How do you start teaching phonics? I fear teaching the wrong thing the wrong way

[bytheMoonlight]

My daughter is almost 3 and has started to show an intrest in letters. She likes it when I write her name and other peoples name's that she knows.

The net step I think is to spell each letter out to her so she start to learn them but I have read that teaching them the wrong way is worse than teaching them nothing at all as the school will have to unteach her before they do anything else.

I do not know anything about phonics and have looked about different websites but am wary that they might be teaching it a different way to what her school might show her. I'm not sure what school she will go to so cannot find out what system they use.

So where do I go from here with her? She can count to 10, knows basic colours and shapes so feel this is a natural progression that she seems keen on learning but we are stuck due to my ignorance!

Any advice greatly recieved

Have a look on this site: www.syntheticphonics.com/. It may not have the exact system your school uses but it has the 'correct' pronunciation of sounds. To start with you could just separate the occasional word out into sounds in conversation, so she can hear the separate sounds. Later you could show her letters and say the sound, so she can begin to associate sounds with letters.

Sorry forgot to post link properly: www.syntheticphonics.com/

Just watched the first video and it seems confusing!

Feel really that I might not be able to teach dd how to read when she is older as I don;t understand the system

How about the Alphablocks?

Hopefully you will get some help from others

But as you are sounding anxious can I just add that you don't have to teach her anything. If she is starting to figure things in her head then giving her access to books, reading to her etc will be loads.
DD used to just sound out the letters on roadsigns and things. I have never 'taught' any of my children even thoughthey were trying to read and trying to spell/write.
I just made sure I talked to them, answered their questions and had loads of basicx books around.

( DS1 just got A at AS level English and is planning to do English at Oxford or Warwick)

Unless you are home edding?

No not home edding.

I remember helping my nephews and neices when they were small by sounding out the letters, breaking the words down into smaller parts etc. I used to enjoy doing that and always thought I would do that with dc.

But now it seems I hav to learn a whole new way to say the letters and I think I need to go to school to learn the system!

I know she is still very young to learn to read and I suppose I am more on about when she is older.

But for now when she points out say the letter 'E' which is the first letter of her name, my instinct is say to say E but I stop myself as I am meant to say it a different way which would mean looking it up before I could tell dd.

Does any of that make any sense?

Off to check out Shaz's second link

I'm watching alphablocks with DS, they use all the correct sounds.

Alright, I only have a 2 year old so I don't know anything, but:

Unless English, and the alphabet, have changed in the past twenty years, I don't think you need to worry about this. I think it's awful that parents are worried about teaching their children the "wrong" way to read and to sound out letters. Phonics isn't some magical science that has revolutionised literacy, has it? It's just teaching your child to read.

I don't know. I think it's another area where parents feel disenfranchised by the "experts" and that's a huge shame. Just say the letters with her, follow your instincts, foster her interest.

Thats great advice cat64, so I guess its just stepping stones.

We already read a lot of books ( or some days we read the same books a lot of times if dd has her way! )
We do Rhymetime at the libary and sing them at home.
She loves find the picture books, although I need to borrow different ones as she knows the ones we have off by heart I think.
We talk a lot and she tells me what she has been up to while I have been at work, she does the same with dh.

So I can start playing I spy and using that to introduce the first letter of each word and use the letters from the fridge to spell her name - do I use the phonics way to say the letters?

bytheMoonlight - I started with the phonics sounds because DS 2.10 was interested.

He's now learnt the ABC song so he knows the names of the letters and the sounds and we just use them casually when playing puzzles and things (alphabet jigsaw).

He loves alphablocks and he likes to try and sound out words.

The basic phonic sounds are not difficult - I would really not worry about doing it "wrong" - eg the letter M - I was saying it "muh" - but really it is more of a mmmmmmm - due to alphablocks DS now says mmmmmm.

You will know most of the phonic sounds for 2 letter combinations eg oo is oooooooo as in moon, ph = f etc.

IMO when DCs are showing an interest in letters and numbers it would be wrong not to follow that interest. This is not the same as some sort of intensive learning to read/count program.

