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Primary education

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Original poster

Phonic sounds in because

159 replies

maydaychild · 02/03/2012 15:57

Could one of you wonderful MNetters help me with 'because' as Dd has it in her high freq this week

What is making the or sound and is the e magic
Thanks

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heartmoonshadow · 04/03/2012 20:22

The e at the end is making the e in be say its name not its sound so it is a magic e or split e-e if that is the way she has learnt it. To be honest this is probably way above the knowledge she needs to know and she needs to think of it as a tricky word and just commit to her reading/writing memory.

mrz · 04/03/2012 20:26

No it isn't magic and no it isn't saying it's name... it is representing the sound ee which will allow her to read all the words that follow the same representation of the sound. Four year olds are quite capable of knowing and applying that knowledge.

MerryMarigold · 04/03/2012 20:39

mrz · 04/03/2012 20:44

Why do people make something simple complicated !!!

maizieD · 04/03/2012 21:04

it's that easy, why are they not taught early on in the phonics programme then, and included in it, rather than expecting teachers to go outside the programme and teach the 'red words' as sight words.

But the programme developer didn't expect people to go outside the programme and teach them as 'sight words' . Because she developed the programme while she was actually teaching real live children in a real live school (children with about 90% of EAL) and she taught those words perfectly successfully as words to be sounded out but with a grapheme they either hadn't yet learned or one that was an unusual correspondence. Her approach worked absolutely fine.

Her school consistently got 90%+ children at L4+ in English at the end of KS2, so she must have been teaching them perfectly satisfactorily without resorting to nonsense about 'words you can't sound out'.

MerryMarigold · 04/03/2012 21:15

"but with a grapheme they hadn't yet learned."

SO that's by sight then, because they can't decode it if they haven't learned it and they can't transfer to any other word either...

Our school is 80+% EAL, which I suppose is why they took up RWI, but with the new methods apparently Y2 SAT scores are improved, although it's only been one year since the change in approach.

mrz · 04/03/2012 21:23

no because they are taught it as the word is introduced

Procedure
Explain that there are some words which have one or sometimes two tricky
letters in them.
Read the caption, pointing to each word, then point to the word to be learned
and read it again.
Write the word on the whiteboard.
Sound-talk the word, and repeat, blending the sounds to read the word.
Discuss the tricky bit of the word where the letters do not correspond to the
sounds the children know (e.g. in he, the last letter does not represent the same sound as the children know in hen).

MerryMarigold · 04/03/2012 21:26

Oh ok, I think I understand better, but still don't understand how it's different from any other more complex sound like 'ow' or 'oo' etc., ie. what makes it 'red' if they have had it explained.

maizieD · 04/03/2012 21:27

No. it's not 'by sight'. By 'sight' is if they are taught the whole flaming word as a 'whole' (like a pictogram), with flashcards . They are taught to sound it out and blend it, paying particular attention to the unusual grapheme which represents 'x' sound in this word. The 'new' grapheme is the only bit they can't decode before they are told about it. Al the rest can be decoded, and is decoded.

Didn't mrz detail the procedure for teaching this on another thread somewhere today?
(Or even on this thread. Drat this goldfish memory...)

P.S I'm not with you, just in case you misinterpreted my second sentence...

maizieD · 04/03/2012 21:28

Oh, X posted with mrz.

Sorry..

mrz · 04/03/2012 21:30

It's as simple as that... the letter doesn't represent the sound the child knows at that point once they learn the alternative it is no longer tricky/red

as e in he represent ee not e
as ai in said represents e not ai
as a in was reprents o not a

EdithWeston · 04/03/2012 21:31

Surely it's only by sight in the sense that reading requires you to see?

Once a child has grasped the idea that a sound can have more than on representation (and the other way round), then adding more sounds as encountered is part of a phonics programme. But you still need to go through them all in a more methodical fashion both to ensure all are covered and to get the benefits of repetition. It's quite a boost to go onto a 'new' sound and a child to realise they already know some forms of it.

maizieD · 04/03/2012 21:32

The words are usually 'red' because they either contain a grapheme which is taught later in the programme or they contain a very unusual 'correspondence, like the words 'one', 'two', and 'eye'.

