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?

[blackcoffee]

no sh is a digraph
a_e as in your example of cape is a split digraph

[IWipeArses]

But the letter 'a' can sound like 'ay' too.

[blackcoffee]

too right it can! what year is ds in?
the a sound is taught to begin with and the alternative sounds later on

[learnandsay]

Iwipe-me-arse, cap, cape

these are different. There is a Latin ending of ae, which one might choose to represent a digraph. If one chooses that method one might describe cape as a split digraph. (Although I would not do this for various reasons.) I would describe the final e in the word cape as a magic e. (Split digraphs are useful. There is no doubt about that. But they do not work all of the time.)

[IWipeArses]

But when the child is spelling the word cape, they're being taught to say cu-ah-pu-eh

[blackcoffee]

not in my class learn and say
it's c, split digraph a-e, (ay) p

[IWipeArses]

He's in Reception.

[blackcoffee]

Latin ending of ae has nothing to do with it - in any case that is pronounced ee!

[learnandsay]

But where else do you see the digraph ae?

[blackcoffee]

sorry, I meant Arses
I haven't come near split digraphs yet, am still on Phase 3, but would not teach it like that

[blackcoffee]

split digraph
a_e pronounced ay
bake, cake, shake, mate, rate loads of 'em

[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.

[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?

[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

[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'?

[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.

[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!

[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]

thrust, even
bangs head

[IWipeArses]

I'll ask tomorrow.

[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.

[sashh]

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

[Lougle]

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

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

[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.