Any primary teachers out there?

[ihearttc]

Not quite sure how to explain this so apologies if this doesn't make any sense?

Ive posted before about my DS who is in reception and the fact that we are having a bit of a struggle with him reading. Not the fact that he can't read because he can and can actually read quite well but he's having real issues with sounding out words and is just learning to read by recognising the words and he is doing absolutely fine that way but when he comes to a word that he doesn't know he just cannnot sound it out. He knows all his JP's and is on Level 4 ORT which he is sailing through but I get the feeling he cannot read anything more than that because he just isn't learning to read how school are expecting him to.

One of the words he got stuck on while reading a home book last night was:-brought and he had absolutely no idea of how to do it and quite honestly Ive got no idea how to help him. Are there sounds that they should be learning after the first 42 JP sounds and when should they be doing them? For example Ive taught him that words such as night,light,right,bright have the same ending and therefore make the same sound which he has grasped really well and can just read them with no problem but have no idea where to go from here so could someone please point me in the right direction!

Have spoken to his teacher who just says well he knows his sounds so he should be able to do it but words like brought don't work with all the JP sounds so am totally confused. Im not a teacher but it feels like Im having to teach him all this because Im not getting anywhere but Im so scared of doing it wrong.

Do some children just read by whole words and not by phonics and if so is that really bad?

I've seen some of your posts before and I think you and I have the same child! I could have written your post about my dd (5.2). I don't really have anything useful to suggest, but am watching with interest to see what any teachers say....

Does he get cross when he doesn't know a word? My dd will try to skim over it and if I pull her back to try to sound it out, she gets a bit fed up and says I'm slowing her down!

Thank you...and yes Im sure we've spoken before and we do appear to have the same child lol!

Yes he gets really frustrated and because he can actually read everything else very fluently its all the more noticeable when he cannot sound a word out. Im finding myself getting cross with him as well which I know is silly but its just so frustrating. He can read words like suddenly,bizarre but cannot sound out a word like found because he literally cannot see the word split up like:-f ou nd even though he knows what sounds they all make. Just feels like we're making no progress at all and he is getting so fed up reading these books but they won't move him on or tell me what to do with him!

Think everyone must have seen my posts as well cause Ive posted so many times about it but feels like Im banging my head against a brick wall. What has your DD's teacher said to you about it?

Words such as 'brought' and 'he' are sight vocab words that cannot be sounded out - children learn them by their shape. How does he manage with 'the' 'to' 'said'? I choose one recurring word and write on LOTS of post-its and get them to stick them around the house then whenever the see it they are becoming familiar with how it looks and say it aloud, therefore memorising shape and sound at the same time. Could also make it using magnetic letters on fridge, foam bath letters etc.
Hope this makes sense - om mat leave at mo so teaching brain on a go-slow

Thats the problem spula-he is absolutely fine with sight words. He has learnt all 100 key reception words (in fact he did them all by christmas lol!)and is now onto the next 100 which Im assuming are Y1 words but brought,thought etc haven't been on there yet.

The only way I can try and explain it is that its like he has an almost photographic memory for the actual shape of words...once he has looked at them a couple of times he just knows what they are but when it comes to words that he has to use his JP to sound out he just can't do it. We've got magnetic words and post it notes all over the house but he only sees the whole word and not the separate parts of it if that makes sense?

Im assuming its how I and most other children in the 70's and 80's learnt to read by learning whole words so it obviously does work but its not how its done now.

Thank you so much for replying tho especially when you are on maternity leave.

ihearttc quite simply the book isn't appropriate for his stage. Can I ask what books the school uses?

The English language contains approx 42-45 sounds depending on where you live. After learning the "basic" sounds children then need to learn the alternative ways of writing the sounds - ai as in paid- ay as in play- a_e as in made - ey as in they - eigh as in weigh- ea as in great
j as in jump - g as in magic -ge as in page - dge as in bridge
or as in for- oor as in door-oar - al as in wall- au as in autumn- aw as in straw- ough as in brought etc

Can I just stress brought is not a sight word and can easily be sounded out once a child has been taught all the phonemes.

Sorry-don't know why there ended up 2 threads...must have pressed the button twice!

Mrz-I am so glad you replied as was hoping you would!

Yes he is on ort level 4 and I used that as an example because obviously most people know those books but his school use loads of different schemes within a particular colour band and he can choose any book out of that colour...so he can have ort one day,then a rigby star one,then a really old Ginn one (which I think the word was out of) and some other ones which I can't remember.

He has got a Rigby Star one tonight called Vroom which has got the word "thought"in it which he can't sound out either. I honestly don't think they've learnt any other ways of writing/reading the sounds apart from the 42 JP sounds they had at the beginning of september which I assume is why he's getting confused and the only reason he's got as far as he has is because he is just learning whole words. Is there anywhere I can find how to teach him those alternate ways of writing the sounds or is that only something a school can do?

