Advice from teacher re teaching phonics

[LittleBudaOnLine]

dd2 is in reception. This year has been difficult both due to the fact that she struggled with understanding english at the start of the year (bilingual child. We moved back to the UK last summer) and because the teacher was c* (long story).

Anyway, we are now at the end of the school year and she doesn't know any of the double letter sounds - that she was supposed to have learnt at school.
We have finally managed to get the list of the sounds they have learnt this year from the teacher (+ copy of the Jolly Phonic sheet from teacher's handbook?).

She is supposed to be at an ORT level 3 (yes I know the 'old' approach - not phonic based) but really she is there only because she can remember the story very well. When she is strying to 'read' the story for the first time, she can hardly recognize/sound out the words.

What is the best approach now? Doing one sound a day? 2 or 3 at once but going over them for a few days? Concentrating on the sounds only or doing that and some reading? My initial idea is that she first needs to know all the sounds not to be lost next year.

Any input appreciated

My DD is in a similar boat, she isn't bilingual but has speech probs, so has struggled with phonic sounds. She does read, but only because she is teaching herself whole words.

I'm doing the Dancing Bears, Bear Necessities A1 book.

www.prometheantrust.org/soundfoundationsbooks.htm

It's v. good, gives fool proof instructions for the parent and comes with sounds flashcards. The only thing is, I teach her the Jolly Phonics action with the sound, as this is what they are doing at school and I don't want to confuse her.

We've also used the Jolly Phonics finger phonics books as they have the letters cut out and DD likes to trace them with her finger.

Oh, should add that I'm not a teacher!

You won't get better-or easier or more enjoyable-than Headsprout

I'm a SALT interested in the effects of reading on language skills at am involved in resaerch projects using this (nothing to do with thme commercially though)
Also have used with my own children.

Thanks Ixia.
I have the same worries about using a system that is different from school. She has been struggling enough this year for me not to add any more difficulties...

Moondog, is it easy to use english wise?

dd2 is much better with english now but is still not always understanding completely what is said to her (in english). She is just starting to play with other children. So I was thinking that me talking to her on a one to one basis might be better??

If you want to back up the Jolly Phonics stuff they do a DVD, workbooks and a cd and song book. Early Learning do most of it as do Amazon. I bought the cd and song book from Amazon and my little boy loved it. It really seemed to reinforce what they were taught at school.

School also sent a sound book home. They would basically stick a new letter and action in every day or so and we would go through it, sounding out the letter and doing the action.

Buda, I don't speak English to my children and they got on fine.It starts very simply and builds up.
It's terrific, it really is.

Thanks. All usefull to know.

Headsprout and Sound Foundations both exellent. Also BRI from www.piperbooks.co.uk.
All give ample practice in blending/sounding out which is the crux of it all.

bump for today

I will say that my dd realy did not cope with Headsprout. She is dyslexic and I think has auditory processing issues too. She could not cope with teh American accent. She found it immensely frustrating to get so far with a task and then through not understanding what teh voice was saying having to start at the beginning again! She loved the graphics and teh games at first but we had to stop as she was getting so uopset with it. We're now using Dancing Bears and having more success.

LittleBudaOnLine I agree it would be much better/more effective for your daughter to learn phonics with you rather than an on line programme. I would also stick with the actions from Jolly Phonics (or look at the Phonics International programme which also has actions).
I believe in teaching a new sound every day, while continually revisiting the sounds already taught to reinforce these. I would also suggest lots of daily practise blending two and three sound words for reading and segmenting (chopping up) for spelling.

I'd like to back up what Malaleuca & mrz say, it can't be repeated too often! It is the practice in sounding out and blending words which is the most important element. Teach the 'sound' then use it! Also, breaking words into their sounds for spelling.

Bin the ORT books! Use decodables

I have taught an EAL child (with practically no English at all to start with)like this and she has done extremely well.

As a bit of a bonus, starting from individual speech sounds helps to improve accent and any minor speech production problems.

Thank you!
Tbh, I was worried that she would struggle to understand what they say. I know that in class, she is still missing rather important bits of information so leaving her to her own device to 'play' on a game like this has never really be an option. I would have needed to be with her all the time at the very least.

I like the one sound a day. That's how she learnt her letters last year so I can see that working.

I have tried to do some blending work with her this year. She hasn't 'clicked' until recently (July baby who wasn't ready...) so I will carry on with that too.

Re decodable books, which ones would you advise to use?

My DD also didn't get on with Headsprout. She's 6, in kindergarten in a French-speaking school, and I've been teaching her English reading at home.

She could already do all her basic sounds but the Headsprout program made her go right back to the beginning and work through every single letter sound, which she found very dull. The games for each sound were basically the same, but disguised as 'different' because now it's in Dinosaur Land rather than Space World. The program is supposed to be intuitive and 'learn' to move on rapidly when a user has grasped the sound, but I saw no evidence of this - even when I did some clicking for her (there is a LOT of repetitive clicking, in a worrisome RSI sort of way) I was made to click on a sound dozens and dozens of times. I know early reading is a lot about repetition, but this was really mindless clicking with almost no engagement of the child.

I also didn't like the way it first taught sounds as a blend - 'an' was taught, then split into 'a' and 'n'. This is confusing for a child doing any other phonic system I've ever seen.

And rules like 'silent e making the vowel long', as in 'pin' and 'pine', are not included, which I think is ridiculous for a program purporting to go up to a second grade reading level. Pull any regular picture book off your shelf and try and find a page that doesn't have a 'long vowel sound + silent e' rule in it. It's endemic in English; I don't want a child who can only read 'readers' and not real books.

Jolly Phonics and similar schemes are much better and much cheaper - the only advantage Headsprout has is the ability for the parent to outsource the teaching to the computer.

On the plus side, the admin is very efficient, and I had no trouble whatsoever getting my promised refund within the 30 day period.

LittleBudaOnLine

I would say things like

Do you want to come to the sh/o/p?

Can you see the big d/o/g?

how high can you j/u/m/p?

to encourage aural blending as well as using letters for blending for reading

I like songbirds, Rigby Rockets, and the new Ragtag rhymes

Thanks for the pointers mrz. That's a lot of help.

cutting words up and physically sliding the sounds together can help some children visualise what they need to do

I think that's what I am trying to do. When in front of a word she can't remember/new word, I am cutting the word into syllables, make her read the first one (which is then more like CVC), then the second and put the two together.

Would you say that reading the ORT books is a waste of time??

Personally I think ORT shouldn't be introduced until children are blending confidently and know some of the alternative ways of writing the phonemes so they don't encounter words they haven't got the skills and knowledge to read.