Missing phonograms in the phonetic reading cards?

Question:

There are about 5-6 phonograms in the sandpaper letters/moveable alphabet that don't appear to be included in your level 3 cards but are in the phonogram lists. Can I ask why these have been left out of the cards for reading practice?

Answer: 

Great question. We have a high bar for which words we can and can't include in our phonetic reading cards (level 3). The words must:

1. Be completely phonetic except for the phonogram
2. Have a typical pronunciation of that phonogram
3. Be a noun that is easily pictured
4. Feature vocabulary that is known to the child (no obscure terms here)

And, we need at least six words for each phonogram that follow those rules so the students get several examples of how the phonogram works in real life.

We scoured the Oxford English dictionary and other dictionaries to find words that met all these criterion. As it turns out, there just aren't enough words for each of the key sound phonograms. So we couldn't feature them. (But if you think we've missed some words, please let us know!)

I wondered if I should make smaller packets for a few of the phonograms so I asked my mentor teacher trainers about this. They put my mind at ease. They reminded me that the purpose of these materials is to build the children's reading confidence by helping them see how phonograms fit into words. We can do that by offering them many examples. We don't have to offer every possible example, just enough to build their confidence and help them see the pattern. 

We did make an exception for 'th'; our 'th' packet includes non-phonetic but common spelling variations (like the silent b in thumb). But we recommend that you save that packet for the last one you introduce in level 3. We want the children to have confidence in reading phonograms before we add in those types of spelling complexities. 

An interesting fact is that the phonetic reading cards were the first Maitri Learning material I made. I did so because my own students were constantly asking me to "check" their phonetic object box work. They needed a control of error so they could check their own work.

But when I went to buy these materials, I couldn't find any set that was made to the high standards set out in my AMI Montessori training. One of the biggest problems was that the objects and cards that other companies made did not exclusively picture nouns. They included actions. But actions can not clearly be depicted in an image; they need video/movement. When we try to show an action as an image, we are inherently requiring the young child to abstract and interpret. But if we are trying to isolate the difficulty of reading, we don't want to require complex interpretations. We want them to focus all of their energy on the task of reading without adding to their cognitive load. 

You can find out more information by reading our Ask Maitri blog post on Which phonograms are the right phonograms.

Let us know if this makes sense and agrees with what you've seen in your experience.