Help with phonics

[AuntieBulgaria]

Hullo, DD is starting reception in September. She has recently started trying to read things by herself by sounding out the letters. I want to support her but am worried about giving her 'bad' info. Or not actually knowing how to explain.

She was trying to read the word 'alien' in the back of the car the other day but she is used to A making the sound 'ah' (well not ah but you know what I mean, not ay).

Forgive me for being totally dim but why is it 'ay' in alien and age? Is it what I would have called - 'the magic 'e'? Is that what's called a split diagraph?

I read the guide to phonics that DD's school issues and it says that at school they are not given books to read with phonemes they haven't learnt yet but DD is just trying to give it a go with everything she comes across.

What should I say when the word she is reading does something unfamiliar?

Some times she can work it out - she read and blended 'like' as luh i ck eh but then said 'like' because she could make it make sense in the context I suppose.

I can't see anything wrong with it, but it only allows 5 options. Which takes us neatly back to i_e pronounce ee, where the 'e' doesn't make the 'i' say its name and can only be explained by the split grapheme.

Wouldn't just be simpler to tell him that 'c' almost always makes the soft sound when followed by the letters e, i, or y though?

Personally, I'm not sure that referring to 'magic e' is going to cause huge problems for most children. Although it might cause problems later when trying to explain why a vowel is controlled by a second vowel when they are separated by a single consonant e.g. 'shaking' or 'judo'

I say "split spelling" Virgil but that doesn't apply to circus and circle

But in circle the final sound is written and the letter has nothing to do with the
s- ir- k- l

Tgger we begin in reception because children use words such as like and make and home in their writing

Was that to me or to Virgil?

Probably would have been better blue moon if I'd thought about that! I taught them to read before they went to school and so I'd already muddled through by the time I discovered that I had done it slightly differently.

They haven't done badly out of it though. DS2 was five last week and is on stage 11 so he's not been adversely affected by magic e

Sorry OP I've completely hijacked this thread!

It wasn't to anyone in particular but that is the problem with magic e ... in many cases the isn't part of the vowel and in this case nothing to do with the either.

I accept it wasn't the best explanation for the c. Seems to work for the g though?

ge is a spelling for j as is dge

No worries, I think it's just illustrating to me that if I want to avoid confusing her, I might have to learn a bit more.

Guys, don't scare people who genuinely want to help their children with phonics (by going into too much jargon/detail in one go) and don't have good phonics teaching in their area. The OP comes across as genuinely worried about phonics. mrz talks about giving parents lessons in how to support their children in phonics tuition. No school near us offers that. If you have a bright child who is not dyslexic they will be able to read with love, practice and parental guidance, assuming the parents can read and have patience and imagination.

Theory is all well and good. But we have to be aware of what resources are available to each OP.

And remember, phonics is a system for teaching all children to read. It might help with teaching an individual to read. But it has the drawback of putting the parent at a disadvantage. Many parents already know how to read, and given a bright child who is not dyslexic can teach their child to read without any problems. The drawback of phonics is that the parent not only has to teach their child but has to learn phonics. I taught my daughter to read without it. It wasn't necessary. I dare say that if I was teaching a whole class it might have been. _ But I wasn't. That's the point. _

Well my son goes to the local state primary, and as parents we went to an evening meeting on supporting phonics. My son also did a "phonics handbook" for each letter and sound, and I'm guessing it wasn't just for his benefit.

Learnandsay - I really get that you're not convinced by phonics (putting it mildly). So why do you get involved in threads about them or supporting their use? If there was a "right, I'm going to do controlled crying, help me" thread, I'd just stay clear as it's something I've never done with my children.

Good question - why jump in the middle of something you don't approve of and don't understand, every single time? Particularly when your dd hasn't even started learning phonics yet.

I'm not sure you would necessarily know if the local schools offered phonics sessions for parents, have you asked each one? We do one, and so does my ds's school. It's commonplace these days.

