sss and suh and WWYD?

[Meita]

DS has just started reception, second week now, first week of full days.

He 'learned to read' last year from doing Reading Eggs, watching Alphablocks, and then reading Songbird books with me; he is quite comfortable and confident on stage 3 of the songbird books.

I am happy for him to start again at the beginning with phonics, I'm sure it will do him good and be great for his confidence too, and he will learn about letter formation too. We were told they were using a scheme similar to Jolly Phonics, with actions etc. so kinaesthetic learning; and that they would be doing five sounds per week.

So today he said they had done 'a' and yesterday 's'. During supper he started 'singing': hand on my apple, a-a-a-, hand on my apple, a-a-a.. etc. and doing a movement with it. Then he went on to say something about hissing snakes, together with a movement, can't remember the exact words, maybe 'snakes are hissing, suh suh suh'

I queried the 'suh' and said surely it's 'snakes are hissing, sss sss sss'

But he insisted that it was 'suh' and that after all he had been there and knew what he had been taught and I hadn't.

Though I really am happy for him to do all the basics again, I'm not happy for him to be re-learning it 'wrong', after having carefully always said mmm and sss and fff etc. and that being the way he 'knows' his sounds now. It feels like a step backwards and makes me worry that the teacher isn't really clued up about phonics, and that we will be seeing some half-way system being taught.

WWYD? I guess I'll wait and see what happens with further sounds - maybe it was just a glitch? But if it continues this way, what would I do - neither me nor DP grew up here so we have no experience at all of how schools work in this country. Would it be worth talking to the teacher about this (and when? Request an appointment, or wait to parent's evening?) and how would I bring it up without making it all confrontational, or is there no real point in bringing it up at all as teacher will do as teacher will do? I don't want to be a 'difficult' parent but this does have me a bit concerned. Or am I worrying over nothing?

Tough one. The teacher shouldn't be getting it so wrong, but there is not much you can do about it if she is. Presumably at least rest assured it shouldn't badly impact on your DS if he already knows the sounds?

I have the opposite problem, being a reception teacher, my first task is to undo all the bad teaching the parents have done, with muh and suh and tuh etc.

- this gives a snake song, could it be this one?

Similar, but don't think it's exactly that one.

overmydeadbody, I just worry that he will start sounding out that way and then not be able to blend, so would say suh-tuh-a-nuh-duh and then for obvious reasons not 'hear' s-t-a-n-d. Will I have to be telling him 'yes I know your teacher taught you that it's suh, but when you are sounding out you need to say sss'? Basically teaching him that he shouldn't listen to the teacher?

As a reception teacher, I know how important it is to not add the 'uh' to sounds! Drives me mad! I would politely ask the teacher to clarify so you can best support your child... you are doing her aa favour if she is getting it wrong!

Meita:

Both my DDs had this kind of problem - hearing things differently than I would (or was written) - and part of this is that DH is from Essex/ I'm from US and we're in Birmingham, and the girls were at a school with staff with strong regional accents (DD1 now Y7/ DD2 now Y5 has changed schools).

My advice is find out what phonics system they are using and if you can - most of these have workbooks and CDs with the songs. You can also find resources on-line once you know the scheme your DC is working in.

I'd relax about worrying about him learning a new system - since you've said he's already learned to read with reading egg/ song bird books.

If you haven't discovered it already: Oxford Owl (maths & reading for Early Years) has all sorts of resources & free e-books: www.oxfordowl.co.uk/for-home/reading-owl/reading & a useful phonics made easy section: www.oxfordowl.co.uk/for-home/reading-site/expert-help/phonics-made-easy - where you can play sounds.

Finally - be a bit forgiving about pronunciation - it can vary, due to different accents (kids definitely Brumy as opposed to my US & DH's Essex accents) & loose teeth.

HTH

I would definitely say something. This is too important not to get it right. Think about all of the other children in the class and all of the children that she will go on to teach.

sss/suh is not a matter of pronunciation in the same way that 'a' is in ba-th and bar-th. We say dog-sssss in all accents, nobody says dog-suh!

