To think that schools should teach reading properly

[Reallytired]

My son has been really lucky, he has had an excellent reception teacher and has been taught how to read properly by synthetic phonics. His teacher followed Jolly phonics logically with great results.

He has a little friend who is at a different school. She is 6 months younger than my son and has had only 2 terms of school. This girl has been taught to read by sight words and a reading ladder. Because she started after christmas she got taught the letter sound "ch" before being taught "s", "a", "t", "p", "i", "n".

The result is that this poor little girl is still on Oxford Reading Tree level one and hates reading. Her mother is convinced that her daughter is dyslexic because the little girl is extremely bright in other areas of the reception curriculum. I think the reason the little girl can't read is that the teaching she has recieved has been a mess.

Synthetic phonics raises reading rates dramatically in studies. No excuse IMO for not using it in schools.
Not saying all children should learn to read by the age of 5 or anything, just that they should all be taught by the most effective methods.

But I thought they had to now...

Well, schools are supposed to follow the recommendations of the Rose Report from September 2007. But I know for a fact that my sons' school is not going to use phonics first, fast and foremost, as is recommended. They have been given the OK by their attached Ofsted inspector, because their results are generally very good. I think this is completely missing the point, as it is the underachieving children whom synthetic phonics will most benefit.

It makes me very angry because the success rates are so much higher for all children with properly taught synthetic phonics. Watching even fluent readers in DS2's Y1 class guess at unfamiliar words is disheartening. DS2 hardly ever guesses, because he doesn't need to.

Pictures are for decoration and to tell us something more about the story. They do not tell us the words.

See, no pictures in this post.

But can you stop them guessing? As I said, my ds guesses. He was taught JP - undiluted - as it should be taught. He doesn't need to guess. But he does.

You need to spend some time in the class room before making judgements.

I didnt have a clue what went on in a class until read with the kids as a parent assistant.

My view is that the standards I have witnessed are particularly weak, what can you do? If you mention it, it either gets ignored or you are told that your child will be working to the standard appropriate for them.

Then you feel pushy and withdraw. Nothing gets done.

I back everything up with my ds when he gets home. That means reading every day and some numberwork.

When I taught my ds to read before reception, I didnt have a clue as to how you did it, I just taught him how I was taught.

You cannot leave it all to the school because it just wont happen.

I think the biggest laugh about the education system and the expected input from the parents is that nearly every parent I know does not know what the kids are being taught or how they are being taught.

How can you reinforce any education like that.

Mumsnetters should petition the Education Dept to issue learning guidelines at the beginning of each term and give some clues as to its application, that way we could all help our children to reach the standards we hope they will.

Ah now - I did leave it to the school .

I read to my ds before he started school, but I didn't teach him to read. I still spend more time reading to him than listening to him read (you get more interesting stories ), but he is making good progress despite my slackness. Perhaps it would be faster if we did things differently, but we, and his teacher, are happy witht he way we are doing things.

I'm not sure I agree with the "pictures are for decoration" bit.

My DS is in Reception, and at the beginning of the year we had a really helpful evening session with the head outlining the way they were going to teach them to read. As an example she gave us a paragraph of a text written in Dutch. Interestingly when the paragraph in Dutch had pictures added to it, most people felt that they could understand much better what it was about - the pictures aided or confirmed the interpretation. She said it was a very good example of how the children hovered around the "edge of understanding" with their early reading.

To my mind the pictures help DS with the reading, which makes him follow the narrative, which make him enjoy the book, which makes him feel good about his reading which makes him a better reader.

I may just be feeling smug as we have never done an ORT or Biff and Chip!

Interesting - sounds like we may be in a minority then because we do get information as to how the school intends to teach the children, via this detailed session at the beginning of the year. And three reading books a week to bring home and 1-to-1 reading sessions with teacher or TA three times a week at school.

I do think you are making assumptions . Presumably you are hearing much 2nd hand and ,perhaps, with the mother working even she may be less directly in touch with the classroom on a day to day basis. Her dd obviously is being exposed to phonics from your first post, perhaps in conjunction with other methods like learning to recognise the 40 odd sight words for Reception. Presumably she is younger than average for the class , so just 5? maybe, may not have the most encouraging of home support and it just may not have "clicked " for her yet. I suspect it is way too soon to consider dyslexia as a serious concern.

