phonics for dummies ?

[bananacarnival]

Is there a quick page that someone could kindly send me a link to? I need to get to grips with all of the terminology. For my children, but I'm also going back into a job that's in education and I need to be aware of the latest initiatives. My google search is not going well...

Thanks

are you kidding? there's loads of info out there
just google letters and sounds
good website - phonics play

Talk to mrz on this forum. She'll fill you up with phonics terms till you're blue in the face. Personally I think the theoretical side of phonics is a bit weird and stupid. So you might want to learn it here on the job from an expert rather than read it from a book. Because a book will tell you the theory but in life you actually have to do it, and in my brief experience the two aren't the same at all.

(In practice I think phonics/( or sounding out words) is fantastic, up to a limit.)

no I definitely disagree with that learn and say
nothing weird, it's logical and practical - and it works!

Does it?

Explain the "e" sound in women.
How does the word Wymondham work phonetically?
How does a child work out what Achaeans sounds like?

The objections go on and on. As a holistic theory of how our language either works or sounds phonics is a bit rubbish. But for breaking down individual words it's great.

Not the "e" the "i" in the "wom" part of the word.

I live near Wymondham :) pronounced it how it's looks when I first moved here much to DP's amusement.

Also went to a phonics workshop the other day, was confused as hell when I left.

the e sound in women is like the e sound in men
it's the o sound that might come as more of a surprise
w y as in i mondham?
A ch as in c ae as in ee ans? (hardly a high frequency word you have to admit)
it isn't a holistic theory. It's a tool for early readers. Night night!

Pronounced how it looks?

You live in: Weemondham?

Pronounced Windum

go on then alien, how do you say it?

I raise you cockburns
nn

co-burns?

and very fine too! cheers!

or ask an English person how you pronounce the Welsh double l.

I would look at which one your school is using at there are several programmes.

If you want a nuts and bolts understanding of phonics, Loring's Blend Phonics, freely available through Mr Potter gives a clear understanding of how it works as well as a light history and theory behind it.

Many thanks all
Going to check suggested sites

Alphablocks

I presume you're in the UK 'bananacarnival', in which case I wouldn't view publications on Don Potter's website as particularly relevant. We have a different understanding of synthetic phonics over here.

I do a one (very long) page description of UK-style synthetic phonics here, complete with ALL the jargon:
www.dyslexics.org.uk/main_method_3.htm

HTH

The Welsh have their own phonemes. Most languages do.

'Explain the "e" sound in women.
How does the word Wymondham work phonetically?
How does a child work out what Achaeans sounds like?
The objections go on and on. As a holistic theory of how our language either works or sounds phonics is a bit rubbish. But for breaking down individual words it's great.'
If your definition of phonics is narrow, that's true, learnandsay, but a broader view is easily capable of explaining such anomalies. For example, Wymondham, which is pronounced 'Windum' is a very good example of what we do in English with quite a lot of place names and other words. 'Chocolate' is a word that springs readily to mind. What we do in words like this is to elide a syllable (choklut) or even syllables. However, although you wouldn't want to change the way these words are spoken in normal discourse, when one is spelling them, using a spelling voice - Wy mond ham - is very useful.
In the case of Achaeans, we take a number of spellings like the , to which you are presumably referring, from ancient Greek: thus, 'archaeology' and 'encyclopaedia'. They are simply less frequent spellings of the sound 'ee' and of course you wouldn't teach them to young children unless they were very precocious.
So, phonics, well understood and well taught, is capable of explaining any word in the English language because all words contain sounds and all sounds have been assigned spellings.

"So, phonics, well understood and well taught," is the key to success or otherwise

bananacarnival what exactly do you want? A basic glossary?

Maverick that link is brilliant. Thanks so much!

Yes mrz, a glossary was what I was after too. Found an ok one on phonicsplay

went to a phonics workshop the other day, was confused as hell when I left.

In English, phonics in the sense of sounding out graphemes (single letters or combinations of them used for spelling a sound like sh, igh) and blending them into words works only up to a point.

The main English graphemes (or spelling patterns) are
80 main spellings, 8 ending patterns, 2 prefixes and consonant doubling.
|cat|, |plate, plain, play|,

|car|, |care|,

|sauce, saw|,
|bed|,
|cat/ot/ut, c/l/ram, comic, pick, kite/kept, seek, risk, quick|,
|chat, catch|,
|dog|,

|end|, |eat, funny|, |herb|,

|fish|, |garden|, |house|,

|ink|, |bite, by|,
|jug, bridge, oblige|,
|lips|, |man|, |nose, ring|,
|on, want, quarrel|,

|bone, old, so|,
|coin, toy|, |food, good|,

|order, wart, quarter, more|,
|out, now|,
|pin|, |rug|,

|sun, face, lunacy|,
|shop, station, cautious, facial, musician|,
|tap, delicate|, |this thing|,
|up|, |cube, cue|,
|van, river, have|,
|wind|, |fix|, |yes|,
|zip, wise|,
|vision, treasure|

endings: doable, fatal, single, ordinary, flatten, presence, present, other
prefixes: decide, invite

• consonant doubling (bitter - biter)

(The above is much clearer with graphemes picked out in bold, but too fiddly to do on here. PM me, leaving your email, and I can send them to u if u think it would help.)

Teaching the main sound for the main graphemes as illustrated above (i.e. phonics in the normal sense of the word) is simple enough. Unfortunately, 69 of them have other pronunciations as well (on hot spot - only, once, onion...).

In synthetic phonics the teaching of the alternative pronunciations with small groups of words (brother, mother, other...) is still called phonics as well. It's the stretching of the term 'phonics' to cover virtually all teaching of reading and writing that is so confusing.

Because of the variable pronunciation of many spellings (laid - said), and many sounds having different spellings (bed said head), phonics in the normal sense (of learning the sounds of graphemes and how to blend them into words, and using those graphemes for spelling) is only a small part of learning to read and write English. Yet advocates of synthetic phonics sell it as a miracle cure for all reading and writing problems.

They get away with this claim because most people have little understanding of what learning to read and write English between the ages of 5-18 really involves.