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.

Crossed posts with you, spammertime

Leanandsay, everything you say makes sense to me. Feenie, nobody is talking about teaching a class of children to read - they are parents talking about supporting their own dcs.

Slight: s-l-igh-t.

V. easy indeed for 4 year olds.

Here, yes, clinkclink - but not on every other thread learnandsay pops up sneering on.

Spammer, I'm not in any way trying to turn you against phonics. If it works for you then great. If it works for anyone then great. I want my daughters to read and write and spell well. I'm prepared to teach them myself, and I do. If I find teachers who can do it better than I can I'll be delighted. I'm really only looking for logical holes in a theory that I don't agree with here because this is a forum. So, no, not really, you're not really being drawn in to anything that you didn't sign up for.

Have you got a dc in school yet, clinkclink?

You will understand why learnandsay's viewpoint on 'igh' for example doesn't quite work when you have.

On every thread, Feenie --, because (almost) every objection of mine has been on logical grounds. Phonics adherents love saying things like "you can't read if you can't decode" But people have been reading for decades without using phonics, people like me. So you can read without decoding. So that sentence is plain wrong. Many of the phonics adherents phrases and assertions are plain wrong.

Phonics may be successful, so is capital punishment. But that doesn't make it right. (It also depends on your definition of successful, at least in the case of capital punishment.)

I can't be bothered to go back and highlight silly comments you've made for the sake of it, learnandsay, but they are there for anyone to read.

It's very tedious, and I'm far from the first person to point it out.

What's 'right' is making sure each and every child leaves school able to read. And sight vocabulary alone can't do that, and mixed methods have been shown to confuse those 20% who are failing.

But people have been reading for decades without using phonics, people like me.

Only 80% of them, learnandsay - most working out the code for themselves along the way. Lucky for you that you are not one of the 20% who haven't, for decades. How nice it must be for you not to be one of those 20% who struggle. I'm alright, Jack, eh?

Many of the phonics adherents phrases and assertions are plain wrong

No, you just don't understand them - something you demonstrate over and over again.

Feenie, yes I have 2 dds in school. Both had a few words before they went to school. Both learned to read rapidly - one is g&t, the other is top in her class (reception). They do phonics, of course, but the school doesn't have enough big cat reading books so the little one gets sent home with all sorts. This works fine for her - if it's a tricky word, I just tell her what it is or she works it out from the context. I completely support the way the school teaches, but I don't see any problem with using a more casual approach at home. So to me that is what learnandsay is advocating, judging from what she says here,

I have to admit I don't get the 'igh' words as far as phonics go, though. Dd2 knows night, and I'd just tell her any words if she struggled.

learnandsay - are you telling us that your brain has never made any connections between word sounds and the way they are spelt? Can you read nonsense words? Are you not teaching your dd phonics in your own way when you connect words like light, flight, slight, etc???? Surely you are pointing out the pattern to her? What would you call that????? To me, that's phonics without using all the posh words.

Have you ever been taught a foreign language? Were you taught it by being immersed in it and picking up the rules for yourself, or living in the country for a few months (which would in the long run make you a far more fluent speaker), or did someone break it down into a set of rules to learn, first, which you could then consolidate when feeling a bit more confident into reasonable fluency by immersing yourself in the language for a while?

No, wait a minute, Feenie.

Someone says you can't read if you can't decode in a phonics definition of decoding, implies, or asserts that I can't read.

But I can read.

So, logically they must be wrong. It's got nothing to do with understanding phonics. I can read. I don't know phonics, therefore logically, anybody who says that you must have phonics in order to read must logically be wrong.

Because I don't have phonics and I can read.

Do any of the teachers posting on here advocate that parents teach their children phonics at home? I'm not aware of them ever having suggested it. Nor am I aware of them warning people off reading with their children and immersing them in an environment where books are a pleasurable experience to be shared.

What do you mean by phonics, learnandsay? I wasn't taught phonics, but I can read all the phonics sounds I've seen being taught at my children's school. Clearly, therefore, I DO have phonics, but I didn't need to be taught. That is entirely different.

In other words, I find it really hard to believe you can't decode, learnandsay.

How would you read 'queep', learnandsay? Or 'girst'? Can you read them?

Yes, rabbitstew, of course I'm teaching my daughter to sound out words when the sounds a easily recognisable. But I wouldn't try to make her remember the or sound in aught because it's an ugly word. I'd just teach her that that ugly word spells aught. If she has a phonics teacher who instils in her all the nuances of English spelling and pronunciation then I'm not going to attempt to contradict any of it. If Feenie or mrz would do it, then great. But supposing my daughter gets taught to read by someone who isn't half as passionate as those two, then what?

Well, I'll tell you what, they'll get taught by me. And we'll sound out words which have an obvious correspondence between the way they're spelled and the way they're written and we will just remember the others.

clinkclink: but if you also tell her that "igh" sounds EYE then she can also read sight, might, fight, light.

mrz teaches parents how to do phonics, rabbit.

We all do, to interested parents who want to know how to help their child practise their phonics at home.

No one has ever told you what you must do with your preschooler at home, learnandsay.

Feenie, of course I can read them, queep rhymes with sheep and girst either rhymes with first or forms a wholly new word sounding similar to pierced. But that isn't from [decoding.] That knowledge is from experience.

Who is we, Feenie? Are you saying that all schools give parenting classes on phonics?

So all you have actually have to say on the matter is that some teachers are good and some are bad? Isn't that bleeding obvious? And I would still be looking for other examples of words with "aught" in them, to see if there was a common pattern and so that I could memorise how to spell them in one group - eg taught, fraught, naughty, daughter, draught - and concluding that mostly "aught" makes an or sound, so that would always be my first attempt when sounding out, but sometimes it makes an alternative sound. In other words, I would be looking for patterns and explaining the pattern to myself or my child in my own way (not really caring whether this messes things up for the teachers if it's working for my own child!....). Why do you not think "aught" has an obvious correspondence between the way it is spelt and the way it is written when there are actually a lot of words with those letters in which make the same sound????? I'm not sure where you draw the line between obvious correspondences and ugly words?

But you know the part of the word 'sheep' which makes the rep sound and can apply it to queep. And which part of first makes the irst sound, and you applied it to girst.

That's decoding, learnandsay. That's using phonics.

a lovely version of aught would be ort.