"ou" understanding the different sounds ou can make?

[atiredmum]

Do you teach should, could etc as "ou" making a different sound as in

ou = ou t

and

ou = s ou p

What year?

No could, should, would have a different phoneme. ou is out, about, shout
ould - is more to do with sight vocabulary and tricky words.
I use an acronym for teaching the spelling of ould - oh you lucky duck (Y3 teacher but can be introduced earlier)

Hi atiredmum, A long answer to your question:
As claimed by Masha, is not very tricky at all.
First some correct factual information: represents four sounds in the English language: it can be 'ow', as in 'count'; it can be 'oo' as in 'soup'; it can be 'u' as in 'rough' or 'touch'; and, it can be 'oe' in 'mould'. This is not difficult to teach. is one spelling but represents different sounds.
Masha's coding for the examples she's given is simply wrong. Apart from 'sound', 'soup' and 'touch', the way the rest of the words are coded is as follows:
In the case of 'should', 'could' and 'would', the is the spelling, not ! It represents the same sound as in 'bush' or 'wood'.
In the word 'through', the spelling is 'oo'. In the word 'though', you have two sounds 'th' and 'oe', representing the sound 'oe'.
'Bought' should be coded for 'b' 'or' 't'. And, 'drought' should be coded , for 'd' 'r' 'ow' 't'.
'Cough' is not something I'd worry about. The sounds in 'cough' are 'k' 'o' 'f' and it should be coded . Given that is a not uncommon spelling for the sound 'f' at the ends of words, the only thing to point out if you're teaching it is that the is 'o' and it's pretty much a one-off.
By the way 'atiredmum', it makes much more sense to make clear that letters don't make sounds; they represent them. It's a symbolic system, like music or maths. If it's taught correctly, from simple to complex, it's perfectly logical, understandable and easy to teach.

It's important to note that Masha's identification of 'difficulties' come from her perception only, and not from any experience in actually teaching children to read. The things that Masha insist must be difficult for children are often non-issues in a modern classroom where phonics is taught well.

and to answer your question they would all normally be taught in reception and completed in Y1.

My identification of difficulties comes mainly from a close analysis of the 6800 most used English words,
but also from analyses of several collections of spelling errors (primary children up to university level),
as well as making a note of the words that children stumble over in their reading when working as a voluntary reading assistant with slow learners.

But not from direct experience in teaching phonics.

but your list clearly demonstrate you don't understand English phoneme representation in those words.

I'm a parent and struggling with this; I have a yr 6 ds2, who is good reader / poor speller. Our school has introduced Read Write Ink this year for all years, and according to the spelling chart,
ou and ow are the possible spellings for the ou sound as in out, shout.
Could and should are red letter words that don't follow their phonic rule and need to learnt separately.
I don't know, this all just seems more confusing than ever...

It is best if could, would and should are taught as a group; they follow a pattern, but are the only words that follow this pattern.

Ingles2, have a look at Debbie's Alphabet Code spelling chart as it's much more comprehensive than the RWI one:

www.phonicsinternational.com/unit1_pdfs/The%20_Alphabetic%20_Code_phoneme_pictures_A4x4_chart.pdf
The Alphabet Code -Debbie Hepplewhite's comprehensive chart.

Thanks Maverick I'll have a look at that later

Could and should are red letter words that don't follow their phonic rule and need to learnt separately.

I would really strongly advise you not to think of letters/letter combinations as following 'phonic rules'. That is where all the confusions and misunderstandings start.

You have to understand that it is the 'sounds' of the language which are represented by a letter or combination of letters. Because of the history of the development of English we have a number of different ways to spell some of the sounds. None of these different 'spellings' violates a 'rule' (except in masha's eyes), they are all perfectly valid. Some are more common than others.

In order to learn to read a person has to learn about 160 -180 common representations of sounds by letters (letter/sound correspondences). This is perfectly do-able, as many experienced teachers on here will testify. People learning this way will tend to think of 'alternatives' and 'probabilities' rather than 'rules' and be much more flexible in their approach to unknown words.

To help mums a little with the Phonic Code go to www.phonicbooks.co.uk and click on teaching tools, and then parent tools, and you will find a useful downloadable list of the English Sounds and their representations.

but yours are mixed up masha!

