Phonics which have 2 sounds - like cOW and snOW

[InTheDessert]

Does anyone have a link to letter combinations which have 2 possible pronunciations??
My 7yr old (Y3) is really struggling with spelling. I've hunted down a chart which lists all the alternative spellings for one sound, but can't find the inverse. Does it exist?

I don't know, but I have to say I am fed up to the back teeth with this approach to learning spelling. When there are 4 ways to spell a sound, how would you know which one to use unless you have memorised the individual words? In English the only way to learn to spell effectively is to learn the words!

I never found anything usable for a young child here, and so I encourage dsd to read widely and used kumon style techniques to hammer home spellings and to increase vocab.

We've learnt the words. Well enough to get 13/15 or higher each week.
But they flung a "whole of term" spelling test on them last week, and he compleatly flunked it. So drilling them in doesn't work for him (or me). But having to learn phonics to help the kids has done emense amounts for my spelling, hopefully with a bit more guidance we can improve on it (frankly it can't get worse). But he and I need some help!!!

In English the only way to learn to spell effectively is to learn the words!

^^Spot on! This, plus reading, reading and more reading! The more you see words written down, the easier they are to recognise and remember.

Agree with slightlyperturbed - phonics will never work on anything but a basic 'starting to read' level in English, as our language is really complicated. Nothing substitutes reading/writing and memorizing words.

Thanks bean. What about the other way round - I guess actually more for reading, so "ow" can be in snow or now?

OP, phonics work up to a point. After that it really does come down to familiarity and learning spellings by rote. Ough for example is many different sounds: cough, bought and bough.

"unless you have memorised the individual words". An impossible task to memorise the million plus words of the English language.

Unlikely you will know which alternative spelling to use unless you are familiar with the word but phonics allows you make an informed attempt and limits the alternatives.

"But they flung a "whole of term" spelling test on them last week, and he compleatly flunked it. So drilling them in doesn't work for him (or me)" it doesn't work for most people

Mrz - being widely read gives you the knowledge to make an informed attempt too. Phonics is still new and only really in state schools. Dsd's private school doesn't use phonics at all and likes kids to use traditional tools to increase vocabulary.

" Ough for example is many different sounds: cough, bought and bough" with phonics the child would know that cough is three sounds so the spelling ough isn't a different sound

Vocab isn't a problem. Reading widely isn't a problem.
Spelling (and handwriting) is a massive problem.
Reading his school report is like a flash back 30 years. Anything, ANYTHING I can try to prevent the next 10 years at school being as miserable for DS as it was for me is worth a go.
Is there a simple chart of the most common letter combinations that have more than one pronunciation?
Please, can we stop on the "the only way to do it is rote learning" That won't work here. If I can get half way there with lesser methods, I'll take them.
If the answer is sorry, no. It's too complicated, I'll do a cut and paste job on the chart kindly linked to by bean, which will do a big chunk of it.

Dailyfail I know many prolific readers who are poor (atrocious) spellers. Learning to look closely at the way sounds are represented in words for encoding and decoding helps memory but in phonics we would also teach the etymology and morphology of the word as this often provides clues for spelling

Phonics doesn't always help! Many words have the same vowel sound but are spelt very differently.

Chew - through - blue - shoe - boo - who - to - too
Perk - Work
Park - Clerk
Pond - Wand
Flurry - Worry
Off - cough
Scuff - tough
Deer - fear - mere
Con - gone

Etc etc

80smum that's what phonics teaches

If you have the list of which spellings belong to which sounds could you not make your own list going the other way? Just type it up in Word and print it out.

http://www.phonicbooks.co.uk/pdffiles/phoniccodeposter-older-3.pdf

If you want a really comprehensive list of words http://www.sounds-write.co.uk/docs/soundswriteenglishspellingslexicon.pdf

http://www.sounds-write.co.uk/pdf-downloads.aspx select lexicon as I'm afraid PDFs not linking

80smum that's what phonics teaches

Does it?! Clearly I am clueless! I always thought it was rather more limited.

The info on the oxford owl website might be helpful.

Phonics teaches children how sounds are represented. What else would it be 80sMum?

in Read,Write,inc they are taught 'ow - blow the snow' first as this sound is more common. A little later they are taught ' ow -brown cow'. They are told there is no easy way to work out which it is as they are reading. If they sound out the word and it doesn't make sense, try the other sound. Eventually they learn the different spelling choices. There is a big wall chart with all the sounds, starting with the most common variation first, then followed by the others. The children get used to referring to this, if unsure.

I did try doing an 'inverse' list once; it's very complex, much more so than listing the alternative spellings for the 44 (ish) sounds.

As far as I'm aware no-one has done one.

It really is a case of learning which sound spelling goes in each word.

But.

How does your child learn their spellings? Some ways are more helpful than others.