Reading help...

[Houseworkprocrastinator]

I need a little bit of help with explaining some sounds to my daughter. In school they follow the jolly phonics (i think) and since doing the initial sounds in reception, they haven't brought any sounds home so i have no idea what they are learning. ("nothing" according to her) She is currently in year 1 but i think a little ahead in her reading than the majority of the class but i am now struggling to help her with the 'rules' when reading.

Things that have come up recently are...

when CH makes a c sound (she has had words like archaeology, chameleon and character)

when S makes a sh sound (measure, unusual, sugar etc)

Are there any rules to help explain when these happen?

we have also been having words ending in TION and SION are these taught as whole sounds?

Thanks in advance...

[Missbopeep]

the rogue spellings which don't use the main patterns:
wag - was, ear - early, dream - dreamt, now - slow.

ear followed by other letters can say a lot of the time- earth, heard, early,

has 2 sounds- the sound as in cow, and the sound as in grow. Children are taught these 2 sounds.

[mrz]

Sorry Missbopeep now you have me confused

[Missbopeep]

sorry I forgot to put "..................." round masha's post- first 2 lines.

I wasn't sure if she was saying that those sounds didn't conform to a pattern or were regular.

Maybe she can help us both.

[mrz]

I'll leave you try and work out what masha means ...I have a violent allergy to her lists

[Mashabell]

I don't think I agree with your 55% for spelling. Most of the books and experts I studied when training ( not in primary ed but as a specialist) gave much higher figures than 55%.
Because I had seen many different claims about how regular or irregular English spelling is, I decided to establish this beyond a shadow of doubt by analysing the spellings of the 7,000 most used English words. I found that 3,695 of them contain one or more unpredictable spellings (frIend, cheQUered, coPy - cf. poppy).
The people who claim that English spelling is more regular than it is are nearly all apologists for English spelling. They try to make u believe that it is not nearly as bad as it is, and that bad spelling is simply the result of bad teaching.

Re
wag - was, ear - early, dream - dreamt, now - slow.

Unlike any other alphabetically written language, English poses spelling AND READING difficulties. - The others have no spellings with more than one pronunciation like the above.

'Wag' makes regular use of those letters, but because 'wa' is an almost regular subpattern for the /o/ sound (was, want, wash), this creates reading difficulties.

The /ee/ sound has a completely unpredictable spelling:
eat ? eel, even, ceiling, field, police, people, me, key, ski, debris, quay (ea in 152 words ? other spellings in 304),
and because [ea] has several sounds (treat, ear - great, threat, wear) it poses decoding difficulties as well (unlike ee which has just one sound, like all spellings in other European languages do.)

A final -o (go) has several unpredictable spellings (toe, snow, though, sew), and as u pointed out, ow has two pronunciations which children have learn to read correctly in different words.

For reading, context helps them with choosing the right one.
For spelling, they simply have to memorise the correct spelling for each word.
Masha Bell

[Missbopeep]

You must have far too much time on your hands!
Far easier to read some of the work already carried out by experts - which you seem ignorant of.

You also show a complete misunderstnading of how spelling and reading are taught. eg

A final -o (go) has several unpredictable spellings (toe, snow, though, sew), and as u pointed out, ow has two pronunciations which children have learn to read correctly in different words

Children are taught these spellings as groups of words, not separately in isolation.
So with toe they would learn all the other -oe words.
Same for -ow
same for -ough
same for sew

If these are taughts systematically using multi sensory methods and also re-learning ( going back over them every couple of weeks) then they stick.

They also of course use context as a guide when reading, as do we as adults. eg "In the field were some black and white cows" I doubt they would struggle to know if it was ,ow as in "oh" or ow as in snow.

I don't really understand your point TBH. Are you arguing that phonics etc should not be used because some words do not fit with he majority?

[Missbopeep]

sorry- typos! -ow as in how.

[maizieD]

I don't really understand your point TBH. Are you arguing that phonics etc should not be used because some words do not fit with he majority?

When I first encountered marsha a few years ago she was just campaigning for the reform of English spelling. When I, and others, pointed out to her that good systematic synthetic or linguistic phonics instruction was extremely effective in teaching children to spell well she widened her campaign to include anti-phonics in her message.

She hasn't a clue about how SP or LP instruction works but she's anti it all the same. More children able to spell well would make her campaign look a bit weak...

[Missbopeep]

Oh well I didn't know there was a back history to her posts.

Sorry masha but you need to read around more before you come jumpng in with half baked ideas.

[Mashabell]

Missbopeep
Are you arguing that phonics etc should not be used because some words do not fit with he majority?
No. I am merely trying to explain why phonics is of limited use even for learning to read, why children also as u say
of course use context as a guide when reading.
For learning to spell English 'correctly' (rather than phonically), beyond the basic stage, it is even more useless.

[Missbopeep]

You are entitled to your opinion.

However, IMO you are misguided at best and misinformed at worst.

I assume you are not a professional and have no training in teaching reading or phonics?

If so, it's a bit like me telling a surgeon how to do an opeation just because I took a splinter out of my child's finger.

Maybe take some of the time you obviously have to look at the website of the Reading Reform group, Debbie Hepplewhite ( same as RRG), Jolly Phonics and the work of Sue Lloyd.

[maizieD]

Marsha was a Secondary English teacher. We all know how expert they are at teaching phonics

She wouldn't touch the RRF with a bargepole; we're more interested in teaching children to read and spell now.