Phonics and learning to read

[mumofone]

Hi can anyone give me an idiots guide to teaching children to read? Does it all start with letter recognition and what age would this generally be done at? Is this what's known as phonics?

[Simona]

I don't think there is such a thing as an idiot guide when it comes to this subject

I would sign post you to Development Matters ...it is there in black and white...that is a good start

Google phonics and see what it recommends.
Also look up 'The Literacy Trust'
or 'I can' or the current strategy to help children improve their reading.

Your LA will probably have a good training session on this important subject

One question for you: how will you be teaching your child to read?

[bunyip]

The current trend seems to revolve around 'phonics'.

Or, as some of my client parents have observed, the complete inability to spell words of more than three letters before they reach secondary school.

The Jolly Phonics (surely "fonix" ) series is good in this respect. As with most educational publishers, they make an expensive racket out of re-issuing essentially the same books with a different cover and layout on a rolling basis. Try second hand book and auction sites for older, affordable and just-as-useful editions of the workbooks, etc.

Another handy title is (Mona McNee) C-A-T + CAT : teach your child to read with phonics Right Way Publishing. It's a bit out of synch with Jolly Phonics, but has the advantage of teaching the letters/sounds in such a way that children use similar hand movements at first, so gain confidence quickly with lots of repetitions.

[FloraDora]

This is a vast subject and I really do think it requires training ...but no matter how you approach teaching a child to read ...unless they want to you are up against a very brick wall. So in my opinion, before you go anywhere near phonics or sight vocabularly try to develop a love of reading, be a good role model and read yourself aswell as to them, encourage them to be curious about print in the environment aswell as books....develop props for books, then they play and read.....
This is a good article from the BBC outlining lots of different professionals thoughts:

Viewpoints: Teaching children to read - BBC News

Before you start with phonics read this:
https://www.gov.uk/government/upload...00281-2007.pdf

It's the Letters and sounds publication which is the basis for any published phonics scheme.
It's important to note that phonics starts with environment sounds, making sounds , singing, good listening to distinguish sounds .....before you go anywhere near rhyming and letters. Just playing with the sounds you can make and hear.

[mumofone]

So sorry i never responded to these helpful replies, just revisiting this now and remembered i had posted about this! Thanks all :-)

[BallyH]

I was reading this without looking at the 'dates' the posts were written and I thought Simona was back. I felt relieved as I enjoyed her imput. Shame she isn't.

[mumofone]

I was reading this without looking at the 'dates' the posts were written and I thought Simona was back. I felt relieved as I enjoyed her imput. Shame she isn't.

Yes sorry I resurrected the thread, takes me so long to get round to things!! I know I miss her input too, I like a nice healthy debate and it's good to have differing opinions :-)

[Maza]

As Floradora said, the Letters and Sounds is just wonderful. Everyone should have training on this. I get so, so, so exasperated with nurseries who jump straight in with teaching letter recognition before they have done any environmental sounds work with the children. There are some lovely activities in there and my classes and my daughter loved them.

Another lovely (and easy) read is 'Foundations of Literacy' by Sue Palmer and Ros Bayly. Possibly quite expensive now, but you could always buy a used copy on Amazon.

By the way, can somebody please give mean idiots guide to adding links to my posts please?!

[mama2three]

As Floradora said, the Letters and Sounds is just wonderful. Everyone should have training on this. I get so, so, so exasperated with nurseries who jump straight in with teaching letter recognition before they have done any environmental sounds work with the children. There are some lovely activities in there and my classes and my daughter loved them.

Another lovely (and easy) read is 'Foundations of Literacy' by Sue Palmer and Ros Bayly. Possibly quite expensive now, but you could always buy a used copy on Amazon.

By the way, can somebody please give mean idiots guide to adding links to my posts please?!

the way i do it is to just click copy on the web address bar of the 'link' then paste on my reply.