reading question

[loosinas]

my son has just gone into year one. his school only change reading books once a week and therefore to prevent him gnawing off his arm with boredom ive been buying sets of readers. especially over the summer for him to read. he really likes the wee read write inc ones. i think they really appeal to boys the sketches are quite quentin blake-esque. anyways, im now working in a school that uses read write inc as their phonics scheme and i can see why ! id really like to buy the flashcards to help my son with the trickier phonemes as i love the way its linked to a picture and a sentence to reinforce the words its in e.g i took a phonics set about ee and ea and the sentences really helped them know which common words took which and helped them with their writing after...... ANYWAYS, would it totally be the wring thing to do to show him these and do the sentences with him when his school uses jolly phonics? is it just gonna throw him off ? thanks ! x

[loosinas]

bumppity bump

[loosinas]

anyone help ?

[MandJane]

If it were my son, I would use whatever helps him to learn to read. I am doing a reading program with my yr 2 son and it is helping his reading so much, we still do the reading book that comes home

[jenniec79]

What about (shh) Non-scheme books

I can't imagine any extra phonics/flashcards putting him off by confusing him with the ones he's given in class, after all a phoneme is a phoneme and they'll cover the lot eventually. It just sounds a bit dull.

Get him to the library and fired up about reading in own time, let the school do the dull less exciting bit.

[virgiltracey]

I don't think you'll undo anyting. I use a mixture of various sets at home. We have songbird phonics (really good for building confidence) ORT floppy's phonics, standard ORT read at home (not phoncs), usborne phonics readers (cat in a hat etc) and also project X (which is designed specifically for boys but is again not pure phonics). They will all build on the jolly phonics foundation.

I have found that the important thing if you are using a couple of different schemes at home is to spend some time putting them in the right order. DS2 had done level 1 and level 2 of songbirds before he knew enough non phonetic words to tackle some of the level 1 ORT read at home books (The Biff and Chip ones) since ORT read at home has non phonetic words in right from the start. I prefered the DSs to be able to tackle "ship","moon", "this" etc with confidence before launching into words such as "Oh!" and "one" which just have to be memorised.

[virgiltracey]

Jennie nobody is suggesting that he isn't also being read to. But he simply won't be ready to read many of the books that he might pick up in the library. At this early stage he will need two different types of books, those that he is learning to read himself and those being read to him. Both will bring great benefit to his reading progression but they are likely to be different types of books.

[jenniec79]

Virgil, I never suggested otherwise, just that if school are focussing on phonics and flashcards then more of the same at home might to a 5 year old, get a little dull, while reading books (whether easy as reading scheme ones which he's been doing, or trickier one to read with or read to) that spark his interest in reading itself would be another angle.

My local library seems to have a pretty good selection of kids' books right from the very beginning. You may be able to request they order things in if yours doesn't have many beginners books - I realise I'm lucky in that I'm close to the main city library, not a little satellite one, but there are loads of books at that level out there that you shouldn't have to miss out. The books I remember loving in my own childhood were never reading scheme ones, they were things like Topsy and Tim, Noddy, Meg&Mog etc. There's an even better selection now!

[blackeyedsusan]

what level is he at?

the usborne very first phonics(?) starting with pirate pat, are good.

[loosinas]

im especially worried that if i teach him the "tag line" that accompanies the phonemes for example i think the one for ea is something like "a cup of tea please" that he will parrot them in phonics lessons at school and that wont be helpful. but i think the tag lines are really useful for knowing words that use the phonemes ... ??

[virgiltracey]

not sure I'd do the "tag lines" since I agree that might get him mixed up (although they have probably moved on from reciting the sounds and doing actions in year 1 so perhaps not). The books will be fine though