Help! Re-learning the phonics sounds and not letters

[TinkerTills]

Hi all. Anyone have experience of "undoing" the learning of the alphabet in favour of phonics? My parents have been teaching my daughter the old sounds and not the phonics sounds. I was also pretty clueless until I found myself watching alphablocks the other week...

The problem is my daughter is stubbornly sticking to the "fuh" instead of "fff" and "muh" instead of "mmm". In some ways i'm proud - she knows her letters - but how will the teacher deal with this? (DD starts school in Sept). Reception teachers must have some experience of undoing the well-intended mistakes of families!!

Help.

[cornflakegirl]

We've found the Jolly Songs cd really good for reinforcing the phonics sounds in a fun way.

[BabiesAreLikeBuses]

My nephew's nursery refuse to teach it in case they get it wrong and upset the local schools, they also claim that their minimum wage doesn't cover teaching activities that schools should be doing... It's the most extreme example i have heard but it shows provision varies. My dc did nursery year at school and covered phonics phase one after Easter.
I agree parental awareness is an issue as we have a whole generation who were taught through Peter and Jane style look and say books... But there is a wealth of phonics info on the net as well as games and clips. Just be careful with apps, most of them seem to be American and do say 'cuh' etc. our favourite at home is hairy letters (although they voice l and r incorrectly, my friend says you can record your voice into the app to stop this).

[PoppyWearer]

I wouldn't worry. My DC1 was taught Jolly Phonics at her pre-school and a different system in Reception and she has coped just fine with the differences!

[ReallyTired]

My daughter's private nursery taught her a lot of phonic sounds incorrectly and she was quite indignant that s was "suh" rather than "ssss". She adored Sandra who in her eyes knew far more than anyone else!

I got round this by saying that the letters had hard sounds and soft sounds. I told her that Sandra had taught her the hard sounds and I was teaching her the soft sound (ie. the pure letter sound).

[mrz]

breatheslowly if you know which school your child will be attending it is worth asking around (doesn't have to be the school you could approach parents with children there already) which programme the school uses although most only vary slightly in the order sounds are introduced. Jolly Phonics uses actions - Letters & Sounds does not. RWI has "red words" Jolly Phonics has "tricky words" ...but otherwise essentially the same.

I use a programme called Sounds-Write which has a different approach but still based on the basic concepts

Spoken English has 44 sounds (give or take one or two for accent)
The Alphabet has only 26 letters to represent those sounds
There are roughly 175 common spellings for the 44 sounds in our language making English complex but phonetic

There are very few words that contain unique sound/spelling representations so words do not have to be learnt by sight.

Written language is the visual representation of spoken language

Sounds can be spelt with one, two, three or four letters
(c a t sh o p l igh t h eigh t)

The same sound can be spelt in different ways
(a- apron ai -rain ay- play ey- they a-e -came eigh-weight aigh-straight ae-sundae ea-great are all ways to spell the sound /ai/

The same spelling can represent different sounds
(ea is /ai/ in great /ee/ in leaf and /e/ in head)

Debbie Hepplewhite has a preschool programme with lots of information for parents
www.phonicsinternationalpreschool.com/trs_test.html
www.phonicsinternationalpreschool.com/
www.phonicsinternational.com/Aa_pic_flash_audio.pdf

or if you have any questions I'm sure posters will be happy to help

[TinkerTills]

Wow - thanks all for this information! I also think there should be more information given out to parents of pre-schoolers. We wouldn't have made the mistakes if we'd have known. I like ReallyTired's suggestion of soft sounds. I will try that with DD. To her credit DD has already cracked 'sss' and 'tt'. Although she sometimes forgets... the promise of a chocolate button is working wonders!

DD's new school also have a COMPLETELY different way of teaching multiplication and division. Can't they leave anything alone? My parents struggled to help me with short division/ multiplication because they'd been taught the long way and now I'll struggle to help my kids? Although maybe I'll worry about that another day!

[cornflakegirl]

If you're talking about grid multiplication and chunking, they're actually fairly straight-forward, and the way that you probably do multiplication and division in your head. The idea is to get children secure in what multiplication really means before teaching them the quick way to do it. It's weird for us because it's a new technique, but it's easy to learn, and when you do it really makes sense.

[PastSellByDate]

Hello mrz - yes our school introduced 'sound of the week' for DD2 when a new Class R teacher started - based on various jolly phonics phonemes. I was a bit [hmmm] at first but in fact knowing that they were working on 'ah' sounds that week, getting sent home a copy of the 'ant' song and simple words like hat, cat, sat - really helped.

At first this all seemed dead obvious but they carried it right on through progressively more complicated sounds: combined vowels 'ee', 'ai', 'ay' and blended sounds: 'th', 'wh' & 'sh'. Each week a few new laminated example words (with actions) were attached to my DD2's key ring and we'd happily learn them over the weekend and she'd use them in class to songs or in work.

I don't understand the logic or the where's or why for's - but for DD2 - she took to this really quickly, enjoyed it and was reading by end of Year R. DD1 who had more of a look and say approach (much like I did) didn't really 'get reading' until late Y2. The sounds with jolly phonics have songs and the actions for words (especially High Frequency Words (HFWs) were sweet and all the kids seemed to enjoy it).

