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.

We now have a problem with him reading graffitti and MN thread titles.....but that is another story

Now ds had brought home a Ginn book and I much preferred it to ORT. It had a couple of Fairy tales in it.

And in response to the OP, i think the little girl needs to go back to basics and start to love books that are shared with her before she can love reading iyswim

The earlier levels of Ginn are sooooooo tedious. DS1 would rather read about the castles and pirates and dinosaurs in ORT

I agree with popsycal.

We had no priates and dinosaurs.

Now those he would have read...

castle adventure, pirate adventure, land of the dinosaurs....those are the 3 that I have currently borrowed from work

Ah well, it'snot like we don't have dinosaur book coming out of our ears, so I guess we haven't missed out.

But we'd be less likely to have the parent helper tut-tutting at us if they had come home I can tell you

Jacanne, as Edam said, once people know how to read they do acquire a so-called 'sight vocabulary', but it is the wrong place to start.

Once a child has learned the basic rules of the English spelling code, many of the words in your list aren't that difficult.

Said - child sounds out 's -ay -d' and adjusts
The - the 'th' is easy, and in front of vowels the 'e' behaves like 'me','he','she'
Are - the 'ar' is easy;it is only the 'e' on the end that is unusual

'One' is particularly tricky, I admit.....

I ignored the tedious run floppy run ones though....once you ignore the boring first 4 stages they get better

I like ORT books; I just don't think the very early stages (say 1 to 4) are great for teaching children to read. Once they can read, and understand the main rules of 'the code', from about Level 5 they are very good - entertaining, lovely illustrations, good plots.

lol at the graffitti Popsycal. When my brother was little he once asked my mum "'Why has someone written 'Leeds United are wankers' on that wall?"

hey singersgirl
did you see we decided on your dss' primary school for dd in the end! (i think i was using a pseudonym)

singersgirl - it is stages 5 and 6 we have that ds1 likes

ps pls email me countessdrac at gmail dot com
would love to meet up

I have no idea what level ds is at .

His school bands books by colour. So sometimes you get ORT (although we haven't had one of those in a while), sometimes Ginn, sometimes jsut a book, with no level at all .

I am told his reading is above average. And that is all I know.

I don't think it matters much, does it?

gosh no! Just wondering if the pirates will be ocming soo for him

I am afraid that I disagree with you singersgirl - I think the acquisition of sight vocabulary has to go alongside the teaching of synthetic phonics. Being able to decode words in isolation is just that - they need to be seen in the real context of a book - I know this from experience as I have taught many children who could synthesise and segment CVC words but did that for every word they came across in a book, even the phonically irregular ones, and basically had no sense of what they were reading. Some of the earliest reading books, even those with a phonic slant, contain the word "was" and "said" (I also disagree with your assertion that children "adjust" with words like "said" - sometimes it happens, but usually only with the more able. In my experience "said" was a sticking point for many children. I didn't include "the" in my list but "there" and "their".

Some of the more common sight words (like those on the NLS list for reception and yr1) can be sounded out but require a relatively advanced level of phonics - knowing long vowel sounds etc, but my point is that in order to make even the most simple books accessible these most common words need to be learnt earlier.

there are sight words up to and including year 2
I agree these need to be just learned -dd knows them all now and is flying with her reading

Look at this link.

education.guardian.co.uk/primaryeducation/story/0,,2122127,00.html

West Dunbartonshire council is one of the largest and most deprived councils in scotland. They have got their levels of illiteracy down to 6% from 28%.

Most of England has fewer social problems than West Dunbartonshire council. Why are rates of illiteracy in England so appalling?

I'm not sure that anyone is disagreeing about the importance of phonics...

there are sight words right up to year 5......

but admittedly more for spelling (medium frequency words)

Hana - I agree with you about phonics alongside the sight words. And like your DC, ds1 is the same.

But the Jolly Phonics videos specifically deal with adjusting or tweaking tricky words like 'said' and 'was'. DS2 (who admittedly is able) had no problem at 3 reading 'wass' and adjusting it. I agree that children acquire sight vocabulary as they become proficient readers; I just don't think they should be taught it as a 'strategy'.

If Jolly Phonics is used, one representation of all the long vowel sounds is taught within the first term, and alternatives (eg 'ai','ay', 'a-e')so children should have no problem with most of the high-frequency words. Other schemes, such as Ruth Miskin, introduce sounds in a different order, but still cover them rapidly.

Oh, synthetic phonics is one of my Things, so I like to Bang On About It. It is one of the reasons I became a parent governor.

Yoo-hoo, Countess Dracula! I had seen that - have you got the uniform all sorted? I will e-mail you.