Reading - advice please

[shades1]

DS1 is 5 and in year one, can read phonetically spelt words really well, but is getting stuck on words that aren't.

Reading his book last night he was getting stuck on "here" - so today I've been giving him the two pronunciations of each letter to encourage him to try both and see which one makes sense.

Will this work or is there anything else I could try ?

For what it's worth I have done the same with my DS. I tried to explain that when there was a "a" "e" "i" or "o" then a letter then "e" the first one was like the alphabet sound.

But resorted back to "try with the other sound and see if it makes sense". It's working fine!

PS DS is 5 and in year one too

You need catflap!!

Oooh CATFLAP - where are yoooou?

She'll be along soon I'm sure as she always posts on these boards and she has fabulous advice!

Our language is a phonetic langugae - that is, the words are constructed of letters to represent the sounds in that word. However, because our language has varied origins, the phonics is complex. Yet, more words are phonically regular with all the alphabet code knowledge. It is incomplete phonics knowledge that makes some words seem harder, or more irregular, or needing some sort of whole word treatment.

The word you used - 'here' is indeed one of those really tricky ones, but I'd be interested in hearing what other ones ds1 is also have trouble with.

The two pronunciations of each letter? I wonder what you mean by that, exactly. Perhaps you could clarify?

Basically, with our written language, it was the spoken words that (obviously) came first. There are about 44 different individual speech sounds and these are represented by 26 letters. Clearly not enough for one letter to be for each sound, or even 2, as there is such a variety of spelling.

For children that struggle, I think it is confusing to approach reading from the letters, by saying they have sounds that they make. By looking at the letters on their own, it will get incredibly confusing, especially by attaching their 'traditional' sounds to them, which are usually their most common sound in the initial position. e.g. 'r' taught as rrr as in the start of 'red' will make things tricky when words such as 'dark' and 'world' are seen. 'a' is used in the sounds ai, oa, ea, ar and air.

To make sense of this complex nature and ensure that enough knowledge is acquired to make virtually any word decodable independently by children, it is necessary to teach them all the sounds and their related spellings in a systematic and thorough fashion. The chidlren are then taught how to blend these sounds all through a word, to read it in its entirity. Doesn't sound incredibly exciting, granted, but by following a scheme such as Jolly Phonics, it is fun as it is multi-sensory which also means it is picked up quickly and it is fast paced which means results are seen quickly which makes it very motivating.

For support reading material; words would only be encountered in structured sessions that were comprised of sounds and letters already taught. There is no point teaching a set of sounds and letters and how to blend them and then expecting a child to read a word that is made up of more complex sounds and letters. So, words such as 'here' would be left for later.

HTH for now

By the two sounds we (or at least I) mean "e" can be "e" for elephant or "e" as you say it in the alphabet.

TBH DS doesnt have trouble with "here" as such because that is one of the key sight word he learned in reception so he doesn't use phonics to read "here" he just knows that word.

At DS school they seem to make a mixture of phonics and sight words, but I still used to have to tell him "use the other sounds" for the ones that are not sight words, like "make" "hide" etc... I do think there is a rule as I tried to explain in my previous post, but i find explaining that rule to a 5 yo a bit much... and he has now got the hang of it and will more often than not work it out for himself.

"Airport" caused him trouble tonight though caus he hasn't been told the "ai" sound thought he can read "said"... daft hey! "said" is a sight word so he never actually decomposed it!

Try getting DS1 to read on past tricky words and then going back and thinking about which word would fit into the gap and make sense within the sentence. The pictures can also be used as a visual aid as well.
Also keep a note of the words that are not pronounced phonetically and go through them with him afterwards.
Unfortunately, the English language being what it is, there are some words that we only know how to pronounce because we have been told. Your son will not be worse off for this, and if it avoids confusion, all the better

I try to relate the word ds is having difficulty with to a word he has come across beofre...sorry to tired to puit that better.

catflap - is there a good website for synthetic phonics, sounds like ds would benefit from it as he mainly sight reads

Wallace, have a look at this website, it had quite good feedback on the synthetic phonics website from people who had used it www.starfall.com/ I?ve just had another look at it and although there are a some things that I would change, all in all it?s very good. Have a look and see what you think.

