Peter and Jane books ...are they...

[winterfox78]

...any good for helping a 4 year old learn to read???

I was given a box set recently...

Im after recommendations of books you have bought that has helped your 4 year old learn to read.

Thanks

@Willhewonthe67
You have to be careful making comparisons between learning to read in different languages. It is literally easier to learn to read when the letter/sound correspondences match up transparently - so one letter/digraph for each sound and no or few exceptions. So learning to read Finnish for Finnish speaking children in Finland, is easier than learning to read English as an English speaking child in the UK.

Perfectly good way to read alongside learning phonics at school. The first stage is so basic I found it gave my DCs confidence.
I never understood phonics and the Biff and Chip books from school were so dull.

Does your child want to learn to read already? If they do, crack on, but follow their lead. Some like phonics, some prefer look and say. sensible teachers know phonics shouldn't be followed slavishly

DS taught himself to read before starting school because he liked books - any books. He did not learn using a reading scheme. The most important thing is that they enjoy books.
I will agree with a PP though that if they start school able to read fluently then they will be bored - unless they have a particularly good teacher which DS sadly didn't

@Elisheva very interested in what you said about early readers not having an advantage longer term. Would you mind expanding on this? My friend is quite… open about how advanced her son is with reading and it’s making me anxious about my own DS. The children are in reception.

I assume by Peter and Jane books you mean the Ladybird books?
The best thing about Ladybird books are the fantastic and beautiful illustrations. You can spend hours just looking and talking about what is in the picture with a child.
Allan + Janet Ahlberg or Shirley Hughes books are good for this too.
This is a much nicer way to learn to appreciate books than worrying about actual reading at age 4.
One reason I dislike Biff and Chip books is because the illustrations are very poor and dated.

I think that most people don’t really understand what ‘phonics’ means - it just means sounds.
Literally everyone who can read uses phonics to decode the words - to turn the letters into sounds and to blend them together. It’s not possible to read without phonics (if you were relying on sight memory you would need someone with you when you were reading to tell you the words you didn’t yet know!). Even adults who are competent and experienced readers use phonics.
People also use ‘phonics’ to describe a method of teaching reading, where the children are taught all the different sounds that the letters show and how to blend them together to make words.
The alternate method is look and say, where the children learn to recognise whole words. Through enough exposure to words their brain starts to work out the phonic code - the recognise rat/bat/cat and notice that they all end in /at/.
Lots of children can learn to read this way, but about 3 or 4 in 10 can’t. If phonics is taught systematically and well then 90-95% of children will learn to read.
Mixed methods (flashlights), or varying your teaching according to the child, which seems to be intuitively correct, is only 80% successful.

By the end of KS1 the children who could read before school are no further forward than those who couldn’t,
The two things that have a predictable effect on attainment are a good vocabulary and good phonological awareness.

@Elisheva thank you. That’s very interesting and echoes what my Mum keeps saying- “they’re all pretty much the same by the end of year 2”. Friend in question keeps calling the school and saying that the activities need to be stretching her precious little darling 🙈

"Children become readers in the laps of their parents"

Is one of the best quotes I know about reading.

Being read to and enjoying books this way is the foundation of all reading.

You can be a mechanical reader without the contextual knowledge base, understanding vocabulary, analogies, underlying themes etc. I have taught many children like this in SEND school.

My eldest wasn't a keen, advanced or avid reader but absorbs information like a sponge; when his reading caught up with his understanding he was off and away. The week junior and the new britanica magazine have been his turning points.

Absolutely agree
However, its apparently the In Thing to diss much of the past and those of us who dwelled in it.

Can I just say how impressive your memory is
You may be the same age or similar age to Me (wrong side of 55 lol) as I remember learning via Peter and Jane (I longed for the Grey edition at one point) but I remember little else .

Not if they go to a decent school. One of my DC was reading fluently at 3 (thanks to Peter and Jane - I taught him) and it was not a problem.

My son loved them as a child and could read by the time he started school. He still likes reading and has a great vocabulary too he's 19 now.

Go for it, my youngest was phonics brainwashed and could barely read until he was 8 🙄

My kids were desperate to read and I taught them using Peter and Jane. Yes, not a good idea to push actively as they will then end up bored rigid when they get to school. Mine were extremely bored in reception.

