to be a bit frustrated by dd's first reading book NO WORDS!!!

[littlebylittle]

Okay - health warning here, I am hormonal!! I am also a teacher (clearly not reception!)and should know the theory behind this. But...dd has just brought home first reading book after five weeks in reception and there are no words!! She know all letter sounds (initial) and has grasped all the phonics at school so far (ie they have seen her understand phonics). She also knows a good few words by sight. She'll also talk happily about stories and predict what's going to happen. So I am just a little peeved that there are no b**y words in this book. After this rant I will calm down and share the book she is so excited about and realise that yes IABU. But for five mins I feel like throwing the book at the wall! Any experience of learning to read confidently and quickly starting with wordless books?

a week or two?
not at our school.

LOL Freudian - never let logic, reasoning and understanding that teachers work within the constraints of what they're given for 30 kids get in the way of a good schools bash.

Haha sorry :o I am clearly naive!

edam, thankfully we don't have this problem because we HE. When I read threads like this it just makes me even more relieved that we decided to do so.

This is not about penalising children. It is not about children who cannot read or do not understand the basics of how to use a book. It is about identifying children who, while being able to read fluently, cannot tell a story in their own words because they are lacking some basic cognitive/imaginative skills that might otherwise have not been picked up.

DS was like this. Reading to him was (like the child in Smithagain's example) an exercise in code breaking which came very naturally to him. This was not because he had not been exposed to books, but because those empathetic and imaginative skills that come naturally to most children were lacking in him. It is a way of schools identifying issues in certain children.

And I will say again - schools are not ultimately responsible for you child's education - you as a parent are. Just because schools give your children a reading book does not mean your responsibility to read a wide range of books with your child is over. And why should it matter, if your child reads widely with you every week, if they get one book that week from school that is of a particular type?

Totally agree MillyR. Your last sentence is spot-on.

I can't really understand why parents are complaining. Clearly these are parents who have been teaching/encouraging their children to read at home before they start school so why can't they just continue with that? The can't expect the school to be offering their DC a range of challenging texts which changes every day. They, as parents, are in a position to offer that.

Our DD's reading record only gets written in once a week at school so I assume she is only reading once a week in a one-to-one situation with her teacher. It doesn't worry me because I realise they are also doing number work; playing in the home corner; experimenting with sand and water; playing outside and looking at nature; practising writing; hosting teddy-bears picnics; learning songs; discussing topics.....and the list goes on and on. Learning to read is just a small part of what they're doing. And besides, we are continuing to read at home with her from her own selection of books as well as visiting the library so her once-weekly wordless books are just a tiny part of her whole education at this stage.

DD has a wide vocabulary and making up/narrating stories is one of her strongest skills at this stage. She can't read (much) yet but I am very proud of her talent as a story-teller; the wordless books allow her to practise and enjoy this skill. That, to me, is more important than the code-breaking aspect of literacy as I know she will learn that soon enough.

totally agree with MillyR and Olifin.

and bubbley I do see your point about schools treating all the same, believe me - DH and I are actually really pro-HE, and have only reluctantly decided to send DD to school because she is desperate to go.

I just feel that this particular issue is, well, a non-issue! but things like all children getting the same, non-differentiated maths worksheets every week, that of course is a reason to grumble! (plenty of experience with that at my DSDs' school)

I think Olifin and MillyR are absolutely right that ultimately it doesn't matter because you are responsible for their education yourself and there is so much you can do at home to make up for it.
But I would suspect the reason why parents get anxious about it is because it happens at the beginning of reception when you haven't got the confidence to pretty much ignore what the school is doing and do your own thing.
I am a bit about the idea that people who don't like these books simply don't understand what they're for - I think in many cases we do understand it (there is plenty of info in the books themselves at the back, so it shouldn't be hard to find out what the point is even if the teacher doesn't explain it) it's just you can sometimes see it not working for your child if the child is getting underwhelmed and even frustrated by it because they're keen to put their new phonics skills into action.
So you see these people who are supposedly the great experts on teaching reading, which still seems like this mysterious technical skill (the teaching of it I mean, not the reading itself) doing something for your child which doesn't appear to be working, so you get stressed.
Once your child has grasped the basics of reading and you have the confidence to not worry about what they do at school, or once it's a second child and you have seen the first one make progress independently of what happens in the classroom, it's much easier to chill.
I have a dd (y1) who has totally leaped ahead with reading the moment I decided to stop forcing her to do her school reading books - wish I'd done it sooner! But as a keen reception parent who wants to work with the school and has huge respect for the teachers and their mysterious arts (partly because you have not yet sussed out what the teachers' strengths and weaknesses are, or indeed, which ones know what they're doing at all and which ones don't) it's harder to do that.

I am aware that the length of this post totally overstates the importance of the issue which I agree it pretty trivial in the grand scheme of things, but hey ho.... I think this is why people get wound up about it, anyway - it's not just PFB 'my little Johnny should be reading Shakespeare', it's genuine anxiety when you see something is not working for your child and don't know what to do about it and whether or not it is the first sign of a more fundamental problem.

Well, dd has had two wordless books, alongside two with three words per page. She loves her books, wants to read them and yesterday we wrote together the story to go with the wordless book. Gave me the chance to encourage her to add more detail, talk about characters' feelings etc. So whilst I still have that "let's race ahead with decoding" feeling sometimes, I can see the beginnings of a keen little reader who stops to smell the flowers, IYSWIM, when reading instead of rushing to see what happens in the end. I don't know if everyone's schools do this, but the wordless book also came with a detailed story for me to read on a photocopied sheet. I haven't yet, bit worried whe'll go "you read it mummy" but it seems a good idea. So think I've come a long way from my OP!