It's important to say the sounds precisely so I would casually mention to the teacher that your daughter insists the sound is "suh" and you think she will listen to the teacher if she tells her it's /s/

Thanks all! Much appreciated.

DS has now had t and been saying it 'properly' i.e. t not tuh. And his insistence that he was taught suh for s has become somewhat more small voiced. So I'm thinking I'll wait and see. Might sort itself out.

But if I notice more of the kind, I'll do some casual mentioning I think.

Blending is aided by adding the schwa -

The main conclusions of this study provide answers to the three questions motivating this research. First, is it easier for beginners to blend when phoneme segments are whispered without adding a schwa vowel to the consonants (e.g., /h/E/t/), or when adding a schwa vowel (e.g., /hu/E/tu/)? Surprisingly, the an- swer was no. Our kindergartners were more successful when consonants were pronounced with added schwa. Children blended more three-phoneme words successfully when consonants were pronounced with added schwa than when they were whispered to avoid adding schwa. This suggests teachers may safely pronounce consonant phonemes loudly by adding a uniform schwa during teach- ing without interfering with blending, and that adding artificial voicing facilitates blending.
Reading teachers have commonly been taught to minimize the schwa vowel in pronouncing consonants under the reasoning that this added /u/ vowel distorts the phoneme and makes blending more difficult. While this explanation is appealing, the present data do not support it. Several explanations are possible.

The Cluella Study, Murray et al, Journal of Literacy Research 2008

Interesting, zebedee! Now I'm wondering if that counts for those consonants that are 'loud' in themselves and thus easy to pronounce clearly and loudly without adding the schwa (new term learned) such as s, m, f... as well. Or only for 'hard' ones such as b, w, g. And if that study differentiated between those. Don't have time to look up the study right now but when I find a moment, will get back to it! Thanks.

Yes, that is interesting Zebedee. It is a little at odds with my experience of teaching phonics though!

Case in point: a child in my class was struggling with blending as he wasn't confident with his sounds. I spoke to mum and gave her some ideas of ways she could help. Unfortunately mum didn't really understand me when I tried to ask her not to add the schwa and re-taught her child the sounds over half term WITH the schwa! His progress went backwards- he was adding a schwa to all consonants, even at the end of a word (especially when reading non-words) I had to explain this to her and she was horrified!

I have witnessed children read rabbit like this: ruh-ah-buh-buh-i-tuh : ruhahbitter.

If segmenting and blending is taught as the main method of decoding then children will use every bit of the sound. If they think that t is 'tuh' than some will pronounce it as 'tuh', even if it is the final sound in a word.

OP- if your DS is pronouncing other consonants correctly, perhaps he is just a bit muddled and it is not the teacher after all. At that age it is likely another child has used that sound and he has picked it up?

If you add the schwa and say /s/ /uh/ /a/ /t/ /uh/ you cannot hear the word ... blending is definitiely not helped by adding an extra sound (schwa) to the consonants in the word

I would probably speak to the teacher. You are going to come across as an interfering, arrogant, know-it-all but it is just wrong and sloppy. I've been having phonics for seven years and teaching the schwa is the worst thing a teacher can do. In my opinion.

teaching phonics not having phonics!

The Cluella Study is interesting, but it focusses on oral blending (i.e. children listening to a person saying the sounds then determining what the target word is) rather than children saying and blending the sounds themselves. It is possible that there may be a difference in processing the sounds between hearing them spoken by a third party and saying them themselves. Also, the researchers themselves acknowledge that the whispered consonants may have been more difficult for the children to hear, even though they were wearing headphones to try to eliminate ambient 'noise'. Added to that, the effect size of 0.2 between whispered and schwa added consonants was very small.

I know that Letters & Sounds phase 1 includes oral blending and have been told that this seems to help children when they start sounding out and blending for themselves, but it is noticable that the leading phonics programmes do not use oral blending without letters without adversely affecting their results.

I too have found that some children have difficulty producing the words correctly if they add a schwa to the consonants. Though by Y7 others seem to have taught themselves how to ignore the schwa...

Have you tried saying the sounds inprecisely to a young child maizieD... they simply don't hear the word.