Phonics - sounding out digraphs as individual sounds

[bluespiral]

DD is in reception. They're following the Read Write Inc scheme. Sorry if I don't use all the right terminology as am new to phonics!

She's been doing well so far with blending - knows all the individual letter sounds, the digraphs they've learnt so far and is confident blending CVC words.

What I've noticed however is with some of the most recent set 2 digraphs (the vowel ones such as ow, igh etc. rather than sh, th etc.) although she can recognise and sound them out in isolation, she doesn't always spot them in a word and tries to sound out each letter if that makes sense.

Eg - she knows the sound that "ar" makes - but if she encounters a word she doesn't know by sight already, lets say "cart", instead of sounding out c/ar/t she tries c/a/r/t and obviously it doesn't blend into a word.

Is there anything I can be doing to help her recognise digraphs within words, or is it just a case of doing lots of reading until she instinctively knows they're there?

Many of these difficulties and 'misunderstandings' can be resolved using the following book:

An inexpensive and easy to use book, that can encourage children with reading, spelling and writing, and really help them to understand Phonics, is reviewed in the MN Book Reviews section. Just search ‘Phonics’ and my name.

Phonics thread bingo - score 1 for book review plug!
Micro, we had the same problem re too much to explain at once. We put school books on hold for a while, got DS the songbirds series and did a whistle-stop tour of the missing vowel correspondences. Too frustrating for him to have every fifth word explained whether by phonics or just told to him.

Phonics thread bingo - score 1 for book review plug!

I am on for four corners

I chucked the school books in a corner, ticked the Floppy's Phonics boxes on Reading Chest and flew from there.

I could have just used my school's, but Reading Chest deliver them in a big exciting envelope addressed to your child, which ds loved.

Phonics thread bingo - score 1 for book review plug!

:o Twice in the same thread surely warrants an extra 'free' dab?

Yep I agree re not trying to do too much at once. Today I taught her that usually when you see "y" at the end of a word it makes an "ee" sound. unless it's a digraph like "ay". I hope that's right!

Problem is the books she brings home are not yet decodable for her (level 3 ORT) although she does pretty well on them through word recognition. I'm glad people on here think it's ok to move along with the incidental teaching sometimes as although it's great that she's doing ok thanks to memory I also want her to have the confidence that things can be sounded out.

There's still some guess work going on (eg earlier she read "must" as "musical" - but when I ask her to sound it out she gets it right). I suppose it's just a case of practising and it will all come in time.

Well spotted fuzzpig

Keep plugging away with the 'sound it out'. It will sink in eventually.

The previous poster is probably right about not doing too much at once. I'm more used to doing this with children who are mostly being given stuff that is within their knowledge. The incidental stuff really is incidental. It's probably quite different if children are facing a lot of words that they don't have the skills to read.

Agreed.

That's why I'm on for four corners, fuzzpig!

Bluespiral, that sounds reasonable to me.

:o

Blue the most helpful thing I found when my DCs were trying to read was supplementing their school books - which like your DD's often had a lot of words that were not yet decodable for them - with some reading scheme books from the library. Granted I had a lot of opportunity to find the right ones, since I worked there :o but they have some really good series that our school didn't, like Usborne Very First Reading and Reading Corner Phonics. It helped them to have some books where they could easily decode all the words, as they could do those much more fluently without having to keep stopping, so their confidence increased a lot.