Why is Letterland unpopular?

[Carla123]

This is leading from comments made on other threads, that Letterland can be confusing.

Dd1's school use Letterland and have done for many years. The school places a strong emphasis on phonics teaching and has a good track record with literacy in general. As far as I am aware, they have no intention of changing to an alternative phonics scheme, so we are stuck with Letterland regardless.

DD (age 4) is in the nursery and has really taken to Letterand. After the school introduced it to the parents we began using some of the resources at home. DD learnt all the single letter sounds quickly and easily made the link between the characters and plain letters (as has DC2 age 2). DD1 is now starting to blend sounds and read CVC words. We have also started on some of the two letter sounds, without any problems. As such, I am really pleased with Letterland so far. Should I expect trouble ahead? Can anyone elaborate on why it is confusing for some children? Are there any specific examples of where the Letterland makes particular sounds confusing? What can I do to help avoid problems later?

Any advice / experiences would be much appreciated.

It's confusing because the children get hung up on the characters rather than the sounds. So children know Annie Apple but not a ... and you can't blend and segment with the character names.

Because I lost the will to live after the PILs bought ds a Letterland video and insisted we all sit and watch it together?

Bad, bad times.

The version of Letterland when mine were small did have "a" and "ay" for a written 'a', but this isn't sufficient mitigation for the basic flaw that it is an alphabet based system, rather than a sound based system. It covers 26 letters (but no digraphs like sh, ch, or th) and 31 sounds.

That is not how English works. There are 44 phonemes, each of which can be written a number of ways. Letterland simply doesn't cover this.

I started my DCs reading on a phonics system, using Letterland as a minor diversion to supplement. I wouldn't recommend it for a main approach.

I similarly lost the will to live after my mother bought some Letterland books for dc1.

Unfortunately, she loved them though, for my own mental well-being, I've charity-shopped them before dc2 can get a taste for them.

Letterland does cover the digraphs. There's a second book and a second cd full of songs. Some of them are etched into my memory from repeated playing in the car:

The cat belongs to the hat man
He lets her go where she pleases
but if she climbs up beside him
it always ends in sneezes Aaa - ch - ch -ch -ch -ch -ch

my kids loved them (the audio cds particularly, and DS2 started blending sounds at 3.4 as a result of letterland).

Thanks for the replies. All the 44 phonemes definitely are covered. The 26 single letter sounds are introduced in the first book 'ABC' then the rest of the phonic sounds and alternative ways of writing them are covered in the next two books 'Beyond ABC' and 'Far Beyond ABC'. Perhaps the latest editions of Letterland resources include things that the older version didn't, according to recent phonics guidelines.

DD has just learnt 'qu' 'ch' 'sh' & 'th' (the first sounds introduced in Beyond ABC). From what I can see, the Letterland books themselves do not stipulate an order in which to learn the phonic sounds, which is at odds with other schemes. However, DDs teachers have introduced the sounds in the same groups as most phonics guidelines (e.g starting with s a t p i n).

I haven't seen the DVD. We have the ABC book & songs, which my DD absolutely loves and the Beyond ABC book. We also have the flash cards, which have the characters on one side and the plain letter(s) / digraphs on the other side. As soon as Dd learns the characters and the phonic sounds that the characters say, we use the plain letter side of the cards for blending and segmenting. We generally don't need to use the characters anymore, but can use them as a prompt if she is stuck on a sound (e.g what sound does noisy nick say?). We also return to the characters initially when introducing a new digraph, in order to provide DD with an example that she will remember.

When blending, segmenting, playing I spy etc Dd would always say 'a' rather than Annie Apple - So far! I am still concerned that things may get confusing later on, from what others have said. As DD is doing so well with Letterland at the moment, what, if anything, would others recommend I do?

