How did you teach the alphabet?

[ThreeLittleDuckies]

My little one is about to turn 4 and has just started being interested in letters, so I'm going to start teaching her the alphabet. I know they'll teach her when she starts school but she is showing an interest now!
Do I teach lowercase first, or upper and lowercase at the same time? I can't remember how I did it in school!
Thanks!

winnie why are there only 24 letters in the alphabet?

DS is 3.5yrs old and knows 95% upper and lower case letters in terms of identifying their names. He also knows each letter has an upper and lower case version and that each letter has a sound, and that in some words the sounds are different to the phonic noise. Our language is complicated!

He’s got about 50% of phonics and starting to learn some words by sight.

We started off with learning alphabet song (trying to avoid the elemennoopee issue). Then recognising letters on signs and car registration plates and on the back of cereal boxes. Letters in the bath and on the fridge. Then learning “his” letter (first letter of name), then how to spell his name. He’s got a tablet which has some nice letter games on it. I try to integrate letter recognition into his day and ask him about the sounds they make. Also trying now to say a word and get him to guess what letter it starts with to build up to eye spy.

He’s doing well on this but doesn’t have the dexterity to write any letters at all except maybe a I and O (!). They all learn different things at different rates.

I’d recommend you buy some phonics flash cards mainly for yourself so you don’t teach them the “wrong” versions like “muuh” instead of “mmmm”. Teachers will thank you.

*I am curious.., are teachers the top tier of experts we have in the world?

How does your job title validate your opinion? I'd like to see reference to research papers to back up any claim someone connects their job title to.*

My experience validates my opinion.

Children who start year R having been 'taught' phonics by their well meaning parents or untrained nursery staff present an issue to their Year R teachers, who then have to undo this in order to teach them the pure letter sounds properly.

It is much better for parents to do all the pre-reading and writing stuff like singing nursery rhymes, reading to the child several times a day, talking about stories, talking about anything and everything in order to develop vocabulary, listening for sounds in nature, playing games with sounds etc etc. Developing fine motor skills with play doh, threading beads; developing gross motor skills to make the body strong and ready to write. All the stuff most parents do anyway. Phase 1 of Letters and Sounds.

Even as a qualified and experienced teacher I didn't teach my children the letter sounds before they started school. In my experience it is better to wait and leave it to the class teacher.

For what it's worth I believe phonics is an important part of teaching reading but it isn't the only way. Memorising word shapes, finding words within words, using sentence clues, looking for pictorial clues all have their place. Some children don't find phonics easy and so rely on these other strategies more heavily.

I thought I would be very structured with home learning and would teach my children to read, at home, age 3. Then I taught for 10 years, had my DCs and my opinion totally changed. Less is more with phonics at home.

Play "I Spy " phonetically.

So if the answer is chair you'd say "I spy with something in my eye something beginning with ch" rather than "Beginning with c (see)"

With writing it depends if the school does printing or a joined up writing font. I've attached a pic so you know what I mean, it's obviously much harder but it's taught so that the transition to joined up is easier later.

My daughter had speech delay

I brought her a phones sound card set and she soon improved her speech. She could read at 3. Never did her any harm. Still in top sets.

Never did mine any harm either. The nursey they attended was attached to a school who offered training to staff, parents and carers. Regardless of what school the children moved onto, phonics would be in the learning. Better to have those around the children pronouncing correctly knowing those children will be taking work home.

For those who couldn't attend or as a refresher, links were also provided to several very useful youtube links.

It's not hard to learn and parents/carers should be encouraged to get involved. How are we going to help them to blend words in reading books correctly otherwise?

Also helped getting jobs in education lol.

Children who start year R having been 'taught' phonics by their well meaning parents or untrained nursery staff present an issue to their Year R teachers, who then have to undo this in order to teach them the pure letter sounds properly.

It’s an ‘issue’ which an ‘experienced’ and ‘trained’ reception teacher should be able to manage well enough. Having parents that show an interest in their child's education and engages in their child’s interests is such a positive thing, even if they do make the odd mistake or encourage a minor misconception it’s still so valuable for the overall education and development of the child that it definitely trumps a teacher’s convenience in my opinion. Of course it’s easier for you if everyone comes in as a clean slate, but that’s not reality - and it does make me question your level of experience and training quite frankly.

It's not about convenience.

You are extremely rude.

Problem is pink that even for an experienced reception teacher, it’s a lot harder to unteach the the issues that well intentioned parents have made than it is to teach from scratch.

Yes, I can do it but it might take months to fix and would have been a lot easier if it hadn’t had to happen in the first place.

I taught middle child Alphabet before school, he really struggled with the basics in school because of the flipping phonics differences. He's 6 and appears to have forgotten the alphabet 'song' completely but can sound out words when reading and writing.

Honestly phonics confuses the heck outta me

I’m another one coming on to say Alphablocks.

@lilmishap
Any decent teacher in my experience will help you. Once it's explained properly it all makes sense. The workshops the school still does, ran for about an hour iirc, with the option of getting more if needed.

That was one of the reasons I chose the school because their ethos was it has to be a partnership between them and us. Staff including the head gave up time to run workshops beyond the usual Internet safety one. Worked closely with other local schools and parents who had specific skills to run workshops. Thus reducing the need to pay for outside people.

I would question the experience of a teacher who struggled to 'undo' previous learning.
As a teacher, you have to be able to adapt your learning to suit the needs of the specific child. Great if you have a class full of kids without any additional learning need or speak another language.

