"So" is a sight word and can't be sounded out...

[Stampstamp]

Said the reception class teacher today. Aaargh! Thank heavens DD can already mostly read (she's nearly 5). Why do some teachers and schools have such a limited understanding of phonics, it seems so fundamental to me?

CecilyP You gave the example of bungalow and asked if anyone would need to sound all the way through to read it. Yes. Absolutely they would. The kids I teach (many but not all EAL) would be very unlikely to know the word 'bungalow' in Y6.

Well obviously if they had never heard the word bungalow, by the age of 10 or 11, they wouldn't. It seems I am far too sheltered to have allowed for that possible scenario. Are you sure that their problems relate to the method of teaching in early years? As far as I am aware, all the early phonics schemes have their 'tricky words' or 'red words', which is possibly a child-friendly way of saying 'common words with uncommon spellings, and while I don't honestly think the word 'so' is one of them, it is listed in them as a 'tricky word'.

But it's not really nonsense to an average parent, I don't think. It's nonsense to you and the OP.

But some parents may think that saying 'so' is a tricky word is nonsense, because they just think, 'so is surely an easy word to read'. As has been said here some parents may never have come across phonics in their own education. I know of one parent in DDs class who talked about reading with me. She claimed to only know the letters by their name. I couldn't get my head around this actually, and wonder if she just doesn't remember.

And how quickly really does 'so' swap from a sounded out word to a sight word anyway? Not a pure sight word in a teachers world, but in a parent and child reading situation. Is it wrong for a child to stop trying all the phonetically possible combinations of a two letter common word and just know it by sight? That is not the same as reading every word by sight, and is not encouraging that either. I'd have thought it was just a child becoming a fluent reader.

ITA was introduced to remove the complexities of our orthographical system so was fine as long as you used texts using the same code but not transferable to ordinary texts.

Mixed methods were introduced as a response to the failure of whole language methods with the belief that combining something that hadn't worked with something that had worked perfectly well for centuries would make it better ...rather than dilute

So pozzled, suppose that in a pure phonics world they accurately sound out bungalow and get it right (which they will, as everything in there is regular).

Not necessarily, if you had never heard the word before, the last syllable could be pronounced to rhyme with cow!

Growlithe the whole purpose of teaching phonics is to provide an effective strategy to use when we meet unfamiliar words ... by introducing a simple word like so and explaining that the letter is a spelling for the sound /oa/ the teacher provides a point of reference
If you teach so by sight the child can read so if you teach them that in some words the letter is the spelling for the sound /oa/ they can apply it to

no go so bold comb hobo post ago Euro obey omega bolt don't hold Rover also hero ocean only bony fold host Rowan biro Hugo ogle open both ghost most sober duo jumbo okay oval clover Gobi noble total go photo oldest over cold golf notice volt echo solo
etc etc etc

which do you think is the quickest method to fluent reading being able to read one word by sight or dozens by phonic knowledge?

of course the teacher doesn't want the child to sound out words for ever they are aiming for automaticity, for some children they may remember that s+o is so after being told once other children may need to read the word 10 times or 100 times ...

"well being able to read new words is a very good place to start."

So are you saying that if I encounter a new word, look up its meaning, fit it into a sentence and could (say) answer questions on it, but mispronounce it (or, indeed, don't now how to say it at all), I can't read it? This is the heart of my concern about phonics: you talk about "reading new words" and "knowing words" as though being able to pronounce them is the first and main test.

Kanji is almost entirely non-phonetic. There are thousands of "sight words" with absolute no way to decode the ideogram into a pronunciation, or to construct an ideogram given knowledge of the spoken word. See, for example, here. And yet, Japanese has vanishingly low levels of adult illiteracy.

No friday I'm not saying that are you?