I think Letterland is good, and I'm not sure it is confusing. Even my three-year-old has easily made the leap from the character names to the letter sounds in a very short space of time - he loves letterland and knew all the characters at the age of 2.5. I originally bought the books to make early reading a bit more fun for my now nearly six-year-old DD when we were briefly homeschooling and she has quite happily used them alongside other phonics schemes. They do go way beyond the initial phonemes and I found them a really easy way of getting her to learn harder digraphs and trigraphs eg IGH is taught in little story about Icecream Man giving Golden Girl an Icecream for being so quiet next to Harry Hat Man, who hates lots of noise. Again, she picked up more complicated phonics very quickly. To be honest, I'd stick with it, if she's enjoying it, they're using it at school and she's not struggling. Introducing something else might just confuse her further. Why rock the boat?

Just ask what percentage of children leave the Letterland school age 10 with poor reading skills (say. more than 5% leaving with L3 or below in English) . If it is more than about 5% then Letterland isn't working as well as other SP programmes can (if properly taught).

We used Letterland with our 3 and they all loved it and picked up the phonics really well. They didn't get confused by the character names - they knew that Annie Apple says 'a' etc. The videos do get a bit mind-numbing but there were some lovely resources. They are all confident readers and the boys in particular are fab spellers.

I was taught using Letterland, and learnt to read very quickly (off the reading scheme by the middle of Year One) and I don't remember anyone in my class having particular problems reading (but then, we only used it in 'nursery', I don't think we used it it reception, but not positive).

It sounds like some of the characters have changed though. We had Nasty Nick and Impy Ink, I don't remember an Ice Cream Man at all!

Actually, Nick might have been Naughty rather than Nasty.

I always liked the 'vowel men'. There was an apple seller, a magician, a teacher (?) a sailor and an umbrella seller. If I is now a man, who's his 'vowel man'?

I've looked it up now. I'm a little bit sad the kissing cousins have gone, and vase of violets. Thanks to Letterland, I know that violets have 5 petals!

I once watched a very disturbing training video of a headteacher being hairy hat man, that did it for me !

Thing is, all things in education go in cycles. What's popular for a while then goes out of fashion and hides at the backs of cupboards for a while before coming back into fashion again 10 - 15 years later with lots of people thinking it's new. IMO, Letterland is OK. I've taught dcs who get confused with some pictures though.... I think (from memory) 'P' is a puppy, and there's confusion with it being a dog ? And I remember one child insisting the zebra was a stripey horse .

He's a very sad spaniel, called Poor Peter. I don't think he's a puppy particularly. You had to stroke his ear (the tail of the p) to make him feel better.

I like the stripy horse

Both my Dcs went to a school that used Letterland. They loved it and learned to read very quickly and easily. When DC1 was home from Uni over Christmas, our conversation one evening turned into a ''do you remember when....?'' type of thing. It would appear that even now, some 15 years or so later, they both remember the Letterland name for each character - so clearly it had an impact! ( They were both also disappointed to find out that some of their favourites have now namechanged)

If it is working for your child, I see no problem.

DC1 did Letterland in his school. By the time DC2 joined three years later, the school had switched to Jolly Phonics (for all of the reasons listed above).

All my DCs loved Letterland, the characters and the stories, even the two that didn't do it at school! All are good readers now.

My DCs liked the DVDs, and I didn't mind them - I could put one on and have them watch it whilst I was cooking, and feel that they were occupied and learning.

If your school still uses it, then it probably means they have a good collection of material and have perfected using it.

I think part of the problem is that children love the characters and stories and they become fixed in the child's memory rather than the letters/sounds.

I think Jolly Phonics can have these issues too. I have a couple of children who know all the actions to the sounds but no concept of the sounds themselves. They have fixated on these actions, one child in particular, and can't seem to get beyond them. I am currently trying to get one child out of the whole actions thing so he can start making any form of progress.

I don't know much of Letterland as not seen it for a long long time.

I agree Hulababy
I find some children say n - aeroplane rather than n oisy
r for dog/puppy
etc which is why I don't like the jolly Stories book

Think mine were taught using the sounds and actions in reception. Now in Y1 and a couple are really struggling. They haven't done the story books, just the sounds and songs I think, but these actions are maing it very hard for them to move on, I feel like I have had to start from scratch again.