How to deal With sight words in Reception

[Gingham1]

This week we have received a list of sight words to learn to read and write! This is following quite a few reading books (very old, mix of publishers) that do not follow reading ability or phonic phases taught in class, books contain words with ou/Oo/ch/ing/wh/ght etc.

My question is how to approach this with the teacher. I really didn't want to go down the "sight words" route so early in his reading journey. Also would prefer decodable reading books but I was willing to ignore this for the time being and obtain our own, that was before we received the sight words. Why do schools still do this?

[Hersetta427]

Some words have to be learned by sight though as they don't conform to phonics rule, for example 'the', 'some' etc.

[BubblesBuddy]

Many years ago, my DD had "breakthrough"
words which tended to be common words that didn't conform. Their, there, the, etc. There were about 120 of them and it really speeded up her reading. They had tests on them in batches of 10. If a child is keen to learn, I would have thought there was no harm in this. Do you not have library books with more complicated words in them so you can read together? If they know more words, it's more enjoyable. If it overwhelms, don't do it. DD did breakthrough in the first few weeks of YR so was 4.5 years old.

[BowlingShoes]

Ignore the list. Get decodable books and deal with other words in the books as you come across them. "The" for example is decodable, but not until you have learned the different ways that "th" can be sounded out, so just explain this.

[Arkadia]

So is "some" perfectly decodable, along with above, glove, oven, thorough, etc.

[Feenie]

Yes, perfectly.

Hersetta, that hasn't been the correct advice for over 15 years now.

[Gingham1]

Oops I didn't realize this posted twice.
Hersetta*,but all words have rules? I just don't understand why they would give them sight words before they've taught them the rule. Bit annoyed about the mixture of phonics and sight words so early in reception.

Re the books we do have many but it's nice for the child to have a school "reading book" that corresponds what they're being taught

That's what I thought feenie, should I question the school?

[Feenie]

You could - they certainly aren't following the statutory requirements.

Or you could ignore them and subscribe to Reading Chest.

[sirfredfredgeorge]

Gingham1 because that's how the teacher chooses to do it, our school never gave out any sight words, or any suggestion such a thing existed. It seems from here that that is a very good approach, it certainly worked with DD who went from no experience of reading at entry, to completely fluent in reception.

As people have said, ignore the sight words, or teach the sounds yourself, our reading record book thing had a copy of all the early spellings of sounds in it, and DD just looked at those and talked to us about it.

[Piglet208]

Are you referring to a list of high frequency words which include some tricky words ( not decodable) that is from the letters and sounds scheme?

[BubblesBuddy]

If your DC wants to read and can do these words, why not? Why stifle learning? Reading is such a turn off these days. Are children actually reading better than 15 years ago? The brightest children are probably as far ahead as they always were and if your child is bright and enthusiastic, why prevent them learning? My DD loved reading and went from zero to books with paragraphs in YR. I would never have stopped her because she hadn't done "sh" or "tr" in phonics at school. We just worked it out and she flew. It helps having a good memory of course.

[Norestformrz]

“Are you referring to a list of high frequency words which include some tricky words ( not decodable) that is from the letters and sounds scheme?” Tricky isn’t synonymous with non decodable. It simply means that they contain spellings that haven’t been taught yet so need to be taught when the word is introduced or needed.
Letters and Sounds teaches them as any other word - blending through the word with the teacher explaining the unknown grapheme (spelling)

[AuntieStella]

"Are children actually reading better than 15 years ago?"

Yes, the evidence on this has been emerging for some time now.

Do remember that phonics is the centruies old traditional way of learning to read, and it gets better results than the experimental methods and mixed methods of the latter part of the 20th century.

[Norestformrz]

“Why stifle learning?” If your child was being taught badly would you say nothing so as to not stifle learning?
“Are children actually reading better than 15 years ago? “ yes they are.
“The brightest children are probably as far ahead as they always were and if your child is bright and enthusiastic,” not necessarily.
“My DD loved reading “ there’s nothing stifles the love of reading more than not being able to read.
“I would never have stopped her because she hadn't done "sh" ” neither would someone teaching with phonics they would simply tell the child that the spelling sh is the sound /sh/ (not /s/ /h/ ) enabling the child to read the word and any other word with the sh spelling. Teach one word by sight and the child knows one word. Teach how to decode the word and that knowledge can be applied in many words. Why stifle learning?
I ignored “tr” because it’s not a phoneme so would never “do it”.