Ah that makes sense. They haven't done them yet in my son's YR class, groan, or I don't think they have, he normally has a sheet with sounds to practise when they've been taught. His reading is very advanced and generally he reads all these words fluently, but just occassionally he stumbles with words that have these- eg "shared" came up the other day,and "stared". And then I stumble to explain the rule to him........he is one of the lucky ones who has picked a lot up without needing explicit rules.....
learnandsay you do have a point. My mother gives me strange looks when I start explaining phonics rules to her. She taught her 3 children to read before we started school with good old Peter and Jane and flashcards .

Spammer, mainly because it's in a forum. The whole idea of a forum, I think, is to juxtapose views. I wouldn't be able to understand a forum where everybody agreed. It would seem pointless to me. I'm actually very much in favour of the idea of sounding words out. It seems like common sense. What I'm against is building a fallacious theory around the practice. I'm in favour of lots of things, like gay marriage. But I'd hate to see a fanatical theory where everybody had to marry someone of their own sex. All things in moderation, I think.

Yes of course it's a forum. And, sticking with my example, if someone came on and said "should I do controlled crying" (as indeed they have tonight), then I'm happy to put over my pov.

However, if they were asking how for support in doing controlled crying, I'd stay away. How would my very different opinion help?

The best way to learn only one method is to buy a book or watch a video on that method. In a forum you are bound, by definition, to get a mix of views.

So, I would say to the person who only wants one method, go to the library.

All things in moderation, I think.

Not when you are teaching children to read - I want all the children in my school to be able to read, not a moderate number, and they do so using this 'fallacious theory'.

What's your evidence base for saying that? How many children have you taught to read? It's great that you've taught your dd to read so far using just sight vocabulary - great for both of you that she isn't one of the 20% who fail to read using that method. She will need phonics at some stage though.

And you don't often come on threads to juxtapose views, learnandsay - often you come on to insult or just to say something completely inane for the sake of it.

Feenie, I think that's brilliant and I commend you and mrz for your passion. I'd love both of you to teach my daughters both phonics and reading. But you're not here. I am. I'm not teaching a whole class. I'm a parent not a teacher. I'm pretty sure that if I was trying to teach a whole class to read I'd need phonics. But I'm not. so I don't. My daughter does sound words out, (where the sound correspondence with the word is fairly intuitive.) In the cases where it is not intuitive then I just tell her what that word says and next time we see it, sure enough, she remembers it. The idea of sounding words out isn't rocket science. For quite a lot of words it makes perfect sense. It only starts to get difficult when the spelling of a word doesn't look anything like the way it's pronounced, like slight, for example. My daughter and I don't bother with any code here, we just laugh and say that a "silly billy" made the slight, light, right, (etc) words, and when we see them we recognise them, laugh about them and then read them. It's easy and we don't need a theory.

Gaah, I'm getting drawn in, aren't I?

I'm not a teacher either, just a parent of a boy in reception. And he picked up very, very fast that you read "igh" as an "i" sound. So it's an easy rule for him to follow. Isn't it just a logical way to do it? I'm not being obtuse and I have no axe to grind, honestly - I am however v impressed at how he has been taught.

It only starts to get difficult when the spelling of a word doesn't look anything like the way it's pronounced, like slight, for example. My daughter and I don't bother with any code here, we just laugh and say that a "silly billy" made the slight, light, right, (etc) words, and when we see them we recognise them, laugh about them and then read them. It's easy and we don't need a theory.

That's fine - it starts to get difficult for you because you don't understand it, and you don't feel that you need to go through it with your 4 year old dd - and fine, leave it to the school.

But you don't leave it there. No one has told you what you must and mustn't do with your dd, but you persist on coming onto each and every single phonics thread to sneer, and denounce every aspect of something taught successfully in schools. Why? You've even said that you will try to find out how to ensure your dd doesn't 'do' phonics at school.

'igh' is a basic sound taught in Reception, btw - it's quite easy for them to recognise and use.