Are phonics more difficult for some children?

[RubyrooUK]

My son has just turned four and is starting school.

He has known his alphabet for a couple of years and has over the last year spotted words and worked them out: "mum", "dad", "no" etc.

Anyway, he is very keen to read and tends to remember words and point them out when he next sees them.

We have been trying to do phonics with him, sounding out the words. He can never sound them out well but can easily spot words he knows and make others from them.

Eg b-u-zz, he will sound out each bit but be unable to assemble it. He will then say the letters and then spot the word buzz somewhere else and recognise it in other text. But still can't sound it out, although he knows the letters make "buzz".

Do phonics work for all children or do some find sight words easier? I learnt to read very early using sight words and never came across phonics so I have no idea if it's normal that your child is clueless about blending early on but spots words at sight easily....

Apologies for long post. I'm well aware this is not a serious or important post compared to some; I had just been wondering as phonics seems the default method of reading now in school. And clearly I have too much time on my hands!

Thank you!

It's more difficult for children with hearing difficulties

Are you sure you're sounding out correctly? eg "b" rather than "buh"?

And yes, as with almost any question about this age group it's always good to check be 100% certain that hearing is unimpaired.

Phonics work for virtually all children and are vital for accurate spelling later on. However IME something generally "clicks" with blending. Until then the child can be sound perfect with phonics but not get that c-a-t blends to cat.

my ds is also 4 and has just started school. He recognises loads of words by sight that he has just sort of picked up from saying 'what does that say' but i've never tried to do phonics with him so god knows how he's going to do with that.

Spotting words is a different skill from sounding out phonics - it's more like recognising a picture. The advantage of phonics is that it teaches you how words 'work' and give you skills to decode words you haven't met before. Back when I was at school, we didn't do any phonics - but as you learned a larger number and variety of sight words, you were just expected to 'pick up' the rules automatically as you went along.

Some people were a lot better at this than others, but for those who just didn't 'get it' as quickly, they soon fell behind the class with their reading ability.

Explicitly teaching phonics to everyone gets around this, because the 'rules' are out there and accessible. It's anyone's guess whether your son would be reading fluently quicker with one method or the other, but the research shows that phonics is the best method overall. And it certainly won't disadvantage the children who would have been ok learning through sight words.

Thanks for the replies.

Pretty sure his hearing is okay; he can hear the words "does anyone want a biscuit?" whispered from three miles away!

Possibly I'm not doing it right as I am not confident in the sounds as phonics seems so complicated to me. I appreciate it isn't - it just isn't the system I used. I will see how things go at school - hopefully it will all just "click" like you say.

Thanks again.

i did phonics at school and i'm really old (born 1973) altho i think they were slightly different as we said muh instead of mmmm like they say now but when did they change from doing phonics to doing sight words?

I'm kind of glad I'm not the only one that is concerned about this...my ds knows a few words from sight such as "off" "go" etc but doesn't seem to be able to sound out. I have tried to teach him but he won't do it for me yet...I am hoping he will start trying to do it when it's the teacher showing him rather than me.

The 'blending' aspect is certainly one that just 'clicks' when they are ready for it. I remember being quite confused about why DS just couldn't 'get' what I was talking about when I did the "c-a-t cat" stuff. It just meant nothing to him at 4. He could see without any trouble that 'c' was the first letter of cat, and 'a' was the start of apple, etc. But he'd just look at me like I was a Martian when I showed how they blended together into a word.

A year or so later, he was reading pretty much anything he could lay his hands on, just because the wiring in his head had got to the right stage to make sense of it!

yy to it suddenly clicking ...but actually I found explaining it to them helps...
I worked ages ago with a very bright but dyslexic child (6yo) - we did work set by a specialist department. We did all these sound and letter recognition and then blending exercises - he knew his sounds (for him that was the hard bit) but we were making no progress blending. One day I asked him if he knew what he was doing - he said learning to read !
In his head it was something mystical. No-one had explained it to him ...I did - he went off all quiet and walked in the next day saying I can spell dragon! (and he did but with an en rather than on at the end) - and once he got it he flew...

So all the letters have names and sounds - we use the sounds - c makes a c sound, we put the sounds together to make words - some are a bit trickier than others and don't follow simple rules, you can learn those as you go along but basically

This is C it makes a c sound, this is a, this is t - put it together and you get C-a-t... (elongate it and whispering helps get rid of the HUh at the end) - now what do you think happens if we change that c for a s? then do rat, mat pat bat fat etc- write them down as you do them ...or have bricks/cards - keep the 'at' and keep changing the first letter ....get them to choose letters, if they come up with a nonsense word (eg dat) sound it out and say but that isn't a real word...then you can change the a for i or o or the last letter ...

I read early and dont know why, phonics would have been very challanging for me and how I know my brain works now, I had a flick through a book, to see if I could aid my DD reading and I could not understand it.

Thankfully the school taught her to read her brain does get it.

4 is very very young yet, lots of dc only start to get it around 6, and it happens suddenly and races ahead so dont fret.

I tried to learn reading by phonics in the early 70s. I found it incredibly difficult and was in the "remedial" class for reading and writing. I'm a terrible speller now.

