Phonics taught at Kindies here??

[Saisaiii]

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?

 

[jools]

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.

 

[carang]

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...

 

[bekyboo44]

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Letterland, for example, is one phonics programme that is now considered outdated.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.

 

[bekyboo44]

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!

 

[rani]

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.

 

[jools]

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.

 

[bekyboo44]

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!!

 

[carang]

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.

 

[BonnieChan]

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)...