Primary School Phonics

Running_Horse

How does it work?

Take the word "take".

Is it tuh-ah-kuh-eh, or tuh-ai-kuh?

Daughter starting school soon, and want to be sure I'm getting it right.

Many thanks.

edsks

It's the latter tuh-ai-kuh. Every letter of the alphabet has a name and a sound. Phonics is about how the word sounds. Because "take" has the magic e then in repect to the "vowel, consonant, e" then in this instance the vowel takes the same sound as its name. Thus "take" is pronounced as it is rather than rhyming with "back". Obviously some words do not lend themselves to being learned via the phonics method (these are often called "tricky" words) and so where a word is pronounced so differently than as pronounced using the phonics method e.g. "the" then you would learn this through the whole-word method.

bylromarha

Running_Horse wrote: »

How does it work?

Take the word "take".

Is it tuh-ah-kuh-eh, or tuh-ai-kuh?

Daughter starting school soon, and want to be sure I'm getting it right.

Many thanks.

2nd one too.

Would say that don't use the phrase magic e. That's a phrase for us 80s kids! I can still sing the words and pictures song - who can't?!

As you're emphasizing the "ai" sound, "ai" is also spelt "a_e" and "a" (like baby) and other ways too.

You want them to see "a_e" as a sound, not "a" with a magic e on the end. Some schools call these sounds a split digraph with the kids, others a split sound. But the emphasis is always on "a_e" is the sound "ai"

shy-but-need-help

If they're spelling it out letter for letter then they'll say the first but if they're sounding it out to read the word they will say it the second way but describe it as a split digraph and learn about them being 2 letter sounds around another one.

I wouldn't worry too much most first schools will offer a workshop in the first term of reception which you can attend to learn how the new system for teaching them works.

Most schools will also start with 2 blocks of phonics- S A T and then P I N.

It might be worth finding out if the school your child will be going to is using jolly phonics or letters and sounds (or a different system entirely) as their teaching system as that can alter alot of how/what they are taught.

pozalina

shy-but-need-help wrote: »

It might be worth finding out if the school your child will be going to is using jolly phonics or letters and sounds (or a different system entirely) as their teaching system as that can alter alot of how/what they are taught.

Thanks for this, my ds does letters and sounds at his nursery but I mistakenly thought it was the same as jolly phonics. No wonder he didn't respond when I was doung the jolly phonics actions with the sounds!

MX5huggy

Why does my heart sink when I read that my 18mth old will in 3 years time know to describe the word take as a split digraph? when at 30 plus I have never heard of a split digraph? now magic e that rings a bell no idea what, did I use it at uni?

Percy1983

My other half works with these things I will ask her tonight.

With that I help out at school and when I saw the phonics alphabet thingy I couldn't make any sense of it.

Dontknowanymore

MX5huggy wrote: »

Why does my heart sink when I read that my 18mth old will in 3 years time know to describe the word take as a split digraph? when at 30 plus I have never heard of a split digraph? now magic e that rings a bell no idea what, did I use it at uni?

Dont worry yourself, I had to ask on facebook what a number bond was for my son's year 2 maths homework!

I wouldnt worry about these things, the school will teach most of this stuff and it will carry on at home with things like spellings, maths challenges etc etc.

shy-but-need-help

MX5huggy wrote: »

Why does my heart sink when I read that my 18mth old will in 3 years time know to describe the word take as a split digraph? when at 30 plus I have never heard of a split digraph? now magic e that rings a bell no idea what, did I use it at uni?

It's honestly not as bad as it sounds, they just have different names for things than we did, when you see them you think things like "ohhh magic E". I have five kids and every single one of them to enter reception has been taught in a different way to the last they seem to be changing it so often! I just sign myself up to every workshop or open evening they offer to keep track of it all ( and thankfully my sister teaches primary years so she's a walking resource :rotfl:)

pmlindyloo

What a terrible muddle we get in with phonics!

My advice would be to read to her lots and if you want to 'do sounds' just go for the ones that make sense. eg, the first sound of a word or the 'th' sound.

Schools do tackle phonics in all kind of different ways and so, following previous advice given, try to attend any parents evenings and ask lots of questions about how they teach.

As a retired primary school teacher and a specialist teacher in dyslexia, my experience is that most children learn to read in spite of some 'strange' ways they have been taught, both my parents and teachers!

We don't actually 'teach' children to talk other than speaking to them and repeating words. The brain is a wonderful thing and can 'work out' lots by itself. That's why young children say words like 'swimmed' instead of swam. The child has never heard the word 'swimmed', (I hope not!) but his/her brain has just worked out that the past tense of verbs is often 'ed'. Hope that makes sense.

Just to add one other thing and this is a personal 'bee in my bonnet', I think we ought to be saying that letters represent sounds. So 'tuh' is written t. After all speaking came before writing.

Hope that makes sense!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

gauly

Running_Horse wrote: »

How does it work?

Take the word "take".

Is it tuh-ah-kuh-eh, or tuh-ai-kuh?

Daughter starting school soon, and want to be sure I'm getting it right.

Many thanks.

I got a book out the library on teaching phonics so you could look there. Here's some things I remember:

- Our school learnt the letter sounds in groups - I think the first set are p,a,i,n,t,s. Then they learn some words like "sit", "nap", etc using those letters.

- You don't start with words like "take" but with simple words which use the expected sound for each letter. The consonants are pretty obvious and the vowels are:
A pronounced 'ah' as in cat
E pronounced 'eh' as in bed
I pronounced as in kid
O pronounced as in dog
U pronounced "uh" as in bug
cat, bed, kid, dog and bug are all simple, purely phonetic words.

- Then come double letters (tt, ff, ss, ck), then double letters which make new sounds (ch, th, sh, ph). It's quite a way in before you need to start worrying about words like "take".

- You try to say as little of the "uh" sound after a consonant as possible. So not really a "kuh" but just "k" (which isn't really possible in my opinion but make it as short as possible). The Cbeebies phonics programmes on iPlayer do this if you want to hear it. Some consonants are possible to say with no "uh" sound, so you say "ssss" not "suh", "mmmm" not "muh", "nnnn", "zzz", "fff", "lll", "rrrr", "vvv".

- Don't introduce the letter names until the child knows all the standard letter sounds or even later. Our school uses "kicking kuh" for K and "curly kuh" for C to distinguish them.

- Don't start on non-phonetic words until the child can read a few words phonetically, then you will probably want to introduce "the" and "a" to get things started. You want to make phonics the default option for them rather than attempting to memorise whole words. Memorising words can appear more attractive to the child at first since it is quicker, but phonics has long term benefits.

I'm sure there was loads more in the book and that I heard about from school, but that's all I can remember!