Why don't they teach phonics like this...?

[Chocoholic900]

So I know there are lots of different schemes for teaching phonics, I know a bit about letters & sounds, RWI and jolly phonics and what I've noticed with all of them is there are multiple digraphs that sound the same but are spelled differently for example - igh & ie or ee & ea or oi & oy...

But they always teach them separately so teach igh then weeks or months later then show the children there is another way of spelling igh - 'ie'

Any teachers or the like can explain why don't they just group all the same sounding digraphs together and just say these digraphs all say 'ee'. It can be ee as in bee, ea as in tea or e as in we.

Maybe it's just me but it seems like a simpler and possibly quicker way to just teach all the same sounds with various spellings together a bit like 'c & k' ... but then I guess all the reading scheme books aren't designed for that kind of progression and grouping of digraphs...

My DC school does it this way but they are an independent school who follow their own scheme. They also allow children to progress up book bands before they've taught specific phonic sound in class if it is clear the child knows the sound and can read fluently and understand the text.

But they do link them when the alternatives have been learnt, or mentioned. At least they do at our school - who follow RWInc.

So the children will learn, at different times, igh, i-e, ie, y etc. For each version they will practice words with that spelling. They don’t learn all the same sound one after another so that they can practice each separately and remember the different versions.

I think the linguistic phonics schemes, such as sounds-write, work in the way you describe so teach one sound and it’s various spellings together.

I am using some catch up readers with my DD1 that work a bit like this, they don’t teach all the spellings together but they teach the most common ones for each vowel sound in one set of books and then build on them in the next set of books by introducing further spellings. It’s working really well for us, I really like the approach.

My son's school follows Little Wandle and they did two versions of oo at the same time: zoom to the moon and hook a book.

The idea is to teach one spelling (grapheme) for every sound (phoneme) relatively quickly so that children are able to write phonetically plausibly as soon as possible.

'Ay' is one of the first digraphs taught and once children have grasped this they can have a go at writing any word with this sound. Then they can speedily move onto ee and being able to write any word with this sound. It is motivating for children to have a grapheme to represent all of their spoken sounds so they can have a go writing absolutely any word, even if we know it isn't the correct spelling.

If we stuck at 'ay' and taught this also as 'ai' and 'a-e', it will take much longer for children to grasp and much longer to teach every phoneme. They won't have the experience of words to necessarily choose the correct grapheme and won't necessarily have the maturity to understand tricky concepts such as split digraphs.

So basically it's to quickly allow children to learn one grapheme for every one of their spoken sounds so that they can practice blending to read and segmenting to write with a full range of sounds. Let them become confident and motivated to read and write then as they become more mature and experienced, introduce the idea that each phoneme can have more than one grapheme and we need to remember them to read and choose between them to write.

Completely agree with this post. We want children to choose the most plausible grapheme for each phoneme to get them reading and writing as soon as possible. There are so many different graphemes for certain sounds that it would get very confusing

For example 'er'

er- flower
ir- bird
ur - turn
re - centre
ear - earth
our - journey
or - work

I'm sure there's more!

@MaggieFS That is different as in most UK dialects, and especially in Southern England, the grapheme 'oo' represents two different and distinct phonemes. They are taught separately so that children understand that, for example, 'boot' and 'foot' are pronounced differently despite looking like rhyming words.

Yes, I think that's what I mean, two different sounds 1) oo as per zoom to the moon and 2) oo as per hook a book.

But I think I've got things the wrong way round vs the OP's point, because they sound different to each other.

And this is why I leave it to the experts...

Sounds write does it your way, which my son's school uses. I actually think it works ok for reading but he gets them muddled with his writing, so for example they learned ai, ay, a_e together and he was then asking me 'which ay' is it?' When writing because he knew he had a range of options.

I'm a TA and at my school we use little wandle and they are introduced broadly in the order they are most likely to come across them. It means they secure ai, igh and ee (for example) and have confidence in these sounds. Yes we do then get them writing 'i like caik' and 'i like to plai' but that's ok as their spelling catches up as they learn more sounds. By the time we introduce ay and i_e they are secure in the first lot and seem less likely to mix them up.

Also, it means we can get through all the phonemes quickly in one phase so they have one way of spelling and reading all the sounds. It gives them less to learn in one go. Sounds write seems to take a long time to get through the sounds. Just my thoughts/ experience, I'm not sure whether one method is objectively any better than the other!

And yes to LW doing zoom to the moon and hook a book at the same time! Because actually there are lots of words using this grapheme and it would be confusing if we only introduced the 'moon' one as they would then mis read really common words like look and good. But OP was talking about teaching multiple graphemes (spellings) for one sound (phoneme) rather than multiple phonemes for one grapheme. I do realise how confusing it all is for the uninitiated!

Most schemes do the long and short oo at the same time, or one after the other, ime.

The others are ordered based on their frequency of use/usefulness in common words.

So satpin are the first sounds and you can then make a lot of vc and cvc words which children will can start to read quickly and easily.

The others are taught later when alternative spellings of sounds and alternative pronunciations of letter combinations are covered.

All the government accredited schemes use very similar, if not the same, order. I assume there is a specific reason for that order.

Right from day 1 of reception we do have large posters with all of the sounds on, inc those not taught until much much later. So they are referred to as and when needed, even if they've not been specifically taught to the class at that point.