confused with phase 5 phonics

[griffalo2]

ds's teacher has given us a list of words that ds needs to practice sounding out but im confused with the sound in the words 'head' and 'bread', how will he know when to use the ee sound for ea like in bead or beard and the short e sound in head.
iukwim?

I don't know if there is an actual method, but DS (5) tends to try new words with 'ea' in then first with an 'ee' sound, if it doesn't sound right (ie. it either isn't a word, or the word isn't right in the context) he repeats it with an 'e' sound.

Technically speaking you guess what the word sounds like.

Just to be even more confusing, the /ee/ in bead, and the /ear/ in beard are different phonemes, too.

but isnt guessing taking away the point of phonics?

this list of words is to practice for the screening test so if the word 'head' comes up on the real one how is he supposed to phonetically read it?

i used 'beard' as an example as it was the first word that came into my head with an 'ea' sound,i forgot about the 'ear' sound. oops

Well, no, it's not really taking away the point because children can already speak, so they can probably guess quite accurately in most cases. The problem only really arises when they've got no idea what the word is, might be, might sound like, myriad, bifocal and heinous for example. Adults would struggle with Achaean, Wymondham and the name St John.

Am sure a phonics expert will be on shortly, but I think there is a different sound for "ar" so if you see "ar" you read it differently from "ea". Hmmmmm. Eg hear, beard, feared, clear, then head is like bed, dread, fed, etc.

griffalo, it isn't guessing, it is a systematic approach.
In the test I believe that any 'nonsense' words are marked as such so the child knows that what they are about to say doesn't have to make sense, therefore, I think I would be correct in saying if 'sead' came up they could say 'sed' or 'seed' and both would be marked correctly.
However, if the word isn't marked as nonsense e.g. head, then if your DS really hadn't come across the word before, then he could try 'hed' and 'heed', decide on the word 'hed' (as lets be honest most 5 or 6 year olds would be more likely to know the word 'hed').
BTW the above is based on supposition, I'm not a teacher, and we live in Wales where there are no 'official' phonics tests .

littlemiss, i was wondering as long as ds has sounded the word out correctly and read it as it sounds say 'heed' as in 'head' then would it be marked correctly.Hmm

The phonics test won't have words like that in them.

If he was reading 'my head hurts' and pronounced it 'heed' then he would know it doesn't make sense and say 'hed' as he has now learnt that 'ea' can be short or long.

'Read' is one that often takes a while to self-correct. e.g. 'I read my books'.

here is a video of the test in action

www.education.gov.uk/schools/teachingandlearning/assessment/keystage1/a00200415/year-1-phonics-screening-check-materials

ds's teacher has given us a list of words that ds needs to practice sounding out but im confused with the sound in the words 'head' and 'bread', how will he know when to use the ee sound for ea like in bead and the short e sound in head.

There only 2 ways he would know. Reading the words in context and working out what pronunciation makes an actual word that makes sense in that context, or someone telling him. After that he would just have to remember - which is, presumably, how we know.

griffalo2 you don't guess you teach your child to try the most common representation first and then try others to find which makes sense. So the letters ea most commonly represent ee as in bead and heat and bean and sea then e as in bread and head or ai in great and steak. Lee is right words like that won't be included in the phonics check.