supporting teaching of vowel digraphs?

[Betterbet]

hi D's is 5 and making reasonable progress with reading I think. they are doing phonics but seem to do a bit of memorizing hfw so I think the teaching might be slightly out of date. ds is guessing quite a lot and his memory of ea, oa, ai etc seems a bit rubbish when he reads with me. I don't think they have done split digraphs yet but they have come up in biff and chip quite a bit. does anybody have any tips on learning these digraphs- strategies or games? I really want him to be solid on these basics at this stage. thanks in advance.

You could have a look at the current magic e thread.

thanks, I just have. seems a bit controversial! would just like something to help remind him, as it doesn't seem to be staying in.

I don't know about other people's children, but my daughter is a good reader and it doesn't stay "in" her either. Sometimes she gets it right and sometimes she doesn't.

But then that happens to me too

vowel digraphs in English are irregular.

The only thing that I know of is that you can read and practice. Practice makes perfect. And to my way of thinking the magic e is the simplest way of reminding them. (Other people have other views.)

That's a big problem with Biff Chip et al Betterbet the books introduce words before the child can decode/read them and the idea when they were written was that the child could look at the illustration and guess ...
I could never work out why they imagined many 4 or 5 year olds would recognise concrete but there you go. I would tell him the words if I were you.

oh and vowel digraphs in English are regular ...there just happens to lots of alternatives rather than one spelling representing one sound.