Now every child is different, etc. etc... - but systematically working through sounds, parents being encouraged to pick out words with 'this week's sound' whilst reading and encourage DCs to read those words, etc... - seemed joined up, lead to good progress (at least for my DD2) and the building blocks of what was being taught in the classroom were clearly communicated to parents.

-----

Hi Maizie D - again just a lowly parent here - no idea why actions words work but they did. More info here: www.actionwords.co.uk/welcome.htm with little cartoons acting them out. There's more info there about why they think it works. This may well all be a load of hooey - but DCs definitely enjoyed this and generally seemed happier and learning to read more readily than DD1 & her cohort 2 years earlier following a largely look and say approach.

HTH

[mrz]

Jolly Phonics is meant to be taught at the rate of 6 sounds a week not one!

[mrz]

Maizie Action Words were devised by a school in Saltburn based on the idea of Jolly Phonics actions but applied to the HFW from the original literacy strategy. Each word has an action mnemonic used as prompts - sorry PSBD but they are the Look & Say method

[daftdame]

I would not worry overly. I think your daughter will probably adapt when she starts school. Coincidently I learnt with the old (vaguely phonic sounds with the vowel ie cuh etc) and had no problem translating them to the sounds in words.

I would just use repetition to consolidate the new way of saying the individual sounds and explain to grandparents that this is the way reading is taught now.

[mrz]

It isn't a new way to say the sounds ... just the correct way as it always has been.

[daftdame]

mrz You are always such the pedant. I guess not a fan of David Crystal.

I could say used new v old as it is new to the OP's daughter...and me, and the OP's daughter's grandparents.

[daftdame]

^ Should say 'I could say I used...'. Ironic I make a typo concerning a pendantry (snigger) comment.

[mrz]

I'm a big fan of David Crystal - five of his books sit permanently on my desk I just don't like the impression that it has changed from old way to new way as it isn't the case.

[daftdame]

But that (the change) is reality for some people and yes I'm aware I'm beginning to sound a bit post-modern.

Pleased you like the books, I do too.

[mummytime]

I would leave it up to school for two reasons:
A) teachers in my experience tend to start teaching everyone their sounds starting at the beginning, they only really start to "differentiate" when some are falling behind
B) children tend to "believe" what teachers tell them. So they may not change something because "mummy" says so but will then change when "teacher" says so. It takes a few years until your children begin to see their teacher's as fallible.

As for Maths, the school may well run a session on how they teach Maths which will help.

[daftdame]

mummytime I afraid DS mistrusted teachers from a very early age, they were fallible from the off.

I also mistrusted some of my teachers, they weren't just regarded as fallible but possibly evil! (was always looking for witchy tendencies)

I will admit that, in my case, it was during 'the bad old days' in education, when smacking was still allowed, how old am I?

DH and I probably knew more about what our son could do.

Therefore your view about children believing teacher over mummy is not consistent with everyone's experience.

However I do think peer pressure might have something to do with it, so the OP's DD will probably follow suit and learn the sounds as they are taught at school.

[breatheslowly]

mummytime - I really don't think you can leave it up to the school in some cases. DD is asking what words start with and she will be 3 in September. I think it stems from seeing other children's names in nursery. For example she can spot "w" which is not a letter in her name, but she knows it is "w for William". She has two more years before she starts school. If I have to leave it up to school then how do I answer her questions? Do I say "I don't know" or "I can't tell you because you need to learn it at school"?

[mrz]

I would simply answer her questions rather than teach her

[mrz]

take your cue from her

[breatheslowly]

At the moment it is all about the sounds that words start with, so if she asks we have a conversation about the sound and think of other words beginning with the same sound - a bit like "I spy". I am certainly not pushing her or starting the conversations myself. I refused to learn to read before I went to school as I said that was what going to school was for. If I tried to teach DD I thing she would be as stubborn as I was - there is no reason for her to learn before she goes to school other than her own curiosity.

[YoniBottsBumgina]

It's not too difficult. You can still tell them the basic letter sounds if they ask. Just remember to make the actual sound mmmm or whatever instead of muh.

With the tricky letters like d, c, t etc you just have to keep it very short and clipped if you can't make the sounds easily. It is hard to represent hard consonants as sounds - the softer ones are easy. (I find Y really hard so have sort of fudged that one but it doesn't seem to have hindered him.) If you get stuck then try saying a word which has that letter in a "pure" form (so, rat instead of hurt) and then separate the letter out from the other sounds and say it alone. There are probably games on the Alphablocks site too which help.

It is more difficult to be heard with sounds like ffff in the back of a car, but that is only one letter sound out of 26, and you won't always be in a car when you talk to your DC about letters.

[mrz]

I'm going to be told off by daftdame for being a pedant but ...

"hurt" isn't a good example because there isn't a /r/ sound the sounds in hurt are /h/ /er/ /t/ spelt h-ur-t

sorry daftdame but it is important

[daftdame]

Depends on your accent though....that is some people pronounce an 'r' in hurt, or is that classed as a different sound? (polishes pedantry pendant. I admit I'm not an expert)