"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?

[mrz]

Perhaps you & friday should get your facts right working9while5 ... mixed methods/whole language teaching was introduced by the Dfes in 1997 ...long after Baker!

Previously local politicians in the form of LEAs dictated methods in their areas ... hence ITA was only popular in some areas of the UK and other areas remained untouched


You may also like to consider the Rose Review of Reading as you seem to believe phonics is taught in isolation which couldn't be further from the truth

"All the decoding ability in the world isn't going to help a child who can't understand basic common vocabulary in the language they are learning to read in become a proficient independent reader without equal emphasis on development of the prerequisite language skills."



At best, our settings and schools draw upon these factors and embody the principles of high quality phonic work within a language rich curriculum that gives rise to high standards of reading and writing.

For example, nurturing positive attitudes to literacy and the skills associated with them, across the curriculum, is crucially important as is developing spoken language, building vocabulary, grammar, comprehension and facility with ICT .

[working9while5]

I think your own reading comprehension is a bit poor tbh.

The point Friday made was that politicians weren't involved in literacy teaching pre-Baker, not that Baker introduced these methods.

I don't know if this is factually accurate, just pointing out that you misread Friday's post.

I don't doubt the Rose review calls for balance. In practice though it still relies on children having a level of linguistic and cognitive competence that is lacking in
many many children across the UK on school entry where skills are so low it is a waste of time for many.

If you think knowledge of reading is poor among some teachers, knowledge of language development is non-existent for many.

[working9while5]

Positive attitudes to literacy are NOT essential to the development of spoken language in the sense I am talking about here. I am referring to children with limited or no language skills for interpersonal communication, the foundation for all teacher-directed learning, not the cognitive academic language proficiency required to extrapolate meaning from text or develop an argument etc.

[mrz]

Obviously your comprehension isn't too hot either working9while5 because I haven't suggested that Baker did introduce these methods ... only that the methods were introduced by politician long after Baker and not when friday suggested (ie 1950s).

The point of the Rose review is that it highlighted that good phonics teaching occurred when schools provided a language rich curriculum which developed children's spoken vocabulary and understanding.

I don't think phonics is well taught in many schools as indicated by the OPs post and certainly not as part of a language rich curriculum because sadly many believe the myths that phonics excludes other books or teaching vocabulary & understanding

[poppylover]

To the OP
So is a tricky word at the stage your child is at. The teacher is correct. It is not a tricky word when further phonemes have been taught at a later time. If you really want to help you should try to understand how phonics is taught..maybe get yourself a copy of Letters and Sounds or download it from the internet. Letters and Sounds very clearly shows the order in which phonemes are taught...it is not random, it is a well thought out programme. It sounds like the teacher was correct and you would be better off showing him or her more respect.
www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/190599/Letters_and_Sounds_-_DFES-00281-2007.pdf

[ClayDavis]

Presumably if the OP follows your advice and reads Letters and Sounds she'll see that it says that 'tricky' words can and should be sounded out from the early stages, not that they can't be sounded out. If, as you say, Letters and Sounds is a well thought out programme then it shows the teacher was incorrect.

[mrz]

You beat me to it ClayDavis are you a teacher poppylover?

[mrz]

from Letters & Sounds

Teaching Tricky words

Procedure

1. Explain that there are some words that have one, or sometimes two, tricky letters.

1. Read the caption, pointing to each word, then point to the word to be learned and read it again.

1. Write the word on the whiteboard.

1. Sound-talk the word and repeat putting sound lines and buttons under each phoneme and _blending them to read the word_. ( note not learning whole word by sight )

1. Discuss the tricky bit of the word where the letters do not correspond to the sounds the children know (e.g. in go, the last letter does not represent the same sound as the children know in dog).

[Thecatisatwat]

Mrz, I don't think Jolly Phonics does break down tricky words like you describe. In dd's Jolly Phonics workbooks it says 'Some words are tricky and cannot be spelt out' and suggests that the best way to learn them is to write them. In fact in one of the later books 'go' (and therefore presumably 'so') is given as an example of a tricky word. Assuming that the OP's teacher meant 'tricky' rather than 'sight' and assuming that she is teaching phonics using JP, I'd say she's right (and OP should direct her ranting towards something more worthwhile).

[Thecatisatwat]

Should be 'cannot be sounded out'.

[Stampstamp]

Thanks poppylover, I do have a copy of Debbie Hepplewhite's alphabet code and used it to teach my child to read. Which you would have known if you'd read my actual posts. The teacher didn't say anything about "at this stage", and was talking to the whole reception group of parents, not to me specifically. I haven't shown the teachers any disrespect apart from on this thread which given the circumstances I think is fair enough. But thanks for resurrecting the thread to have a go at me!

[mrz]

teaching a "tricky word" as a whole is treating it as a "sight word" Thecatisatwat and if you read the title the teacher said "so is a sight word" which it isn't

[maizieD]

In dd's Jolly Phonics workbooks it says 'Some words are tricky and cannot be spelt out'

I am absolutely astounded by this.

