I'm currently struggling with anxiety so can't figure out whether I'm being over-anxious about DD's reading or whether I have legitimate concerns that I need to be talking to DD's teacher about.
DD started reception in September. They cover phonics at school and the sounds that have been covered at school come home in a phonics book. So far, all of the sounds written in DD's phonics book are sounds that she was previously confident with. I see this as a good thing as it will ensure that the sounds are really cemented in her memory and will ensure she hasn't 'missed' any sounds as she's mainly learnt them through reading at home rather than any formal order.
In addition to the phonics, DD gets 'Key Words' sheets sent home. It has been made very clear to us that the key words are to be learnt by sight and not sounded out. I understand that, at this stage, it can be helpful to learn some high frequency words by sight as they appear regularly in text and the spellings for those sounds are not learnt until later. However, the majority of the words given by the school are words that could be decoded easily with DD's current phonics knowledge.
The problem that I'm encountering is that, as DD has learnt now 80 words by sight, this seems to have made her more likely to guess words that look vaguely similar to the sight words she knows rather than to decode them.
The reading books that are sent home (she gets 2-3 per week) are the Storyworld books and are made up almost entirely of the 'sight' words that DD has learnt. The 'key words' sent home are made up of some of the year one high frequency words that turn up if I google 'high frequency words' and some words that seem specific to the Storyworld stories, so that DD can sight-read the books quickly. The books seem set up to reinforce learning these words by sight as they have lots of repetition. Each book may have one word that can be decoded and the rest have already been taught by sight (DD's not decoding quickly).
DD reads to me most days. We have Jelly and Bean Books (a gift), Songbirds and a Reading Chest subscription. I didn't mind that the books from school were as I have described, as DD races through them in a minute, so I thought of them as just something that DD needed to do and then she can choose anything from our home collection, whenever she likes. However, I've now noticed that after reading her school books, her reading of other books seems slightly worse. It's as though she loses faith in the decoding and tries to guess a lot more after having sight read the school book, which makes her reading of other books worse.
We also get books sent home that were read at school with a TA, with a comment in her reading diary such as "Excellent reading! No hesitations. Answered all questions correctly." DD does not get anything from reading this book again, but the book will not be changed until I have written a comment about it having been read again at home.
Well done if you've read this far.
In summary: Are my concerns legitimate enough to bring up with the teacher at the next parents evening in March, or do I just need to chill out and leave it (easier said than done for me atm)?
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Concerned that school reading books are hindering DDs reading progress
46 replies
Readytomakechanges · 16/01/2017 14:07
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