Thoughts on “little waddle” reading method?

[Golaz]

My DD has just stated reception. We had a phonics workshop today where they described this methodology for teaching children to read and showed some examples of the books they would be using. It sounded really dumb and boring and the books look shit. I didn’t get it at all. Does anyone have any insights or experiences to share? Is this likely to be helpful in actually teaching my child to read and enjoy reading? At the moment she loves books but can’t read at all.

There are the words which are tricky words, these are not "phonetic"

The screening was made up of real words and Alien words.

I’m sure phonics is fantastic for the majority of kids. However if (like me) you have a generally bright kid who just ISNT getting on with the phonics system, it can be really, really disheartening- because the govt approach is SO dogmatic, it doesn’t allow for any alternative methods, even where children are clearly showing signs that phonics just isn’t working for them.

No you wouldn’t because you'd know the phonic options and you'd try them out until you found the correct sound. Just like the word 'the' is easy to read using phonetics. You just might need to find the right ones.

You think “victuals” is pronounced phonetically?
It isn’t.

How would you know you had made the correct sound in a test, when you didn’t already know the word?

So why don't you get that "e" can correspond to either "eh" or "ee" (or other stuff - sorry, can't do IPA right now)? Or do you think that to be phonetic a language has to have just one grapheme for every phoneme and vice versa? Heck, even Spanish hasn't got that.

If you are complaining that "sequin" isn't a word most 6 year olds know, so it shouldn't be in the "known words" category, that's one thing.
But it is a pretty common grapheme-phoneme correspondence and if you go by word frequency then it's VERY common (if you only take word count, OK it's not that common, but all the function words are super common).

It's perfectly phonetic and has lots of neighbours (are you familiar with that term for words that have the same grapheme-phoneme correspondence?).

The tricky words are all phonetic, but it’s beyond the phonetic knowledge expected by beginner readers.

You pronounce it correctly because you already know the word

They are taught the pronounce it correctly because the i turns the eh (e) into an ee (e).
So, yes, it's learning the rules that comes with "phonics" rather than it being phonetic,

For the test, they should be choosing words carefully. But if a word can be pronounced two ways, then both should be allowed (I’m mainly thinking alien words here).

This method of decoding relies on the learner having previous knowledge of the word.
This is not the point of the phonics screening check.

I wonder how you pronounce it… in my accent, it’s a very straight forward word……

The tricky words are all phonetic, but it’s beyond the phonetic knowledge expected by beginner readers

No,they are not. Can you tell me a word off the tricky words list that is phonetic ?

By what orthographic rule does the “eh” sound turn into an “ee” sound in the word “sequin”?

“Vittle”

Because in the YEAR 1 test, the words should be chosen carefully to avoid confusion. That’s the point of it.

We teach readers to try the alternative sounds if they read a word and it doesn’t sound right.

It’s not rocket science.

How do they know of it “sounds right” if they haven’t heard the word before?

The

to

go

little

Just because they’re not 'beginner phonic sounds' (too tired to think of a better way of phrasing that) doesn’t mean they’re not phonetic.

He, be, is, the, we, by, my... I could go on.

But 'e' can be pronounced different ways:

men
me

Still not hard.

You're still complaining it's an infrequent word. Not that it isn't a phonetically spelled word.

I know of no one round here who says it like that. Here’s the 'IPA' for the word. One it’s roots are French, not English. Words like this may not follow the expected, but they are still phonetic. And not for grade 1.

https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/victual

No. I’m complaining that you need to know the word “sequin” in order to correctly decode it which is not the point of phonetic screening test.

Consider you are a ESL learner. You’ve never heard the word “sequin”. You pronounce it phonetically and you get it wrong.

Is that a test of their decoding ability? Or a test of their vocabulary?

😂😂😂 there’s a little button on that link that will help you with the pronunciation

Why are you laughing? I can see the IPA pronunciation and see how is should be pronounced. I am saying that no one where I live would probably pronounce it like that.

The screening test is a test of decoding, not vocabulary. You’d be surprised how important decoding is on the path to understanding.

They would probably mispronounce it due to it not being phonetic. 😊