when showing dd a alphabet puzzle toy, should i say the letters or sound the letters out?

[JeanPoole]

like should i say a b c d
or aa bb cuu duu etc

shes 2 years old and i'm wondering if i teacg her say d is d, will she find it harder to understand it makes the sound duu

Moondog, not sure I like mrz tone.

I don't think there is any evidence at all that knowing letter names slows down reading. It sounds like an opinion to me. Fine. Doesn't bother me either way. Just answering JeanPoole's original question.

but mrz seems very sure of being right..

I'm sure you do indeed know your stuff.
What additional qualifications do you have in these field to complement your experience may I ask?

Leave it moondog. It's not wurf it.

I would support mrz's view that children who have been taught letter names first often struggle with reading because they try to blend words using letter names, and my evidence for this is similar - I've seen this happen many times as a Literacy co-ordinator and in 15 years of teaching children to read.

I also agree that teaching letter names first deeply confusing to many kids.

What you have to remember is most kids learn in spite of how they are taught, not as a direct result of it.

V. worrying state of affairs.

Yes I've heard about from memory it had links with Head Start and compensatory education.

Sorry moondog can I ask are you in the US?

Diane MacGuinness is a great person to start with.
'Why our children can't read and what we can do about it' is a very readable slim tome.

No,I'm in the UK,connected to this university

IwoulddoDrWho - may I refer you to my earlier post of Mon 18-May-09 16:33:09 to answer your latter questions.

IwoulddoDrWho when did I say I only believe in one method? and when did I rubbish anything?
I merely said to moondog I personally don't like Headsprout which I stand by. Am I the only not allowed an opinion in this discussion or are we only allowed to comment if we agree with you?

My apologies moondog I assumed from you interest in Headsprout you must be living in the US.

But wouldn't it be nice moondog is all children were able to learn because they were taught in the most effective way for them first rather than when it becomes an issue?

I'm not sure which field you mean moondog but I have a MA in Education with a focus on literacy if that helps?

IwoulddoDrWho there is plenty of research out there

Preschool foundations of early reading acquisition
Susan Rvachew, PhD S-LP(C)1 and Robert Savage, PhD

"Letter knowledge
Letter name knowledge has a complex relationship with reading. While closely related to reading, it is also known that training letter names does not itself raise reading ability....Children may often represent the sounds in words using a combination of letter names and letter sounds (ie, ?bn? [bean]) in early spelling."

McGuinness, Diane (2004). Early Reading Instruction: What Science Really Tells Us about How to Teach Reading. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

"Other studies indicated that learning letter names as opposed to learning phoneme-grapheme correspondences (learning the sound that goes with the letter) could negatively affect spelling proficiency."

Indeed it would be great if they were taught effectively.There is no reason why they shouldn't be either. We know what methods are the most effective ones. The case was made and proven in Project Followthrough in the States, the largest educational educational experiment ever to date.

Never heard of it?? Most peopel haven't because the results run contrary to everything we want to believe about the 'art' of teaching.

Another criminally neglected aspect is error correction. What do we do when a child gets something wrong? How do we address and remediate it systematically?
Most reading programmes (even good phonics ones) very poor on this. Headsprout's great strength is its use of sophisticated error correction techniques.Additionally it is online, not on a CDRom so the data going to HQ from thousands and thousands of children across the world enables them to tweak it constantly.

Perhaps you could point me to some that says that teaching kids letter names first and then sounds slows down reading. It may seem pedantic but that is the OP's question and my current practice. I have also taught for 20 years, many of it with non-visual learners who find most methods of learning to read difficult. I use a bit of everything and it works. I'm always sceptical of people who only believe in one method and won't discuss others without rubbishing them.

I agree with mrz re teaching letter names first, I'm an ex literacy co-ordinator.

I wasn't that keen on what I saw of Headsprout(no offense either),have to say my very literate 5 year olds would die of boredom,it's very dry and some of the text is shockingly tedious.

To the op masses of quality picture books are a must,if you really want to you could teach the sounds(correctly of course)but I wouldn't clutter her brain with much else at the moment.

My 3 are very literate. Most of this is due to being immersed in literature from a young age which led to them becoming book addicts. Dd4 sits up in bed doing pretend reading night after night,she memorises a lot,uses book language and is starting to guess at words,point out sounds etc. She wouldn't do this if she didn't adore books. Her brothers 5 are very advanced readers and were very like her at this age.

Go to the library,find authors you both love, look at Red House and Book People(good offers),read to her at every opportunity,go to book shops and read there.

If you do all this now it will give her a fantastic grounding which will give her a headstart when she starts school.

What sane and sensible advice - and just what I should have said. Hope you're still there OP!

Just enjoy reading with her. Do lots of nursery rhymes as well - the rhyme and rhythm helps.

Quite. Also agree totally with Mila, IMO any child who has a love of books and stories from an early age will have the self-impetus to want to learn to read by themselves. Also take the lead from your child, my dd has from an early age asked which letters are which and how to read certain words.

DrWho - the OP probably (and understandably) got tired of the qualification-polishing and went to read her child some stories. I would have. (by the way, always wanted to ask you, would you really? (doDW?)

I can't speak for the OP of course, but it didn't seem to me that she was asking "how do I teach my child to read?", but rather, "how do I name the letters in the alphabet when it occurs in her toys?"

We have a few toys with letters on for decoration, e.g. some wooden blocks with letters and numbers on, and I would like to know what to say to DD when she asks about them. She recognises numbers and quite reasonably assumes the letters have names too.

With dd I just did Ay Bee See Dee until she was about 3 and consciously making the connection herself between the letters of the alphabet and the words she could see on the pages of her books. Going the "sounds" way at that stage would be counter-productive IMO- what would you say for "A" "sometimes it's ah, sometimes it's ay, sometimes it's silent, sometimes it's uh" etc...

Shortback if it was me and this is what I did with my 3 was to get a quality picture alphabet book and read that, pronouncing the sounds in the Jolly Phonics way.

Jolly Phonics is good as it has actions which help you pronounce them correctly. I never bothered much with the actions with my own dc but if you're not sure on pronunciation they put you on the right track.

Try to get an alphabet book that has i for igloo etc (not ice cream), o for orange etc (not owl),g for goat etc (not giant)-easier said than done believe me.

Oh and avoid flashcards etc like the plague they don't need them at this age and could make them associate books/sounds with something tedious. They will more than likely come across flashcards at school but by this stage your dc will adore books/sounds etc so no problem .

Of course I would. Wouldn't you Bucharest?