Thrilled to read your post. I have been shouted down on threads on here when I've said phonics just doesn't work with some children and bores others to death. Personal experience with GS (phonics just didn't work at all for 3 years, six months look say with granny got him up to speed) and DD who taught herself to read at 2, fluent at 3. Hated phonics at school with a passion as she was so bored, I couldn't understand why they didn't just let her read a book but with a reading age of above 11 (that's what they tested at her primary school) she had to sit through the whole phonics things. We home schooled as it was turning her off learning.

I'd hold onto them OP, I think they might be collectors items now :)

Mine had a teacher who insisted only a professional could teach a child to read. My child, at 4 reading things like The Famous Five and The Secret Seven, was just an insult to her and she made her life hell.

@BloodyHellKen they are still published new so they aren't going to be collectors items.
@Morph22010 I remember the 'baccy' tin full of words too.

@wintetfox78, the flash cards had every word in the Peter and Jane books on. So words like look, there, water etc. I picked out the words in book 1, played word games with those words, then when child could read those words they were introduced to the book. So when they saw the book for first time they already knew the words so learned to read with fluency rather than the one word then pause some children do. Word games get harder as more words introduced and you go up book levels. Also once child was secure on a word I removed it into different pile and replaced with new word. I used to spend 10 mins twice a day on reading and word games. Sometimes child also read book to their Dad. I did basic Maths too just in n everyday way, so if making a jigsaw puzzle we would look for right angled piece instead of corner piece, as walking down road would look at doors and count odd numbers, or even numbers. That sort of thing. They learned to tell time by 6 as well.

I loved them too. I was an early reader, I could read before I started school at 3, and I enjoyed being given a new Peter and Jane book each week.

I used flash cards which came monthly - it was over 40 years ago and I can't remember what they were called, but each card had a picture, with a matching word card.

At first, my daughter learned to name the picture - cat, pig, dog, etc and I put the correct word card with the picture.

Eventually she was able to name the correct word card without the picture.

Then I started her on the Peter and Jane books.

She had read the whole series before she started school, aged 4. (It was a private school that took children from the age of 4).
When she joined the school, they put her on free reading books, as it was obvious that she was a very fluent reader. (When I say fluent I mean that she was able to read newspapers).

It could be that she was very gifted in language - she grew up to speak 3 languages and worked as an interpreter.

So, Peter and Jane worked well for her, and I started using them to reach my granddaughter to read. Her school was amazed at her reading ability from reception onwards. She is now year 3 and many of the other children have caught up with her.

She too is orientated towards English but she is far less confident in maths, as was her mum.

The current system at school has been designed to get the highest possible proportion of kids reading. Phonics has been proven to be the best way of doing this. This is a brilliant starting point but doesn’t cater for the more able (and I’m not talking genius level - just kids who are able to read by the time they start school).

Teachers are following the curriculum. There are boxes they must tick. The problem is that there doesn’t seem to be room within that system to encourage the kids who arrive at school already reading. They have to jump through the same hoops as everyone else.

DD is coming home with books with stories that are mostly extremely dull and not pushing her to be challenged at all. It is a chore to read some of them. At home she is reading chapter books to herself happily. I feel that schools almost disapprove of this because it doesn’t fit the system. She is also not learning how to persevere, how to cope with failure or any of those useful skills because rather than giving her work that challenges her a bit they all do the same. Luckily there are other areas where she has to work hard to keep up with her peers but it would be a worry for a child who is very able at everything.

I was a very capable child and my teacher handed me The Hobbit to read and gave me work to do like adding up and recording the dinner money etc. while others were doing simpler arithmetic. I don’t think this flexibility is there anymore so a child being ahead isn't necessarily a positive thing.

I could read chapter books before I went to school. My first school report said ‘ X can read and write her name legibly’

I found Peter and Jane interminably boring, second only to those bloody roger red hat books which I was made to read to ‘prove’ I was progressing almost til the end of primary school. Despite reading young adult material outside of school.

A part of the reason I chose to home Ed!

My now 10yo learned to read on a series called ‘little people big dreams’
they aren’t learning to read books but they are simplistic enough for young readers to learn from and have an interesting enough story that they don’t feel disheartening.
we made a deal that I would get her a new one for everyone she read to me and that was the motivation she needed to push through the harder bits.

phonics has its place though and if you’re sending her to school I would prepare her with the materials they will use rather than start a different way

@SomePosters They were still using the Roger Red Hat books when DS started school - he's 25 now. I couldn't have been happier on the day they got rid of them. Pretty sure some of the DC's who were reading them to me were reading the exact same books their parents had read and possibly their grandparents judging by the yellowed pages which were falling out. They really were boring too.