Learning to read

[cairnterrier]

Please can someone explain to me how children are currently taught to read? DS is just starting to pick out letters (the first letter of his name, M for Mummy, D for Daddy) but am I right in thinking that the 'name' of letters is now pronounced differently eg 'mmm' for M rather than 'em'.

I'm just wondering if it's worth getting hold of some books so that I know what I'm doing and ties in with what he'll learn at school (and at nursery?? do they cover this as well?) or shall I just carry on with reading books with him and pointing out letters and pronoucing them as I always have. Do children get confused if they learn one thing at home and then have to unlearn it?

I realise that thinking about this at a young age is a bit PFB but I could read before I went to primary school so want to know what I'm doing in case DS heads this way too.

I was also wondering about getting hold of some of the older reading books but is the repeating style of reading now frowned upon? For example the books (poss printed by Ladybird?) that had a very simple two word sentence on one page and a picture on the other?

Apologies if these are all very basic questions, DS is our first child so have no experience of what methods are taught nowadays.

It's a bit odd really. I didn't realise learning to read was so complicated!

It would be more complicated if we had to learn every word by sight

Well, even with look and say you don't really learn every single word by sight because so many words follow patterns. You learn the exceptions by sight though, certainly. You also practice rather than remember rules, which some people aren't good at doing. I wouldn't want to remember all the ways in which the 'oe' sound can be written, which incidentally I don't know. But I can still read.

It's odd because logically there must be more to learn with look and say, but paradoxically it certainly feels as though there's a lot less to know.

My daughter is in reception she started with the phonics sounds then went on to the word boxes that can be sounded out think there were about 30 of those (ten words in each) she then had a high frequency word list to learn stuff like he, me, you, said... and then 6 lots of tricky word boxes (ten in each) words like who, why, there, many... Etc. these have all been sent home for me to "help" her with, not sure how much they did in school but I just went through them like flash cards and now she can recognise them. Now she is getting spellings about 3 or 4 words a week. She also has reading books on top of that. I don't remember having this much homework!

Um, MaizieD,

phonic sounds is not a tautological because there are musical sounds, ultrasonic sounds and many other types of sound besides. The term simply identifies a range of sounds.

mrz

We have spoken before about my DD (7) who has lots of dyslexic traits and struggles with reading, and you have lots of useful info. I am doing a lot of phonic work with her at home to support her and she is finding it easier ( along with vision therapy). There are still things that I simply don't know the 'rules' for and just tell her "here the 'er' sound is written like this" eg in 'world' because I don't even know why myself! But surely there is also a place for word recognition?

Particulary when it comes to spelling. For example all the differnent ways of making the 'or' sound. But you still need to know that it's awful, not auful and this is surely generally done once words move from the conscious declarative memory to the automatic process of procedural memory?

Have you ever raed txet that smeoone has scarbmled? Being able to do this must be some kind of visual fluency / recognition as it would be impossible to read by phonics?

learnandsay the definition of phonic is relating to sound (any sound)
so phonic sounds is literally sound sounds

when or follows w it represents er

in world, work, word, ...

if you keep the beginning and ending the same and mix up the middle it is quite easy to work out the word quickly (a half completed anagram really)

mrz,

There's a mistake that's been introduced here and repeated by me. I meant phonics not phonic where it relates to a system of teaching reading. And phonics has various elements including theory. I think the lack of an s was introduced to this thread in the phrase "phonic sounds is tautology." (I don't know why.)

But I did repeat it.

phonics means sounds
so phonics sounds means sounds sounds

Sure, but it also means a system of teaching children to read as in synthetic phonics and as such includes theory and experimentation as well as sounds.

Strictly speaking it should just be phonemes which means speech sounds

but it doesn't really matter because anyone with a young child understands

^when or follows w it represents er

in world, work, word, ...^

thanks - another case of a W working it's magic then!

if you keep the beginning and ending the same and mix up the middle it is quite easy to work out the word quickly (a half completed anagram really) true - will experiment! Thank you.