Honestly thank you so so much for replying. I really feel as though Ive just hit a huge brick wall with all this and don't know what to do next and DS who was so happy to read in september has lost all his enthusiasm for it because he know thinks he can't do isn't surprising if he hasn't been taught how to.

thought contains the same sound /or/ written "ough" which I would expect to be taught in Y1 rather than reception in most schools. He isn't going to use the phonics he knows to read words contain spelling patterns he hasn't been taught. I would explain to him that it represents the same sound as "or" when he meets it and isn't sure of the word. Personally I wouldn't worry that he is naturally remembering some words (I would be more concerned if he was being taught to remember whole words) but I would help him by sounding out words with him if he is unable to alone and asking if he can put the sounds together.

I would take a look at www.phonicsinternational.com/unit1_pdfs/The%20English%20Alphabetic%20Code%20-%20complete%20picture%2 0chart.pdf it shows all the alternative ways of representing the sounds

Don't worry too much - he is unlikely to have yet been introduced to how to sound out 'ough' for 'brought'. It depends on which phonics scheme your child's school follows, but as a teacher who has taught across Early Years and KS1, some children do not learn these sounds until Y1 or even Yr2. Its at this stage that they are taught a bigger variety of graphemes and phonemes and the different ways that they might sound. For example in 'brought' the 'ough' obviously makes an 'or' sound, but in 'though', it makes an 'oh' sound!

Sight words are those that cannot be sounded out and these will also gradually be introduced. Stage 4 ORT does sound rather advanced for a Reception child so perhaps it might be the case that he is reading books with vocabulary he hasn't yet been taught the skills to decode. Perhaps you could speak to the teacher - if he/she still feels the books are suitable, remember there are other strategies that you can prompt your child to use, such as using picture cues and contextual and syntactic cues, ie, reading what he is able to in the sentence, then using his knowledge of the storyline and the type of word that might make sense (alongside the beginning and end sounds which he would probably know) to decipher the word.

dinosaurus I would be very interested to know which words can't be sounded out

I just want to add that there is nothing wrong with a child learning to read from sight memory. However, they do need to develop a wide range of strategies to help decode words which they are unfamiliar with.

In addition to phonics & recognising words from sight, a reader with some confidence & fluency may be able to guess the word from the context or grammar clues by reading the rest of the sentence. This skill comes with fluency though, so I wouldnt expect early readers to use it.

What I mean mrz, is that many words cannot be sounded out without the prior knowledge of spelling patterns. For example, if a child attempted to sound out 'fine' without being taught the effect of the 'e' on how we say the 'i', they would struggle to read it.
Children can only read 'funny' when they know that the 'y' should be said as 'ee'. In my experience, children often learn the rules above because a structured phonics programme throughout KS1 incorporates these 'rules'. However, I have found that some children seem to be able to read such words very quickly and easily (possibly because they find it easier to recognise whole words) without specifically being able to tell me why they read it that way, ie, they read from looking at the whole word, rather than sounding it out.

Thank you for all your replies-much appreciated.

Mrz-that link is fantastic! Am going to print it out so that I can understand it as well as him!

I found a list somewhere last night while trawling internet of the sounds etc they are supposed to learn in Reception and you are completely right in that all the ones he is struggling with thought,brought,crawled (was another one last night) he hasn't been taught yet at all and it says most of them are down in Y1 so its no wonder he's struggling.

He is actually quite good at "guessing" for want of a better word what the word should actually be in the context of the sentence and by using the pictures but I have to admit Ive been trying to stop him doing that because I thought he should be able to sound out all the words by now but obviously he can't. He apparently did a Salford Reading Test at school last week and although I have no idea what his score was they did say that he hadn't done as well as they thought he'd do so Im thinking he really does use the pictures/context to make an educated guess quite a lot of the time because I presume there are no pictures to go by on that?

Dinosaurus-thats exactly what he does. He can read what I think are quite hard words for a 5 year old such but he can't tell you how he knows thats what they are...but then struggles on what I would probably say are easier words.

Ihearttc you're doing a great job and it sounds like he's actually doing really well! But don't stop him from making a guestimate at words. You don't just have to sound out words to work them out. Reading around words is another very important skill which isn't taught enough in my opinion and I often have to remind my year 4 children that it's ok to use other clues as well as sounding out. E.g. read the sentence around the tricky word and think about what would fit/make sense within the context of the text. Also looking at piture cues can help. All these skills must come into play for children to be able to read and comprehend what they're reading.

MrZ that link is great! Just goes to show how complex the English language is. Amazing anyone ever learns it really....!

Note to self: Don't try to offer advice when feeding DS, brain being numbed by DD watching Captain Mack, and not being in work-mode since February . Re-read op and get it now and clearly agree with the much better advice!!