Phase 2 words

The phonics approach has worked really well so far for my 2-year old. Having a limited, fixed set of sounds is reliable and manageable. But now we have pretty much reached the limits of my initial brief. Until recently we stuck to words which are strictly phonetic using only about 25 sounds (that is, one per letter of the alphabet, minus one as she only knows the hard /k/ sound for both C and K). Stand is about as hard as it gets. She was reading 60 or 70 such words without needing any context or clues. I can hardly even think of any more words that we actually use commonly and which fit these rules, and we are getting a teeny bit bored of peg, frog, plum, hand, etc. It’s time to move on.

I have had to think hard about what groups of words would be most logical to move on to. Over the past three weeks we have been adding the following groups of words. I’ve come up with six categories and three sub-categories.

• Double letters which don’t affect the sound:
  doll, bell, kiss, egg, fuss, fill, dress, 
  • Also: words ending with CK which phonetically might as well end in KK or CC:
    neck, black, pack, back, 
• Words ending in Y when it sounds like ‘ee’:
  mummy, funny, happy, nappy, silly, bunny;
• Words with a vowel+R which gives that lengthening effect, and where the R doesn’t really sound like an R (in my British English):
  car, arm, dark, fork, star, start;
• Words where the vowels vary slightly from my initial strict phonics rules:
  open, put, full, bag; 
  • Certain diphthongs:
    owl, toy, boy, way; 
  • Words containing the schwa sound:
    basket, lemon, melon;
• Very short words which are written strangely:
  I, is;
• Words with ‘sh’:
  fish, shop, shorts, flash, splash, push.

I didn’t follow a specific order as I think they are fairly equal in complexity (save the first which seems easiest). I just let myself be guided by her interests. Some types can be taught as rhyming words which of course adds to the fun. Once you combine all these patterns the vocabulary becomes vast. Making sentences becomes much easier. We’ve also been writing menus (egg and melon, anyone?) and labelling body parts and clothes on life-size drawings of people chalked on the terrace.

Just now she was talking about un singe with her dad, so I wrote MONKEY on the edge of a drawing. From the other side of the paper she read it upside down in a flash.

We still work our way around confusing words, so the girl in a dress wears socks and sandals instead of shoes, which could easily be confused with shows, but arms can have fingers and elbows since halfway through the word the reader has already guessed the meaning – just as we adults do when reading. Needless to say none of our chalk ladies have tights yet.

Next up will be ‘ch’ for chin, ‘oo’ as in moon, and soon enough we’ll have to include long vowels (e.g. face). But by that time she will be “sight-reading” some words, and even getting context from the sentence, instead of deciphering each word entirely separately.

To bridge the gap between the cat-dog phase and the famed irregularity and randomness of English spelling, we make sure to acknowledge that things are not always written exactly as they are said. She’ll need to grasp that pretty well in order to read even very basic French, anyway. More on that can of worms later.

I suppose you could say I was indirectly influenced by Mullarney’s book on the issue of letter sounds versus names. I say indirectly as I remember being taught this way myself by my mum who had read this book, so I am really just repeating my own experience. As with teaching any new skill, you need to make the information clear, simple and bite-sized. It seems to me eminently simpler to teach a child something like the sound ‘huh’ for the letter H, than to teach her the name aitch and then have her learn the sound that it makes as a second stage. Even the vowel names don’t match the sounds they make in easy words (m-a-t, not m-ay-t, and p-i-g, not p-eye-g, for example).

Of course, I could just see it this way because that’s how I learnt myself. In any case, they soon pick up the letter names in addition. In fact just learning the ABC song quickly teaches them the names, and a child who knows the sounds will make the links in no time at all. I’ve tried to avoid the letter names and yet the last time I began writing ‘WET’ on the terrace, my daughter immediately said “double-you…”.

So for the letter C, do you say ‘kuh’ or ‘sss’ as in city? For U, do you choose the ‘u’ of put, of plug or of puke? There are around 44 sounds for just 26 letters (fewer sounds in General American pronunciation). I tried to choose the sounds which are more common, or less confusing. Like Mullarney, I opted for the short vowels and the hard consonant sounds, so ‘kuh’ not ‘sss’ for C, and Y as a consonant not a vowel. There’s plenty of time for learning the multiple sounds associated to various letters. I also plumped for ‘eks’ for X (or rather ‘əks’ since the schwa blends better with other letters) and ‘kwuh’ for Q since I figure the most common usage for X is in the middle or at the end of words and Q is only rarely anything but the ‘qu’ of queen (in English, at least; French will have to wait).

