Forced baby behaviour?

[learnandsay]

Are simplistic phonics books good, bad or neutral? If a Reception child can already read Ladybird stories such as Three Little Pigs, Where the Wild Things Are, Dr Seuss, etc, etc, etc but they're bringing home apparently the whole ORT 1+ range comprising of nothing but CVC words which present no challenge and no learning opportunity either, is reading them:

(1) a waste of time, reading time is precious, doesn't it make more sense to spend it on reading words which present a learning opportunity?

(2) potentially leading towards reading becoming uninteresting

(3) promoting ignorance - if the child can read the names of countries already the child could be reading sentences like: The Nile is the longest river in the world, instead of sentences like Dot got a pot and Bot got Dot's pot. Pat pat pat, tap tap tap.

In summary, would the time be better spent reading something useful?

No wonder it takes kids so long to learn everything, it's quite confusing...when you don't know it!!!

Children need to know basic concepts

There are 44 sounds in English but 175ish ways to write those sounds
Sounds can be written with 1, 2, 3 or 4 letters
One sound can be written in different ways (there are 9 ways to write the sound "ae" for example)
One spelling can represent different sounds (the letter can be "o" in hot and "oe" in go and "oo" in do )

DS, in Year 1, currently has a teacher who is very passionate about phonics.

I don't know how she does it, but his reading has progressed massively in the last half term. I thought he could read well in reception but, more often than not, he was guessing at the words based on visual clues on the page.

DH was taught to read using 'Look and Say' (as was I) in the 70s. He still has difficulty decoding words, and often mispronounces proper nouns and common words as he doesn't 'read' them. I, instinctively, feel that DS would be prone to the same.

DS' decoding skills have improved beyond recognition this year, thanks mainly to his teacher. I firmly believe that a good teacher of literacy is worth their weight in gold.

Or a good parent in literacy.

But I guess if you have neither you're probably in trouble.

DD knows the 44 sounds apparently as she has been tested (I did not even know there were 44 )

She is now practising writing them and starting alternative ones....

She also has a teacher who is passionate about phonics (which is good)....

The last sound I showed DD was igh as that is about as far as I can go I just pointed some out as we read and some she picked up herself....

simpson the link gives the 44 sounds and the most common way they can be written (with examples words containing the spelling)
The sound will be in speech marks with the spellings and examples listed under each sound.

Don't criticise yourself, simpson. If you think about it you can usually break down most words into their component sounds. To me the complications arise when their are words like Wymondham, St John (pronounced sinjen) and all sorts of silly stuff in English. But normal English can often be broken down into sounds and when it can't there isn't always a reason to worry about it. And if you are worried mrz is a rock at sorting it out. (I just like arguing with her about impossible stuff.)

True learnandsay, but the fact that I'm partially sighted and unable to read a font size less than 24 - and even then only when 5 inches from my face, means that my ability to teach DS to read would be extremely challenging.

Trust me - I do all I can to help his reading. However, I still believe that his ability to decode has been brought on in leaps and bounds by his current teacher.

simpson, concentrate on the easy stuff first and build up little by little. It's not that hard, I promise. (if I can do it anyone can.)

St John pronounced "sinjin" "sinjun" or "sinjon" originates from Norman French

I am not too bad actually and can do all the double letter sounds like ew, ou/ow, ch, th, er etc etc....

The only 3 letter ones i know are ing and igh and I also know split vowel sounds fine too. So I guess I am doing better than most but just lose it when faced with words like thought, caught, would/could/should etc etc...

you're talking about varieties of ways to pronounce vowel combinations. I simply pick the most common ones and discuss them constantly and completely ignore the outliers (infrequent examples) I want my daughter to be able to read most words not every single word in English. Just because there may be a large number of ways to spell the "eye" sound I, that doesn't mean that all of them are equally important.

simpson there are lots of teachers who don't know as much

actually all the ways to spell "ie" are pretty common

mind
tie
ride
high
by

The Latin version i in foci isn't common. But appears occasionally in English.

As I start a work placement in an infant school (not my kids one after half term) in reception....

I do go into my kids school and read with yrs 1,2 and 4 weekly....

The ai sound(s) always throws me as in said, pair, wait ....

Learnandsay - that's what I have done, shown or told DD the most common ones first....

She picked up y as an ee sound straight away by herself as her name ends this way...

For a while she used to read sky as ski...but she is fine now.

is a spelling for "e" in said
there isn't an in air it's one of those 3 letter spellings "air" as in fair and hair
and wait is straight forward (aigh - 4 letter spelling of "ae")

Haberd is suggesting our with an "ah" sound. Isn't that a Liverpool variation where you'd say "He's staated goin out with aah Lisaah."

I live in London. It's a shorter ah than that.

I guess I am doing better than most but just lose it when faced with words like thought, caught, would/could/should etc etc...

I know it probably seems confusing and I felt the same initially, having learnt by Look and Say in the 70s and internalised the rules of phonics without ever being told them. But what worked for us (in case it helps anyone else) was just to split up the sounds which I already knew and say 'th-aw-t' or whatever. DD seemed to get the hang of the fact that whatever was in the middle of the th and the t said aw pretty fast.

It has been very much trial and error for me (and a lot of googling) to help my daughter but actually now that I'm on the other side of it, it's turned out that it is all less weird than it seems and actually quite logical.

That's the way, simpson. We can all laugh about the stranger Latin or Greek outliers once we've got common English down pat. After i comes ii and then all manner of weird combinations. But if we enjoy it too much we won't have any friends. We'll be too geeky.

Wait I get totally, said I get totally although DD's school teach said as a sight word that they just have to know....

Never knew there was an air sound you learn something new every day!!

I would love to go on a phonics course actually, might ask the new school about it....when my placement starts.

"air" can be written or

Thanks mrz - this is really helping as although I have always been told tricky words can be decoded I have never seen how ( apart from said and like) but now I "get" how where, there, care etc can be decoded which are words DD has been given to learn by sight

Most words are easy once you know the different ways the sounds can be written.