Interesting article re. synthetic phonics

[Biscuitsneeded]

www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-25917646

Guessing from context has been defined as mixing

when in fact in the case of heterographs everyone has no choice but to employ this method.

Therefore that particular definition of mixing must necessarily be wrong.

sorry, heterophones

(a word with one spelling but multiple meanings and pronunciations)

If you change 'polish' to 'pollish' so that it doesn't get mixed up phonetically with Polish, then you're just changing which thing children have to remember. the 'l' won't change, in fact they will both have 'lish'on the end of the word, so children will have to learn that 'lish' and 'llish' sound the same but are spelt differently. What's the difference between having to learn that one sound can have two spellings vs having to learn that one spelling can have two different sounds??

Lougle, I'm not sure about the spelling change. But people who wanted to stamp out confusion could always write or say people or things from Poland...

Can anyone point me in the direction of resources for teaching my DCs to read?
He's doing phonics at preschool and has started to sound out words and to write. We read a lot at home (I loved reading as a child and still do when I have the time!) so happy to encourage.

I'm wary however of him getting confused between what he's taught at preschool versus what I say at home.

We've already come a cropper with words like "one" ("no mummy, it starts with a "w"!) and knight etc etc. all words we see in books and he asks me to help him spell out.

Any ideas?

TheGreat, is your son being taught to read in preschool? I'm impressed. I think children just have to learn to live with the fact that one and once aren't written the way they sound.

As far as resources go:
Every child's story starts with once upon a time. Get him to read that line with you every time.

And as for knight, CBeebies has Mike the Knight (I suspect for that very reason.)

column I don't think being taught to read in preschool is that unusual - my DDs were taught in nursery. It was something the children could choose to do if they wanted to, not forced at all, but the lady doing it was qualified to do it. My DDs loved it and it definitely gave them a flying start in primary. They used the same phonics programme as the local primaries.

2 out of 3 nurseries our way teach phonics and early reading skills. (I don't actually know about the third one, it may well do but my DDs haven't attended that one).

lougle - I have no idea what a phonics assessment is. Sounds like your DC are at a different school

Maizie - someone up thread

TheGreat - M&S do a good selection of traditional tales called, I think First Readers. They have the story on two levels, so you can read the one on the left and in time DC will recognise the main words on the right. Just found the link for you books

I hated phonics when mine went through it. Very frustrating and confusing for them.

I've been HEing my 6yo for a year now and he can read pretty much anything but I haven't really had to teach him as such. It's just through curiosity and practise. I think they waste an awful lot of time on that stuff at school.

Yes he is - it's because he's shown an interest - not because they're forcing it.

Yes I've told him that these words are said that way but he wants to know "why" and it confuses him when he tries to read or write himself.

I should add - he's an october baby so if born 5 weeks earlier, he would be at school!

TheGreatHunt,

Have a look at Debbie's Phonics International. She gives lots of advice on the early teaching of reading and has some free resources. (and what isn't 'free' is very reasonably priced)

See 'Phonics International for pre-school', LH column

www.phonicsinternational.com

Or buy a copy of the Phonics Handbook (Jolly Phonics)

(disclaimer: I have no commercial interest in ANY SP programme)

BoC
Maizie - someone up thread

So unusual as to not be worth getting annoyed about.

Thank you!

I guess it depends on the child. When I started school I had already learned to read without being taught how to sound words out. For two of my dds, however they would have really struggled without phonics in terms of where to begin. Dd3 in reception would not have been able to learn to read using ORT IMO.

Lougle
What's the difference between having to learn that one sound can have two spellings vs having to learn that one spelling can have two different sounds??

Both are unhelpful for learning to read and write, but inconsistent use of doubled consonants is one of the very worst parts of English spelling.

I've established that at least 4,000 common words contain one or more irregularly/unpredictably used letters. Among those are 400+ which use doubled consonants helpfully for learning to read, as they are supposed to, e.g. ballad, belly, billy, collar, bully.
But their use is unpredictable, because they are undermined by 500+ words without doubled consonants after their short vowels, such as 'salad, celery, bilious, column, colour'.

They undermine the basic logic of doubling after short vowels (latter, letter, hidden, copper, cutter) and not doubling after long vowels (later, delete, hide, cope, cute).

If we always doubled after short, stressed vowels, and never misused this principle for obscure grammatical reasons (e.g. arrive - cf. arrow, arise), both learning to read and write would become very much easier.