But what would I know? I never completed teacher training (health reasons) and years of raising children has taught me nothing,

If teachers don't want to spend months on undoing our work, talk to your school about running workshops. Don't dismiss us for wanting to be actively involved in our children's education. Instead, work with us to get through some of the barriers we have helping our children learn.
It also assumes that parents have no experience in education, art, music, Bsl/Makaton etc.

I didn’t teach it really, we had a book that had it in as the decorative paper in the front so I used to touch each letter as I sang it and that was that. Very informal, no upper case or lower case, that sounds more like lessons.

It's far preferable for parents to attend a phonics workshop at their child's school and use this knowledge to support the child with reading books selected by the teacher at home, than to try to teach them to read before they start school, yes.

30 children in any given class will have a huge range of experiences and abilities which of course the teacher will be taking into account when planning their next steps of learning. That's obvious. But when you realise that some children have been told that certain graphemes represent incorrect sounds it does complicate things.

There are just so many lovely things to do with 4 year olds related to reading that are not related to phonics. Why not spend time doing those instead of rushing ahead and trying to get children reading before they are ready?

Please teach her phonics not the alphabet. Being able to sing the alphabet song is really not that useful! I agree with watching the Alphablocks, it’ll help you to learn too.

Don't dismiss us for wanting to be actively involved in our children's education

You can be extremely involved in your child's education but let their teacher take the lead with phonics!

When my DCs were preschoolers we did countless things together that prepared them for school and helped them be ready to read and write. We did cooking, crafts, outdoor obstacle courses at adventure playgrounds, made up plays with puppets, went to the museum and library etc etc. We did music groups, gym tots, talked about the world around us.

But I didn't teach them any phonucs
They didn't need it before they started school. My job as a parent was to get them ready for school.

When they were in year R I continued to read to them daily and also listened to them read the books their teacher sent home. Of course I had the phonics knowledge needed to support them with blending and segmenting but I followed their lead and took it at their pace. I never taught them discrete phonics at any time. I attended the phonics workshops at their school with the other parents and we were asked by the literacy leader to support application of phonics at home (by hearing our children read), so I have done this.

Both are exceeding age related expectations, if that's important.

My view is that there's a whole host of activities that parents can do to support learning of reading but there is no need for phonics to be taught at home.

People doubting my experience levels are barking up the wrong tree.

What's more, when my DCs school did an open evening before they started year R, we as parents were advised not to start teaching our children phonics at home but to focus on readiness for reading.

There were also tips like, get them to practise putting their uniform on by themselves, teach them how to use cutlery at home, make sure they can use the toilet and wash their hands independently, zip up their own coat etc. This practical stuff is far more important at the preschool stage than teaching letter sounds.

Teaching something earlier on isn't always better.

This practical stuff is far more important at the preschool stage than teaching letter sounds

These are normal things parents should be teaching their kids. Teachers shouldn’t have to tell parents to do them. Very few children genuinely struggle with these basics.

There are just so many lovely things to do with 4 year olds related to reading that are not related to phonics. Why not spend time doing those instead of rushing ahead and trying to get children reading before they are ready?

Because the OPs child has shown a specific interest in the letters on the page. And as others have said if you’re going to engage in that interest it’s only sensible to look at it from a phonics angle rather than naming the letters or teaching the sounds incorrectly. OP isn’t rushing anything or being pushy, they’re just following they’re DCs interests and sensibly seeking some advice on how to go about it the right way. Yes, if a parent rushes ahead before their child is ready/even interested and teaches them sounds incorrectly because they haven’t bothered to research anything then that can cause difficulties - but that’s not the case here. Teaching a whole class phonics certainly requires training, but learning about and understanding phonics and the basics of ‘letters and sounds’ and watching alphablocks really isn’t rocket science you don’t need to go through ITT to engage with it and many schools rely on parents to practice sounds with their children at home - they don’t all need to go through specialist training to ‘be allowed’ to do that.

These are normal things parents should be teaching their kids. Teachers shouldn’t have to tell parents to do them. Very few children genuinely struggle with these basics.

Of course I agree with you, they are the basics. But being able to do them all means a child is ready to learn.

And if the child wants to start before they start school?
Just read with them as normal, or start introducing the occasional sound blending?
If a book has a word like c-a-t we ignore and just say cat or sound the letters out as written on the paper?
Homework reading and they are stuck on a word, to help them learn the word we stop bothering to sound out the first couple of letters to give them a clue?

Strange how schools work. The workshops were run because of scenarios such as the above. Same with literacy for parents, to help them help their child read.

Totally agree with Bluewaves. I didn’t teach either of my kids. At the preparing for school meetings we had the head teachers of every local school stood up together and begged us not to. They said they wasted a huge amount of time in reception fixing the mistakes made by parents. Basically we were told don’t teach it, you will fuck it up. I wholeheartedly agreed and didn’t teach it. Both children never struggled.

The OP's child is about to turn 4.

My opinion is that this is too early for phonics.

When children are ready, it's a quick process to teach them letters and sounds. It's done in a certain order which keeps it uncomplicated for them.

In my experience, formal phonics too early is unnecessary. Some teachers believe year R is too early, in fact.

www.google.com/amp/s/schoolsweek.co.uk/the-reception-year-isnt-all-about-learning-to-read/amp/

Developing a love of books is what is more important.

www.amazon.co.uk/LeapFrog-602803-Leapfrog-Fridge-Phonics/dp/B078BXSTBG/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=fridge+phonics&tag=mumsnetforu03-21&qid=1575823705&sr=8-1

This was popular when my kids were starting to learn phonic sounds. I don't remember it looking like this but it was over 10 years ago