Phonics - basics

[Mashabell]

At this time of year many schools hold parents evenings to explain phonics.
So it occurred to me that parents who have never given the matter any thought before might find it helpful if I explain briefly on here what phonics is. (For me things always register better if I read or hear something several times.) So here I go.

Words are made up of sounds which are blended together: cat is a blend of C ? A - T.
Some sounds are spelt with just one letter, as in ?cat?, others with two or three (ch, igh). The different spellings for sounds are collectively known as ?graphemes?.

For reading, children have to learn to sound out the graphemes and to blend them into words.
For writing, they learn to break words up into their constituent sounds and what letters to use for them.

Most European languages have around 40 sounds, and English has 43 ½ . (The ½ sound is the unstressed, barely audible vowel in endings of ?flatten, certain?, but can be elsewhere in a word too (dEcide).

The 43 main English sounds (in alphabetical order) are as follows and illustrated with the words in brackets:
A : (ant), AI : (rain), AIR : (air), AR : (arm), AU : (sauce), B : (bed), CH : (chip), D : (dog), E : (egg), EE : (eel), ER : (herb), F : (fish), G : (garden), H : (house), I : (ink), IGH : (high), J : (jug), K : (kite), L : (lips), M : (man), N : (nose), NG : (ring), O : (pot), OE : (toe), OI : (coin), OO : (food), OO : (wood), OR : (order), OU : (out), P : (pin), R : (rug), S : (sun), SH : (shop), T : (tap), TH : (this), TH : (thing), U : (cup), UE : (cue), V : (van), W : (window), Y : (yak), Z : (zip), ZH (spelt mostly -si-) : (television)

Because some English sounds are spelt differently in different positions of words (mAY, mAkE) or are spelt differently for other reasons (KiCK, ComiC),
the basic English spelling system uses 81 graphemes:
A : (ant), AI : (rain, plate, play), AIR : (air), AR : (arm), AU : (sauce, saw),

B : (bed), CH : (chip, stitch), D : (dog),

E : (egg), EE : (eel, funny), ER : (herb),

F : (fish), G : (garden), H : (house),
I : (ink), IGH : (by, bite),

J : (jug, bridge, oblige),

K : (c/at/ot/ut, crab/ clap, kite/kept, comic, pick, seek, risk; quick, fix),

L : (lips), M : (man), N : (nose), NG : (ring),

O : (pot, want, quarrel), OE : (toe, bone, old), OI : (coin, toy), OO : (food), OO : (wood), OR : (order, wart, quarter, more), OU : (out, now),
P : (pin), R : (rug), S : (sun, face), SH : (shop, station, musician), T : (tap, delicate), TH : (this), TH : (thing), U : (cup), UE : (cue, cube), V : (van, have), W : (window), Y : (yak), Z : (zip), -si- : (television)

There are also 8 main endings ( doable, fatal, single, ordinary, flatten, presence, present, other),
2 prefixes (decide, invite)
and the use of doubled consonants for showing that a vowel is short rather than long (dinner ? diner).

There are many exceptions to the above which children get taught as they move up through the primary years, but to begin with, they?ll start learning the sounds for just a few letters which nowadays are often s, a, t, p, i, n.
Making them aware of the sounds in words is usually the very first step.

I would be happy to answer any questions about this.
I would be happy to be corrected too if I made any errors by trying to show the system on here without the use of bold or colour.
Masha Bell

Mrz - Why would you avoid the most used English words masha?

I have looked at several of the new phonics schemes. They try to keep the reading books for beginners as decodable as possible, because words with changing letter sounds, such as the in who only once are much harder for beginners to decode than those in which the sound stays the same (stop on hot spot).

When I worked as a reading assistant, I recorded the words which children stumbled over, and they were almost invariably ones which contain letters or graphemes which can have more than one sound. I am finding the same with my grandchildren, although their overall progress is very good.

I have looked at several of the new phonics schemes. They try to keep the reading books for beginners as decodable as possible, because words with changing letter sounds, such as the in who only once are much harder for beginners to decode than those in which the sound stays the same (stop on hot spot).

