Synthetic phonics and explaining 'tricky' words

[Pozzled]

Sorry if I'm repeating questions, but I couldn't find this exact info elsewhere.

SP is working really well for my DD, but the school uses mixed methods and sends home 'tricky' words to learn. I deal with this by showing her the phonics behind the word, but I'm struggling to explain a couple:

One- does the 'o' make the /w/ /u/ sounds? And the same in 'once'? I know 'o' often says /u/ but are these two words the only time it says /w/ /u/?

Are- obviously a trigraph for /ar/ but does it make this sound in any other words? All the ones I can think of it makes /air/.

Were- same thing, does 'ere' make /er/ in any other English words?

And can anyone tell me which other genuinely phonetically 'tricky' words I should look out for ie graphemes that are hardly ever seen elsewhere?

I think you're overthinking the phonics a bit. Here's a mumsnet discussion on tricky words. Maverick quotes the Letters & Sounds guidance (which seems contradictory at best to me.)

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/primary/a1358993-this-is-a-tricky-word-and-cant-be-sounded-out

My own personal feeling is that when it comes to tricky words the wheels fall off the phonics wagon.

If you look at the etymology of a lot of English words you will find that in the distant past they were often pronounced with all of their current letters. And many have lost letters and sounds that they once had. In many modern cases the spelling doesn't reflect the pronunciation at all, whereas once it did.

Many of the most commonly used words (High Frequency Words/ HFWs) in written English such as , and , contain an unusual spelling that is hard to decode without direct instruction. There are approximately 100 HFWs with 'grotty graphemes' (Miskin) which need to be taught directly and systematically in every early reading programme, using a phonics all-through-the word approach -for a list see D.McGuinness. Early Reading Instruction p58.

There are only nine HFWs words , , , , , , , and , that may need to be memorised as whole units i.e. as high frequency 'sight' words, though no English word is completely phonologically opaque.

John Walker: High frequency words. 1.
literacyblog.blogspot.com/2012/02/high-frequency-words.html
High frequency words 2.
literacyblog.blogspot.com/2012/02/more-on-high-frequency-words.html

HTH

Thanks for responding both of you. Learnandsay I don't agree that 'the wheels fall off the wagon' wrt tricky words and phonics, although I suppose it depends what you call 'tricky words'. My DD can use phonics for many common words that she has encountered, which others might label tricky- e.g. me, we, then, to, so. The words in the OP are the first I've struggled to explain.

However, I do agree that it can be useful to think about the etymology when teaching reading- for instance 'says' is a lot easier to recognise if you can understand how the pronounciation has changed.

Maverick, thanks for linking that blog, it was very reassuring because it showed me that what I've been doing is reasonable.

I always read these threads about phonics and think wtf . I never ever learnt to read that way and nor did the three dcs, who incidentally read very very well from usual age...Do you think you have to explain it, or doesn't it just "make sense" after a while? A bit like reverse parking

Although it does make me realise Chaucer has more uses than I thought - as a phonological progression to modern English spelling.

I was having a discussion with someone else in RL about handwriting and we were discussing how children quite often can't write the letters because they are so used to synthetic phonics that they can no longer recognise the letters of the alphabet - as separate symbols. And then they have difficulty writing them individually as they link them always with other letters missing out essential strokes.

OP I am a literacy specialist. I can tell you that in my text books telling me how to teach, there is a list of "tricky words" which are commonly caled high frequency words. These should be taught separately from the words that are are phonic spellings.

You don't need to explain the phonics to your DD because in most cases the rules don't work. You will only confuse her if you try to expain the non-phonics behind these words! :)

eg once, one.

These have to be learned by sight and by writing , and any other multi sensory methods that you can think of- such as air tracing, sand tracing, making out of playdough, pastry etc etc. Cutting the letters out of card and re-arranging ( child does it) then schecking can be very effective, as can buying wooden/plastic letters for same purpose- but buy lower case not upper.

I don't quite get your comments ITWB. Letters are blended in SP but single consonants and short vowels are sounded out as single sounds for instance. eg c-a-t. It's only when you have blends like sh and th for example that childen may be confused- but even then they should know there are 2 letters involved- that's the whole point of SP- identifying which letters make which sound.

Missbopeep that isn't how schools teach HFW and the so called "tricky" words.

Children are encouraged to decode the part they know and are told the sound they don't know at that stage. So for the word said the child would be told that is a spelling for the sound "e" which enables them to read the word "s" "e" "d" with ease.

I was having a discussion with someone else in RL about handwriting and we were discussing how children quite often can't write the letters because they are so used to synthetic phonics that they can no longer recognise the letters of the alphabet

What!
Children are taught to correctly form each letter as part of their phonics lesson and as they are also taught the alphabet and alphabetical order you need to look for some other reason ...

The word said appears in the most predictable of locations and so does the word says. Context is probably more useful than knowing that ai sounds like e in this word. It's likely to sound like something else in maid, laid and plait. I think my daughter reads says and said as sight words. (I think she recognises all the tricky words at school.) She hasn't been taught them as such. She's just familiar with them.

maverick I would argue that here and of don't need to be memorised

(one, two, who and eye would be my list)

maverick I would argue that here and of don't need to be memorised

I don't think that maverick would fall out with you over this

phew!

(I teach them as decodable)

I agree that 'of' is decodable.

With 'here' and 'were' I would have thought the two possible sounds for 'ere' are very rare, so you would teach them incidentally just for those words, rather than as a spelling pattern in the same way as ones like 'er'? Or would you teach 'ere' as a unit which can make at least three different sounds? (were, here, there).

Missbopeep I am a bit concerned that you say tricky words are 'commonly called' HFW. They are very different things- many HFW are not at all tricky, like 'and'. As a literacy specialist, I would be interested to see which words you would teach non-phonetically.

Oh and another question for mrz, maverick and other experts- at what stage would you introduce the truly tricky words like who, one etc?

They often crop up in children's writing before they appear in reading books so it's useful to teach them when they are needed ...reception children often want to write 'One day ...' for example