another neurotic mum....

[loosinas]

im just wondering how to help my son... hes a week into year one and hes on the red book band. we seem to have hit a wall. hes still sounding every word and stumbling with phonemes as hes trying to sound every letter and not noticing sounds that need to be sounded out together eg IGH in night. how can i help him move forward ? is it a matter of practicing the phonemes or what ? he likes "doing his sounds" so he wouldnt be averse to that. im quite worried hes not where he needs to be.....

why not practise one sound, eg "igh" and then do a phoneme hunt for those words. you can write some of them on cards and see if he can spot them, or look for those worrds in some of his story books. give him a magnifying glass and he can be a phoneme detective...

the igh one is quite a tricky one I think... it's just practice really... have a look at my thread on encouraging reading there was some great advice on there and some good websites to look at.

does it help if you revea the letters or sounds a bit at a time. For trickier words I put my finger over part of the word so "fighting" Show the "f" then pull finger back to show the "igh" then pull finer back further to show the "t" then pull back fully to show the "ing". It worked with the DSs. Once they've seen it a few times they get to spot the sounds hidden in the words themselves

sorry for the typos, I had a muh needed glass of wine before I realised I'd forgotten lunch and so have only had a small bowl of cornflakes all day!

Red band books shouldn't have 'igh' in them.

Are they phonetic books or 'look and say' books.

If they're look and say, then he's not actually meant to read the words - just guess :(

A phonetic red band book would only have CVC words in it.

hes got some rigby star ones now and theyre not totally decodable like the old songbirds phonics ones he had..

IndigoBell I was thinking that red band shouldn't have 'igh' ... seems a bit advanced for red band

DS learnt "igh" in term 2 of reception and has been reading it happily ever since. Its combo he spots and remembers well. They had very systematic teaching of phonics/sounds in that class, lots of practise, actions and focused use of the new sounds.

DS has been reading Red band since half way through term 2 of reception, now like OPs child just into Year 1.. Within Red band there seem to be easier books and harder books depending on what phonetic bits the child has learnt yet. I guess many school like ours use a mix of decodable phonics books and older look and say books. I'm very glad they do as the look and say books can be much more interesting to DS even if he needs more assistance with the reading, they keep him engaged in a way some pure phonics schemes do not.

My ds similar. His teacher last year told us to draw the sound buttons underneath them so that he sees the sounds, not the letters. So for 'with' there would be a button under 'w', 'i' and 'th'. Lots of practice and spotting the words out and about helped too. (we got stuck in an enormous traffic jam in Bristol, and got ds to notice his sounds on the road signs. It was a very long jam!)

With DD I practiced those graphemes, one group at the time, if this makes sense, teachers out there feel free to correct me;
i-e:
like
bike
trike
bite
igh:
light
fright
night
might
sight
right
We would read them at first few times, me pointing differences in writing these words, and then with my finger I would cover gh, and show her to read only sounds that she sees.
We also practiced writing them, once she could confidently read words containing these graphemes and distinguish between the two, I would read those words above and she would write them with appropriate grapheme in the middle.
Eventually we got there
Also it was recomended by some of the teachers here on MN to use the recourses from and sounds lot's of very useful staff there, printouts, banners etc, hope this helps.

I can't do link
Letters and Sounds.