Sight reading and decoding

[runoutofnameideas]

How do slightly older children learn new words which are irregular - do they still decode somehow with rules I'm not aware of or learn them by sight? Something like "unusual" for example?

Do they work out that there are different ways to pronounce say the middle u and then try them out in their head or something?

Ds just finished reception. He is a very able reader (well I might just be being a proud mum thinking that!) and has zoomed through the levels (and before anyone says too quickly, he does understand and has good expression, rarely sounds out out loud) but he wasn't taught at his level at all for reading within school so I feel a bit lost about how this all works. He is a natural sight reader although he can decode if he has to so I am wondering if he will just learn these sorts of words by sight as he goes which is I'm sure what I did but maybe that's not the done thing these days?

Advice would be great if my question isn't too vague and confusing!

Skilled readers don't 'guess' at words. They may guess at the meaning of words or approximate how to pronounce an unfamiliar word from another language (eg if I didn't know how German spelling works, I might read Schadenfreude as 'shay-den-frood'). But they don't guess.

Nothing kills fluency like having a child scanning the entire page for a picture clue, then reading on to see if they can guess what they've left out, and (if by then they haven't actually lost their place in the book) perhaps looking at the first letter and randomly saying every possible word they can think of beginning with 'm'. Maybe, they're most of the way there and using context have guessed with confidence 'mule'. Should we care that they'll never know it should have been 'moose'?

Surely anyone can see that relying on pictures, rhymes, repetition and predictable stories is such a short-term strategy.

Blending, left to right all through the word... It's just the only way that makes sense.

I've been reading this thread with real interest, it's fantastic to see so many knowledgeable posters contributing. Like the OP my son has finished reception on purple/gold book bands but unlike the OP he has learnt a great many more phonemes (mostly I might add because as they've come up in his books I've taught them to him). However, and I think this was touched on earlier, he absolutely despises sounding a word out and will do anything to avoid it. He says it makes him feel stupid. As a result he's been guessing any words he knows he's going to have to sound out (skullduggery was yesterdays wild guessing word of the day, ending with some bizarre nonsense attempts.). As Mrz suggests I cover parts of the words with my thumb/s to help him but it's having such a knock on effect on his attitude it's driving me bonkers. He's been reading in his head for around four months I guess and in the last two it's been a massive battle to get him to read to me. Obviously I can't let him only read to himself as I'll have no idea if he's just wildly guessing and reinforcing the problem. Anyone have any experience on this side?

You could ask him to listen to you read and make outrageous guesses at some words it's funny how reception children love it when adults/teachers make "deliberate" mistakes they have to correct. I do things like singing the alphabet/number song and getting mixed up and all the class offer to teach me to do it properly. Invite him to help you work out the word and model sounding out the words. It's one of the reasons I don't like telling a child the word if they are stuck

Thank you, that's a fantastic idea, I've been doing something similar with expression for speech as his class teacher was a little obsessed with it towards the end of the year. He didn't always read on to find out how the speech was spoken ('oh no,' whispered x, 'uh oh,' squeaked x, etc) so I would deliberately get it wrong when reading to him and then we'd re do the line together. Have to say he'd still rather not ham it up lol!

Ministripe - where did you get your fantastic ideas from: '(children) who are offered meaningful, interesting texts who are encouraged to use phonics, pictures, context and meaning to decode'?
Hyperactive, frightened kids, eyes darting all over the place - such a common pattern with 6,7 year olds introduced to the strategies you describe.

AllChildrenReading - teaching children to read Using mixed methods makes them hyperactive? That's a pretty strong claim. Have you got any studies you can share with us to back this position?

Sort of going back to my OP, I've noticed exactly what ds is doing with some new longer words (longer two or three syllable words) now. He sounds out the first bit but not the whole word and then guesses the last syllable based on context.
How can I encourage him to sound out the whole thing as I think he can't be bothered and would rather have a stab at guessing?