Oh, for heaven's sake, masha, of course they do in the very early stages. There is absolutely no need to introduce the complex code until children have mastered the principle of letters representing sounds, and, how to decode the 'sounds' and blend them to produce the words. Which does not mean that children are never taught the complex code, just that they are not overwhelmed with it in the early stages.

As to the literary merit of early decodables

a) They are not written for the parents, so their finding them boring is completely irrelevant.
b) Repetitive text 'look and say' readers are also very boring (even more so, perhaps as the vocabulary is even more limited)

I'm not really sure what your point is, apart from demonstrating yet again that your understanding of synthetic phonics teaching is very poor.

BTW I am astounded that you think I should support you in any way on this thread. As you quite rightly noted, a number of us are experts on the teaching of SP. You are not....

masha could I ask which new schemes you are looking at? because the ones we use certainly contain words that are used frequently in English ... we don't avoid these words we teach children how to read them.

maizieD

"There is absolutely no need to introduce the complex code until children have mastered the principle of letters representing sounds, and, how to decode the 'sounds' and blend them to produce the words."

This is the basis of our years of disagreement. A large part of the population, children and adults are able to perform the task you describe. But you keep on ignoring the large minority who are cognitively not able to do this. Not everyone can isolate the sounds in a word, as they are not able to process the gaps between the sounds. Those who have these problems can only learn new words by remembering and reproducing the whole sound of the word. And this also applies to the graphic representation of speech, or the written word, by only being able to match the whole sound of a word to the whole graphic representation. Which would suggest a preferance for a logographic writing system rather than an alphabet writing system. These writing systems were designed to best suite the cognitive needs and abilities of the designers and those best suited to use them, which is not necessarily the same population as who now have to learn to use them.

As you are no doubt aware I have a clinically diagnosed disability which explains why I have never been able to cognitively use any form of phonics. One of the tests which forms part of any diagnosis of APD, is designed to measure the size of gap between sounds an individual can process. When i did the test there was not a gap included big enough for me to process. Which makes me a worst case scenario. But as you have noticed on a good day my spelling and grammar can be like most others, but you do not get to see most of my bad days, when I avoid going online, and or avoid going outside of the home environment. Spell checkers can be useful, but of little use when you miss whole words or phrases, or when a spelling error is another recognised word. So may be if schools were to include a form of test to measure the size of gap between sounds each child can process, then may be schools could identify which children could use any phonics based program, and also identify children who would need to use an alternative teaching program as they are cognitively not able to use phonics. According to the Medical Research Council this can be up to 10% of the child population, including those who have had Glue Ear (Otitis Media with Effusion) and that only applies ot hsoe who have APD, there are many other clinical conditions which may cause similar problems.

Mrz - the ones we use certainly contain words that are used frequently in English ... we don't avoid these words we teach children how to read them.
MaizieD who is a phonics expert has explained which words u avoid with beginners, and why. She has confirmed what I said but seems to resent my explanation of phonics. So why don't the pair of u, and any other phonics experts who want to chip in, make it clear on here in another thread exactly what phonics is? Instead of belittling my efforts, to it better.

I tried to do so and to explain to parents why so many early reading books are excruciatingly dull, and also why parental involvement and help makes an enormous difference to their children's progress with learning to read and write.

I have to agree that earlier decodables were much more exciting! Here are some extracts from a Victorian one (with commentary)

www.sitella.co.uk/sideline/diversions/rwt/index.html

Oh, sorry, ignore last. The page can only be accessed through the 'Wayback Machine' and it's a bit complex to do.

Try this: www.archive.org/web/web.php, then paste the link from my previous post into the search box.

(the Wayback site will apparently be unavailable from this evening until Sunday)

masha I work with very young children whereas maizie works with secondary children so I very much doubt her pupils would be interested in the phonics reading schemes I use.

I agree that the books we first use with four year olds don't introduce "complex" code (the children are usually five by the time we get to the complex stuff) but neither do they exclude the common words most frequently used in English

Hmm.. I have found Jelly & Bean very useful on occasion (and the pupils didn't dislike them )

maizieD - I like Jelly & Bean too, and have recommended it to people teaching reading in English to older children (who are learning to read in English having already learned to read in another language). It is probably the least infantile and condescending of the reading schemes, hence being more suitable for older learners.

