when do primary children stop using phonetic letter sounds in spelling out words?

[imaginaryfriend]

When did your children no longer use phonetic letter sounds to spell out words? Dd is in Y1 and uses phonetic sounds all the time but dp thinks she should be using letter sounds by now.

I never quite have (am 37 now). I can use the proper letter sounds, but have to translate in my head from the phonetic. If I'm spelling just for me rather than out loud for someone elses benefit, I use the phonetic sounds...

This is Dp's actual question:

When the basic phonetic principles are in place (eg. the fact that the letter 'c' can be phonetically articulated in different ways), at what point is the move made to articulating the letters of the alphabet non-phonetically (ie as adults do?, 'c' rather than 'curly kuh'). At what point in the current curriculum do teachers stop using the phonetic articulation of the alphabet?

Theres no hard and fast rules I dont think, its just when the child makes the connection between wuhhh sound and double u then etc etc.

Far better to let them build their confidence with all sorts of writing than now have themn relearn letter sounds.

I think your dp is referring bck to when he was at school when we were taught A is for apple the aaaaaahhh sound etc etc (unless you were really unlucky like me nd learnt ITA lol).

This is Dp's actual question:

When the basic phonetic principles are in place (eg. the fact that the letter 'c' can be phonetically articulated in different ways), at what point is the move made to articulating the letters of the alphabet non-phonetically (ie as adults do?, 'c' rather than 'curly kuh'). At what point in the current curriculum do teachers stop using the phonetic articulation of the alphabet?

I think possibly year 2 children feel slughtly embarassed using clever cat/curly c and perhaps by then the penny drops that they realise that clurly kuh is cee.....when ive worked in schools with older children (year 2 up) ive said cee and then depending on their reaction added clever cat or curly etc.

It can be quite frustrating for a child of 7 to be relearning sounds that in his mind he knows.

Iirc, for dd it was at the end of Year 1

DD is in Y2 and her and pretty much all her class (I help twice a week) still refer to phonetic sounds. This is entirely normal from what I can gather. Also work as TA in an infant school and all the children I have worked with in Y1 and my small Y2 groups use phonic sounds.

Last year I spent time in Y3, summer term, and it was mixed as to who used what. Didn't seem to be related to brighter child = letter names, etc either.

None of them use curly c type though, bar my Y1 class. They just say c

I would like to preface the following: I work as a TA currently but am applying for the graduate teacher training programme, so am by no means an expert but have a bit of knowledge.

The curriculum teaches letter names (will try to make them meaningful by sub-naming as curly k etc but this is phased outafter yr 1) and the sounds that they make. Most consonants in English are pretty easy with exception of c and a couple others. It's the vowel sounds that create problems as English is so full of vagaries, so the different spelling patterns of the various long and short vowel sounds are taught.

The trend in teaching spelling now seems to be synthetic phonics which focuses on blending and segmenting letter strings and not the laborious sounding out of each letter (like Jolly Phonics which doesn't work as soon as you want to make whole words and sounds change based on sequence - gosh isn't English complicated!)

Hope that helps.

Somewhere between Yr1 and Yr3, depending how secure they are in the sounds, I think.

That's on the basis of a church activity I did with a big group of primary-aged children that involved spelling things out!

Just speaking entirely from the perspective of my own school, we have an expectation that the children know their letter sounds by the end of Year One. This is based on the assumption that the child is working to national curriculum expectations or above. For those children who are below NC expectations, it is not so imperative for us that they know their letter sounds by the end of year one (eg, we do not want to confuse them when they are still working on being secure with the phonetic sounds of the letters). I know of other schools who do not work to this idea, and others who do, so really it is hard to say I think as different schools do and expect it differently. I personally do not know of schools that do not expect children by the time they finish year two, to not know their letter names, but then I am sure there are schools out there that do not expect them to, so it is really hard to say!

IRRC DS1 started to use the letter names rather than sounds in YR 2 but didn't do it consistently until YR 3. It was a gradual process and very often he would spell out words that were a mixture of names and sounds. It didn't matter so long as he spelt the word right.

In my dd's school, most children are encouraged to do it from Yr 1, with more able children encouraged to so so every time. Those still struggling with the sounds are left to concentrate on those. In year two, the expectation is that children will use the letter names, but again a few children will find this too confusing. Interestingly, my dd (age 7) who learned to read fluently very quickly, has to really think hard to convert the letter names back to sounds now

We don't stop teaching phonic clues we just add to the skills set. We look at long vowel sounds, letter names, sounds, diagraphs, trigraphs etc etc etc. When looking at high frequency words you would talk about letter names etc.

Children need lots of ways to decode.

Thanks for all the replies.

At the moment dd knows all the letter names but she usually uses the letter sounds when she's spelling a new word or practising her spellings. When she's decoding a word she's reading she uses a mixture of reading sounds such as 'ay', 'or' or 'oy' when they appear. So she'd read toy as 'tuh-oy'.

Ds asks me to spell things for him quite often and often insists I use names not sounds, does it matter?

When he's reading (he's only just starting to read simple sentences) he sounds out using letter sounds though.

Should I just tell him the names if he asks me to spell something that way or insist on the sounds? I don't want to dampen his enthusiasm by being all 'proper' about it.

He knows both sounds and names for all letters so maybe it doesn't matter? I don't want to confuse him.

Maybe ask him to have a go at spelling the word himself when he asks sprinkly, and then work on it together so if you segment the word into syllables (or C+V in shorter words) you can ask him which letters make the sound for say "bay" in "baby" for example. It's not wrong to sound it out in this way but giving the letter names will develop his literacy skills too.

I don't think it matters either.

So long as the child knows both letter sound and letter name, and how to make up the other sounds such as sh, ch, igh, etc.

IF that sounds perfectly normal, and when doing my Y1 assessments that is what I look for. I may also then ask "so how do you make the sound oy" etc. but initially it is that t-oy we look for,

ds is Yr1 and has recently started saying Cee-Ay-Tee rather than Cuh-a-tuh (actually he doesn't sound out cat as he knows how to spell it, but for example).

I still expect my Year 1s to use sounds, but am starting to introduce letter names and talk about alternative ways of making the sounds. We always use letter names when practising spelling tricky words (ie those that cannot be sounded out), but by now in Year 2 the children are swopping over.

DS2 is in yr 1 and uses a mixture, but mostly phonetic sounds.

DD is in yr 3 and always uses letter names.

DS1 is in yr 5 and still occasionally uses phonetic sounds !

So basically I would say somewhere in yr1-yr2-yr3

Helpful huh?

letter sounds to read, letter names to spell.

If children don't have a clear understanding of phonics it can affect their auditory processing and spelling, so it is important that any child who finds reading and spelling hard is still encouraged to use phonic skills for word building and spelling, although of course knowing the letter names is important. For eg my Class R dd could spell shrimp for eg sounding out (under her breath) the phonic sounds. If I told her the letters - ess, aitch etc - she could write it down but wouldn't yet know whT she'd written until she worked it out. I work with children who haven't made the connection between the sound and the letter name and it affects their spelling badly. The ability to hear the phonemes in a word is key to spelling it.
Of course, some children whizz through this stage but for others it is important that they don't feel embarrassed doing what they need to, at whatever age.
My 2 major bugbears - singing the alphabet to the Barney song means no-one knows any letters from l - p as they are rushed so much, and putting an uh sound on the end of letter sounds. It really slows children down when they try to decode/spell.