All About Teaching and Learning Phonics

[siak]

sean wife:

HI Tamarind,


Like many mummies here, I am also getting my kids (coming to 2.5 yrs old) to read the P&J series based on you good recommendation. I would say they have been pretty co-operative when motivated with their favourite food and can ‘read’ level 5 now. I say ‘read’ because although they can technically read out the words, I am not sure if they can really understand the storyline. They can recognize the words mainly based on sight reading and I think they can remember new words quite fast (but tend to get confused with they, the, there…).

Sean wife, your kids at 2.5 years can read level 5 now, very impressed :salute:

My younger girl (now at 3 year and 4 months) seems not interested in P&J. She just finished at 3B, but everytime I ask her to read, she does not show her interest. She will take her own sweet time to read, and with her soft voice, and she tends to do funny funny thing while she is reading it. I see her like that also feel very agitated. :x But when she reads chinese books, she seems very happy and quickly takes the book and read out loud.

I guess P&J story is too boring for her.

[sean wife]

Hi Siak,


Their level of interest varies…sometimes very soft and draggy and funny tone also. But so far, whipping out their favourite pokky stick usually works wonders…they even want to use the stick to point to the words and read…but seriously, i m not sure i am on the right track as there seems to be problems also if the kids recognizes too many words just by sight reading alone…??

[tamarind]

maltbibi,

You can try these books :

The Complete Adventures of Curious George by Margret & H.A. Rey

By Dr Suess :
Green eggs and ham
The cat in the hat
The cat in the hat comes back
One fish two fish
Hop on Pop

The complete tales of Winnie the pooh by A.A. Milne

Madeline by Ludwig Bemelmans (and other books in the series)

Little Miss Collection
Mr Men collection

All the above should be easy to read for a 4 year old who can read book 5a.

The Complete tales of Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter have very beautiful illustrations but the words can be a little difficult.

All the books are available in the library.


sean wife,
Reading level 5 at 2.5 years old is certainly very impressive ! I use the same strategy as you, by using small rewards. But not always sweets, most of the time the reward is watching his favourite DVDs, which are the Leapfrog DVDs

It is perfectly OK if they can learn and remember most words by sight. Phonics can be taught at any time, before or after they have learnt many words by sight, depending on the ability of the child.

Some kids, like my boy, may seem to be learning words by sight in that he does not try to decode the words as he reads, but actually phonics is helping him to remember the words (even though he may not be showing it)

Phonics is very important for spelling, so we need to train our kids to be able listen to a word and spell it out. Since your kids are good at learning to read by sight, then you should concentrate on teaching them to spell using phonics.

For example, write each of these letters on one small piece of paper :

a c m t

Mix them up, give it to the child. Then say \"c-a-t\", speak slowly so that the beginning and end sounds are clearly sounded, and then ask the child to pick out the letters and arrange correctly on her own. Practice every day until the child is able to spell any 3 letter word by listening to the sound. Then move on to 4 letter words starting with \"br\", \"cr\", etc. My blog includes the list of words : http://tamarindphonics.blogspot.com

Remember to teach them the technique of listening to the sounds, not by memorizing the spelling.

As to whether to continue the Peter and Jane series, it is all up to you. You may want to go slower. Peter and Jane can work wonders for kids who can learn reading by sight words very well. Kids can progress very quickly, but they may not be able to understand the story, especially when they reach the higher levels. You can also try some of the books that I recommended to Maltbibi above and then go back to Peter and Jane later.

[starz]

Hi Tamarind,


Thank you so much for your always encouraging reply and advise.
Guess i have to just continue my child on ladybird til level 10 to 11. For Think for the time being, i will hold on Roald Dahl's books.

Btw i think i hv been very slow in phonics so i guess i leave it to Montessori phonics. But at the meantime, if i have the time, will continue to teach her. So far we are at Vowel O only, completed A and I

Also is 4 letter blending difficult? cos i myself not sure how to pronounce the bl, cl, n etc. Also how to explain the Silent E to my child?

Lastly, from your spelling games suggestions, I actually ever play this game with her before but oni a few times. give her a \"t c n\" ask her arrange. so far she is able to. shall i follow the Vowel A, I, O n etc to teach her tis way?

also just ask to arrange, tats it? not verbally say it out n spell out rite? Or need them to write out so that we test whether they know?

Thank you.

[sean wife]

Hi Tamarind,


Thanks for your reply. Actually they are far from fluent when reading the P&J now, each page can take 2-3 minutes. And they ‘read’ without much consideration to the punctuation and tone etc. They have enjoyed Curious George since babies and that were probably the longest stories they can sit through when they were young…I also borrow Dr Seuss from the library, but must say that some of the stories are really long and it is difficult to make them read through the whole book at one sitting…Usually they are only willing to read the first few pages and I will have to finish the rest of the book. And as they read really slow now, it’s really hard to have the patience to listen them read for long…I like the suggestion of introducing spelling through sounding out the words, will try that out and see if I have any success…

[mummy of 2]

DS1 has been reading \"Room on the Broom\" by Julia Donaldson after watching the play. He can read about 80% of the book from memory. It may be good to watch plays/cartoon/DVDs adapted from books, and then ask the child to read the book. They are more likely to be interested and can understand the story better

[pea]

tamarind:

pea,
Where can we find the Sesame Street DVDs in Singapore ?

I was worried that my girl will feel bored in school, but she has not complained. She likes the music, arts, and sports lessons very much, so she likes going to school.

I spoke to my girl's English teacher, she said that although the books are very easy for my girl, she still pays attention, and spends her time quietly observing the other classmates. I let her read more interesting and challenging books at home so she can continue to learn more.

Hi Tamarind.

You can find Sesame Street DVD's at Popular.

Your girl is very guai leh. Yes, you should continue to challenge her at home yourself.

[starz]

hi tamarind,


Another thing, u suggest we teach spelling using phonics, how about other words like girl, farm, tree which is not under phonetics? how to teach spelling of these words?

Thank you.

[tamarind]

starz:

hi tamarind,


Another thing, u suggest we teach spelling using phonics, how about other words like girl, farm, tree which is not under phonetics? how to teach spelling of these words?

Thank you.

starz,
There are many words in English that are not phonetic. So we cannot teach kids to spell every word entirely using phonics. But phonics can at least help them remember the beginning and ending, so there is less to remember. Kids who knows phonics very well, especially how to join 3 letters and 4 letters to form words, will naturally know how to use the technique to help them spell these words.

For example, the word \"girl\", my boy knows that it starts with \"g\" and ends with \"l\", all he has to remember is \"ir\" in the middle. It helps 50% and that is already very good because he does not have a good memory. I don't need to teach him how to remember it.

In phonics, \"ir\" is taught as a sound and kids will learn how to read all the words which have \"ir\" in the middle, like \"dirt\", \"shirt\", \"skirt\", etc. Take a look at this page :
http://www.atozphonics.com/phonograms.html

The problem is that few kids can remember all those phonics rules. If we try to teach them too complicated rules, they cannot understand anyway.

Personally I think that knowing how the basic technique of joining 3 letters to form words, and also 4 letter words containing \"br\", \"cr\", etc are good enough to help kids tremendously in spelling.

[tamarind]

pea:

Hi Tamarind.

You can find Sesame Street DVD's at Popular.

Thanks pea