Bit worried ds reading.

[Moonfacesmother]

Ds is in reception, he was reading dandelion readers and was on unit 17 which is apparently yellow band equivalent. He was doing well and has a lot of high frequency words and could sound out the unfamiliar words as the dandelion readers are entirely phonetic.

However apparently his school only have them to to unit 17 and now he's finished all the ones they have they have given him a red band reader and he can't read it! He can read the high frequency words but when he comes to words he can't sound out he's lost and he's getting frustrated because he could sound out the words in the other books. The book we have had this week has words like "tastes" "whoosh" "house" "dance"
I know you can in theory sound these out but ds doesn't seem to have covered split vowel digraphs at all so he struggles whenever he comes to one.

Any advice or is it basically like starting again?!

ah ok - I have never seen a dandelion book Mrz - thank you.

Sorry to disagree bauhausfan but all words are phonically regular if you know the alphabetic code.

No - eg bouquet

Children are taught that in English there are 44 sounds (plus or minus 1 depending on accent)
That there 176 common spellings for those sounds (and some unusual ones such as the letter o representing the sound /wu/)
that a sound can be spelt with one, two, three or four letters
that one sound can have more than one spelling
and that one spelling can represent more than one sound

What's irregular about bouquet [puzzled]

Not sure what point you are making mrz? Yes phonics can teach MOST sounds but not all words can be read phonetically - like my examples - which just takes us back to my original point. Think we're going around in circles. I think you're a primary teacher so maybe the basic phonics concept serves your purposes but coming from my perspective (secondary and under-grad), we have to look at the bigger picture.

In bouquet the et isn't pronounced according to the phonetic alphabet - it's prounounced 'ay'. Not sure why you keep asking such basic questions if you are a teacher?

Non-phonetic words
irregular words
alien words
sight words
(Many) High /medium frequency words

Whatever we call them, we are referring to those words that can not be spelled out phonetically.

B, I agree that it's possible to only get so far without ending some of the ... whatever we call them ;)

However, 'whoosh' might not be the most useful.
OP I'm happy to PM you some purely phonetic material that will move further than Dandelion and yet avoid the introduction of X words.

Isn't bouquet French?

I am an educationalist, and I don't listen to my own kids read unless they insist, or track their progress, until the age of about 6/7 as most kids sort themselves out by then anyway.

You haven't managed to identify any of these words that can't be read phonetically bauhausfan ... one has a very unusual spelling for the sound but that doesn't mean it isn't phonetic and bouquet has common spellings for the sounds nothing

Whether you are 4 or 94 you can read and spell without learning words as wholes if you know the code. Fortunately some secondary schools do look at the bigger picture and teach phonics

Also bough/cough/rough - all pronounced differently. Phonics is a great starting point but children eventually have to move beyond it.

b - ough /b/ /ou/

c- ou - gh /k/ /o/ /f/

r-ou - gh /r/ /u/ /f/

basic stuff for most 6 year olds bauhausfan

read out vs spelled out
reading vs ending.

Your masters degree didn't teach you much about our orthographical system did it

Do you have a degree in teaching or are you a classroom assistant?

It's basic stuff if you are 5 or 6 in a Y1 class bauhausfan

and you don't have 3 different ways to pronounce the same letters

in bough you have a tetragraph ough representing the sound /ou/

in cough you have representing the sound /o/ and representing the sound /f/

in rough the spelling represents the sound /u/

I have a degree and a masters thanks

You might find it helpful to look at the alphabetic code -

www.phonicsinternational.com/Training_illustrated_The%20English%20Alphabetic%20Code.pdf

What! The average 6 year old wouldn't have an issue with decoding those words bauhausfan! I'm shocked an English teacher finds it so difficult!

actually more than shocked I'm appalled!

Our school uses mostly phonics books but there are still some old ORT books in there too. When we hit words he can't sound out, I just tell him the sound(s) he doesn't know yet.

I support that with Songbirds books from the library. We've never used Dandelion books so I can't compare, but Songbirds books have really built DS's confidence.

Oh, and I agree with mrz (always a good position I find!). DS is quite comfortable with the idea that different letters make the same sound, and the same letters make different sounds. Not that he knows them all yet - but phonics is giving him that knowledge.