phonics and spelling probs

[LeBFG]

I'm new to phonics (and early learning in general) and am preparing a bit in advance as my kids are still very young. I'll be teaching them to read and write in English and I have a question about phonics. Do kids struggle with spelling when they are exposed early on to phonical (sp?) spelling? I have a nephew who makes regular mistakes like spelling blue 'bloo' for instance.

Not if it is taught properly. You have to teach that 'ue' can make the same sound as 'oo' and then the child has to learn which one 'looks' right in the word, which they do learn surprisingly quickly.

Not if it is taught properly. You have to teach that 'ue' can make the same sound as 'oo' and then the child has to learn which one 'looks' right in the word, which they do learn surprisingly quickly.

Sorry, not sure why that posted twice

My 5 year old spells everything phonetically and hasn't learned about the 'ue' sound yet so would spell bloo and tonight wouldn't have it that owl is spelt with no A!

Hi -

Just looked at your 'profile' and see you are in France. Are you French, and why will the children be learning to read and write in English - or will they learn French as well?

I was a male Teaching Assistant (TA) in primary schools for over twenty years. English is a difficult language, and I believe French is possibly more logical and straightforward (though I never got far in French at secondary school, but I was probably just lazy!)

'Phonics' has been used in UK schools for eight years now I think, and if it is taught properly and well, it is very good and has successful results. Unfortunately, many schools are still not teaching it well enough, and combine it with 'old fashioned' methods, so for some children it ends up being a confusing mixture of methods. Also, because money is not available for the latest books, which SHOULD be phonically de-codeable, books that are 20 or 30 years old are still being used!

Re your nephew: he is very clever, and correct in a way, because in English his 'bloo' does have exactly the same sound as 'blue'. As children progress with Phonics, they should be taught how a sound can be represented by several different combinations of letters. The opposite can also be true, and a group of letters may be pronounced in several different ways. This is what makes it difficult and confusing for children (and many adults) and perhaps that is where French seems more sensible.

So, to answer your question: No, children that are taught Phonics correctly should have all the necessary skills, to be able to spell accurately. If they are taught the 'rules' to follow, as well as the exceptions that occur, they should do all right.

If you read some of the 'posts' on MN on Phonics, particularly advice from 'mrz', who is probably our most experienced teacher, you should get to understand it OK. If you have any other particular questions, come back to me, as a PM if you wish. Meanwhile, I'll try and 'keep an eye' on you, and give support where I can.

Good luck.

Thanks for the replies, esp the detailed one from Ferguson. To be clear, my nephew goes to a UK school and I'm English but live in France so will have to home teach reading and writing English (French, apparently do little/no phonics when teaching French). I've lurked a bit and know there are lots of wonderful phonics resources online. Like a lot of people dragged up in the the 70/80's, I'm coming new to phonics and the spelling thing just struck me as a potential problem with the technique.

I have nothing to back my opinion up, but I think that children who learn to read using phonics are taught a set of skills which they can then transfer to spelling, in a way that isn't possible if you are taught to read by look and say.
In reception DS1 was taught to read with look and say. They learnt about 4-5 words a week. He could then read them and write them. So by Christmas they had about 40words in their reading/writing vocabulary.

DS2 and 3 were taught 4-5 phonemes a week, so within days there was wealth of words they could read and write, but working them out from their constituent sounds. By Christmas they will know more than 40 phonemes so will be able to read hundreds of words. But they won't know every way that a sound can be created with different letter combinations so DS3 (in reception) at the moment, if asked would spell blue as bloo - he has learnt 'oo' but not 'ue'. He can try.
DS1 at reception in Christmas would not have any idea how to write blue as he hadn't been taught that word. So couldn't even try.

With DS2 and 3 if I am there when they are writing I may say "Oh, good try, that does make an 'oo' sound, but in this word it is actually an 'ue', especially with something that is quite common, e.g. DS3 was writing things like 'babee' it only took a couple of gentle nudges that he now tends to use a 'y' at the end of a word as his first choice for an ee sound in that instance. If they come to me having done a page of writing by themselves I would probably just leave it.

Our children are instructed to use phonic rules for spelling the words which they don't know how to spell, (which is most of them.) Therefore they spell most words wrongly but consistently wrongly. It also encourages them to slightly mispronounce words, such as because, in such a way as to justify the manner in which they are now spelling it! It's vaguely comical and I believe manageable if the parents take corrective action early enough.

Of course you have to be aware of how your children are spelling everything in order to be able to do anything about it. It's no good mentioning to the teacher that your child's spelling is atrocious because she already knows. There's just not much she can do about it because she has 29 other children to worry about, several of whom can not write yet and are causing her far more worry than your daughter's spelling is.

"Our children are instructed to use phonic rules for spelling the words which they don't know how to spell, (which is most of them.) Therefore they spell most words wrongly but consistently wrongly. It also encourages them to slightly mispronounce words, such as because,"

sorry columngollum but I have to ask ... is that really what happens in your child's school?

Indeed. Regular workbooks are plagued with the most elementary mistakes, and where the word playground appears in its correct form the teacher has written clever girl, you've spelled playground correctly. Blue is spelled bloo, through throo and so on.

I think that's what happens in our school, too (Columngollum).

oh dear that has nothing to do with phonics ... it's poor teaching

The children are instructed to spell the words in the way in which they sound. Of course it's possible to say that that has nothing to do with phonics, the instruction is wrong. But either way the word is misspelled, and spelled the way in which the child thinks it sounds according to how she has been taught to spell the sounds of words. I'm not sure who to blame for the error, the child, the word or the teacher, to be honest. But the solution is for me to teach my daughter how to spell, (which I'm doing.)

I instruct children to think of the sounds they can hear in the word but I teach them to use the correct alternatives I don't leave them internalising "bloo"

It's a simple matter to say well done those are the sounds in the word blue but we spell the /oo/ sound in this word and get the child to correct it.

In order not to demoralise the children I suppose one would dispense corrections sparingly. At the moment correcting my daughter's work would be rather like painting chickenpox scars on a papier-mache face. I don't do it that way. I teach her to spell words before she uses them and leave her writing the way it is. Sometimes I help her to write words before she puts pen to paper. But this wouldn't be practical in a class of 30.

Praise the effort is a good effort but in the word blue we spell it isn't demoralising.
Children who only use the words they have been taught to spell often write in a stilted manner I'm afraid.

Weird then, how well my children do on "poor teaching". I guess it works for us.

So your children aren't making any spelling mistakes lljkk

My youngest son is in year 2 and has been taught using phonics and his spelling is way way ahead of his brothers who are 9 and 13 years older so were taught using look and say. In my, albeit limited, experience phonics is a far superior way of teaching reading and spelling and is done well at our school - with 91% of children passing the phonics check.