How do you decode "ball"

[lolalotta]

So we came across "ball" in a Songbirds book tonight, I wasn't sure how to explain we go about decoding that to my DD? Then it got me thinking about tall, call, hall, wall etc! Can anyone help? I had a look in the Oxford phonics spelling dictionary but I still couldn't work it out! Thank you!

“This is why sometimes i think kids with regional accents have a rough deal with phonics. “ actually it can be just the opposite. It’s much easier for example for children in my class to encode words like bath, grass, put than children with RP accents.
As I said Phonics isn’t accent dependent you teach to the child’s accent so it’s absolutely no barrier.

You just have to ignore/adapt the occasional phonics rule to your needs Maisy. I remember doing two lessons - one on /aw/, one on /ore/. Would have confused them to do the two sounds at once.

I don't mind it too much. There's some annoying Julia Donaldson book that was in my class library a few years ago - it had scarf and giraffe as a rhyme. Confused my kids terribly as that certainly won't work in my accent

There aren’t any rules in phonics

Raven - Room on the Broom has rhyme issues too: I have to force "zoom" and "broom" to rhyme in the story because I normally pronounce them with different vowels (long v short).

See now, zoom and broom rhyme to me

As some phonics programmes and online seem to state that /ore/, /aw/ etc are homophones, that's very much a system rule I ignore - doesn't work for us.

It's unhelpful, isn't it.

My DC were baffled by a (British) phonics app which asked them to find the odd vowel out:

put
but
cut

They all rhyme for my DC. I read them aloud slowly, and in some disgust they worked out what the app was asking for.

The odd thing about that for me was that my DC code-switch quite comfortably between how I speak and how DH does (RP v Cheshire). They have a b[ah]th with me and a b[a]th with Daddy after getting muddy playing on the gr[ah]ss/gr[a]ss. So I was really interested (and a little sad) to discover that I use a whole vowel they don't have.

Cut and but rhyme for sure, and do with golfing putt, but put is more p-oo-t

In many places cut and but would be pronounced to rhyme with how you would say put, Old.

The /u/ sound I would use for those 2 words doesn't really exist in some accents.

My DH was surprised to find that put and putt were totally different sounding words to me (and our children).

“My DC were baffled by a (British) phonics app which asked them to find the odd vowel out:” I’m really surprised a UK produced app is looking at words that rhyme

Hopefully all of this doesn’t confuse our little grand daughter too much. Her dad is originally from Manchester but I’ve never heard him speak using a strong dialect. I suspect London’s influence?

I would say that "all" is a tricky word that you have to learn

once you've done that then ball, call, wall, fall, stall, etc etc are easy

My DH was surprised to find that put and putt were totally different sounding words to me
I'm with your DH.

“I would say that "all" is a tricky word that you have to learn “ but it isn’t and you don’t

I just wanted to say thank you for all your help! What a lot of replies! I can't believe how complex the English language is!

@Norestformrz yes it is! said phonetically it would be a short "a" sound - the "a" in ball is said like "or", you can't sound that out.

Yes you can.

The letter ‘a ‘ can represent sounds other than the sound in words like cat or and.

Hiyasminitsme a letter (spelling) can represent many sounds and a sound can have many spellings. In the case of the sound /or/ there are fourteen common spellings including the spelling a.
In addition the spelling a can be the sound /a/ in words like cap, /ae/ in famous, /ar/ in father, /e/ in many, /o/ in twaddle, /or/ in water and Schwa in words like data.

What the.... Just clicked on this thread by mistake. Decoding words?

/o/ in twaddle

Wondering if that was a deliberate choice or a standard example.

It was deliberate. I thought if I said /o/ in was someone would say it’s a tricky word and you need to memorise it which obviously is twaddle.

For many years at my old school we taught 'al' as a sound in its own right. Hall, talk, always etc. My new school doesn't teach it separately. Children seem to pick it up from knowing the HFW 'all'.

Al in the spelling for /or/ in walk, talk, chalk etc where the l isn’t pronounced (unless you say w or l k)