Please no more phonics

[morethanpotatoprints]

Ok. I am quite happy to be educated here as I admit knowing little about phonics. However, I can't see as they have helped my dd. I believe she is dyslexic (although school would never look at this). For children who don't get the sounds, or can't spell what are the alternatives. In addition how do they move on from words which are phonetically correct but spelt wrong. For e.g Table- tabul/ chair- cher (Northern dialect there) Practice or Practise/ Praktis. My dd is probably going to be home ed soon and I would really appreciate somebody telling me what I can do to help her improve.

My children learnt quite early in infant school that some teachers are shall we say rigid about being right and it's better to let them be. That way they learnt what they were expected to and what interested them, knowing that education is not limited to how someone else does things.

So yes I don't have any problem with phonics or anyone saying we used stealth phonics to learn how to read. Despite each and every one of us admitting now to either not having been taught or not retaining it as you do with redundant stuff, we all somehow functioned adequately and accessed what we wanted. It's tedious, but DCs definitely survive and learn to deal with rigid attitudes, especially if they just let it wash over. Remember it is said to help "most" children by those holding power over your child for a large part of their day. For a few short years anyway.

"It seems from what you say her actually decoding of the text is fine but she isn't understanding /remembering what she has read?"

Could someone explain if and how phonics will help here?

Until now I'd thought understanding and recall was based on development and experience of negotiating the world. This too happens in time, as long as children are exposed to and encouraged as they grow. Interestingly, my one child who tested at seven years ahead of her age in social perception was the last to learn how to read, but managed reading before she was made [and failed] to learn phonics.

Many English words are only spelled the way they sound if you're crafty about how you define the sounds! Cow should really be spelled caw. If you say them literally as they are spelled I have no idea what slight, fight and might spell, slig-hut, fig-hut and mig-hut.

phi doesn't spell pie, literally it spells p-hu-i

So, if you want to be literal about it, no, many English words are not spelled the way they sound.

Couthy - my DD couldn't learn via phonics. Could only read 3 letter words badly at the start of Y3.

I'm fairly sure she would have got a dx of APD if we'd had her assessed then.

However instead we did auditory integration training with her and it totally changed her hearing. After tha she was able to learn using phonics.

(she was never able to learn via whole words)

Anyway, as the majority of kids who struggle with phonics dont do AIT or any of it's competitors it's impossible to know whether those kids could learn via phonics if they did.......

Hi, just come back here again.
Couthy- You are describing my daughter. Go upstairs and get school book/bag or whatever. She forgets what she went for, sometimes even forgets I sent her up and will do something particularly different.
The vagueness I describe is like she isn't there, almost in a trance. Sometimes I'll say wer'e back in the room, and she'll laugh and shake herself out of it. I must admit to doing this myself when reading, especially text books. I'm not saying phonics hasn't helped at all but its not enough in itself and without a lot of other intervention I'm sure she'll not reach her potential which would be a shame. She is only just beginning to understand reading music despite starting at 5 and playing 4 instruments. She has been learning by ear and remembering the pattern of notes (tunes) rather than read. She understands what the notes are and the stave etc. After reading your replies I have decided to continue with phonics but take a wider approach and use other strategies as well. Thank you all.

No CouthyMow it doesn't depend on accent.

The "Explode the Code" phonics workbooks are a good starting point, and make teaching phonics very easy indeed.

My youngest learnt to read very quickly using these workbooks.

www.amazon.co.uk/Explode-Code-1-Nancy-Hall/dp/0838814603/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1340191599&sr=8-1

Couthy, I have noticed that accent makes a difference with dd, she has a very distinctive local accent, that as a family we try to alleviate. Her dbs are always correcting her. We have found that she spells some words in her accent and no amount of phonics nor other method helps this unless we correct the word first. I am trying to think of an example but can't atm, lol.

Have found an example yippee!

We say call (pronounced corl)
dd says carl and will spell it this way.

We live in the North West.

Cassl / cah-sl for castle is the first one to spring to mind, Mrz.

If you spell it how you say it, each one is spelt differently.

Whether you say "ah" or "a" the spelling for the sound is still the child (or adult) is taught in their own accent.
So ooop north we don't say grarss or barth and we say put not poot but the representation of the sound remains constant.

No one system of any education will ever suit all children. Using phonics as a base (imo with other tools as well) is an excellent system to catch the majority of learners.
Those that struggle for whatever reason - need individualised support. This does not mean that another system needs to replace phonics, as just as likely, there will be a whole host of parents saying that their child 'just doesn't get .... system' .
It will be up to the likes of mrz to organise this individualised strategies.

Mrz. I understand that in theory it should stay constant but for my dd it doesn't. If my dd was south and not north west she would write barth as thats how she would pronounce it. So when she does this I have to correct her. It is quite often the same sounds such as all, ew, th, ai,. I'm convinced that the bad spelling, pronounciation and inability to speak some sounds are all linked.

We use spelling voices when teaching younger children so over articulating the sounds (remember a school even took the step of teaching elocution ) but if your daughter has been thoroughly taught and knows that the letter can represent the sound "ar" then for most children it does eventually click. Spelling is often slightly behind reading.

Mrz. I know this may seem a little extreme but we have considered elocution ourselves as dd has got a very strong gutteral accent. She looks a charming little thing then she opens her mouth. Its obvious that she just picked it up whereas you'd place our other dcs in The North West, but nowhere near as obvious, she actually said nay (no) thanks this morning.

morethan, some time ago a truly stunning goddess complete with golden locks a few tables from us in an upmarket establishment opened her mouth and very similar guttural sounds emerged. She and her other Nordic companions were simply enjoying a good joke. Perhaps there are many descendants from ancient invaders living near you? Perhaps it will be easy to pick up a MFL from those parts?

OP, from what you have said, your DD does 'get' phonics as she spells words as they sound. And to her, how words sound is more tied up with the local accent than for the rest of your family. So for your dd her and hair sound the same and fair and fur sound the same. I don't think she needs elocution lessons because, regardless of how we speak, some words which are spelt differently will sound the same, eg the megaposh pronounce and and end the same. She perhaps needs to concentrate on how words actually are spelt, rather than listening for the sounds and hoping for the best. I am sure there are spelling programmes for this age-group which others can recommend.

I've got to be honest my mum sent me to elocution to improve my spelling but it didn't help at the time

Thank you all so much for your responses. I'm sure she'll be ok. Interesting point about the language though. Soon we start Home ed, and she loves singing Opera and is quite good. Recently she asked me to find the Italian words for a song and I found she picked it up really easy. So now she wants to learn Italian and might sound better than trying to learn English. (Oh I'm a mean mum, lol) Seriously though, I will work at your suggestions and hopefully with some 1-to 1 we may get there