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Join our Primary Education forum to discuss starting school and helping your child get the most out of it.

Join our Primary Education forum to discuss starting school and helping your child get the most out of it.

Primary education

Not recognising some words

17 replies

Amummyatlast · 07/02/2018 19:18

DD is in early years and is a summer born, so only 4 still. She is doing brilliantly with phonics and can segment and blend words with no problem. But while she recognises some words (e.g. He, the, is, and, etc.) there are lots of words that she has seen many times but just can't remember (e.g. can, put). Is this a problem? She is currently on the pink band/Oxford Reading Tree 1+ at school, although she has some higher level books from the library that she can decode.

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user789653241 · 07/02/2018 19:49

As long as she can decode, I think you don't need to worry. After all, you need to be able to decode using phonics, not meant to memorise words.

lolalotta · 07/02/2018 20:05

This sounds very similar to my summer born! I'm not worried at all. It just takes time and lots and lots of patience!

GhostWriter666 · 07/02/2018 20:19

So shes in reception year? I would say she's doing well.

"and", "is", etc are all referred to as high-frequency words. They are seen often, are often on boards in the class showing lots of high-frequency words...so will be some of the first words to be "read". Most other words are decoded at this age which if she is doing this then that's great.

Also "tricky" words will be taught to read on sight in reception (and beyond) these are words that cant be decoded in the usual way: no, go, mrs, mr, to, the, he,

My dd was one of the better readers in the class in reception and it wasnt until the last term of reception that she was beginning to read without the sounding out. The decoding is great and she still uses it for unfamiliar words now.

Amummyatlast · 07/02/2018 20:26

Thank- you. That's very reassuring.

OP posts:

Norestformrz · 07/02/2018 20:42

"Also "tricky" words will be taught to read on sight in reception (and beyond) these are words that cant be decoded in the usual way: no, go, mrs, mr, to, the, he, " no they are not taught as sight words ( with the exception of Mr. And Mrs which are abbreviations ) the words can be decoded and children should be taught how to decode them

Tomorrowillbeachicken · 07/02/2018 21:31

Totally normal at this time.

GhostWriter666 · 08/02/2018 10:53

Norestformrz maybe have a look at www.teachingyourchild.org.uk/tricky-words.htm where it states.... Tricky words are those words which cannot be sounded out correctly using the Jolly Phonics sounds. The only way these words can be read and spelt correctly is by learning them and having plenty of practise

user789653241 · 08/02/2018 11:14

Then the article is clearly not up to date with current phonics teaching?

GhostWriter666 · 08/02/2018 11:20

Well my dc's reception teacher last year must not have been up on the current phonics teaching.... he was straight out of uni so how more up to date could he be?
He sent home "tricky words" to learn to read on sight, and said how they were tricky because they cannot be decoded easily.

Or could it be that different schools teach it differently?

HarveySchlumpfenburger · 08/02/2018 13:29

Different schools do teach it differently. Not all of them are correct.

High frequency words are words that occur very frequently. Some of these will be fully decodeable with the level of code knowledge usually taught in reception. Others will only be partially decodeable.

Tricky words are words that are only partially decodeable with the level of knowledge a child has at a given point. The usually way these should be taught is to point out the tricky part and then for the child to blend the word as they would any other word.

Unfortunately being fresh out of uni in't a guarantee that knowledge is either up to date or correct.

Norestformrz · 08/02/2018 16:55

"Well my dc's reception teacher last year must not have been up on the current phonics teaching.... he was straight out of uni so how more up to date could he be" you do realise most student teachers are lucky if they get an hour or so of instruction on how to teach Phonics often led by people who have no background in Phonics?

Feenie · 08/02/2018 17:55

That advice is incorrect and out of date by about 15 years.

HarveySchlumpfenburger · 08/02/2018 19:35

It might be more than that. Jolly Phonics must be at least 20 years old and they’ve been using the term ‘tricky words’ from the start. And not to mean ‘words that can’t be decoded and have to be learnt by sight.’

Feenie · 08/02/2018 19:37

Yes, Rafa, but was thinking more about when the Dfe finally got on board.

HarveySchlumpfenburger · 08/02/2018 19:44

True. Although I’m now wondering if it was ever in date.

Norestformrz · 08/02/2018 19:50

It's never been part of phonics teaching but was obviously part of the failed Searchlights method

HarveySchlumpfenburger · 08/02/2018 19:56

That’s what I’m thinking. It was never part of phonics teaching, but some schools have transferred it into their practice because it was part of what they were already teaching and the training in the early days was lacking.

Which is how you end up with ITT providers teaching it, schools sending it home as info for parents and websites aimed at parents promoting the same idea.

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