A question about helping your child to read and letter sounds

[pepsi]

My ds 4.7 is in full time school and is learning letters/reading, etc using Jolly Phonics. When he brings home letters to learn. I am using the sound to identify them. Should I be using the correct letter name as well if you know what I mean. Like thats the letter "a" which makes the "a" sound eg. a-n-t. Or does this confuse them. Must ask the teacher I know but to be honest Im a bit embarrassed to ask. Any times on helping them to start reading greatly appreciated. My ds is SN at the moment, nothing diagnosed yet though.

ok......

most places now use the sound the letter makes - but by this i dont mean 'muh' for the letter m but it should be 'mmmm'

for s it shouldnt be 'suh' but 'ssssssssssss' (like a snake)

does that make sense? helps them to put the letters together to identify the word

So when do they actually start to name the letter "s" rather than ssssssssssssssss, iyswim.

I am more key stage 2 trained than key stage 1............

so I will pass that one on to someone with more relevant experience......

IME, ks1, it is taught depending on the ability of the child. some children need to focus only on the 'sound', and would find it confusing to move onto the 'name' of the letter until they have fully understood the sound.
Some children are capable of learning both together.
If you suspect your child is SN, I would get them confident with the sounds first, and progress to word building before you introduce the names of the letters.
HTH!

Pepsi - my dss started to use the "name of the letter", e.g. 'Ess' in yr1. But tbh you don't need to worry about it - they all know the alphabet song, and they pick up the names extremely quickly.

But in terms of literacy the names of the letters are of no help, and no use. The only thing they do afaik is make a child 'seem more grown-up' if they can understand a word spelled out loud in the grown up way ... i.e. Ess - Ay - Em, rather than sss - a - mmm

Pepsi my DS's reception teacher does what you do - i.e. name of letter is AYYY and that makes the AHHHHH sound. He seems to cope well and knows the difference!

Whats the earliest you can reasonably expect your child to be able to read a very very simple book then. As my Ds is at the moment considered SN I dont really know how to guage how well he is doing. We played a letter game tonight using 6 letters, he kept on getting different ones wrong, but amazing my dd age 2.7 was really really good at it.....she has picked up loads from me trying to help him, pretty soon there isnt going to be much difference between them. I think she is really bright for her age and he struggles to get letter sounds.

I am currently trying to encourage dd to recognise both phonics and normal letter sounds so she is ready for it when they start talking about it at school. She knows her whole alphabet, and can pick out simple three letter words now and then when she's feeling clever!! I try to teach her both ways without confusing her but it's not always easy!!

I have never heard of not using the correct name of the letters. That's certainly how they do it in the US. My 2 year old knows most of her letters (the names of the letters) but not the sounds they make yet, and my 5 year old first learnt the names of the letters and then the sounds they made. This hasn't confused her at all. What about the letter C, for example, which has 2 different sounds? What do you call it if you're calling it it's sound?

To answer your second question, my daughter was 5 in September and is just starting to read. She knows quite a few sight words (like the, and, you, etc.) and can sound out simple words (like cat or dog).

My DD is now in Year 1. In reception the letters werer learnt using Jolly phonics and as far as I'm aware everyone was taught in this way. I've found that she's just picked up the actual letter names as she's gone away. I was a bit dubious about Jolly Phonics at first but can see the benefits now, as she's pretty good at sounding out and blending the letters together. It took my DD most of reception to get the hang of reading - she was very inconsistent with words, one day would remember "the" but the next day would forget it again. Her teacher said it's very common at that age. She's now becoming quite a confident reader. I think the best thing to try to relax as much as possible, make it fun and don't worry if he gets words wrong.

interesting topic and I can't quite get my head around it either.
DD (nearly 3) learned quite a few letter sounds from an early age (like what you describe as 'sss' for S). So we went along with that system both me & DH. then I got her a toy with the alphabet and there they pronounce 'es' for S etc. So I started only using letters' names and she picked up a lot of them. DH still uses the letter sounds.
She doesn't seem bothered and it would appear she thinks there are 2 different prononciations for the same letter but it hasn't confused her yet.

Add to that the fact that I speak a different language to her when it's just the two of us (we pronounce the alphabet differently and also have extra letters! but I haven't told her yet about this other language's alphabet)

But somehow she manages very well with everything and she also knows some words in two other languages (apart from English and my language). I think children's minds are a miracle and don't think they get confused, somehow they align to the 'norm' eventually.

branster - which language do you speak?
just being nosey!

DD uses letterland at school. She's been taught "Bouncy Ben says "b" and his grown-up name is bee. Letterland also has a system for teaching them that sometimes vowels sound like their letter names, guess jolly Phonics must be similar?

If you ask DD to spell a word, she uses sounds rather than letter names though.