Another reading/reading book question - sorry!

[bluegiraffe]

My DD just started Reception. She knows her letters and has good basic phonics knowledge from a term of Jolly Phonics learning /doing sounds at her nursery and can do simple blending.

We had a parents meeting a couple of weeks ago where they explained how they would be approaching the EYFS in the first term, approach to teaching letters, sounds, reading, writing etc. -and that they use 'Big Cat' phonics method ...

Her first couple of reading books were ORT with no words and an extended reading booklet with them (DH freaked a little until I explained the reason behind it ..). Latest book are from the Sunshine Spiral Starters range - teaching key words 'a' and 'the' etc. (high frequency words), i.e.pg 1 "The X", pg2 "The Y" etc.. but she can guess the word that isn't the key word from the pictures ...

I'm not worried about the simplicity of the books as realise her teacher is still assessing levels (only 1 comment in the reading book from school side so far!)and doing lots of other great things with her :-) ... and we have plenty of reading material here that she can devour!

But - getting round to my question - shouldn't she be getting reading books that go along with the phonics/blending approach or are these other 'key word' books ok?

[mrz]

If they are using Big Cat Phonics to teach phonics then there is a whole reading scheme (including wordless books if they must) to use and no the key word books aren't needed or good practice.

[everpuzzled]

Lots of schools don't even begin sending books home until after half term some even later than that.

My dc have always had look and say books. School can't afford to replace all their books with phonics ones. But they have phonics sessions every day. It's maybe not the most ideal approach but it certainly hasn't harmed my dc's reading progress at all.

[bluegiraffe]

[Hmm], thank you mrz - we did get a list of 6 'high frequency' words sent home with the first wordless book - so could it be that they are reinforcing those words with the reading they send home until they have done more of the phonics/sounds (they are starting from the beginning with s,a,t, i, p, n ...) with the class?

or am I making excuses for them and maybe I should be PFB and ask for some blendable word books?