I'm not sure you need to know exactly how a child is taught to read to back up their education. Reading to a child as well as with, answering questions about anything and everything, explaining, pointing out, constantly counting and doing simple sums in everyday activities, taking them to place that will stimulate their interest... those are education in the widest sense and those are the things that most schools don't have time to do anymore. A teacher teaches, we add the bits they can't do in 6 hours a day 5 days a week.

Why does it matter if a child can't read in reception?

FWIW we do get some idea of what the children are learning that term and what we can do to help.

orm, what do you get to help you?

Orm, in answer to your first para, for some reason some of the schools teach word recognision differently. No good teaching your child something that will be undone and confuse when they get to school.

meandmyflyingmachine - so did we!

I hated forcing my children to read those stupid books. DD was OK with it but DS#1 hated them. And I failed to see how making them do something they hated was going to encourage good reading habits. So I read to them. Books like the Hobbit which actually captured his interest. The Kipper and Biff junk was relegated to once a week.

Orm, if your child is unable to read by year 1 it will slow the teaching process down for others in the class.

I think I read somewhere that by year 1 they should be able to recognise so many words and be able to recognise and write a simple sentence. Reading is an aid to this.

TBH I think if your child is still in reception it's too early really to "judge" how they're doing with reading. Many children learn to read ( alittle) before school, some are "new" to it when they arrive.

DS1 really seemed to struggle with his reading when he first started school - and was a long way "behind" many of his peers - he's coming to the end Y1 now and is one of the best readers in his year!!

If your child knows its alphabet and can sound them then really simple reading books should not be a problem. They make the sounds of the alphabet to build the word.

I don't think the comparison with Dutch is valid, though. After all, the reason the pictures help us understand the Dutch text is because we don't speak or understand the Dutch language (well, at least I don't). Most beginning reading books contain words that young children understand, particularly if we are talking about children for whom English is a first language. So if we teach them to decode accurately, they don't need pictures to help them understand.

Of course pictures enhance a story enormously and are very important for young children's overall experience of reading and books. They may even help children comprehend words they have not met before, as in the Dutch example. But they are not helpful as a means of decoding. I have seen so many children in Year 3 and older still scanning pictures frantically for clues, because they don't know how to read properly.

How do you stop them guessing? You can't, completely, but you can say, "Don't guess. Read the word properly. Let's build it up from the beginning and say all the sounds." You can also use logic to explain how much quicker it is if they do that all the time and how much more accurate their reading is.

Fanny did you read with him regularly at home with his reading books?

• when I remembered/wasn't too tired (I 'd just started working nights) even now I'm dreadful at remembering to get it out and read with him .

tenalady - for example we get told they are studying the local area and asked to provide resources (maps etc) and asked to take the children to visit places that they might be interested it. With maths for DS earlier this year we were told that they were using number lines for long division and could we help them practice this. ACtually maths methods is a bug bear with me as I'm sure they contrubuted to my panic over all things mathematical at school and are starting to do the same for DD! DD has a project to complete and we were told all about this and asked to ensure it was being done and to help where neccessary.

Tut,tut! It really makes a difference to read the reading book with them every day.

I can see a big difference between the kids that do and dont.

DD1 used to want to read her school reading books really quickly to get them out of the way so that she could then read "her" books. She wasn't allowed to be moved up reading levels because apparently she'd run out of books by Year 5

Orm, that sounds great that you can be involved, as you can see yours is the only post that has evidence of information coming home to reinforce the education at school. I think when you read most of the posts on other threads they are often questions about what is expected and what happens in the classroom.

actually at the start of Reception we did a lot but he found ti really hard and struggled with it - and I found myself getting frustrated - so backed off.......now he just likes to get his reading book out on his own, read it out loud while I'm cooking dinner/sorting DS3/ironing etc etc etc.

Now after spending loads of times worrying that he was "slow" at reading - I'm starting to wish he wasn't quite so good......reads the TV Magazine and knows what's on, and the TV guide on the TV too when you're flicking through the channels seeing whats on and we have strops because he can't watch "When Sport Goes Bad" on Bravo