A few days ago my eldest daughter, Helen, came home from school with some homework. She had to write some sentences including split vowel digraphs.
I’ve spent an awful lot of my life writing for a living and this was an entirely new concept to me. I quizzed my daughter and asked her to describe a split vowel digraph. She did it perfectly.
For those unaware, a split vowel diagraph is when two vowels appear in a word creating a sound such as “oe” or “ae” but are split by a consonant. One example would be vote or amaze (the ae at the end, not the aa at the beginning).
Shortly afterwards my wife returned home. I just had to tell Mrs Adams about the task Helen had brought home from school. Mrs Adams was as stunned as I was as Helen casually trotted out her knowledge.
Helen is in year one. To me, this seems like an amazingly complex concept for her to understand and be working on. As regards her numeracy, she also doing times tables and she really enjoys it.
I can’t decide what’s happening here. I have fears that we are in danger of pushing of pushing our children too far and too fast educationally.
On the other hand, I have nothing but the greatest respect for teachers. Helen never seems stressed and enjoys her learning. Is it simply that educational practice has improved significantly since my school days? Does that year in reception class from the age of four make a massive difference to what the kids achieve in later years?
I really can’t decide. At this stage, I think it is the latter. I am aware of older children in Helen’s school being given work they struggle with. Maybe this is a problem we will experience at a later time. For now, however, I am simply impressed with what my daughter has learned.
Pic credit: Copyright free image from the US National Archives and Records Administration.
8 thoughts on “In praise of modern teaching methods”
Hi John
Our daughter, although a bit older than yours is in year 9 now but comes home with homework that baffled me. Especially some of the maths stuff. Stuff we never did at school. She asks me for help and I’m lost and end up having to tell her to ask her teacher. It makes me feel a bit inadequate sometimes that I cannot do that stuff. Maths was never my strong point, but seeing the way they have them doing it now leaves me lost.
I’ve seen the maths homework done by the Year Three kids and it absolutely terrifies me! Thanks for commenting.
I remember being surprised at the split digraphs too! But the kids understood it perfectly, so I just ran with it at home. It seems to be a rule which works and helps them learn to read. I do think it’s incredible the progress they make through primary school and even third time round I’m still amazed by what my daughter knows and can do.
I was amazed enough when she cam home talking about digraphs, but this split vowel digraph thing took it to a whole new level! Think it must be the way phonics are taught.
no this one passed me by as well, as did a lot of English as it was never my strong point, (though I did manage a BA.) Maths yes, English no – so I went and read bit more – this explains if well for anyone who may be interested http://www.theschoolrun.com/what-magic-e
Thanks ELain, I’m going ot have a read of that blog post!
I love the fact that I’ve just learned a whole new grammatical concept in my 40s! We definitely didn’t learn about this at school. English language was my favourite subject but split vowel digraphs were not on the curriculum. The mainstream media narrative is always that standards are slipping. Clearly some children are receiving a better education than previous generations. I look forward to baby B teaching me something new in a few years.
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