I'm sitting here smugly because I've been working hard again all day. I've been learning about phonics today and how to teach children to sound talk and blend. I'm now fully proficient in graphemes, phonemes, digraphs, split digraphs and trigraphs! Well, I say I've been working all day, it's only 2.30pm, but I have to pack up now to head off to school for the kiddywinkies. I had a pretty good idea of what it was all about because I am in school so much, and I've sat in on phonics stuff and taught one session myself. I've found a lot more examples today of activities to do that practice the different phonemes. Once you have the relevant word lists, and are clear on the phases and order in which to attack them, then it's really just a case of making it snappy, accessible and fun. Then also providing usable examples and applications. There is quite a big comprehension gap between recognising and reading the different phonemes, and choosing the right graphemes to use in writing. By that, I mean for example it's relatively easy to recognise a sound in a word when you sound it out, like tube, chew or Tuesday. It's much harder when you are writing, to choose the right grapheme or way of writing the sound. So a child might write tube, tewb or tueb or Chewsday even. There are sometimes rules that govern which spelling to use like the ai,ay, a_e sound. The spelling AY is often at the end of the word, like day, pay, way etc but the English language has so many exceptions (like crayon) and often we just learn through repetition that something looks right. That's why reading is so important. I wish my son found reading easier. I really must keep motivating him and reading with him, it's so important. I've found a load of stuff to do with him today. I really want to give it my best shot between now and the end of the summer, to try and help him make some significant advances and feel more confident in his abilities. Talking of reading, what reading scheme do your children follow if you have children? The books my children have to plough through at school are so outdated and boring! It's no wonder they aren't inspired. They are the Oxford Reading Tree books, and there are a few other types of books thrown in like Ginn ones, but they are all so DULL! Do you agree? What alternatives are there? Please comment with suggestions or your views if you have even the tiniest thing to say. I love a bit of feedback. Thanks you.