This is from the Reading Reform Foundation web site, part of the 'Principles of synthetic phonics teaching', a document co-authored by Sue Lloyd, one of the authors of Jolly Phonics

Introduce useful, common ‘tricky words’ slowly and systematically emphasising the blending skill once the tricky letter or letters have been pointed out. For example, when teaching the word ‘you’, say, “In this word (pointing at ‘you’), these letters (pointing at ‘ou’), are code for /oo/.” (‘Tricky words’ are a small number of words, in which there are rare/unusual graphemes, or, words in which not all the graphemes have yet been formally taught, which might be used in early reading material .)

To my knowledge, Sue would never say that tricky words cannot be sounded out

www.rrf.org.uk/pdf/Final_03__The_Synthetic_Phonics_Teaching_Principles%2011-2-10.pdf

[Thecatisatwat]

Well MaizieD, she's clearly changed her views since she wrote the JP workbooks with Sara Wernham.

[Thecatisatwat]

Mrz - so tricky word = sight word?

Anyway, from what I can gather from JP workbooks and reading books (I don't obviously have the teacher resource books) JP teaches words that it thinks are tricky in a completely different way to the methods descibed here by Mrz et al.

e.g. 'These are the tricky words introduced in level 2 [reading books]'
The following list then includes words such as 'are', 'come', 'you', 'there', 'all' etc. The book then says 'Hint: encourage children to identify new tricky words from the same word family. For e.g. if they know the word "all", they can read ball, call, fall etc'
To me this seems far more logical than the whole 'phonetically decodeable bit plus a bit that you'll learn how to decode further down the line' (especially to a 5 year old). By learning 'so' by sight they are surely learning how to also read 'go', 'lo', 'no' (and even ho!) and learning that since 'to' and 'do' are NOT part of the family, they are read differently?

I'm surprised that the DoE hasn't banned JP from schools since JP methods seem to be different to what the government wishes teachers to teach.

Anyway, as many have said life really is too short to waste on these threads, I just thought that the op was being unfairly harsh towards the teacher concerned.

[Feenie]

Nothing you've said there encourages teaching tricky words as sight words - nothing whatsoever.

[Feenie]

By learning 'so' by sight they are surely learning how to also read 'go', 'lo', 'no' (and even ho!)

What you describe there is phonics teaching - not sight word teaching.

[mrz]

No Thecatisatwat a "tricky word" most definitely does NOT equal a "sight word"

[Thecatisatwat]

OK, one more try.

On the back of dd's JP Yellow Level reader reading book, amongst the blurb it says;

'Light type is used for those few letters that should not be sounded out, such as the (b) in 'lamb'. There are also a few 'tricky' words, in which light type is not used, as children should learn them by sight. The tricky words introduced at the Yellow level are shown at the end of each book'.

Which probably explains why I am still confused about the tricky/sight word issue.

I'm curious, Mrz, Feenie and MaizieD, do any of you teach phonics using JP since none of you appear to even vaguely recognise any of the stuff that I am quoting?

Not that I really care, I'm fed up of banging my head against a brick wall as usual on a phonics thread.

[zebedeee]

From the materials I have seen, Dandelion Readers have 'sight words at this level' printed on the inside front cover and Sounds-Write has 'sight words to introduce' in each unit.

[mrz]

No zebedee SoundsWrite & Dandelion don't have sight words at any level

[mrz]

I don't use JP now but I taught it for 15+ years and was trained by Sue Lloyd

[zebedeee]

So... they don't have sight words but use the term 'sight words' - I've quoted from their printed material.

[mrz]

This document is intended to show where all of the high frequency words presented in Letters and Sounds occur in the Sounds~Write programme. However, we feel that the term 'high-frequency words' should be accompanied by a reading and spelling health warning.
In the minds of many teaching practitioners, the term 'high-frequency words' has become synonymous with 'sight words'. Very many of the high-frequency words in the Letters and Sounds word list are easily decodable in the early stages of the Sounds~Write programme and over seventy-five percent of the list of three hundred words can be decoded by pupils taught using Sounds~Write by the end of Y1.
From the beginning, our focus is on transparency: that is to say that we teach pupils a transparent system within which if they can read a word, they can spell it. Nonetheless, the focus on transparency from the beginning can initially restrict pupils’ ability to access text because there are a number of essential single-syllable words whose spelling at this early stage in their learning is not transparent to them. Words such as 'is', 'of' and 'the', for example, cannot easily be avoided when learning to read and write. When encountered in text, or in dictation, the teacher should take responsibility for these words and introduce them in the manner outlined in 'Reading and writing in text' in the 'Introduction to the Initial Code'.

"when reading a high frequency word the teachers says "This is of then immediately points sequentially to the two graphemes

[mrz]

and Dandelion books


"High frequency words are common words, some of which have complex spellings. Beginner readers may have difficulty decoding them. To help with these words point to the graphemes (letters) and say the sounds ..."