So he was just looking at something with the word collision and he guessed colliding or collided. I asked him to look at all the word too but he was a bit grumpy about it!

cover the part of the word he has correctly "read" and get him to look at the other letters as you would with multi syllable words

it could be that he hasn't been taught the si in collision represents /sh/

Ah, your ds sounds so like mine! We had the identical thing yesterday with the word concentrating. He sounded out 'concen' then chucked 'quation' on the end! I pointed out that concenquation wasn't a real word and to sound out the whole word and queue grumpy sulkiness! In the end I wrote concentrating and concenquation on a piece of paper for him so the words stood out alone and he saw the difference straight away. Perhaps you might find that helps, as my ds is much happier to sound out a single word alone than a word in the middle of a sentence. I think I've just got a bit of an uphill struggle tbh, he's definitely missing some phonic knowledge and his school have drummed guessing into him despite me having tried desperately to make sure he always sounds words out. I hate to say to him 'do it my way, your teachers are wrong', just in case he goes in and tells them but it's definitely getting near that point!

As I mentioned earlier in the thread his general reading ability is far ahead of the phonics they've covered in class so yes he didn't know -tion but actually sometimes he does it with long words which have only relativey easy phonics. I need to get him out of the habit of half guessing!

sorry just sneakily marking place to catch up later!

I taught my son a lot of the phonics that he uses as like your son his reading was far ahead of his group in class both for guided reading and daily phonics. I didn't do anything fancy. We would get a sheet of paper, i'd decide which phoneme he needed (based on his reading to me) and then i'd write it down at the top and we'd think of words and write them underneath. We usually did this at the table while we were eating dinner! I don't have any training and just went with what seemed right at the time. For example, I remember covering 'tion' and we did 'sion' at the same time. Sometimes we'd discover things about the phonemes/graphemes as we went along and that would add an alternative spelling of the sound to the top of the sheet. I suspect it was a terrible thing to do and i'll have teachers telling me i've done irrepairable damage but I didn't have much choice at the time as his needs really weren't being met at school. We also played around on Education City, which was fairly useful and he has free home access through school. Sorry if I'm teaching granny to suck eggs btw, I just know how frustrated I've been in the past

As a teacher Moomalicious I do something similar ...if the child needs to be able to read "collision" or "motion" I would look at the phoneme /sh/ and talk about how it can be written in other ways such as "si" or "ti" and make lists

Oh well, that's a relief, I just got the actual phoneme wrong then

If you want an easy way to help him extend his phonics knowledge, try the "funny phonics and smelly spellings" series of workbooks by Louise Fidge from Letts. Most easily available workbooks don't do phonics very well in my opinion but I quite like these. You may need to choose one above his age to get the specific phonics you want but they usually have them in places like WH Smith so you can have a browse.

I agree with mrz that phonics international has the best thorough presentation of phonics and you can access all those worksheets via the internet if you pay £33 for a 3 year membership.

The Letts books are a lot easier to use though if you aren't that familiar with phonics yourself.

Moomalicious - you didn't exactly get it wrong, just included 2 graphemes together (ie ti(sh)and on(un)) and listed words that have that common combination. This is done in some phonic schemes such as the Nessy programme which has been produced by the Bristol dyslexia society to help dyslexics learn to read so you are in good company!

The PI list of phonics below posted by MRZ was great and I will use that.

The issue here in this bit of the thread though is making sure he does sound out rather than guessing based on the first syllable.
I suppose I just have to persevere with gently asking him and showing him how he won't necessarily get the word right if he just guesses!

You can make up nonsense words based on the graphemes he is learning

eg if learning "er" "ew" and "oi" you could write
boinerblew and mewerloin etc and get him to decode them. This gives him practice where he can't guess. you could make it into some sort of game where you write nonsense words for each other to read. If the reader is correct they get to throw a dice or spin a spinner to get a score. (very exciting if you use real pennies to keep score and the winner can keep his/her pennies afterwards!)