The aim is to keep the building blocks as simple possible. Having learnt the sounds, a child can begin reading phonetically, but only if they are ready. Only at the right time for that child. I still remember a clear plastic bib we had in Beirut when my Beirut baby was about 22 months old. It had a picture of a cow and the word ‘MOO’. It had seen us through an awful lot of porridge and lasagne, and the last O had a part missing so it looked like a C backwards. If my Beiruti came across it on from the reverse side, with the letters showing through backwards, she would ‘read’ it nonetheless. I would hear her spell out the letters: ‘Cuh, Oh, Muh,’ she would say, followed by a self-assured ‘Moo!’

She may have felt she was reading, but of course it shows that although she knew the letters forwards, backwards, and upside down, she was making no actual link between them and the sound of a word. The fact that learning all the letters wasn’t immediately followed by reading was of no concern to me. Her level of interest showed when the right time was.

reading phase 1

It has been six weeks since my Beiruti began sounding out her first words. She is now surprisingly confident with short phonetic words following a simple consonant-vowel-consonant pattern. I have even thrown in a fair few simple four-letter words like FROG and CLAP, as well as plurals, like CATS. She is very methodical in pronouncing one sound after the other and it is just amazing to think that she is actually reading. Within limits of course.

And to be honest I’ve intentionally kept those limits quite strict. I’m thoroughly against overloading kids. I think it’s awful that primary school kids have as much homework as I had at the beginning of secondary school.

Now I know that some people would think it crazy to try to teach a two-year old to read. In truth, I would soon have abandoned the idea had she not taken such a lively interest in her first cardboard cut-out letters aged 13 months. I would simply have written off Mullarney’s experience (and that of many other early readers out there) thinking her kids were a bunch of geniuses with little to do with real people. But her fascination with them spurred me on and the journey from letters to words has been simple, fun and rewarding for both of us.

However, even though I am delighted by her progress, I have no intention of rushing things. We may only do three words one day, and none the next. If we do lots of words, they are interspersed with active play and plenty of interaction.

So far I’ve restricted myself to proposing ONLY words which are phonetically regular, with no diphthongs (e.g. cow) or digraphs (e.g. fish) or other complications. That rules a lot out. Even short words like “no”, “to” or “go” are out. So is “car”, which might work with an American accent but not so well with the unpronounced British R. So is “bag” which for some reason has a longer ‘a’ sound than ‘rag’ in my accent.

Common sense also dictates that I only use everyday words she knows well. We’ve done PAN but not PIN, as those are tucked away in my sewing kit and there won’t be the click of recognition when she reads it. Nor can she easily go and get one to put next to the word, like she does with PEG or PEN.

This does take a lot of self-censoring. If she asks me to write “mummy” I do MUM, and even if we come across a word I know she’ll enjoy which appears simple, like BANANA, I resist the urge to ask her what it says. (None of the As in banana sound like the A in CAT.) I don’t want her to feel reading is difficult, or beyond her. She might manage to work out longer or more irregular words, especially with a bit of context. But even if she might guess them correctly, I don’t want to push her into guessing. I want her to KNOW what she’s doing. (Although this might just be what suits her personality, while other kids would enjoy more guesswork.)

Confidence is vital, which is why I introduced the letters very gradually in the first place. Not only was she at ease with all of them before we started even trying words, she could read all kinds of fonts and would pounce on letters anywhere from the drains under her feet to store bags to graffiti.

Now, though, she’s outgrowing this rather restrictive brief. We’ve pretty much reached the limits of a strict phonics approach and need to throw in some “whole language”. She wants to read words like ‘I’ and ‘he’ and ‘for’ just to keep up with her desire to read stories. She wants phrases, not just words. Soon enough it will be out of my hands and there’ll be no holding her back.

Soon I’ll share an easy reading game we play to make reading active and meaningful (read: fun). It can work for preschoolers as well as toddlers, and it’s been a great success.