My DD is struggling with Phonics

Itismehonest

I'm from the years before they started to mess around with how to learn to read & write so please forgive a dinosaur asking what may seem a dumb question.

Do children get taught the "rules of spelling" now? You know, the "i before e" sort of memory aid.

A previous poster pointed out that many youngsters have bad spelling because of the use of txt-type. It's true.
Another reason can be mispronunciation when speaking.
Sometimes just broadening their vocabulary & pronunciation can help.

As to the writing side, even the most educated with excellent spelling can have poor handwriting. There are lots of reasons for this but if your DD feels uptight about her writing (which includes her spelling) it certainly won't help.

marisco_2

As your daughter is a good reader it doesn't sound to me as if she has problems with phonics as such.

Lots of children benefit from tactile/kinesthetic learning. To improve her handwriting do away for now with pens or pencils. Encourage her to form letters in sand, shaving foam, water, on the back of her hand. Holding out her arm and air writing is a really good way to help children to memorise how to form letters.

There is a good game you can play to help children remember spellings of words. Sit opposite each other. Using flash cards show the child a word by holding the card up by your right ear. She will be looking slightly left at the word, this sends stronger recognition messages to the brain.

Any longer words she struggles with break down into smaller portions. For instance the word snowman could be sounded as sn - ow - man. It is often far less daunting when approached in little bits.

The SENCO at her school should be a useful contact. Online sites like educationcity.com are also brilliant for helping with letter sounds, word building and word recognition.

kezlou

Please excuse the appalling spelling on my post i am using my phone to type but it has predictive text on which i can't turn off.

What i mean to say is that my 12 yr old and my 8 yr old son both had problems with phonics. My 12 yr old was so far behind on the scale of spelling that it was unreal. My 8 yr old is the same can easily pass a year 6 test when asked to answer a question verbally but when asked to write and spell he is more of a 4 yr old.

My 12 yr old as i previously said was a level 1 in year 4 primary school which is appalling, but he could read The Chronicles of Narnia by himself unaided. It was only when he started year 5 did we actually get any help and shot up from level 1 to level 4 which is amazing and shocked everyone. He left year 6 with the highest grade in the area in which we live a 5b in Science, his handwriting is appalling and is spelling isn't great but he's doing well and is now completing year 8/9 maths and basic physics in his first year of secondary school.

What i have to point is though if you give your child extra help and they get to the point where they cope with the work by themselves in school, they won't receive any extra input. I know this because that's what happened to me with my eldest, i literally got sick of the school just doddering around and put my eldest through a strict regime of five minutes every day of reading writing etc They wouldn't test him for dyslexia as he was able to keep up with his peers, both of children have dyslexic traits, my youngest almost definitely has. But they can succeed if they are determined enough.

good luck x

mumofjusttwo

I think that phonics is wonderful for the early stages were there is a sound for each letter as in c a t but when child have to look at sounds such as ear as in tear or bear that this can cause confusion. My son is one of these. In reception and year one he had no problems as the were basic phonics but when you have a variety of diffent ways to produce sounds it gets much more complicated. I tell hm to try and then to look at what he has spelt and see if it looks like the word he is speels g as he can read it fine.
I also told my son and his teacher that he needs to focus on his speeding or letter formation before he starts on joined up writing as I can not read it when he does!

milliebear00001

I haven't read all the posts, so apologies if I'm repeating others.

I'm a primary school teacher and wanted to add that good readers (which your daughter clearly is) do not always spell well. Phonics understanding can help children who are poor spellers learn the alphabetic code upon which written English is based.

Simply put, phonics means the letter combinations which represents all the sounds that make words. So, for example, c-a-t sounds are blending to produce the word cat. Unfortunately, there are many combinations of letters that make the sound 'c' and all the other sounds as well!

Good spelling, means you know all the possible ways of using letters to make sounds, and crucially, you remember which choice you need to make. You can help by encouraging your daughter to think about the possible ways she could spell a word, by thinking about the sounds there are in that word. She will then need to learn which letters are appropriate in each word. This is a tall order for many people (including adults) as not all have a very good visual memory for the shapes of words etc. Practise (and a dictionary) will help, as will learning the 'patterns' of words (e.g. collections of words that follow the same spelling patterns).

The full English alphabetic code can be found here:
http://www.phonicsinternational.com/unit1_pdfs/The%20English%20Alphabetic%20Code%20-%20complete%20picture%20chart.pdf

milliebear00001

Itismehonest wrote: »

I'm from the years before they started to mess around with how to learn to read & write so please forgive a dinosaur asking what may seem a dumb question.

Do children get taught the "rules of spelling" now? You know, the "i before e" sort of memory aid.

A previous poster pointed out that many youngsters have bad spelling because of the use of txt-type. It's true.
Another reason can be mispronunciation when speaking.
Sometimes just broadening their vocabulary & pronunciation can help.

As to the writing side, even the most educated with excellent spelling can have poor handwriting. There are lots of reasons for this but if your DD feels uptight about her writing (which includes her spelling) it certainly won't help.

I before e is not taught as there are more exceptions than reliable examples.

Spelling is now generally taught by learning patterned spellings, so we look at (for example) groups of words that are spelled in the same way, and that are regularly used in everyday writing. For example, children are expected to learn that a word that ends with an 'e' (such as 'like') will often 'drop' its last letter when it changes form to 'liking', or that a word that ends with a consonant, like 'stop', will often double its last letter when it changes tense to 'stopped'.

kelfen

I wouldn't bother with cursive (joined up writing) at the mo, cos it doesn't really matter when you get to secondary school an find your own style.

Maybe sit her down, and get her to do her letters in a fun way - felt pen, pencil, finger paints, clay, computer, touch screen phone (I use the ABC Tracing program on Android - think it costs a couple quid but it is priceless for doing upper/lower case, numbers and some shapes).

Stop when she's tired, but praise her for what she CAN do - stickers, etc.

Break it down - so she'll work on her letters, then smaller words, then bigger words, THEN the rules - she's not taking too much in but she is still learning

(I'm a private tutor, and I have one lad who has ADHD/dyslexia/possible ASD, and for the first time since starting to teach him he actually sought me out to help him spell the names of creatures on the FB game he plays on his 10 minute break - so the techniques do work, they just take time!)

Encourage her to read as much as she can, so she gets used to seeing all the different letter combinations and sounding them out - possibly Roald Dahl/similar books she likes as they don't have too many words, can be read together and still feel an accomplishment.