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?

Santa, DC could learn all those things from TV with very little parental input.

SoundsWrite, just as an American child who has learned the letter names could make a reasonable attempt to say the words 'cent' and 'gem', an English child less so.

ok then you could find a correlation between viewing cbeebies and later reading success.

my point is that a correlation doesn't make a causation.

Point taken Santa .

sorry - i was labouring my point rather

Whoops! just off to hear kids read and realising from this thread that I may be the only person in the world who teaches both names and sounds. My child knows that: the letter named ay says a, uh, ah, o, a, and ay; The letter named bee says b; the letter named cee says s, k, ch; and so on.

But this approach makes more sense to me. How else do you describe digraphs? Do you say kuh-huh says chuh? And it's more logical to say,

"the letter "ay" in wall says "or" "

rather than

"the "a" in "wall" says "or" "

I've never argued that some children can't learn both letter names and sounds - just that quite a lot of children ARE confused by operating two systems simultaneously. There is a real concern in English-speaking countries that there has always been a long tail of underachievement. As someone put it recently, we're a nation of Nobel Prize winners and illiterates!
As I have said before, if you teach reading and spelling the right way round, you never get into the kinds of problems you outlined above, StrongestMummy. Start with sounds and teach the spellings for them. So, how you explain the two-letter spellings, or digraphs if you prefer, is to say, "This," pointing to the spelling, "is 'ch'. Say 'ch' here." And you do the same the for every sound spelling correspondence the child doesn't know. That way, you teach a lot of code knowledge incidentally as you're reading.

Bonsoir French is not an easy language to learn to spell.
Agreed. But learning to read French is vastly easier.

mashabell - no, not "vastly" easier, by any stretch of the imagination. Very marginally so.

Italian, Spanish, German or Finnish are all vastly easier to learn to read than English or French.

English, Danish, Portuguese and French are, in that order, the European languages with the most 'opaque' alphabet codes. English and Danish also have a complex syllable structure.

SantaIsAnAnagramOfSatan Mon 12-Dec-11 10:37:00

i still reckon i'm right. i bet you could find the same correlation to reading success with knowing all your colours and numbers before school. involved parents = better chance of success.

Although all the research indicates there is absolutely no correlation between knowing your colours and numbers or indeed early reading and future academic success ...however there is a strong correlation between attitude and willingness to learn and future achievement .

andaPontyinaPearTreeeeee

My teacher taught that 40+ years ago.

I was also taught the origin of some spellings, things like words begingin tri... means there are three things, list as many triwords linked to three things as you can

SoundsWrite wrote " if you teach reading and spelling the right way round,"

That sounds a little prescriptive. Is there really a "right" or wrong order to teach letter sounds? "ch" is a particularly interesting one. My child went through a phase of saying "see haitch says "sh" ". I'd reply "yes, you're right, what else does it say?" "ch" "yup and that's what it says in this word". Her best friend is named Charlotte and so for her, ch= sh is more important than ch=ch. She also has close friends named Cicely, George and Alice. So the soft sounds of letters c and g are more important to her than the hard c and g.

I noticed in my reading sessions that most of the children are most familiar with the letters in their own names and their close family and friends' names. That can play havoc with a theoretical model of which sounds are most frequent in most common words. If you start out with the idea that one letter can say two or more sounds, then the kids haven't got an idea of "right" that they are suddenly told is wrong. And if you have names for the letters they are handles that you can hold to talk about them.

In English, "ch" is mostly commonly pronounced /ch/ as in chair or chalk or chocolate. The /sh/ pronunciation of "ch" as in Charlotte is a lot less common, which is why the /ch/ pronunciation is the right sound to teach first.

Bonsoir, I'm a huge fan of teaching mainly phonics rather than pure look-and-say. But within the teaching of phonics I don't see the need to be dictatorial about the order of things. Especially if there is a strong reason to teach something in a slightly different order. Like if you happened to have a Charlotte, a Chantal and a fondness for machines and pain au chocolat.

If you are using a decodable book scheme to teach phonics, you do actually need to be dictatorial about the order in which sounds are taught, or you make nonsense of the decodable book scheme!

Bonsoir, I'm using the tried and tested family approach to teaching reading: read everything in sight. I had to ask on another thread what was the purpose of the book schemes. I can kind of see the theory, and I was interested to see if StrongestLittleGirlInTheWorld would learn faster if we stuck to the scheme. That went out of the window this morning when she opened her eyes, grabbed her animal encyclopaedia and insisted on reading about stoats and weasels before breakfast. What do you do if a child tries to decode a word that they haven't officially learnt the phonics for? Do you tell them they aren't allowed?

I'm glad it works for your family, but you do understand that educationalists and publishers make schemes that work efficiently for the greatest number?

What do you do if a child tries to decode a word that they haven't officially learnt the phonics for? you teach them the phonics they need to do it and include examples of other words containing the same sound /letter combination just as if a child recognises that ch can represent sh you say yes in chef and chandelier and chiffon and Charlotte but in chip and church and chimney it has a different sound can you hear it?

My big problem with the government Letters & Sounds is that teachers are getting hung up on the bliddy phases and believe they can't teach out of phase ... well you can and what is more you bliddy well should!

Bonsoir what do you do if a child wants to read a book out of order? For instance, in yesterday's reading session, one of the children chose "Land of the dinosaurs", way above his reading level. About seven other children gathered round and they all followed the story excitedly as he told it from the pictures. It was such a magic moment there was no way I was going to stop him and say "go and put this away and get a pink label book". I'm sure the schemes do work, but I think you can mix in enjoyment of books into it. No I should be more emphatic, I think the schemes are vital, but I think mixing in enjoyment is vital too. There will be confusion from time to time but to be honest the sooner kids learn to laugh at English spelling the better.

yes but even on that book order you encounter words that don't fit what they've learnt.

i mentioned ds's first book is full of the word 'put'. i'm struggling to think of other words in which a single 'u' makes that sound. it's just an anomaly as far as i can see. and this is on a reading scheme re: books for where they're up to.

school seems to be taking the approach of following the letters and sounds scheme but simultaneously giving able children lists of so called 'difficult' words to learn (basically sending them home to parents to teach).

ds wants to attempt to read everything at the minute - what's on screen, on a dvd box, a ticket etc which is all good as far as i can see but obviously it means he's attempting things he's never encountered and is well beyond where they're up to. i just keep saying ah well this one doesn't work the way you've learned so far and introducing the sounds/differences but not pushing him to remember them just familiarising him with the idea that it is all much more flexible than the basic one letter phonic sounds he's encountering so far.

any thoughts on 'put' btw?

It seems to me some people are under the misconception that children can't enjoy books and that there is some rule that children may only access reading scheme books... Where does that idea arise?

In this area put is p u t but we have a computerised programme that says it in a southern accent which totally confuses the children

Isn''t 'put' one of the few words containing a short 'u' that is pronounced exactly the same, north and south?

If you are using L&S put (north) comes in phase 2 and put (south) not until phase 5