Primary School Phonics

LJM

you would be suprised at just how quickly children pick up the jolly phonics, i would echo check out what they are teaching and if it is the phonics look in ELC or ebay they have workbooks,leaflets for parents,dictionaries,dvd etc all to help encourage use of my girls used the workbooks which were fantastic,now they are older we are doing thrass,just as fun xx

JC9297

bylromarha wrote: »

You should have been in our house then...son was reading the balcony speech from Romeo and Juliet at age 4. He'd always loved jigsaws, so at age 3, when I began signing words to DD, he asked what the signs were for the sounds. He asked, I gave signs that accompanied the phonics. He put them all together like a jigsaw and BAM!

3 months later he was reading any picture book he selected from the library. He had the skills to look at an unknown word and work it out. OH thought it would be "hilarious" to pull shakespeare off the shelf a week after his 4th birthday to see if he could. At age 5 he had a reading age of 12.

He'd probably have been just fine with learning sight words too, like you're describing, as he's been into books since birth, but phonics gave him the tools to know where to go with a new word rather than looking at the shape of a new word and not knowing how best to tackle reading it. Most children access reading quickly with phonics. It does have its faults, but lack of speed isn't one of them.

This raises a whole other arguement about what reading means!

I suspect your son did not understand much of what he read, he was really just decoding.

That is why children do reading comprehension tests at school and any reading age given is based on that, rather than the ability to say out loud the words on the paper.

dizziblonde

milliebear00001 wrote: »

Phonics were almost certainly how you were taught to read, albeit by another name (or no name as sounding out and blending sounds has been around pretty much since time immemorial). Try reading a word like this without knowing any letter sounds:

antidisestablishmentarianism.

If you don't know the sounds, you can't read any word you've never come across before - bottom line.

Nah I was of the era when whole words and flashcards were the fad of the day. Only learnt some phonics because my mother taught me it!

milliebear00001

dizziblonde wrote: »

Nah I was of the era when whole words and flashcards were the fad of the day. Only learnt some phonics because my mother taught me it!

Yes, my brother was too - flashcard method I mean in the eighties. He had extra help and finally became a free reader when he was 10/11. He would not have received even this help, had my mum not made a massive fuss (and been very aware that he couldn't put sounds together as she (and I) had been taught!)

bylromarha

JC9297 wrote: »

This raises a whole other arguement about what reading means!

I suspect your son did not understand much of what he read, he was really just decoding.

That is why children do reading comprehension tests at school and any reading age given is based on that, rather than the ability to say out loud the words on the paper.

That being one of the major fault with phonics...

With my son though, you suspect wrongly

I still think flashcards have a place - how else do children access key common words like the, you, said etc?

And Michael Rosen is not a fan of phonics - he feels it stops you enjoying reading for readings sake. Have you seen he's put a foreword in a large collection of books which "has the emphasis firmly on enjoying the process of learning to read"?

Think he's a bit fed up of Ruth Miskin's mantra :rotfl:

Jojo_the_Tightfisted

purplepardalis wrote: »

That's not true. Myself and my generation managed perfectly well without phonics. In fact, I'd be happy to stick my neck out and say that levels of literacy were higher.
Also, I want to teach my children a second language at an early age. Phonics won't help.

Doesn't it? Just because they represent a slightly different sound doesn't mean it doesn't work - the child just learns that when speaking French, German, whatever, that -ent sounds like ahne instead of eh ne te and -zig sounds like zhische rather than zer ee geh (well, with my accent it does anyway - and I haven't starved on holiday yet). The only trouble is where you know that the word is of French/German/Japanese origin or the person you are talking to is - you find yourself automatically switching to the pronunciation required in the other language!

Works for older languages too - I can read Chaucer aloud and be understood by someone who never studied it.


Maybe it's just me....

Jojo_the_Tightfisted

JC9297 wrote: »

This raises a whole other arguement about what reading means!

I suspect your son did not understand much of what he read, he was really just decoding.

That is why children do reading comprehension tests at school and any reading age given is based on that, rather than the ability to say out loud the words on the paper.

Why I was marked down for not being able to say the words (I stammered) even though I knew full well what the words were and what they meant?