School providing e-books and no paper books for Reception

[Mummyoply]

My DS is in reception year and the school provide his reading books via an app and ask that children read them on an electronic device, iPad, phone or e-reader.

I have been purchasing the books, if the library don't have them (which they usually don't). This is too costly and also causes a delay, as by the time we get the book my DS has been moved on to another.

I guess my AIBU is, AIBU to refuse to allow him to read on a device and just provide books of the same level (from the library) so he can read a real book? I have emailed the school and message his teacher directly but had no response from either. I've even drawn a blank from the PTA.

How else do you approach new or complicated longer words other than by using your knowledge of phonics?

Well, one of the supposed rules of our language is that an e on the end of a word elongates the vowel sound. So mat Vs mate, hat Vs hate. I remember using that rule to deduce that "wince" had a long vowel sound, but it doesn't. Neither does mince or love, have etc, but save does.Our language is hugely irregular and uses unnecessary letters, as the "e" on the end of "love/mince/have" isn't doing anything, it's just there. Lot of words aren't learned through phonics rules, but just "that's just how we say it despite the spelling".

Win Vs wine Vs wince for example. You would deduce wince followed the pattern of "wine" etc.

It doesn't make a long vowel sound when there is more than one consonant in between the I and the e.

Ce is a digraph. So m i n ce

It doesn't make a long vowel sound when there is more than one consonant in between the I and the e.

Move? Have? Love?

YANBU - I wouldn’t like this and would be irritated. Too much screen time really strains their eyes.

By "move" I mean it isn't pronounced like "clove" for example. "Love" isn't like "Hove" or "hive" and "hive" isn't like "give".

We have recently priced a reading scheme and for 3 year groups it costs around £30,000. That's a lot of PTA money to raise. Good luck OP.

[quote spanieleyes]@UndertheCedartree

Tricky words are simply useful words in sentence building where the children haven't learnt the phonic sounds yet. Once they do learn the appropriate sounds, the words are no longer tricky!

These words are used in an attempt to make the books slightly less repetitive than they are![/quote]
Thank you.

@Pumperthepumper - sounds good. We had a real problem over lockdown as we all shared one laptop. We were down to receive a laptop from the government scheme but it took til the lockdown after Christmas before we got it.

@Pumperthepumper

If your kid has an eye condition then an e-reader will be hugely beneficial for them. You can change fonts, background colour, you can markup to search for unfamiliar words, add notes, link to further reading, make the text bigger or smaller… if I was you I’d drop the screen time for the Xbox for the e-reader.

If this post is aimed at me, my 4 year old son does not have an Xbox! Goodness........

@LuaDipa

I’m with you op, I would have been very unhappy at this.

I have a Kindle myself to minimise clutter but if I read a book a love I have to have a hard copy. My dc also have Kindles but will not use them, they prefer actual books. They are not behind or out of touch or struggling in this brave new world of technology, they just love reading real books. They do their schoolwork, their homework, socialise with their friends and play games on screens. I think books give them a bit of respite. This would be a hill to die on for me.

It doesn't make a long vowel sound when there is more than one consonant in between the I and the e.

Himm. But as PP said, these rules are not always the case.

There is more than one consonant between the y and the e in cycle, but we don't say the y as we would in cylinder. The same with the word notice, where it's an elongated o sound for no reason (as far as the letters go, it could just as easily be pronounced with a short o, like volume).

Ce is a digraph. So m i n ce

L a n ce has an elongated a though.

I've had a reply from the school! They have acknowledged the frustrations felt around using e-books and said it's fine to use whichever paper books we want to at home and just record them on paper rather than through the app.

@Mummyoply

I've had a reply from the school! They have acknowledged the frustrations felt around using e-books and said it's fine to use whichever paper books we want to at home and just record them on paper rather than through the app.

Great