But that is exactly what the school told us MaizieD and they are following RWI to the letter. What am I as a parent supposed to do then? send back their red word list and I don't want to think about specific phonic rules?
Ds2 is a poor phonic decoder (in their words) and to my mind having spelling options and alternatives are just making things worse.
Yesterday, he was trying to spell the word "watch"
Now , I know that he could spell this last year.
Yesterday he was using RWI and had
w o t ch
which he knew wasn't right, so tried
wh o t ch
before he gave up.
so how is being flexible, actually helping him to learn the correct spellings of common words?

sorry, If I sound frustrated... I am..

Looks like I'm needing a long list of words with ou in them to practise with him

should I avoid using oh you lucky duck then?

ps. thanks for the responses it is much appreciated...

list of words with ou in them to practise with him

The following 53 fairly HF ones all have the main sound for 'ou':
About, aloud, announce, around, blouse, bounced, bound, cloud, couch, count, counter, crouch, doubt, foul, found, fountain, ground, hound, house, loud, lounge, mound, mount, mountain, mouse, mouth, ouch, out, pouch, pounce, pound, pout, proud, round, scout, shout, slouch, snout, sound, south, spout, sprout, stout, surround, thousand, trousers, trout, flour, hour, our, sour,

drought, plough.

These 57 are the trickier ones:
Country, couple, cousin, courage, double, (encourage), enough, rough, tough, hiccough, moustache, southern, touch, trouble, young,

bought, brought, fought, ought, sought, thought,

group, mousse, route, routine, soup, souvenir, through, toucan, you, woundx2 [woond/wound],

could, should, would,

cough, trough,

course, court, four, fourth, pour, tour, tournament, tourist, your,
favourite, tambourine, journey,

although, though, dough,
boulder, mould, moult, shoulder, smoulder, soul.

The Sightwords page on my website has another 58.
There all common words with ou are listed alphabetically, but colour-coded for their different sounds. It gives children a chance to practise by themselves (if they want to). When stuck, they can just refer to the very common words above the box which they are likely to know already. - I would recommend this in small doses only, for children who are really keen to learn.

He won't be taught that way if the school use phonics

bought brought etc will be taught as ough not ou words
could should and would will be taught as oul words not ou words
course four etc will be taught as our words not ou words

A short reply to Ingles2:
It depends how the spelling options are organised.
Firstly, in the case of ?watch?, there are three sounds: ?w? ?o? ?ch?. I?d would say to your ds2, after the sound ?w?, we often spell the sound ?o? with this spelling and point to the letter. Then, ask him to write the word and to say the sounds as he writes: / ?w? ?o? ?ch?. Another approach might be for you to say to him, ?Today, we?re going to spell the word ?watch?. Tell me the sounds in the word ?watch?.? As he tells you, you write down the spellings . Ask him to read it back, sound by sound and then to read the word. When he?s done that, ask him to write it and to say the sounds as he?s writing. At the end, he again reads the word.
After that you can introduce other words in which the sound ?o? is spelt with an : ?was?, ?want?, ?wasp?, ?swap?, ?swamp?, ?wallow? and so on, and so on.
Do this on a daily basis and he?ll have it in no time. The important thing is to get him to write the words too. Writing the spellings and saying the sounds as does it will help him to remember.

But that is exactly what the school told us MaizieD and they are following RWI to the letter. What am I as a parent supposed to do then? send back their red word list and I don't want to think about specific phonic rules?
Ds2 is a poor phonic decoder (in their words)

The school may be following Read Write Inc to the Letter, but they seem to have a poor understanding of phonics teaching! Red Words just have an unusual letter/sound correspondence or one that the children haven't yet been taught - Ruth Miskin (the programme's author) would never describe them as 'not following phonic rules', nor would she train anyone else to do so!

Poor 'phonic decoder'? An equally nonsensical statement from the school. You said he was a good reader, where does the 'poor phonic decoding' come in?

Thankyou for your help Soundswrite it's much appreciated..
Can I ask if you know the RWI system? If so, do you have an opinion on it?
You see I'm sat here with the spelling chart looking for "a" as "o" sound and it's not here... so Ds obviously can't identify it, if he follow this as prescribed.

www.sounds-write.co.uk/docs/sounds_write_common_spellings_of_the_consonants_and_vowels.pdf
try soundswrite's chart