Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments VS learners and phonetics

I'm thinking the Monty Python pronunciation of "silly English ken-ig-hit" by the French knight...

I don't get the "we looked at her weather balloon". The point was that it is a short e rather than, "two vowels walking together and the first says its name". Same with head.

Kn is easy, simple rule.

I watch Between the Lions with DD, where they give you Q always walks with u, or "when two vowels go a walking, the first one says its name." Kn together, K keeps silent. They repeat these little phrases. But then it gets confusing when weather and head have the short e.

They have this Dr. Nitwhite (who they call nitwit) who brings up the exceptions. Easy learning for kids to learn the rules of reading.

Ren

Nothing really to add since ds was a sight reader but still a pretty solid speller--but he had that bus! He loved it, it was one of his favorite toys when he was around 1yo.

I understand that it's an exception. With exceptions we just try to come up with mnemonics to help DD remember how to spell them. That's where our "spelling stories" come in handy.

One fun thing we did recently for just spelling in general: charades! I mentioned this on another thread so my apologies for the repeat
We just took the list of words, ds wrote them out on slips of papers so we could pick and then we all took turns acting them out - I really do feel it helped with visualizing the words later! The acts we put on were sort of like little stories to go with the words, kind of like some of the rhymes and things people have mentioned.
This was so fun we will definitely be doing this again often.

I like spelling stories, Cathy! I think that's a brilliant way to remember those exceptions!

When I was in school, my 3rd grade teacher gave us these: "My principal is my pal" and "There's 'a rat' in separate." I'm sure she gave us others, but those I remember with ease because I still use them to keep those words straight! I loved Mrs. Walker!

OK, two counts. You are right Dottie, I paraphrase. It does rhyme. Secondly, I get now weather was about spelling not phonetics.

I was connecting the dots from topic.

Thanks for all the ideas, DD has good spelling, better than phonetics.

Ren

Phonics is certainly useful, but it only gets you so far with English spelling

My DD seems to have trouble perceiving the order of letters in a word. So for her, separating a word into pieces that form smaller words (which she knows how to spell) helps a lot.

She can learn weather=we+at+her and the order of the pieces as part of a "story".

If I try to teach her, "'weather' has 'ea' in it," her spelling often comes out garbled like this: waethre

Thanks a lot for the answers

The funny thing is that DD knows the name and sound of several of the letters in both Spanish and Dutch. It is getting them within a word that gives her trouble.
(I was very surprised because she speaks three languages and is picking up on English pretty fast (she has now private lessons)).

For example: do you hear the sound 'm' in the word 'potato'? She may actually answer yes!
But if I show her the letter M she can identify it by name and sound without any problem.
If she sees the word she can figure out how to read it (well, very simple words of course), but she has to see the print.

Dutch, Spanish and German are phonetic languages, so in our case it is really useful.