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Teaching Letter Sounds
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I have just started Delightful Reading with my DS3. It says not to teach letter names but sounds (such as d’ instead of dee). My confusion is with the letters that can be pronounced different ways. Different ABC books have different words for each letter so some use one sound and some another. It has to be confusing! For example this morning I started with ‘I’ for ice cream then read a book and it was ‘i’ for iguanas itching. The ‘e’ has ‘elephant eating’ so in one swoop there were two sounds for one letter. I don’t kmow how to proceed.
Thanks!
Dana
I don’t have Delightful Reading, but I did teach letter sounds rather than names. I didn’t necessarily avoid the names, but we would say “what does this one say?” or “what is this letter’s sound?” rather than “what letter is this?” And my little two (who aren’t reading yet, but have picked up on all their letters) always point out when they see letter and will call them by their sounds, though they don’t always remember the name. So, that to say, the way I handled the vowels was teaching them the short vowel sounds (since beginning readers mostly use the short vowel sounds), but also mentioning that vowels could also say their name. I don’t know if this is the “right” way 🙂 and maybe someone who uses DR will have more to offer, but this worked fine for us.
This is one point in which I gently differ from what Charlotte said.
I taught my children the letter names as well as their sounds. This was my thinking:- Some people say it is confusing, but I figured if my child could understand “This is a dog and it says ‘woof.’ ” she could understand “This is a D and it says ‘d.’ “
- The children will need to know the letter names as they progress through school and life. I can’t imagine telling someone how to spell my name, for example, without knowing the letters’ names.
- As you mentioned, some letters say more than one sound.
Now, all that to say, plenty of children have learned to read just fine following either philosophy: only letter sounds or both letter names and sounds. So do whichever you feel most comfortable with.
When I was teaching the sounds I would just say this is the letter G. It makes two sounds. GUH and JUH. When we would look at alphabet books with pictures I would just tell my son this is a GUH-tar and this is a JUH-raff. He could see that both were on the G page but sounded different. These words become sight words when reading.
sonya and ruth – you put that much clearer than I did – that is pretty much what we did too and what I was trying to say, but re-reading mine and then reading your responses makes much more sense….I obviously don’t need to post before my second cup of coffee 🙂
With my 2 oldest I taught the sounds – they learned the letter names just be being around in the world… (ie, I didn’t sit down and teach them to them…. My oldest learned the sounds first with me teaching, but already knew some names. My 2nd new almost all the letter names before I taught anything at all (I think she new most of them by the time she turned 2 without any teaching.
I taught the short letter sounds first.
That said, for my next 2, I plan to do more like what Sonya said. I suspect they will know most of the letter names from life and exposure… but will go with “the letter C says “kk”, and “ss” ”
something funny happened today that made me think of this post….one of my 3yos (who will be 4 tomorrow!!!) was arguing with his brother about a letter they saw written somewhere (it was a J). He finally said, in a rather exasperated voice….a “jay” is a type of “juh”!!! Obviously we’ve got a ways to go, but it sure made me laugh – thought I’d share the humor.
I have become more comfortable with explaining to my kids that the ‘letters’ in our alphabet ‘represent sounds’. I would tell my son that the letter ‘G’ for example represents both of the sounds ‘guh’ and ‘juh’, depending on the word. Or the letter ‘C’ can represent the ‘ss’ sound or ‘cuh’ sound, etc.
HTH.
I taught my children the letter names as well as their sounds. This was my thinking:
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