Friday 18 January 2013

Split diagraph anybody?

I learnt this week how to play Full Circle. I was taught by the 8 year old I spend half an hour with each week helping with spelling and reading. He’d told the TA that it was easy peasy and he could thus teach me to play. “That’s great,” I said as she left, “What’s a split diagraph?”
The game involved writing down a word that featured a split diagraph and then changing a letter at a time to make a new word for about ten goes, and we won if we got back to the word we started on. This required a bit of planning I felt, but he was pleased when we ‘won’. He couldn’t really explain what one was, but he could write down an example.
And what’s a split diagraph? When my girls were learning to read and write it was a ‘magic e’. I can’t remember whether I called it anything when I learned to read, but then, I was reading Ladybird books about Janet and John. The whole phonics thing is new to me. I think I, and my girls, were lucky: we learnt to read by osmosis, being read to for as long as any of us can remember. As our vocabulary expanded we recognised what a new word might be from what we knew already, and we did a lot of reading!
I know that an e at the end of a word usually changes at least one letters sound, but I had no idea until Wednesday that this was a split diagraph i.e. two vowel sounds have been split by a consonant… Do they really need to know this? Does it help? Too much information! Well I think so.

I have a lovely picture of my snowy garden but blogger doesn't seem to want me to upload a picture for the second week running... Anybody know why?

8 comments:

libby said...

Can't help with the photo/blogger problem...sorry....and as for the split thingummybob......crikey who knew reedin/ritin was so complicated!
ps we have an original Ladybird painting/book illustration ...we loved the books.

hausfrau said...

There are still ladybird books in this house, but no Janet and John.

hausfrau said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
A Time for Stitching said...

I agree - too much information. I'm sure, as children, we knew this rule without needing to know the name for it. The more I hear about how children are taught today, the more I dispair and wonder what educators are thinking. It seems they are overthinking teaching methods and discarding tried and tested ones. And never mind Janet and John, when my children were learning to read, political correctness had just started to go mad, and it was Ramu and Sita!
Btw can't help with the photo prob except to tell you that I had no issues loading mine to blogger recently, sorry.
Teresa x

Curry Queen said...

Someone else (sorry can't remember who) also commented recently about having problems with Blogger and photos, so it might be worth Googling it. As for split diagraphs - is it me or does this level of detail take all the joy out of learning?

Damien said...

Hi,

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We have a large customer base of clients prepared to pay to display discrete adverts, contextually matched to the content of the page on high quality sites like yours, and this can be a great way to generate an income without compromising your website.

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janicebotterill said...

BTW - have had similar email from Damien - think it might be spam...a split diagraph sounds very uncomfortable.

hausfrau said...

Damien's plans seemed a bit unlikely to me too. Still don't know why I couldn't load a picture, but it seems to be working today!