Confused at to why Reception DD is being taught letter names so soon after sounds?

[Owlelf]

DD is in reception. When she she knew a few letter sounds and could form a few letters. She seems to have progressed really well and knows all get letter sounds, is decoding words and writing captions. To be honest I am really impressed that she has come on so quickly and have to credit her teachers.

I am confused though, that her phonics group are now learning the names of the letters. This evening we read her school book and she seemed to be confusing the letter sounds and names. To my (completely untrained) mind it seems too soon to be confusing her with letter names when she has just learned (?learnt?) the sounds.

I realise I could broach this with her teacher, but would prefer not to as they must know what they are doing- not least given DDs progress so far under their wing.

She is working within stage 3 phonics BTW (her class is split into several groups for phonics, so not all children are learning letter names at the moment).

So I am really interested as to why, at this early stage the letter names are needed? Can anyone explain please?

'The trouble with English is not that there are no rules of spelling but that there are an awful lot of them!'
This is so true. I've never met a teacher who knows the rules and all the exceptions; and if teachers can't do it, neither can the children they teach.
What you can learn is that there are different ways of spellings the sounds of the language, of which there are a finite (around 44, depending on accent) number and tie those sounds to around 175 common ways of spelling them. If done systematically over the three years of Key Stage 1, the spelling system can be taught. This is much, much easier to teach than rules or resorting to the whole word approaches which have consistently failed so many children.

startail - surely "night" can be sounded out phonetically though? N = nuh, igh = eye, t = tuh

And "thought" - th = thuh, ough = or, t = tuh

If you came across "thought" for the first time you might sound the ough out as in cough or rough but given that doesn't make a proper word you'd try ough as in bought and realise what it was.

Might a teacher teaching ough as in bought not also mention the words thought and brought?

just as a teacher teachers the oo and th can represent two sounds they will teach ough can represent different sounds and may be or in thought and bought or may be two sounds as in rough and tough

I realise that mrz, but as there are so many different pronunciations of ough and so few words for any one of them, I think it does make sense to mention every one of them when teaching each pronunciation, which is something you obviously wouldn't do with oo and th.

If you came across "thought" for the first time you might sound the ough out as in cough or rough

With SP teaching a child wouldn't just 'come across' thought without prior, or simultaneous, instruction. SP is direct, explicit instruction, not 'discovery learning'.

If they did in a book they were reading at home with a parent a savvy parent would explain that the 'ough' is code for /or/ that they haven't yet been taught. It's no big deal.

Actually CecilyP you would go through a long list of words containing any phoneme when introducing new phonemes to a child. So we would read look, book, took, cook, good, hood, brook, stood, crook, wool, room, broom, moon, pool, cool, spoon, balloon, groom, stool, roof etc.

I disagree with maizie regarding not just "come across" as often I will teach words through what Debbie Hepplewhite calls incidental teaching when we are reading stories or studying a book or poem. So if we are reading the GingerbreadMan in reception it is a good opportunity to teach the letter g can represent the sound j when it's followed by i or e or if you have a Charlotte you can teach ch sometimes represents sh ...

mrz - if you were taught English as a foreign language you might (if you were well taught) discover that there are indeed spelling rules - and they are quite useful even for native speakers!

but for every spelling rule there are so many exception they make the rules more of a probability than a definite

I disagree with maizie regarding not just "come across"

I agree with you about the 'incidental' teaching, mrz. I was really just trying (not very well) to convey the idea that children aren't just set adrift to find these things out for themselves...

No it would arise from a teacher led activity but I find it a very effective way to cover many of the alternative graphemes in reception

mrz - the fact that there are many exceptions (irregular spellings) does not invalidate the usefulness of learning rules; the same is true when learning other languages.

When learning a foreign language, the usefulness of using probability for testing pronunciation is much reduced since many words encountered will be encountered first in writing, rather than orally (as is the case in the mother-tongue).

I go with probability as in your point earlier about ghoti it is improbably a word starting gh will be pronounced f in English

You could easily teach a class of non-English speakers the rule that "gh" is pronounced /f/ only (but not exclusively) when placed at the end of a syllable (eg laughter, cough, trough) and that the /f/ sound at the beginning of a word is only ever written "f" or "ph". That is a very helpful rule for foreigners.

and small native speaking children

Absolutely. I wish more spelling rules were taught!

I teach things like
the letter a following a w or a qu can represent o
and a c or g followed by an i, e, or y represent s and j

but before a child was old enough to be taught all of these complex rules, variations etc in some elaborate system they'd already be reading surely?

I teach them in reception

so instead of saying you must learn was by sight because you can't decode it I say this word has a tricky part ... in this word the a makes the o sound and look it does the same in want and watch and wasp ...

but then I don't spend time teaching letter names so I have time

Actually CecilyP you would go through a long list of words containing any phoneme when introducing new phonemes to a child. So we would read look, book, took, cook, good, hood, brook, stood, crook, wool, room, broom, moon, pool, cool, spoon, balloon, groom, stool, roof etc.

Makes sense to me mrz. Plenty of examples - but not every example.

so instead of saying you must learn was by sight because you can't decode it I say this word has a tricky part ... in this word the a makes the o sound and look it does the same in want and watch and wasp ...

That seems quite complex phonics. Do small children really take all that on board before they have ever read something with the word 'was' in it?

young children don't find it at all complex.

part of the lesson would be reading and writing sentences containing was

I am glad to hear that they don't find it at all complex. I was just wondering how they got as far as learning that 'a' is generally pronounced 'o' after a w, before they had ever encountered the word 'was' before.

They are encountering words all the time