Letters and Sounds. Pros and Cons?

[SavoirFaire]

This is the phonics programme used by the school we will probably put as 1) on out school list in Jan. What do I need to know about the pros and cons of this? Thanks.

Op, I wouldn't let a school using or not using a particular phonics scheme sway you one way or another particularly. It all depends on how the scheme if they use one is taught, and this you won't know until your child goes there.

My dd was taught using it and it did the job for her, although her school have recently brought in RML as it wasn't doing the job for lots of other children.

Ok, so the "ey" sound is not that common so not the best example, but there are phonic books covering lots of the other more common sounds.

Yes, but that's precisely my point. If a word is common, like "they." And its spelling is not, then effectively that one word has to be learned. To be honest I don't believe the world will end if this is admitted, but some people do.

Yes, learned, but how is it learned learnandsay that is the point we are arguing over. It is not learnt in a vacuum, it is learnt with an explanation (and demonstration) of the sounds.

Well since your child hasn't been taught digraphs learnandsay you have grey to look forward to

That's fine. It's absolutely fine. I understand that. But if the other words which share a common spelling and sound are rarely come across in the child's reading then that goes by the by. That's precisely what I meant about being shown Welsh graphemes. I could show you a hundred Welsh graphemes, maybe more, and give you a two week lecture on them. But if you never came across them for five years would you then be able to read the Lord's prayer in Welsh to me?

No, of course not. I don't understand your argument though. Children are not taught sounds and then left not using them. Am I missing something?

No, she has been taught digraphs and some trigraphs too, just not in school, as far as I can tell. (She has been taught more besides.)

Why would a child know the sounds in another language learnandsay?

The sound we're arguing about is "ay" spelled as "ey." You've already said that it's not a good example. But its lack of goodness is precisely my point.

Which is?

unless of course they happen to speak Welsh in which case they would have no problem learning the spellings if taught.

mrz, we're not talking about children learning Welsh graphemes. We're talking about adults arguing in this forum learning them. I'm saying that familiarity with the graphemes is what's important. And if anybody doesn't believe me they can meet me here in five year's time for a Welsh test.

That's not true. They'd only have no problem with them if they came across them regularly. If they were rare spellings (in any language) they would forget.

Familiarity is important, yes, and having a method to deal with them when reading and spelling is important too.

I disagree it is a good example.

A child would be shown the spellings and and told these are the spellings for the word they and then they would look at other words with the same spelling of the "ay" sound and they would read and spell those words and read texts/sentences containing those words and write sentences/texts containing the words. They would revisit the words in reading/writing over time.

But the 'ey' spelling is not particularly rare, it is used in 'they' which is a common word. Every time a child reads 'they', that child is reminded that 'ey' says 'ay'. So it IS being reinforced. Then when they see 'grey' etc they will have a good idea how to read it.

Maybe your DD doesn't do this yet learnandsay. DS's YR class didn't start doing it this way until January at least. But then it was common practice to get a sheet with the sound they were learning, lots of examples of the sound, a sentence or two and then they had to write a sentence or two or more, or write as many words as they could with the sound.

In a way, pozzled, that's my point. If the normal reference to the word is the word itself then it has been learned as a stand-alone word, (a sight word.)

but there are no "sight" words when everything is "heard". I approach it as a musician approaches notes, which could also be learnt without reference to the sound they make, but would be rather ridiculous.

Agreed, Tgger, my daughter's class definitely doesn't do that. But I'm not sure how many can read or write. So, I'm not sure how many would be able to gain anything from reading and writing exercises. (I think that's something for the future.)

They'll start that next term or soon learnandsay, or at least I hope so and maybe it'll all fall into place a bit more? In Y1 DS is writing all the time, as are the rest of the class.

I would be really concerned if most children couldn't read and write simple words at this stage

mrz, I admire your standards . However, DS's class did not start ANY writing until January in YR, so perhaps things are done differently in some schools!

Whoops, I'm wrong there, sorry (enjoying the red wine), just remembered they started after half term, but certainly couldn't write that much by this point.