It is entirely possible that some children may remember a grapheme from the 'red word' when they are taught it properly (rather than 'in passing') later in the programme.

MerryMarigold · 04/03/2012 21:43

I'm just trying to think of it from a child's point of view.

Here's a word. "was"
I can sound out 'w' but miss says the 'a' makes an 'o' sound, then 's' which makes a 'z' sound. So I know 1 sound, but the other 2 are new. miss says we will learn more about them later.
right, it's only 3 letters. I think I can remember that one is 'was' without sounding anything out.

Now there's another new word. "has"
I can sound out 'h', and 'a' (lucky I forgot about was, isn't it?), and the 's' is a 'z'. Right, I know what that looks like now too, and I probably won't confuse them as I would have done if "was" had been hammered home.

Great. Got 2 words by sight. At least I can read them quickly!

WittyTitle · 04/03/2012 22:13

Can someone examine to me what happens in RWI when accents are involved? I can't grasp why 'put' is a green word? Neither in mine, my DH, my children's or either of their teachers accents (all different) is it phonetically 'sounded out' And why nk is a sound? Why can't they just say n-k? And while you're at it. Why the hell isn't phonics spelled with a damned f?

maizieD · 04/03/2012 22:16

My, you are a fast learner. Not all children get words into sight memory as rapidly as that. They generally need to sound out and blend the word a few times.

Feenie · 04/03/2012 22:17

'nk' is two phonemes - n and k. Are you thinking of 'ng'? That's one distinct phoneme.

And ph is an alternative grapheme for 'f'.

WittyTitle · 04/03/2012 22:21

But ng makes a unique sound so if they sounded n-g it would come out as nnnguh do that one in fine with, but nnnkk wud work with using the sounds they know, n and k, so why bring another one in?

I was being sarcastic about the ph.... I'm aware it makes a f sound.

What about put?

Feenie · 04/03/2012 22:25

Don't get 'nk' either, then - am not familiar with RWI, but to me it's 2 phonemes.

CecilyP · 04/03/2012 22:25

Are you a northerner, WittyTitle? So that for you, put rhymes with but? I think the books were written with southerners in mind.

maizieD · 04/03/2012 22:26

So many questions, WT!

Phonics isn't spelled with damned 'f' because it comes from the Greek word for 'sound' and in Greek the /f/ was represented with a 'ph'. So we spell it like they did. Does it cause you a problem?

Phonics is not an elocution lesson. The sound which a letter or group of letters represents is the one which is appropriate to the accent. In the case of 'put' all my North East children have no problem at all with it as it has the same 'sound' as 'butter', 'bun', 'but' and 'hook'. I can't teach my NE kids that the 'a' in grass is an /ar/ sound, because for them, it isn't (is for me, though; Essex Girl). They can still sound out all these words, though.

To get back to 'u'; it can represent more than one sound. Simple..

In fact, every single vowel letter represents at least two sounds

maizieD · 04/03/2012 22:30

I agree totally about 'nk'. I ignore the programme and teach it as two sounds, /n/ /k/.

I also get cross about RWI teaching word endings -tious and -tion. Great... until the kids meet 'patient'

WittyTitle · 04/03/2012 22:34

No I'm from Canada so grass rhymes with ass (my kids can spell both of those well)
While I don't expect the phonic lark to fit every accent, my DH was born and bred here in London, where I believe the programme originated...and to him it is not a 'green' word. I know from conversations with Other parents I'm not the only one confused by it.

Besides maizie...he who asks the most learns the most, perhaps you could engage in some sustained shared thinking with us?

WittyTitle · 04/03/2012 22:38

And so for this phonics screen that's being blanketed over the whole country, will accents come into play then? Especially with these silly nonsense words? My daughter got yout wrong on a reading test as she said you-t, and her teacher said no its yowt. I say they're both neither wrong or right, it's not a word

WittyTitle · 04/03/2012 22:39

And how would they read patient?

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