How do you insert hyperlinks on this site? Everytime I insert one, it doesn't work!

Thanks I will have a look at that website

Here is my guide to doing links:

See the box on the right of the bit where you type your message to add to the thread. Look at the bottom of it. Then copy and paste this bit description then copy and paste the web address on "url" and put your description in. Should work

whoops! forgot it would show as link! copy and paste the bit that goes backslash..link..{url\description}

Thanks Wallace, ok here goes...

www.starfall.com

nell12 - those mixed strategies of decoding have been shown to confuse and muddle many children, rendering many of them failures at reading.

These strategies give no help really as to the nature of how our written word is constructed, whereas thorough phonics teaching renders practically every word pretty much decodable logically, or, as you put it 'pronounced phonetically' - you just have to be aware as to what all the 'phonics' are.

To date, I only really have 4 words that I think are almost total sight words and (the last) three have some phonics that can be applied - eye, one, once and here.

I think ds will enjoy that website, and even dd would be able to have a go at the easier level

well done for your first successful link

Catflap, have taught in the primary system for more years that I can remember, KS1 and KS2 and I am Literacy Manager for the school. I work in an socially deprived area where literacy levels can be poor. My pupils excel at reading using the methods I have mentioned along with the generallt accepted reading and phonics schemes and are generally above average.
Please try to keep your comments positive and remember what does not work for one child works well for many others.
Surely all techniques are worth trying whatever someone else's attitude or experiences may be?

Catflap, have taught in the primary system for more years that I can remember, KS1 and KS2 and I am Literacy Manager for the school. I work in an socially deprived area where literacy levels can be poor. My pupils excel at reading using the methods I have mentioned along with the generallt accepted reading and phonics schemes and are generally above average.
Please try to keep your comments positive and remember what does not work for one child works well for many others.
Surely all techniques are worth trying whatever someone else's attitude or experiences may be?

Unfortunatelyt, years of experience and various management posts doesn't necessarily render someone in possession of all the facts about learning to read and teaching it most effectively. It is a complex area and largely misunderstood by the majority of teachers.

Research has shown that it is not a case of 'what does not work for one child works well for many others' and that if you teach the right thing, it can work for 99% of children. I think that's really exciting and I have seen it happen in my classrooms, as well as read about hundreds of children for whom success is a certainty. It ahs been proved that with the mixture of methods you are promoting, up to a quarter of children will always fail.

We take this 'what works for one will not necessarily work for others...' attitude with little else except reading - but it doesn't have to be this complex or an individual mystery - it is quite straightforward when properly understood.

My comment couldn't really be too positive, in that it was highlighting how many children fail - and that isn't positive, is it?

Surely all techniques are worth trying - but if you'd tried synthetic phonics exclusively, you wouldn't try anything else.

sorry - I know I clicked about a bit as my trackpad was misbehaving, but unsure how I managed to copy that message into my reply...

complete rubbish.
thus endeth my interest in this thread,
(Maybe all the schools and all the children I have taught over the years must be exceptions to your rule... but given that is 1000 plus children, I doubt it)

oooh a fight

I hate phonics - it reduces reading to boring toil. I learned very quickly with pure word recognition and Im a brilyunt speller too. I just remember words by their shape.

my children do phonics with french but word recognition with english. it seems to work.

you probably hate the boring, limited, traditional phonics that I remember from school. Agreed. And yes, many children can read perfectly well without it. I did. The phonics I am talking about it much more fun, though.

Ive seen the new Ladybird books, but they didnt appeal.

learning phonics in a language like Italian or french is so much more rewarding than in english because you get more results for fewer rules.

night night - couldn't agree more with your last comment - we have a pig of a language to learn!

Apparently, there are far, far less, is any, incidents of dyslexia on the continent, as their languages are so much more straightforward.

p.s. the limited nature of some early phonic books is balanced by the fact that, once the alphabet code is mastered, anything can be read - including all the most interesting books under the sun.

Hi Catflap

is there anything in particular you could recommend that I could go out and buy, have just started DS on Educationcity and he loved it, so much more concentration than doing worksheets.

went to his parents evening and his teachers want to work with us to help him to be able to do literacy independently, he seems scared to try on his own, we think it's because he doesn't want to get things wrong.

Is there anything like that available for parents to attend ?