Phonics help please

[lunar1]

Can anyone help me with the next step for my son in phonics. He knows the sounds for all the individual letters and can read the 25 cards the school gave me that were 2 or 3 letter sounds. not sure what system they use, i think it may be made up!

He has been moved out of KG to reception for reading which is 3 times a week 1:1 with the teacher. She has sent home a reading book, bob met ben. He is supposed to be sounding out the words which he can do, he just cant figure out what word the sounds make. for example he will sound out b o b correctly but doesn't seem to hear the word. instead he attributes a completely random word to it.

Is there a way to get him to hear the word he is sounding out, or is he just not ready and i just need to continue sounding the words out and he will get it eventually?

All this phonics is just a mystery to me!

Can I ask how old your son is?

4 next month

Is he sounding it out correctly though? You'd be surprised how many people get it wrong.

If he's saying 'ber, or, ber' then the word he's sounding is 'berorber' which is pretty complicated and requires more working memory, not to mention being wrong.

I checked the sounds online to make sure i had them right, so yes.

It sounds to me as if KG has rushed into teaching him letter sounds but haven't taught him to blend. Can he hear the words if you say the sounds?

How good is he at sounding out just 'bo'?

Although tbh, I'm surprised he's doing 'b' at all if he's struggling. Not an easy starter sound.

im not sure mrz, he has known the sounds for a while though. how does he learn to blend them? is he just too young?

he can sound out bo but the letters are separate when he sounds them

Watching with interest.

Well my Ds doesn't teach them to read for a while (or at all, not really clear about it) so we use headsprout which has been hugely successful. Lots of the common blends appear to be taught before the individual components.

So 'cl' is taught before 'c' and 'l', although the individuals are taught immediately after.

Hiya,

My older child worked out blending at home aged just under 3. He actually made that 'leap' between knowing the sounds and blending then through watching alphablocks, and then playing the games on the CBeebies website. Once your DS makes that link he'll be well away.

I am a (previously Y1, then reception) teacher myself and in the past have had Y1 children who haven't managed to blend yet on arrival in Y1. I would start them on simpler blending, e.g. reading by putting 2 sounds together as mrz says. So....'it', 'is', 'as', 'in' etc. You could do this by cutting up some squares of card and writing the letters on and saying them individually then faster and faster, moving them closer together and letting him see that link.

Hope this is helpful. DS LOVED alphabloks and particularly the 'e' song helped him at this stage.

PS. I have to add the disclaimer that I do NOT believe that an under 3 is usually going to be reading, my DS was a bit of a strange case who had a knack for it and showed an interest. My DD is now nearly 3 and hasn''t even identified one letter or number yet, and this does not really surprise me (just in case someone is reading this thinking eh?).

In phonics "cl" isn't taught at all .... instead children are taught to blend and

I have tried getting him to say them quicker needing, I will have a look at alphablocks too.

how do they learn to blend them mrz?

In nursery we focus on aural blending and segmenting - ensuring the child can hear the sounds in words putting them together and pulling them apart. We actually begin with compound words so the teacher would say "butter" pause "fly" and the child (hopefully says "butterfly" teacher "foot" pause "ball" child "football. Then move onto syllables and finally to sounds. Only then would we teacher letter/s to sound correspondence.

Can he hear the word if you sound it out? You could try that. If not, just say the sounds closer and closer together until he hears it. I used to play a game with my reception class where I said find something r-e-d or touch your h-ea-d etc. They enjoyed it very much and helped them blend without having to say the sounds themselves.

ds can say the letter sounds but is not yet blending/segmenting yet... going to nick mrz's ideas also carry on just messing around with rhymes and words.

My dd seems to use the blending approach only when prompted. I do feel like a dragon when sitting beside her, teaching to read. She remembers a lot of words by sight. With the rhyming words, she seems to guess very well how the story/sentence will end and puts in that word. However, that's not really 'reading' is it?
We are finding the pink band we are on really easy but the jump to red seems very difficult.
What should I be focusing on? I am not even sure she can blend as she can some and not others. Cvc words she is good with.

It seems from what people are saying that some children are being taught letter/sounds in isolation rather than how it should be, in the context of words, sentences and text.

My son is in Nursery at School and 4 shortly. He cannot blend yet. But I am reading with interest.

You need a collection of objects or pictures (cvc words)
Put two objects /pictures of things with distinct sounding names on the table, e.g., a dog and a cup. Check that your child can name the objects/pictures Then say, "I am going to say the sounds in one of them. See if you can guess which one I?m saying → d-o-g (or c-u-p)"
Your child should point at the right object and saying the word. Say, "Let?s
say the sounds again together and then the word."
After this, add another object so the choice increases to three. Keep adding objects to a maximum of five or six until you are sure they are ready to move on.
Don't worry if your child makes a mistake or just doesn?t answer. Say, d-o-g is dog isn?t it?"

We home educate and our DD has found the sight word approach much easier than blending. She knew all of her letters by 2 but really couldn't grasp the blending concept for ages afterwards so I didn't push it. When she still hadn't got it by four we tried an old reading scheme that used sight words and she has raced through books and is loving reading. She's memorised the words and can read them in any context and has only just begun to blend now (she's up to about level 6 ORT) six months later.

The sight words method of learning to read works really well with many children. In any case, the final aim of learning to read is recognition of all common words by sight instantly. So if a child is not progressing well with phonics, it's well worth trying.

Once they begin to learn to write, children have to learn to break words down into their sounds. But with English, even for spelling having the look of words imprinted on your mind is hugely important (one - once, they - play, take - break). Phonics is not of huge help with such.

Morning, Marsha