What role does learning high frequency words play in phonics?

[Kaida]

I thought in phonics there were no flashcards, lists of words to learn by sight etc. But lots of kids going through the care of the several foster carers in my family (several different schools) have these still. Have I got confused somewhere? (entirely probable, my firstborn is too young for reading yet)

[Hulababy]

oo is taught as two different sounds /u/ and /oo/ very early, even under letters and sounds.

[maizieD]

There was a long period (post WW2 but mostly so in the 70's, 80's and 90's) when phonics was barely taught in UK schools at all thanks to the fact that whole word/look & say methods, which were widely used pre WW2 in the US, were seen as 'modern' and up to date and so enthusiastically adopted in the UK. Whole Word teaching had a particularly charismatic and influential 'guru' called Frank Smith who did a huge amount to promote and perpetuate Whole Word teaching and wrote some extremely influential books on the subject. Like many educational 'innovations' it was widely accepted and very little questioned.

The biggest problem with 'whole word' was that it failed to teach very large numbers of children to read. This inconvenient fact was blamed on many factors and whole word proponents had to try every way they could think of to get children reading without using the dreaded 'phonics' method. One way was to intensively teach the words which ocurr most frquently in written materials. The rationale being that if they represented a large percentage (50%+) of written text then children would be able to get the gist of what they were reading, even if they couldn't read everysingle word. Use of context and pictures was also strongly promoted to get readers to have a go at guessing the non-high frequency words.

One of the whole worders' biggest arguments against phonics was that the English language is highly irregular and that a large proportion of words cannot be decoded anyway.

Somehow, high frequency words and 'undecodable' words became irreparably associated in many teachers' minds, thus starting and perpetuating the myth that HFWs are not decodable. This myth is still going strong today.

It is entirely possible to teach a child to read with phonics without introducing any HFWs until teaching the graphemes that they contain. However, there are a few of them which are quite useful in early texts as they make the decodable text more 'natural' sounding. So, even good phonics programmes introduce a few of the most useful ones quite early on.

I have read Frank Smith's influential book 'Understanding Reading' (which, amazingly sells, 2nd hand, for astronomical prices on the US Amazon, but which I picked up for a fiver on UK Amazon) and can see in it the source of many current myths about learning to read. I am astounded that anyone took it seriously as it is full of very dodgy assertions and misinterpreted 'science', but, there you go!

[Hulababy]

For those unsure of how it all works - here is the "alphabetic code" or sounds. In Floppy Phonics large posters showing these are displayed in every classroom, even reception, for children to access. There are also friezes to be displayed in addition plus other formats

www.phonicsinternational.com/unit1_pdfs/The_Giant_Alphabetic%20_Code_with_phoneme_pictures.pdf

[morethanpotatoprints]

I too am an adult who doesn't understand phonics.
I think some schools are very good and run workshops or info evenings to enable you to support your dc, but none of ours ever did.
I have just heard them read and helped with spelling and reading the best way I know how.
I would like to know more but with dd now at home full time I don't have time to learn. Atm I think I'm using mixed methods but tbh she still struggles alot. I am confident she is improving though and far better than when she was at school. However, I have no idea what phase should be done at what age and am hoping it won't matter to much.

[morethanpotatoprints]

Hulababy.

I have just found your link, its exactly what I needed, thank you
Please could you or one of the other lovely teachers please explain what a diagraph is, is that a word?
Thank you.

[mrz]

a digraph is two letters that represent a sound

so in the word shop there are three sounds "sh-o-p" sh is a digraph
in the word train there are four sounds "t-r-ai-n" ai is a vowel digraph

personally I don't think you need the technical vocabulary

[mrz]

but if the school is using it, it is useful to know what they are talking about

[maizieD]

A digraph is two letters which spell one 'sound', 'sh', 'ch', 'th', 'ai', 'oi' etc are digraphs.

Not to be confused with 'blends' (which aren't taught in a modern SP programme) which are just two or more consecutive consonant letters, each spelling one sound. 'str', 'sp' and 'scr' were often taught as 'blends'.