I don't have any Jelly and Bean books maizie

Jelly & Bean aren't my chosen bedtime reading, but they beat Biff & Chip hands down any day!!

Absolutely - a million times better than ORT!

We had Ginn 360 !

Because learning to read English is difficult (much harder than all other European languages) and takes several years, parental help makes an enormous difference. Schools nowadays expect them to help with reading homework.

The first part, when children learn the main sounds for single letters for which Letters and Sounds recommends the following to begin with
s a t p i n m d g o c k ck e u r h b f, ff l, ll ss
is straightforward.

The next stage
with j v w x y z,zz que

and the digraphs ch sh th ng ai ee igh oa o oar or u row oi ear air ure or
is not too hard either.

U listen to them sound out the spellings (M ? A ? N, CH ? O -P) and their efforts to blend them into words (man, chop) and help them out when stuck, on sheets or in booklets which they bring home.

Things start to get harder, for u and your children, when they begin to learn other ways of pronouncing them same letters ? with the trickier words, e.g. man, can, ran ? many.

Because as adults we don?t read by decoding but recognise words as wholes (and for writing mostly just let our fingers type them out automatically too), we are so used to them that we have trouble seeing which bits of words children find tricky.

The tricky bits which children stumble over, which often prevent them from accessing the word and making sense of it, are mainly the vowels a, e, i, o, u, y and their various combinations ai, ei, ie, a-e (made)..., because they (apart from ee) all have more than one pronunciation. This makes learning to read words with them trickier than mere sounding out and blending.

This is where u as a parent make a huge difference to your child?s progress.
When children keep stumbling over words like ?said, many, once?, it can get really frustrating for their parents. It?s easier to keep your cool and to remain patient, if u understand which bits in words are hard for beginning readers.

ARGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Don't worry mrz. I doubt if anyone except us is bothering to read this thread now

I worry that parents believe phonics is taught the way masha describes and use her methods when trying to support their child causing utter confusion [sigh]
As a teacher I can't stress enough how valuable parental support is but please speak to your child's teacher. Reading her post I can understand why masha believes learning to read is so difficult.

''I have to agree that earlier decodables were much more exciting!''

books.google.com/books?id=p5oNAAAAQAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=reading%2Bwithout%2Btears&as_brr=1#v=onepage&q&f=false

books.google.com/books?id=p5oNAAAAQAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=reading%2Bwithout%2Btears&as_brr=1#v=onepage&q&f=false

In what way is this relevant to explaining English phonics to parents?

I asked myself the same question when I read your first post masha

Mrz
U haven't pointed out a single error in my description of English phonics or how it is taught.

And Maizie confirmed, despite herself, and despite repeatedly claiming that I know nothing about phonics, what I said. I had said:
I have looked at several of the new phonics schemes. They try to keep the reading books for beginners as decodable as possible, because words with changing letter sounds, such as the in who only once are much harder for beginners to decode than those in which the sound stays the same (stop on hot spot).

And she commented-Oh, for heaven's sake, masha, of course they do in the very early stages. There is absolutely no need to introduce the complex code until children have mastered the principle of letters representing sounds, and, how to decode the 'sounds' and blend them to produce the words. Which does not mean that children are never taught the complex code, just that they are not overwhelmed with it in the early stages. -

And teaching the complex code in practice means nothing more than teaching alternative pronunciations for the main letter-sounds which get taught first, in small groups of words.

masha your errors have been pointed out to you continually but you choose to repeat them ad nausium so I don't think there is any point in wasting my time

^books.google.com/books?id=p5oNAAAAQAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=reading%2Bwithout%2Btears&as_brr=1#v=onepage&q&f=false^

In what way is this relevant to explaining English phonics to parents?

You were repeating the dreary old myth about decodable books being 'boring'. I was just injecting some humour into the conversation. But I do suspect that you don't 'do' humour, masha.