Phonics taught at Kindies here??

S

Saisaiii

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I just found out all kindies in Australia now teach phonics only rather than alphabets. Is this the same case in Hong Kong or only certain schools teach phonics?
 
Teaching phonics is vital to learning to read. The letter names become more important later, but the letter sounds will kick start reading. I don't know about all kindies, but certainly the ones I have experience of are teaching phonics.
 
even i was taught to read using phonics. i remember in grade one it was my favourite class... that was in 1970s canada.

as far as i'm aware many places teach BOTH the letter names AND the phoneme. i know that's what i do anyway...
 
Not all kindergartens in HK teach phonics....and even those that do don't necessarily know what they are doing and don't follow a systematic programme.

A lot of the time, the teachers do what they know-there isn't always a systematic programme.

Most of the international schools (and by those I mean those international kindergartens affiltrated with an international schls, not the local kindergartens that put 'international' in their name) are now following a systematic phonics programme.

It is always worth asking the school if they do/do not and what phonics programme they use.
Letterland, for example, is one phonics programme that is now considered outdated.
Any school worth their salt should now be using a synthetic phonics programme.

In the UK and Australia phonics has taken a lot longer to catch on, than it has in the States and Canada. In 1980s England I was never taught phonics. And there are still plenty of schs there now who are scrambling to introduce it.
 
It's also worth noting that most educators and phonics experts do not advise teaching phonics to children under the age of four....the general idea being that children before this age are generally not ready to grasp the concepts (although very bright children may be the exception) and 'force feeding' children phonics before they are ready may only turn them off reading.

It is also important that children are taught the correct phenome sound.....teaching the wrong one can do more harm than good.
Having heard how some local children prononuce the phenomes I am a little worried at the teaching of phonics in some schs!
 
becky is right. our little guy is learning phonics in P1. at ESF kindy they just focused on knowing their alphabet and a bit of writing.
 
Phonics can be taught at an early age, as long as it is approached in a fun way. The problem is often that school's take too long to do it and children are still using the scheme at a much later age than they should be. The idea behind schemes like Letterland and Jolly Phonics is that they should be taught at a reasonable pace, so that children no longer need to refer to the characters in the scheme, but can identify the phoneme from the written letter and from there move onto digraphs etc.
 
Jools is right....phonics works best, I think, when taught everyday in sequence according to the programme.

Whereas sending a two year to a phonics class once a week is largely a waste of time!!
 
yep... fully agree. i teach a VERY little bit of phonics in a playgroup. i don't take children in the "phonics" class until they are at least 3.5 yrs old.
 
my girl is 3.5 yrs old now and I just let her to join a phonics class which will be started in mid of this month. Is it too early for her?

She loves to learn Chinese words but has not much interest in learning English (she has not yet recognized all the alphabets)...
 
i think that she should be ok, if the phonics is taught in a fun and interesting way by a native speaker.

otherwise, you will be wasting your money.
 
It is important that the teacher knows and understands the phonics programme they are implementing....and it is also important that they are able to prononuce the phenomes properly.....this is not something a native teacher necessarily knows!!

For phonics to really work you have to do it everyday, and constantly reinforce it....so if you know what programme your daughters class will be using it's good to have it at home too, so you can help her out. However you must make sure you can also prononuce the phenomes correctly.
 
What I meant was be able to say the letter sounds properly.....they should be said the same way regardless of accent....e.g. a lot of people over stress the sound, when a lot of them should be almost whispered....it's difficult to explain this by writing!
 
My college lecturer used to call it adding the 'schwar'. What she meant was, lets take the sound 's', if you add the schwar, then actually say 'su'. When you say 'su' you can hear two phonemes 's' and 'u'. This can cause great confusion especially when using phonics for spelling, which is why you have to make sure you pronounce the phonemes correctly.
 
except that the "r" sound is different in the UK than it is in Canada.... that DOES matter what accent you have.

i found it amusing that the british teacher pronounced the words "stalk" and "stork" exactly alike, when to me, a canadian, they sound very different.
 
can start early

As one who has been trained in multiple phonics curriculum and have studied early childhood education, you can start kids off in phonics as early as 2 yrs old and yield results. Believe it or not, you might even get better results if you start early.

I won't endorse any particular place or system, but these factors DO MATTER. As you're looking into this, you might want to make sure you the instructor is either American (or Canadian) accent or UK accent. This changes things a bit. American is probably best since it follows phonics rules a bit more.

Also, phonics systems do matter too. The most common in hk is Jolly Phonics followed by Letterland. Both are decent, but not so great compared to more advanced and proven effective systems that have come out from other publishers. And JP is British so just know that it's already biased for the British Accent in multiple cases.
 
I have to laugh at 'educator's comments.
Phonics is about everyday speech sounds being linked to a visual stimuli. Hence, what children hear at home is going to be as much of (probably more!) an influence than whether a teacher is Australian, Canadian or English. Not much point ufssing over whther the teacher is Canadian or UK if the child hears Indian/Cantonese/manadrin accebted English at home - that's the accent they'll grow up with. Good phonic instruction can be interventionalist in its nature, and certaibly certain word pronounciation can be modified......

Actually,there is research arguing that that Irish has the pronounciation closest to a 'pure' phonic concept. If anyone wants their kids to learn English and send them to Ireland, be my guest!
 
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I think the general consensus is that Letterland is largely outdated.

And the best phonics programmes are those that teach 'synthetic phonics,' e.g. Jolly Phonics.

If you plan to teach your own child phonics at hme, then it is best to find out what programme/method will be used in their primary sch and go with that, so that there is consistency in their teaching and learning.

It would also be worth taking a course/studying phonics, and the teaching and learning of it, to make sure you are doing the best thing for your child.

And ultimately to keep reading, reading and reading to your child!
 
Agreed 100% about the reading. And not just books - street signs, the cereal packet, the labels on the milk - everything that makes them understand that words contain the world. :)
 
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