[maizieD]

mrz got there first

[Pozzled]

morethan A digraph is when you have two letters which together make a single sound e.g. ch, sh, oo, ee etc. The English language also has trigraphs (e.g. igh, air) and '4 letters which make one sound' (e.g. eigh) but I don't know if there is a word for those! (Quadgraphs?!)

Hulababy That chart is really useful, but do you (or anyone else) know if there is a sort of reverse chart- where it shows the graphemes and then the most likely phoneme? Or somewhere with the most common 'rules' e.g. on another thread someone mentioned that 'a' makes 'o' after a w- watch, was, want. That had never occurred to me before.

[morethanpotatoprints]

Thanks mrz.

I had just heard the term in respect to resources I have found/ been using. So I wanted to ensure I was using them tbh .
These are the things I am needing to support dd with, she is struggling with the vowel digraphs like ae, ai, and vowels in general.
Oh well, ho hum, another day tomorrow.
Thank You for taking time to reply . You always help parents so much.

[Pozzled]

Sorry, x-posts!

[morethanpotatoprints]

Oh dear, I have now just read trigraphs and blends now.
At least I know what they all represent now. This has really helped me no end thanks very much all of you.
I am going to make a note of them before my poor short term memory forgets them.
Please don't be too , I am not solely responsible for dds English, my dh is good at grammar, but not always here.

[maizieD]

but do you (or anyone else) know if there is a sort of reverse chart- where it shows the graphemes and then the most likely phoneme?

I don't think that anyone has published a chart like that. I did try to make one once, years ago, to help TAs who were 'hearing readers'. I'll have to dig it out and see if it's worth sending to you or putting on line somehow.

[radicalsubstitution]

Hulababy - that is a really great chart!

OK, please tell me off if I'm being a bit thick, or it may be just my accent, but I pronounce 'pour' and 'paw' quite differently. Are the 'our' and 'aw' considered to be the same sound?

[Hulababy]

I say paw and pour as the same aw/or sound.

The phonics international website has a range of resources available for free inc such as the posters etc. plus there are additional ones on the unit 1 part of the site which is also free.

[Pozzled]

Yes, I would pronounce paw and pour identically as well. There are obviously some regional variations in how the graphemes translate into phonemes. A lot of the time, I would pronounce 'a' as 'ar' (in bath, glass, ask etc) where many people would say 'a'.

maizieD Thanks, but don't go to any trouble! I'm just surprised that it's not something that's available. I guess maybe each grapheme can only be pronounced a few ways, whereas the phonemes can be written in many different ways- if that makes any sense?

[mrz]

The Sounds-Write programme teaches
one spelling different sounds

[radicalsubstitution]

OK, just an accent thing then. Thanks!

I am definitely an 'a' 'bath' as in 'apple' person.

Today I ended up in a very amusing conversation with year 12 chemistry students where we were trying to decide the type of iron ion in iron oxide. I said that it would sound far less stupid if I was Scottish (a Scottish friend of mine always pronouned the 'r' in 'iron').

I guess phonics doesn't always account for regional accents...

[mrz]

Yes phonics takes accents into account

[morethanpotatoprints]

Mrz.

Sorry, its me being a nuisance again. When you say phonics takes accents into account what do you mean? I ask as dd struggles with sounds and spells as she speaks which is ok for some words but others its not so.
Her teacher used to say careless mistakes (quite often to dd) , but the local accent would pronounce it curless. So dd hears curless, says curless and spells it like this.
I am trying to correct the pronunciation of this type of word as it comes up in the hope it might help spelling. It seemed a logical approach but not sure if it will work. .

[IsabelleRinging]

I am not sure phonics schemes do take all regional accents into account. For example letter a is taught as making a 'a' sound as in cat, bat and also 'ae' as in radar. I have never com across a scheme which teaches an 'ar' sound as in the southern pronunciation of bath (barth). The same goes for the pronunciation of 'to' as discussed up thread. In my local area it is pronounced 'tu' not 'too', and the phonics schemes do not teach letter o as representing the sound 'u', which really does make it a tricky word for a new reception child.