Oh no, please Mashabell - you've got that in a word document somewhere, so you can just copy and paste it, haven't you? It's like a form of torture.

We don't need to change the language we use. We just have to teach children to read it effectively.

basketofchocolate in Read, Write, Inc. (RWI) the children are tested against a chart every half-term to assess which phonic level they've learned to, and therefore which phonics group a child should be in. Each group consists of around 6 children.

It's quite possible for a child to skip 2 or 3 groups if they have a sudden acceleration in learning over the course of the half-term. They aren't held back by age - the sets are streamed across all of KS1. (Most have moved from the phonics reading programme to the spelling programme by year 2).

That means that a very able year R child can be taught with year 1/2 children for phonics, and a struggling year 2 child could be taught with Year Rs if necessary.

All of the teachers rotate through all the stages, so none of the children are aware of which 'level' they're at, which is great. They don't think 'Oh Mrs Chase is for the great readers' because Mrs Chase could be teaching level 6 one half-term and level 1 the next.

Lougle
you've got that in a word document somewhere, so you can just copy and paste it, haven't you? It's like a form of torture.
English spelling hasn't changed for the past 350 years, so the problems it causes remain the same, and my explanations of them too.
And those problems continue to make learning to read and write very torturous for many children.

We don't need to change the language we use.
There is nothing whatsoever wrong with the English language. Its reading and writing difficulties are caused only by its spelling inconsistencies and lack of logic, as in 'carry - carol, arrow - arrest - arise).

We just have to teach children to read it effectively.
Sadly, even the most effective teachers cannot reduce the amount of rote-learning which the inconsistencies of English spelling create, or the amount of time which the bottom 20% of the ability range need to become even modestly proficient readers because of them.

With a smaller learning load, even the not-so-bright cope more easily.

With a smaller learning load, even the not-so-bright cope more easily.

That's quite insulting. What's being bright got anything to do with learning to read and write?

DS very bright. Trog test at 5 for receptive grammar was adult level and in top 5%. He struggled to read and spell because of an spld, nothing to do with his IQ.
At 18 he can spell some complicated words out loud, the problem is actually putting it down on paper

Out of interest, is there an expectation for how often a teacher is supposed to assess the reading level of KS1 pupils, and assign reading bands? DD (yr 1) is a v.v. fluent reader. But she has only ever been moved up a reading band when we've mentioned to the TA that the current one seems a bit easy, so I'm left wondering whether without proactive parents, she'd still be languishing many levels below her ability. According to the reading record, she last read with her teacher in early October.

That's quite insulting. What's being bright got anything to do with learning to read and write?

You have to forgive marsha; she has a history of being insulting and quite clearly is unable to learn to be more judicious in her statements. Perhaps it, too, is a form of SEN?

Maizie, why do you keep calling masha marsha?

I think the people who don't get phonics never had to struggle to learn to read and so are not best placed to spout off about it. I so wish I had had phonics when I was learning to read. I can still remembered at age 6 or 7 being bewildered at how I was expected to decipher it all when no one had told me how. Yes English has many exceptions but I'd rather have got 50% of the words than none.

I have 2 science degrees so I got there in the end. But because my mind has a definite maths leaning I like learning the rules, exceptions and all.
Why aren't we worrying about all the children that leave school without being able to read and write. Putting them off education altogether. What about the levels of illiteracy in prisons. That worries me a lot more than little Tommy getting bored. As plenty have said if a child is already able to read you give them more challenging books and agreed don't force phonics down there throat.

rumple, I was 6 or 7 and didn't have phonics either, but the teacher did explain to me how to decipher it all. We learned to recognise words and to spell them. I'm not sure why your teacher wasn't good at showing you how. Did you just sit there saying I don't understand this?

Presumably you had books with pictures and single nouns underneath and, hopefully that was OK. And then you had books with bright pictures of Jane catching a ball, and the text underneath said

Jane is catching a ball.

and on the next page Peter was catching a ball. And the text read

Peter is catching a ball.

It was OK up to that point, or not?

The age you learn to read at has nothing to do with intelligence necessarily, IMHO. It's just that when kids are 4/5 that's the only thing competitive parents have to go on to make them feel smug

My older dd was definitely the last in her class to learn to read and now in year 5 she's near the top of her class in English and works at level 5.