11 Plus Exams Forum

I'm in the early stages of teaching ds3 (aged nearly 4 and who is dc4, if that makes sense) to read, and found a great website 'Mr Thorne does phonics'.
He seems to have natural ability to mesmerise young children. ds3 now watches the videos with a dress-up cowboy hat on (once you have seen the videos you will understand ). I will certainly be hoping that this clear and structured approach will lead to better spelling with ds3 than I have with the others!

It was only later that I realised that Mr Thorne is actually an ex pupil at ds1's Grammar school - KE Camp Hill in Birmingham!

Jolly Phonics had an amazing effect on my DS2.

He was attending a special needs nursery as he was not communicating much verbally at age 3 years.

Over a few months he learnt to read and speak!! Now he won't shut up and yes his spelling is spot on.

Doesn't work for all kids but for us it was a miracle.

I'm a great fan of letters and sounds, which is used in schools at the moment.

it covers things like different ways of representing a sound like a/ai/ey

Letters and Sounds is very similar to Jolly Phonics.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-12249654" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Speech problems 'hamper children's reading ability'

Although phonics work helps with early reading, some schools said their pupils were not yet ready for it, Ofsted said.
A focus on speaking and listening and high expectations of pupils often helped tackle the problems, it added.
Ofsted's "Removing Barriers to Literacy" report looked at the factors that stop children from gaining good reading and writing skills.
It said that systematic phonics work, where children are taught to blend letter sounds to form words, is vital in tackling the issue.

Bit of a mixed message, but for those who are ready i.e. respond and make progress, phonics can be fantastic.

muffinmonster wrote:Letters and Sounds is very similar to Jolly Phonics.

it is ,but it takes it just that bit further, I have used both and they have worked well ..there is no magic bullet which works for all. It's trial and error

Thanks for the links.

yoyo123 wrote:there is no magic bullet which works for all. It's trial and error

Definitely agree

I'm also a fan of phonics and it really helped with DC2 and 3 who were late readers (school favoured 'look and sight' approach and by the end of reception they were unable to read!).
Moving abroad was a blessing in disguise as I had to home-school them for a couple of months before a suitable school was found. Unlike DC1 who was only taught 'cvc' words and was away in reading at the age of 3, DC2 & 3, needed a lot of practise. I used many different schemes/ resources (Jolly Phonics, Ruth Miskins, Starfall, Morris Montessori) and all were beneficial- at last they were reading!

So, I'm all for phonics and judging from the White paper: ' the importance of teaching', more schools will be endorsing synthetic phonics in the future.

I have to say that I am a fan of teaching a variety of methods as children learn in a variety of different ways. Some find phonics useful, others recognise the shape of words and some memorise. English is a very complex language, unlike our phonetic European counterparts. I taught my children to read French phonetically in a matter of weeks, sadly they didn't understand what they were reading but they could read aloud. This is impossible with English.

A simple example is bow.

So is it something you tie or an action you perform?

ea - heart, hear, bear, learn
ight - height, eight, night
ough - bough, cough, dough, through, thought, enough

I could go on. Wonderful language, nightmare to learn to read and spell!

moved wrote:I have to say that I am a fan of teaching a variety of methods as children learn in a variety of different ways. Some find phonics useful, others recognise the shape of words and some memorise. English is a very complex language, unlike our phonetic European counterparts. I taught my children to read French phonetically in a matter of weeks, sadly they didn't understand what they were reading but they could read aloud. This is impossible with English.

A simple example is bow.

So is it something you tie or an action you perform?

ea - heart, hear, bear, learn
ight - height, eight, night
ough - bough, cough, dough, through, thought, enough

I could go on. Wonderful language, nightmare to learn to read and spell!

It isn't impossible at all. It just means you need to plan ahead rather better. Other European languages tend to have a more transparent orthography than English which is by the same token, 'opaque'. This means it is more difficult for children to work out the patterns (that do exist) without guidance. The fact remains that English uses the alphabetic principle, whereby letters and combinations of letter represent units of sound in our spoken language. It is not logographic where a symbol or combination of symbold represent a word.

It is exactly why you should not try to teach with 'look/say' methods which give no guidance and in fact give the children the wrong idea entirely as to how English works. It is the children who struggle with phonics who in fact need it the most, as if they find it difficult with guidance then they will find it impossible when left to their own devices to fugure out how English works from the words they have learned by sight.

We use, on average, 50,000 each day, or should I say we need to be able to speak and read about 50,000 words to cope with normal day-to-day interactions(a High School graduate has a vocabulary topping 100,000). The human brain simply doesn't have the capacity to get a child beyond about a Year 3 level using sight words.

To say children learn in different ways is totally irrelevant as you can't change how English works. It would only be relevant if you were going to say, teach phonically weak children to read and write Chinese instead.

To say children learn in different ways is totally irrelevant as you can't change how English works.

but some children need a slightly different key to help them unlock that. If a child struggles with one method then it is worth trying something different.