Question about Phonics

[Hobsandpeanuts]

Hi,

Couldn't find a Phonics forum on the board, so I apologise if this is in the wrong place.

I have a question about letter names and Phonics. I am currently teaching my DS the letters. He knows the ABC song in part and recognises some of the letters. For example when he sees a 'S' he calls it by it's proper letter name.

So when you are trying to teach your children the letters do you say 'This is S and it makes a sss sound?'

Or do you point to the letter 'S' and just say 'This is ssss'.

Not sure I've explained that clearly enough?

I don't especially, it's just that we come across it in a lot of places, at nursery, on jigsaws, books, etc and DD talks about 'ABCD' a lot, recognises the letter of her own name, is always asking about letters on the sides of buildings & signs etc. I'm not actively trying to teach it, just that she seems interested. Is it a problem? Should I not be?

Is a phoneme chart an actual thing that I could buy somewhere? DS is really into trying to read at the minute, but he is learning from a mix of apps and me reading to him whenever he wants. I'm a bit worried that without learning English reading from someone who knows what they're doing (we're in the Netherlands and he will learn in Dutch), he will get confused.

As others have said OP focus on letter sounds with lower case letters. If he picks up names that's fine too but not remotely essential. Be careful to use pure sounds, so when you blend the sounds they actually sound like the word e.g c a t not cer arh ter

If possible get rid or limit toys which have capital letters and names.

Yes SolomonDaisy you can but phoneme charts try Amazon

Your child needs to know both capitals and lower case letters they represent the same sounds. If your name is Beth or Ben the sound at the beginning is /b/ just as in bat and big.both need to be taught from the start.

Marshmallow pies you asked if there was a phonic song for teaching the alphabet ... I wondered why ...short answer us no phonics doesn't teach the "alphabet" as such. The alphabet has 26 letters whereas there are 44 sounds to learn.

mrz I was referring to the song Panzee was talking about, that's all.

Thanks, I have had a look on Amazon and am now completely confused! Is there one you recommend that shows all 44 sounds? Or do I need to buy several things?

I would recommend Floppy's Phonics alphabetic code chart but it is quite expensive. Debbie Hepplewhite does offer free versions to print at home on her Phonics International site.
There are some that should be avoided at all costs.

I'm afraid I would avoid Panzees song

Mrz I'd agree about the song if you were in total control of how you were teaching your child to read! But I found it very useful for my son who had already learnt all the letter names from Countdown, which he watched at Granny's house :o. It helped him get used to the concept of letters making sounds.

I understand that Panzee but would still avoid it as its a mish mash

This one is better, the author of the first one made it after some parents pointed out the problems with the first one.

I have a chart which a friend who did a PGCE gave me. If I can find it I'll let you know what it's called. DS likes it. There's also the Oxford Phonics dictionary which you can buy on the book people, they ship to most countries. We're in Germany and had the same issue.

Letters and Sounds scheme has a short section on letter names/alphabet, although the main focus is on phonemes of course. The teaching advice is to show an example eg show a toy horse - name is horse, sound is (neigh). Letter names are useful when teaching digraphs/trigraphs. Going into KS1 chn might be sorting words by alpha order when making an index.
I agree chn who have been taught letter names rather than phonemes struggle to blend/segment.

I'm afraid I have to disagree about the video ... Please don't encourage children to say /a/ /a/ /a/ or /b//b//b/ in response to seeing letter shapes

I think you will find a free phonics chart on this website:
www.phonicsinternational.com

Letter names are useful when teaching digraphs/trigraphs.

Only if you cannot understand the concept of referring to the letters by their sounds rather than their names...Or, as mrz suggested, just write the digraph and point to it 'this is how we spell the 'x' sound in this word.

Knowing letter names is only useful for acronyms!

And for doing away with curly c and kicking c! :o

Again it's just as easy to say the /c/ in cat or king or
Jack ...

If they know which c is used in cat, king or Jack.

If they don't know you show them.

cat, king and Jack were just examples not definitive replies but as MaizieD says the easiest way if they are at the basic stage is to show them. If you replied "see" or "kay" or curly/kicking the next question is often "well how do you write that?"

I got that :) I don't know which words DS knows how to spell offhand, though. Whereas he does know which c is curly, see, kay and kicking. (He doesn't know which way around b and d go, though, that's the tricky one to do without drawing it out).

Anyway I am not teaching in a school setting so will bow out - I don't think my input here is helping very much.

I teach Reception. When introducing a new sound, I (briefly) say 'this is 'es' and it makes the sound sass' and then only concentrate on 'sss'. When I teach handwriting, I would then use this context to remind them that 'we are practising how to write 'es', what sound does it make? 'ssss' '.

I like to think of it as a dog is called a dog, and it makes the sound 'woof'. An S is called an S and it makes the sound 'sss'.