Names of letters, is this right??

[IWipeArses]

DS has learnt that an 's' is a' sssss' and an 'S' is an 'Ess'. If you see what I mean.

So upper case (capital) letters are said as the name of the letter, but a lower case letter is the "sound" it makes.

This is bollocks surely?

[Bunnyjo]

is it bloody sausage fingers

[Bunnyjo]

Nor it is an obscure word

[maizieD]

Cello...

A word which crops up quite frequently in children's early reading experience

[TeamSledward]

Rudolph, don't forget "y" can also make an "ee" sound (sticky, messy, funny)! ;)

[IWipeArses]

Oooh

[Bunnyjo]

Cello...

[maizieD]

we talk about a silent 'e' sometimes - as in care

Come again? [hm]

The 'e' is part of the 'are' grapheme; which spells /air/

When does 'c' spell /ch/? (go on, confound me with some obscure word... )

[Rudolphstolemycarrots]

we talk about a silent 'e' sometimes - as in care

we talk about 'y' making an 'eye' or a 'yh' sound

we talk about the letter 'c' making a 'ch' and a 'sss' sound.

[Rudolphstolemycarrots]

We mostly call everything by the letter sound. I might then add that it is a capital version and tell DS the proper letter name possibly. I don't really see the name of the letter as important right now in R.

[learnandsay]

Thanks, maizie. Yes, I'll have to put some thought into it. But I think they'll need to be compound words with an element of difficulty in them, because compound words which look naturally the way that they sound she has no trouble with. But, yes indeed.

[maizieD]

You'll have to start teaching her about compound word, lands

[learnandsay]

The problem with the magic e is that some times (see what I did?) it doesn't work. Some would sound like soem, (not like sum) if its magic e had worked. But the good thing about the magic e, although it's inaccurate is that it's simple for children to learn and it works often enough to be very useful. I taught my daughter split digraphs and the magic e.

I tried getting her to read the word pineapple on a drink in our supermarket and she couldn't read it. So I explained that in the word pine there was a magic e. And it was in the middle of the whole word pineapple. She looked at me for quite a while (holding up the supermarket queue) and then replied, if it's in the middle of a word then it's not a magic e.

I was silent for a while after that.

[Lougle]

Magic e doesn't work all the time, though.

'There' isn't Th-ee-r-e
'care' isn't c-ay-r-e

[sashh]

They did that when I was learning to read - er 1970 ish.

[loubielou31]

Go and speak to your DS's teacher.
When your son wants to read a word like cape say "In this word these two letters (and point the the a-e) are the sound ay" So you sound out c ay p, cape.
The phonics method when taught well means that children learn these diagraphs really quickly when and if they are ready for it, and up until that point you just need to point out the quirks of the English language when they crop up in books.

[IWipeArses]

I'll ask tomorrow.

[blackcoffee]

thrust, even
bangs head

[IWipeArses]

When do they learn about the split digraph a_e? Because until they do, the only way they can sound it out is to say each letter sound.

[blackcoffee]

Arses the books are a whole other thread
I am embarrassed about some of the books sent home by our school in the recent past
Do chat to the teacher about your concerns. Good luck!

[TeamSledward]

I was told by LEA literacy consultant that "magic e" should not be taught. Split digraph a_e is the way to do it.
Arses, a child would not learn to spell cape as cu-ah-puh-eh. They would be taught that the word has three sounds/phonemes (cu-ay-puh) and these sounds are represented by four letters.

[IWipeArses]

The problem with doing things systematically at school is that they can't read things at home.
For instance we had 'Oh Floppy!' home from school, and he sounded out Floppy as 'ff-l-oh-pu-pu-yuh' because they hadn't learnt about the letter y making any other sounds.
Now they have learnt that y is yummy, so at the start of a word it's 'yuh' and at the end it's 'ee', and then we were reading one of his story books and came across the word fly.

So by telling them a y is yuh, they then have to relearn this several times.

I've been reading ABC by Dr. Seuss to him for two years, and he's learnt at school that c is 'cuh', so am I confusing him with the 'camel on the ceiling'?

[blackcoffee]

well nowhere in Reception learn - why would you?
as you say it can be a Latin ending - puellae (poo -ell- ee) or indeed be found at the beginning of words - Aesop - but this doesn't tend to form the main thurst of teaching

[learnandsay]

That's not what I asked. I didn't ask where do you come across the split digraph. I asked where do you come across the (unsplit) digraph ae?

[LilRosiesMum]

Yes my DD learned about "a split e" (as in cape) and also they learn "sh" and "th" as a phonic that is different to t or s or h; they go through the many exceptions once they've got the hang of it. These phonic things really worked for my DD, she can read brilliantly; and now I'm seeing the magic working again on my DS (in reception). Don't know about different names for capitals or lowercase, round here they only really concentrate on the sound of the letters.