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?

pm me your site link if you want mashabel.

not saying i'll agree with it but i do like to engage in a breadth of information and ideas and approaches in my childrearing - including helping them learn.

Thank you masha for that long post, and not a list in sight .

No one is debating the relative difficulty of learning to read in English but you could look at it this way masha - only because of the complexity of learning to read in English, and attempts to widen access, has dyslexia emerged. This has allowed scientists to study in detail the spectrum of problems associated with dyslexia (not all of which are related to reading/spelling) and to work towards solutions. Dyslexia does exist in other languages but it is much harder to spot.

I am quite convinced that learning English in all its complexity is a great thing for the developing brain, not to mention the rich history that our language has.

Whilst your motives for spelling reform might be sound masha I'm not sure it would do us any favors. I suggest that you do some reading about the huge developments in neuroscience over the last 13 years and have a rethink .

Masha, it's not that difficult to spot mrz on the TES forum .

Here are masha's books:

Understanding English Spelling

Ruels & Exceptions of English Spelling

Learning to read

Have fun

Oh, I see that you didn't learn to read in English as a child mashabell, that explains a lot .

mashabell - the fact that English is not your first language explains that you don't have the deep-rooted cultural attachment to the English literary tradition (that encompasses our fabulous spelling) that native English speakers have.

We like our spelling and don't want to change it

I've posted for 10 years+ as Feenie on TES aswell, masha. Mrz, Maisie and I all use the same names, so I have no idea at whom you are aiming your post!

I know we English are proud of our literary tradition. But in the 16th C people could spell many words however they felt like spelling them. And as for back when Chaucer was treading the boards and dear Richard II was banishing people from court for forgetting to bring a spoon to work, well, English was hardly a language at all.

Proud of our bizarre spelling? Don't we just put up with it?

It's rough enough in Slough although through endeavour we'll weather whatever measure.

I'm telling my daughter all these words and words like them were made by silly billies. Because they don't look anything like the way they sound. So we've gota list of silly billy words. Are we really proud of our spelling?

The roots of our words would be lost if we followed masha's suggestions

we know the word know relates to knowledge and sign relates to signature

and as I said earlier looking at the roots and origins helps to decide on the spelling.

Mashabell sees written English purely as a tool for communication. But it is so much more than that.

^So now I try never to respond to any of them, although this can be difficult with downright lies like Maizie's,
she tries to set up as an expert on teaching reading or tries to denigrate the teaching of synthetic phonics or keeps on insisting that English is too difficult to learn to read.^

I am not in the habit of lying, masha. I must have imagined you calling yourself a 'literacy consultant', or the posts you have made to try to prove that SP doesn't work. And how you have the gall to say that I am lying when I say that you claim that English is too difficult to learn to read and write when you proclaim it in every post you make just takes my breath away...

If we standardised English spelling according to one spelling of all similar sounds we wouldn't need to get rid of connections. no and nolej would still be related. But I guess siyne and signityre wouldn't be so.

No. And, also, they would make my eyes bleed.

"signucha", shorli?

but how would we spell no (negative) to differentiate it from no -nolej?

Masha had previous posts removed because she made totally false accusations and she is in danger of legal action if she continues.

Mashabell - exposing the problem of the complexities of written English is one thing, and you are clearly very keen on making the problem seem as big as possible.

Synthetic phonics is a very useful solution that helps the vast majority of English speakers learn to read and write with ease.

Eternally mulling over and drawing attention to the same problem isn't a useful way of progressing - in literacy as in any other arena.

Interesting post masha.

As I'm sure you know, using synthertic phonics with it's vast array of alternative graphemes for the phonemes in the words that you gave as an example, children can be taught to spell and read 'tricky' words.

A huge part of making progress in learning to read and spelll is I believe down to the individual's mental lexicon. In terms of the information that we store about words, who's to say that complex spelling isn't one of the things that allows us to capture the essence or meaning of a word. How children build up their mental lexicon is an area of research that may shed more light on the process of learning to read and spell.

PickledS,
My university subjects were psychology and philosophy. I am very aware of the effects of individual differences and of good teaching too.

What so many people seem determined to ignore is that the amount of learning which a subject involves determines whether it can be learned quickly and easily - or not, and also whether everyone can master it or not. Having a vast array of alternative sounds for graphemes as well as graphemes for sounds, compared to having just a few (or none at all as in Finnish), inevitably makes a difference.

I am trying to make people aware of exactly what is responsible for making learning to read and write English much slower than in other languages, as I just did on another thread.

The biggest time-wasters are the following 10:
Irregular consonant doubling (very merry, arrive arise) - which makes the spellings of 925 common words unpredictable;

Unpredictable spellings for /ee/ in 459 words;

long /oo/ - 197, /au/ - 110 and /-o/ endings - 107.

Exceptions to the patterns of
(99), (87) , (79),
short (71) and (63).

----
Surplus -e endings (gone, imagine, delicate) in around 100 words slow reading progress quite a bit too, by diluting or undermining the magic function of -e (bone gone, define imagine, delicate debate).

Masha, I don't doubt that you are an 'expert' in the ins and outs of English spelling. Perhaps you could put your experience to better use by using it to inform the 'how' of phonics teaching?

No one in this country is ignoring the fact that it takes a long time to learn English which is the primary reason why children in this country start school so early.

Perhaps you could put your experience to better use by using it to inform the 'how' of phonics teaching?
The teaching of basic phonics is self-evident, but I think I have had some effect on the rest too (although I doubt that any phonics expert would admit it.)

Several, like Debbie Hepplewhite, have repeatedly said that to teach literacy effectively teachers need to be aware of all the variant sounds for spelling and spellings for sounds which have to be taught with little groups of words. I think my work has made quite a few people take a closer look at English spelling irregularities.

No one in this country is ignoring the fact that it takes a long time to learn English .

They are in the sense that they are not willing to given any thought whatsoever to reducing it.

Masha all your work seems to focus on problems not solutions ... because you are never going to win the British public over to your spelling reform

You wouldn't spell no (negative) differently from no as in knowledge in order to differentiate it. It isn't differentiated in speech is it? And yet people manage fine.