Phonics doesn't always work as well- eg a lot of dyslexic children don't use phonics. I know I didn't- I just learned to recognise words. It meant I have very good spelling, considering that I am dyslexic, and that I have a very wide vocabulary. It does, however, mean that I still pronounce some words very oddly, as I learned them from reading them as a whole word, and learned how to spell them before how to say them, if that makes sense :)

Alphablocks is brill though, as are books on cd.

Alphablocks seems much easier!

If I teach phonic sounds when do they start learning how to say the Alphabet as I know it?

Did you do it at the same time tabouleh?

I've worked in this area, teaching methods go in and out of fashion, and synthetic phonics is in in a big way due to a Scottish study that the last government leapt on.

This does not mean it's the only way to teach reading - indeed I was a at a meeting of publishers where experts were asked if an incoming Tory government was likely to support synthetic phonics too. It just goes to show it's all tied up in politics, trends, and the desire of educational publishers and certain quangos to be doing something new!!!

It seems crazy to me to not use those years when a child is at peak learning capacity to soak up reading easily, and rather leave it until they are five and will struggle more. Go for it! I don't think you need to learn the synthetic phonics method. Just try to pronounce letters as they sound in words rather than their 'names' iyswim. So pronunce 'a' as it sounds in 'cat' rather than 'ay', b as in ball rather than 'bee' etc. Then she will learn to 'decode' new words by going 'c - a - t' = cat rather than just learning them all by sight. And take opportunities to spell out words to her like this. 'Look, that words says 'cat' c - a - t' (as the letters sound in the word)

But children have to be taught sight learning anyway at school, as zillions of words in the English language can't be decoded by phonic e.g. 'the'.

So no harm at all if she does this simultaneously imo. Any basic children's first reading/word book will tend to have lots of examples of words with the right phonetic sounds to prompt you! e.g. dog would be a good example as the way you say the letters d - o - g in dog are the correct phonetic building blocks.

hth

Does anybody remember the ITA system? I'm not sure of the details or how it worked, but it was the way children were taught to read at my school in the early 80s. However I could already read when I started school and I don't remember any issues with me not doing ITA.

Children learn at different rates anyway. Would there really be such a problem if slightly 'wrong' sounds were used when the English language uses a myriad of different sounds for each letter anyway?

Use sounds that work in the word you're trying to help your child to read, if that's what you're doing. I usually said something like 'that's the letter "see" and in this word it says "kuh"' I don't think it does kids any favours once they're beyond sounding everything out to still have them spelling things out loud 'kuh-ah-tuh'.

I Spy is good for distinguishing between letter names and sounds - it's only fair when they're little to spot a shoe as 'something beginning with "sh"', and then challenge them a bit more with 'something beginning with "ess"' as they get the hang of it!

Its good to know that phonics is not as a rigid system as I first thought.

I now think using a combination of instinct and the alphablocks website will work though.

The last thing I wanted to hear was dd's teacher telling me I had done more harm than good.

My DD learned to read with jolly phonics. It was incredible how quickly she managed. The teacher started off with S which has the gesture of making a big S shape and going Ssssss like a snake. The class progressed doing a couple of letters a week, it was also supported by drawing in sand and making the letters in water, so lots of tactile stuff too. the best JP mime is the one for U.

I usually said something like 'that's the letter "see" and in this word it says "kuh"'

My daughter is really into "what noise does the [crocodile/car/horse] make?" conversations, at the moment. So I frame it as "This letter is called Bee. It says 'Buh'" because she understands that things have names and sounds and they're not the same. no idea if this is the approved way, but it's my way, and we shall see.

It's as easy as others have indicated, apart from it's very important to keep the sound pure i.e. don't put an 'uh' at the end of the sounds.

This is because it doesn't help with blending later on. For example, mmmm - u - mmmm makes 'mum' when you put the sounds together, but muh - u - muh just makes 'muhumuh', which makes no sense. .

So keep the sounds short - c, not cuh, and p not puh. It's trickier with some sounds than others (b is hard to clip short).

I wouldn't worry about doing it the wrong way. As a primary school teacher I would just be glad that you cared about it.

tortoise has summed it up well I think. Otherwise there is lots of good advice on this thread already, so I won't add to it!