Do they stop and start this phonics business?

[learnandsay]

Our Reception children started a few months ago with Letters & Sounds and a sheet of A4 paper was sent home with letters (pictures, I think) and some activity for each letter. But I remember there being some digraphs on it. And I thought that was fairly ambitious and good. But it seems as though the children got to the end of the regular alphabet (quite a while ago) and I don't think they've learned any sounds since. My daughter used to come home rubbing her tummy and saying "mmm". She doesn't do anything like that any more. And when I ask her what sounds they've leaned she says we've finished them all now.

Maybe some Reception children still aren't getting books with words in yet. But surely they've got to learn "sh" "th" "ch" "ai" "oo" "ee" some of which are already on the sheet, "ea" and quite a few others before they can reasonably read much of any use. I know they can start more stuff next term. But won't it take ages to learn to read anything at this rate?

Maybe he could read it at this point, just I didn't know. That's a possiblity! . Probably not though as he hadn't been given any reading books and they were going very slowly with the sounds. I don't think they had covered i-e and ea by this point. And the c sounding s. They were taught just using phonics, just slowly.

Lots of teaching is "incidental" the word ice would be especially useful at this time of the year and the teacher would talk about the alternative ways the sounds are represented.

In the schools where there is best practice . I remember having to go over the "c/s" thing myself with DS in about Feb I think, that's not to say his teacher hadn't mentioned it but I doubt it as he is pretty quick to latch onto things.

It's a very easy way to extend children's knowledge when ready.

I don't know when the c/s problem gets resolved. We were in the Natural History Museum today looking at a thylacine. And there were several adults nearby who couldn't pronounce the name of the animal.

It's one of the few that DS often forgets/gets wrong still. [blushes] I didn't know what a thylacine was, but I would have pronounced it correctly .

I asked my daughter about ice creams half price. The only word she couldn't read was price. She made prikee, prissy, prick-e

then I pointed out the magic e and the c/s
and she made price. But I think if I'd given her those two clues I'd pretty much given her the word.

the is the spelling for "s" and is the spelling for "ie"

I think we'll work on the c/s for
ce
cy
ci

as and when we need it. She's only just getting used to the idea that c doesn't always have a cu sound. She hasn't tended to be taught lots of rules. On the whole she's got by without them.

well if you've got ice and price it's a good opportunity missed

I'm thinking about it now. All the ace words, face, space, pace, then ice, rice, spice, lice, nice and so on. That could go somewhere.

ci is less hopeful. She knows Pacific, city, pencil (not acid) but could learn it. The rest of the ci words don't look good. And cy looks even less hopeful. There's cycle, maybe icy, spicy, Tracy and Lucy. I'll see what I can do. I'll put something together for her that's nice and fun. But on the whole I don't think this problem is as serious as the lack of magic-e/split digraphs in general was a few weeks ago. This one needs to be ironed out, you're quite right. But it's not a gaping wound.

Not many of DD's class could read Ice creams half price at this stage in reception but I would say a good chunk of them would by the end of the year...

DD would be fine with it but I don't know how as I have never taught her and she could probably have read it before reception tbh so wouldn't have been taught in reception - well she probably has but could already do it if that makes sense)...

DD's reading has really taken off in the last couple of weeks and she has just read a pretty high level book this eve (it was her brothers) with no problems decoding it (words that I did not think she would know) but only understood the story at a basic level as she is not mature enough for the more complex comprehension questions yet iyswim...

Do you know what system her nursery teacher and the teacher who moved up with her into Reception was using?

They use jolly phonics but tbh DD was reading before she started nursery....(at a very basic level think "cat sat on a mat" type thing)

I am not sure if she uses jolly phonics any more though as she never really twigged the point of the actions to the sounds as she wanted to just know the sounds iyswim. She is going into phase 6 of letters and sounds soon...

She did the phonics test (last yrs test) last week and passed so the school (and DD) must be doing something right!! She came home full of talk about "alien words" etc etc...