Do some children just not really get on with phonics?

[inthesamesea]

DS is reception, so I do know it’s early days, but he doesn’t seem to be ‘getting it.’

I’ve been taking the advice to sound out words ‘r e d and c a t and b e d’ for instance but he just doesn’t seem to get it. If I say b e d and ask what you think you said he will often say something random like chair but does know the letters, the problem is blending them together.

He knows some words by sight and I’m wondering if this might be a better approach for him. Would welcome any suggestions etc.

He's only little, and reception has not long started.

What are school asking you to focus on?

English isn't a phonological language.

Phonics didn’t work for me or dd. Both of us were early and voracious readers and writers. We are also both autistic.

There are too many exceptions to the rules in phonics. They are infuriating. It’s easier for some brains just to pick up the sounds from whole words and learn to apply them to new words without having it broken down explicitly.

I thought this was an interesting article about phonics.

England’s synthetic phonics approach is not working for children who struggle to read

My DD hasn’t got on with it. She’s been identified for dyslexia testing when she turns 7.

when she started year 2 she was suddenly reading (prior to that I would say she could barely read) turns out she had learnt to read the old fashioned way- recognising words and letters- and it wasn’t evident until she was exposed to more complex texts. She’s now on a different reading scheme as she would be assessed as level 2/3 on phonics 😭 poor love.

her teacher is overly experienced and thinks she’s “unusual” though so it sounds uncommon (and likely dyslexic!)

I presumed that too but I’ve just finished an MA in dyslexia and literacy difficulties- and learnt it is only a small percentage of words that cannot be decoded using phonic rules

Do you think your anxiety over him struggling to blend is rubbing off on him, so he feels anxious about doing it? Also, make sure you are articulating the phonemes correctly ( as Luh hih puh blends to luhihpuh and not lip. I spent 4 months tutoring a reception child basically reteaching him how to enunciate the phonemes correctly because over-keen mum had done it all wrong.

Blending is developmental and will just click at some point - keep doing what you are doing.

To those posters who are insisting their children didn’t ‘get’ phonics - they must have, or they would only be able to read a finite number of words now. They might have found it more difficult than some children, but they most certainly do ‘get’ phonics - or they wouldn’t ever be able to read an unfamiliar word.

It’s been widely discredited - the author makes it very clear that they don’t even understand what phonics teaching is.

https://iferi.org/iferi_forum/viewtopic.php?t=1431