to think teaching kids to read is a tad infuriating..

[donefornow]

Ok, I know I'm awful for even saying it, we are very suuportive if dds reading and are very patient but at times I feel like tearing my hair out for example we have read the same word about 9 times in the book and she still won't read it, I know she can do it but just can't be arsed!
Not to mention the tedious books and stupid names in said books.. I'm sorry who calls their child biff!
Sorry rant over...

Unless you've been through The Village with Three Corners books, you have absolutely nothing to complain about!

Dire. On every level.

ORT is much more interesting than 'Roger red hat' and 'peter and Jane'

2kidsintow - The latest editions of the ORT books list the author as Rod Hunt rather than Roderick Hunt because of the problem you encountered when the name was said too quickly!

Using the pictures for comprehension and increasing vocabulary after you've read the words is one thing. Using them to 'infer' the words on a page is quite another, and not something anyone should be encouraging beginning readers to do.

The poster who's child is not looking at the words, would be absolutely right to cover up the pictures until the words on the page have been read.

DS 3 is about to start reception and I'm dreading the ORT.

TBH I think its a sure fire way to put kids off reading for life.TBH I found buying them a comic or something else fun to read was a lot more productive.

I'm one of those dreadful parents who didn't insist that my DS's read every day - they were much too tired after getting in from the CM at 5-45,after a full day at school,dinner bath etc it would be their bed time.

I do/did read to my boys every night and in turn hope to give them a life long love of reading and books.

YABU. 'A tad infuriating' is a massive understatement

I am absolutely with you on this. Because of the age gaps of my DC I've had Kipper and his mates in my life for 10 years, and still have several more to go. It's like a slow death. I would like to go NC.

Also agree with the PP - there is nothing remotely jolly about jolly phonics false advertising.
Sigh.

Ah, 1,2,3 and Away - the official scheme name for the Village with Three Corners stories. Absolutely agree, dire on every level. ORT was positively Nivarna by comparison!

If Roger's hat was red and Billy's was blue why the hell was Jennifer's yellow?

YANBU. Imagine having to listen to the same stories over and over again? Year in. Year out. Yup, the life of a teacher.

DS's school also do ORT and it drives me insane that he does not come home with the books in the correct order.

It's so nice to have a break from it over the summer. DS has been reading the songbird scheme, written by Julia Donaldson - we have giggled our way through the books.

I'm another that didn't do much home reading of school scheme books. With ds it was because essentially he couldn't read having been 'taught' with the whole word/look and guess type approach. He was/is a very bright boy with a very large vocabulary who was also dyslexic and his wild guesses had very little to do with the words, even if they were probably feasible with the pictures. As a fairly intuitive reader I just didn't have the skills to help him and the reading sessions generally began with tantrums and ended with tears. Just horrible. After a long day at school he was in any case far too tired to be working in the evening too.

In the end we took him to a specialist tutor to be taught to read properly from the beginning again using synthetic phonics. Which I found fascinating as I'm one of those people who learned to read when they were pretty tiny and never really thought about how it all worked. No pictures were involved btw, and it took her I think six hours before he was flying.

dd on the other hand learned to read with zero problems (first year of phonics scheme) and I just found the books too grim so we read other things (I love children's books so we always had plenty to choose from).

If Roger's hat was red and Billy's was blue why the hell was Jennifer's yellow?

Jaundice?

What the hell is the proper order to the ORT books? We've had some random ones and they all seem to stand alone.

CoolCadbury, yes indeed, I've been an infant teacher for 36 years, I can chant whole books from memory and identify any scheme with just a character for a clue!
Wish I had written my own scheme and made lots of money.

DS1 started sounding words out, so we dutifully cracked open the ORT books.

Wow! I put a cheerful face on it, but DS1 had absolutely no interest. I let him continue with his comics instead, until we found some Usborne reading books at the library.

Lesson learned - his reading has really improved by letting him try books that interest him, rather than struggle through books that don't. I've no idea what books he'll have to read from September, but from the posts above I'm guessing there's a good chance that we'll be trying to trudge through Biff, Chip and Kipper again :(

I remember, aged 7, listening to my 5 year old brother read aloud a book about two trolls: one was waiting for a birthday cake to be delivered and kept trying to eat everything that looked vaguely cake-like. We recorded his reading, for some reason, and I can remember the line, "Don't eat the postman!"

Anyone know what book/scheme that might have been?

I love it

Have worked in a school and always enjoyed teaching of reading. I'm always so proud of them when you can see a child learn and move forward in their reading. From sounding out to pronouncing words with confidence, I think it's brill I'm obviously a saddo!

DD1 seemed to learn to read very quickly and easily (lucky). I'm praying dd2 will be the same

What the hell is the proper order to the ORT books? We've had some random ones and they all seem to stand alone

When they come to find the Magic Key and start their adventures it's all in a logical order. No point in going on an adventure with a key they haven't found yet (or even moved to the house it's in!)

But do you not think it is amazing...children go from not being able to read ot being able to read... daily it can be frustrating but over time it is amazing

I think it's up there with toilet training on the chart of tedious parenting tasks.

My ds reads saw as was every time

Thanks Nanny. We've already read some random magic key ones on the internet, so I've ballsed that up :)

I am so glad DS1 is at the point of reading other books rather than just the Biff, Chip and Kipper ones. He's a stickler for rules and spent all of reception and Year 1 insisting we had to do his reading EVERY SINGLE NIGHT, cue me sitting there internally screaming while he battled his way through - bless him he tried so hard but it took a long time for reading to click into place!!