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.

The suggestion was that children would be writing sentences and thereby using the otherwise unfamiliar examples of "ay" spelled as "ey."

I can say with a degree of certainty that my daughter's Reception class as a whole is not able to perform such exercises.

They will do though .

Well, yes, hopefully. On a similar note, while we were in the museum a boy who was probably seven or eight was with a parent or guardian and she was reading everything to him. There were "environment" boards around the place with all kinds of details on them and each time he came across one he would cry out "what does this one say?" And his chaperone would cross the room and read it to him. There was one a time when I was right next to him and I bit my tongue (literally,) as I was just about to say why don't you try reading it yourself?

He might have been a big 5/6 year old though, my DS looks about this age. And better she read it than was dismissive/ignored him! Or maybe he'd been living in Sweden like my niece and can't read anything (unlikely but you never know!).

I don't know. But what upset me was that he didn't even try and she didn't encourage him. I'm sure there are perfectly valid reasons for all of it, (well actually I'm not.)

Well, we don't know. That's their business. My DS likes to read all sorts wherever we are which is fab. And DD who can't read has taken to interpreting and shouting out loudly about all the signs that she does understand (like no outdoor shoes in the swimming pool etc).

I think you're right, it's their business (and not mine.)

But surely the journey to reading involves some effort. Surely looking at the first letter of the first word is some kind of a start. Maybe sounding out the first letter is a way forward. Anything will do at this stage!

That's why I bit my tongue. Because I was about to say, for heaven's sake, my four year old....

(and therein lies a bad outcome!)

Of course, but maybe said child and parent have enough on their plate not to be reading in the museum. Perhaps it is quite an achievement to be there in the first place. Actually to have the child asking the question "what does that say?" is pretty good, rather than "when are we going home so I can play on the computer."

I hadn't for a single moment thought about it like that.

And not only had I not thought about it like that but I had worried about how natural history can be included in a child's academic achievement. I was worried that, like anthropology, natural history is only a very interesting sideline. Where we live we have much access to said resource. But I hanker after reading, riting and rithmetic. Maybe I'll think about it some more!

Hope your tongue is ok by the way ...

Yes learnandsay I am saying children should be able to write simple sentences by this point in the year and some will be perfectly happy to use words containing and or any of the alternatives they have encountered in class. (It always helps if you have an Alice or a Georgia or a Trey in your class for lots of "incidental" teaching)

''Even the core of high frequency words which are not transparently decodable using known grapheme?phoneme correspondences usually contain at least one GPC that is familiar. Rather than approach these words as though they were unique entities, it is advisable to start from what is known and register the ?tricky bit? in the word. Even the word yacht, often considered one of the most irregular of English words [it's of Dutch origin], has two of the three phonemes represented with regular graphemes'' (Letters&Sounds Notes of Guidance p16) .

Also possibly of interest -Letters and Sounds review:

www.nonweiler.demon.co.uk/page14.html