Dd1 was diagnosed as dyslexic and I do think I have many of the same traits as her regarding reading, spelling etc. so I think yes, some dc do find phonics difficult.

mrz, since you're here and brought up the subject, do you know of any good resources on phonics with deaf/hard of hearing children?

Agree with others that there needs to be a "click" moment for blending. And some children will find that easier or harder. But you can do things to help them get it.

The first step is often being able to separate out the first sound of a word. Can he tell you words beginning with b? Or tell you the first sound of a word you say to him? Play i-spy?

One top tip I got from here I think was that when you're sounding out you can emphasise the first letter. So not c-a-t but c-a-t. Say it slowly then faster. It sounds really like the word in slow motion.

If you're unsure of the phonics yourself there are some things online that are a great help. Alphablocks (from the BBC) was great for my two, there are games or you can just watch the videos on youtube. And also on youtube you can watch the jolly phonics songs which show them (and you) how to say the letter sounds.

Start with aural blending - you say the separate sounds and see if he can hear the whole word. Use short two or three sound words only and don't use the written form yet.

I was told to do the blending quite fast - faster than I would do otherwise the child doesn't get it. Perhaps watch some YouTube videos on it?

Are phonics more difficult for some children?
Definitely. None of us find all things equally easy or difficult.
But as long as they manage to learn to read, it does not matter a jot.

All children now get plenty of phonics at school, and even children who manage to learn to read with almost no formal phonics, will use phonics for learning to write.

Many of the best readers learn a few words by sight, work out the basic patterns of the English writing system from those for themselves and go from strength. Being able to do this does no harm whatsoever, because the final aim of all reading instruction, including phonics, is to be able to read all common words by sight - as we all do now.

If you do it too fast they don't need to blend so it's a matter of finding the correct speed.

I found with all my 3 that blending clicked pretty much overnight. They went from not having a clue how to put the individual sounds together into a whole word, to being able to blend simple words.
We practised playing I spy so hearing the first sound in words, or saying things like "Please pass me that c.u.p" gradually making the gap between the letters longer.
With DS1 he could blend by age 3, but the younger 2 were both a few months off 5. As soon as it clicked though they were away.

When you say the sounds they don't have a 'hard' ending, e.g. it is mmmmm rather than muh, or sssss rather than suh. So it is easier to hear the word 'mum' if you say mmmm uh mmmm than muh uh muh.

Both my dd's were reading and writing before school, they self taught through word recognition. Sadly this seems to make things harder when they start school and they have to learn phonics ( it's like going backwards ), it took my dd2 quite a long time to get used to phonics but she did pick it up in the end even though it was probably no use to her ( school had to teach it so she could take the phonics test ). Phonics isn't for everyone.

I would guess that developmentally he's not quite there with hearing the separate sounds however well you are saying them and then to put it together as a word. The age range for being able to hear the separate sounds in a word like 'cat' or 'buzz' ranges from around 2 to 7 so it is one of those things that will click at some point but until then a child will find it difficult.

My DS is starting school this week at 4.8 and has had plenty of exposure to sounding out words - I'm a KS1 and SEN teacher but he can't put together a word like 'cat' from 'c-a-t' however I sound it to him because he is just not there yet. He is brilliant with initial sounds and rhyming strings of words but actually hearing the separate sounds is not there yet. Hopefully with regular phonics work at school and practice at home it will come over the next year.

Phonics can be much harder for children who have hearing difficulties, speech and language difficulties or some types of learning difficulties. Most children without these should pick up phonics by 5-6 without too many problems IME.

I found phonics very difficult. It clicked when I has half way through reading the 2nd in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. (in year 2)

My dc have all found phonics pretty easy. They were all reading fluently with sight words first though.
Interestingly from what has been said, the one of mine who really has been helped most with phonics is ds who has severe glue ear. It's actually helped his speech and reading-things like he came out of school very excited to let me know that "ch" and "sh" were different sounds-they sound the same to him. However I don't know whether he'd have had difficulties if he hadn't already been able to read fluently before he came across phonics.

I feel that the OP needs to be a bit more patient with her four year. He has only been in school for a week so frankly its not surprising that he has not got blending. I expect he hasn't yet covered enough letter sounds. It is too soon to start advocating mixed methods.

dd could not blend before the october half term. She is now in year 1 and can read ORT stage 6 books.

To help him click with aural blending you could try breaking words up in every day situations so that he starts to blend them together without thinking about it e.g. "It's time to go to b-e-d" or "Have you brushed your t-ee-th?". Schools often use a puppet who can only talk in sounds and the children have to guess what word the puppet is saying. He's only just started school though, and there will be a lot of children who haven't clicked with this yet, so be patient & give it time, I'm sure it will fall in to place before Christmas.

Thanks everyone. I've found this very helpful to read all your responses.

Don't worry ReallyTired, I'm not hothousing DS. I've got a full time job and I'm far, far too tired!

I was just asking because I don't understand phonics well myself. I do understand the theory of blending the sounds and obtaining the ability to build up words, but as he was picking up all these words at sight but not blending the sounds, I thought I would just ask some more expert parents.

Thank you all so much for sharing your experiences.