Phonics problems?

[ihearttc]

DS2 is nearly 5.5 (November birthday) and in Reception. He started in september knowing some of the JP sounds but could not blend at all. He has progressed quite well well and is currently on yellow ORT with some stage 4 PM Starter books.

He is reading well and quite fluently but is really struggling with phonics. He was fine with the single sounds and is ok with some of the digraphs and trigraphs such as ch, sh, ee, oo, th but struggling with some of the vowel ones such as oi, ai, ear, air etc. He can't seem to see them in the word if that makes sense? I think the only reason he is reading as well as he is, is due to the fact that he has a very logical way of thinking so he guesses what word is likely to be there. For example he read "chair" this afternoon in a book yet if I show him the trigraph "air" on its own he wouldn't know what it is despite them practicising every day at school and we do it lots at home as well. His brother was exactly the same and never ever got phonics but was always a fantastic reading so Im not overly concerned but DS1 is 11 so they didn't have the phonics test when he was in Y1.

Ive got a load of the ORT phonics books to see if that helps but it is painful listening him to read them...one is called Toads in the Road (they are 2 levels below cause Ive gone backwards to get his basic phonic knowledge better) and he litererally sounds out toad T O A D rather than T OA D yet on the next page he knew straight away it was toad even though he has never encountered the word before.

I don't suppose Im explaining myself very well at all but I suspect he sees the word as a whole rather than one to be segmented which I know isn't a great way of learning to read and Im struggling how to help him.

I volunteer in a year 1 class at the moment, and many of them have still needed help this year either recognising or spotting digraphs/trigraphs. So I should imagine not uncommon in reception. The school school send home non-phonics books in year 1 so there may be similar issues going on with mixed methods, we weren't here in reception so can't say for sure.

Those ORT books have lists of digraphs/trigraphs used at the beginning iirc, you may find it helpful to go through those before reading the book to keep revising the correspondences until they stick.
What do you do when your DS fails to read a word like "toad"? It would really help if you supported him to decode it rather than just telling him the word. One way is to write down the word on a separate sheet and underline the three sounds separately, remind him what the digraph says if he can't remember, then get him to sound out (or help him to if he actually can't). Even if he can read words, you could occasionally ask him to underline like that to see how much he's understood. Perhaps you could make a game out of it.
How many "oa" words can he find in the book?

For a child with a really good memory, it can be hard to make sure they get phonics practice, because of that seen-it-once effect.

Catkind...I usually ask him to what sound OA makes which he gets straight away then can read the word. Its almost like he has complete brain block over what digraph is in the words when he is reading so doesn't attempt them.

So it's more about spotting the digraphs in the word than remembering them? What if you just ask "can you spot a digraph here"? Or write it out and see if he can circle/underline one?
I think it's really common to find that difficult to start with, just needs practice.

He can recognise them all individually-they have cards with them on plus the JP actions and he would look at it and say OA and do the action but then when he reads he just says all the letters on their own because he can't see them in the word. I think he is fine with ch, sh and th (and ck actually as well) as they come at the beginning or end of a word whereas it seems to be the ones in the middle he can't seem to see.

I will keep practicing...good to know it seems quite common.