^Growlithe the whole purpose of teaching phonics is to provide an effective strategy to use when we meet unfamiliar words ... by introducing a simple word like so and explaining that the letter is a spelling for the sound /oa/ the teacher provides a point of reference
If you teach so by sight the child can read so if you teach them that in some words the letter is the spelling for the sound /oa/ they can apply it to^

Seems reasonable to me in relation to the word 'so'. In which case why does Jolly Phonics, which surely must have lead to the current resurgence of the phonic method, list it as a tricky word? Perhaps it is Jolly Phonics, that the teacher mentioned in the OP is using. If she does it unthinkingly, it is not a great leap for her to say that it can't be sounded out.

I agree with you on the use of phonics to teach children. I can just kind of get where this teacher is coming from in this particular instance, with a load of parents who have just started reception. She's wound one up (who I suspect would have been almost pleased with the opportunity to show off her knowledge) but she hasn't bambozzled all the others at an early stage.

Anyway, I've spent enough of the weekend on this, I've got a sad occasion to commemorate this morning then a happier event to attend this afternoon.

Checking out of the thread now. Thanks for the discussion.

I have never mentioned pronouncing words you seem to be the one who is confusing decoding with pronouncing ... decoding can be a totally silent process

In Jolly Phonics the tricky words were not meant to be taught as sight words but words that have a different way to spell the sound unfortunately over 20 years mixed methods have turned the definition of both High Frequency Words and Tricky words to sight words in the minds of many teachers.

Japanese children have until the end of high school to master around 2000 Kanji characters English is topping a million words

But if they are taught individually as 'tricky words' they are pretty much taught as sight words, I would have thought.

No Growlithe she probably hasn't bamboozled the other parents but she has taught them words need to be learnt by sight untrue and that words can't be sounded out also untrue

I think at my next parents meeting I will tell them that 2+2 equals 22 I'm sure they will see where I'm coming from

but they aren't taught individually as tricky words you would group them so, no, go look they all have the same spelling for the sound /oa/ lets say the sounds ..done!

Even if they are taught as a group, they have been taken out and called 'tricky'. What you have described is what you would do (what I would do) but that is teaching another correspondence - something Jolly Phonics doesn't do at this stage.

Jolly Phonics does teach the correspondence at this stage

teachers using JP may not because they are using mixed methods
recent NfER research showed that more than half of teachers who thought they were teaching phonics were in fact using mixed methods

and for the record CecilyP it isn't what I do because I don't teach Jolly Phonics

It isn't irrelevant either that many children couldn't extrapolate bungalow in the example given.

Reading ability relies on underlying language comprehension and world knowledge. I work with language disordered young people at secondary who have age appropriate decoding skills but whose knowledge of language is extremely limited.

You can decode fluently without comprehension and it is a known issue in areas with high numbers of EAL students. It is common sense both are needed.... an example that seems to make sense to many is some Asian students who attend mosque who have very highly developed decoding abilities of Arabic with no knowledge of individual word meaning in Arabic. They have learned to recite on sight and yes, have phoneme grapheme correspondence etc but are missing the underlying language competence in Arabic for this to be true reading. This would once have been true re Latin inCatholic worship.

I am all for phonics but I despair when decoding is prioritized above language competence and debvelopment. Sadly there are vast swathes of children in the UK at reception who can't use 'so' in a sentence so talking about how precisely the grapheme 'o' is to be
taught as an example of trickiness is the least of many teacher's concerns and certainly not an indicator the teacher is thick or no child in their class will ever learn to read.

Jolly Phonics does teach the correspondence at this stage

In that case why are these words taken out and referred to as 'tricky words'.

I don't teach Jolly Phonics

I know, mrz, but I am assuming the teacher referred to in OP does (or something very like it).

If that were true I would despair too but no one has ever claimed that decoding should be taught without understanding working9while5

No CecilyP but you said what I described is what I do when in fact it is in the guidance for Letters & Sounds Jolly Phonics and other progs

The prog I use doesn't have any tricky or red words

Fair enough, mrz, but many popular programmes do.