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?

How useful is describing ear as "er" or even "ur" the r is explicit. The other two letters are producing a "u" sound in pearl, learn, earn,

ear makes (eer)

and in p-ear (it makes air)

Very useful if you know anything about phonics learnandsay ..."er" is one of the 44 phonemes found in English and is one of the ways it can be represented in writing.

Ok, I really don't get it.

I thought ear could be:

eer as in hear
ur as in search
air as in pear

I though ea could be:

e as in tread
ee as in each

I didn't think ea could be u?

p ear l
h ear d
ear ly
ear th
y ear n
y ear

How many words does ear make the "er" sound in? (and what are the most common ones?)

Bear (b-air)

you are correct radical can't be "u"

p ear l (making a u sound) the r is explicit
h ear d (making a u sound) the r is explicit
ear ly (making a u sound) the r is explicit
ear th (making a u sound) the r is explicit
y ear n (making a u sound) the r is explicit
y ear making eer

earn
learn
search

I'm afraid that isn't phonics learnandsay

It's not supposed to be phonics. I'm not interested in theories if they don't reflect what's actually going on.

perl
u sounds like the u in umbrella

no learnandsay you are inventing your own unique method, which I'm sorry to say is going to confuse your daughter given that your theory doesn't match long established methods.

I'm not going to teach her that explicitly we'll just continue to sound things out. Other people can tell her about phonemes that I disagree with and I won't contradict them. But my daughter already has a common sense approach to working out what irregular words say. I'll build on the methods she already uses. The combination of ea doesn't seem to be troubling her yet, she can work out ea words.

other people being her teacher?
to think I was worried about muhs and cuhs for m's and c's

When I teach her about split digraphs it'll be the first time that we've ever theorised. Mostly she breaks words down into their sounds and then matches the combination of sounds to a word that she thinks fits. There's no theory involved.

Now you really have me confused you said it's not supposed to be phonics and now you are talking about sounding things out which is phonics ... why sound out incorrectly? It's like saying 142 is fourteen -two instead of one hundred and forty two

Ninah, I'm not sure that her school is all that phonics purist. So we might never get into a disagreement about exactly what the sounds breakdown is theoretically. They might just be happy if the children can break words down and then read them. They seem happy enough at the moment. And have even suggested learning words by heart.

well if you are working with the school... it is likely they will have a system for breaking down words though, even if there are some to learn by heart - I would have a chat with them

The problem is that you are inventing your own graphemes to represent sounds.

I'll go and have a chat with her teacher. I'm not sure what their system is, unlike mrz's by the book phonics the school seems to employ a little bit of this and a little bit of that. They give the impression that they follow children into reading rather than lead them.

learnandsay it isn't something that changes from scheme to scheme.
The facts are there are 44 sounds in English and those sounds can be written in 175 ways and representing "u" isn't one

If the teacher doesn't mind how the child is breaking her words down and putting them back together again then there won't be a clash. If my daughter had a phonics purist teacher who was going to tell her that what she was doing was wrong, or was going to try to get her to unlearn things then first I'd speak to the teacher. But if the teacher was adamant that her way was the only way then I'd invest time and effort in learning her way. But as far as I can tell my daughter's school is happy with everybody's method of reading.

If the teacher doesn't mind a child breaking down learn into l-ea-r-n rather than l-ear-n, I would find another teacher!

At the moment a lot of the time we don't even need to re-represent alternative phoneme spellings we're just sounding out straight from letter sounds and that's enough for my daughter to work out using common sense what the irregular word represents. So if the school wants to introduce phoneme spellings to her it can. She won't have her own versions.

I'd love an update learn, I'm intrigued now!