Any good books re teaching your child to read?

[amylou]

My DS is in Y1 and i'm finding it quite hard when shes reading to me and for instance we come across a new word which she doesnt know.. Does anyone know of any good books for parents which show how to teach your child to read.. our school are using the letterland / ORT books

Catflap is the resident expert, but my recommendation would be to buy the Jolly Phonics handbook (about 20 pounds from Amazon - US keyboard - no pound sign!) or alternatively see if you can get hold of the Phono-Graphix Reading Reflex book. The Phono-Graphix has assessments at the beginning so that you can see exactly where to start with your child; I haven't used it but thought it looked excellent. I've found Jolly Phonics brilliant for teaching the basics to DS2 who is now reading really well for 4.

You might want to hold off on Phono-graphix as the UK version is either just out or due very shortly. It has a different name which I seem to have forgotten - not much help I'm afraid.

Hello Amylou ? First of all, Letterland is fun but unfortunately does not give the correct message to children because it teaches them that the letters have names like Lucy Lamp Lady instead of teaching them that each letter sound (phoneme) has a symbol or symbols that represents that sound, so the sound ?sssss? is represented by the letter ?s?, or the sound ?eeeeee? is represented by the letters ?ee? or ?ea? etc.

Like singersgirl I would recommend you buy the Jolly Phonics handbook. It is straightforward to use. The Phonographix is also excellent but is a remedial scheme.

Catflap has posted a very good explanation of the philosophy behind Jolly Phonics on ?Early writing and correct spelling? thread.

I am thinking of changing my username to "Fan of Catflap"! Her posts helped me loads last year when I was beginning to teach my Reception son to read and everything that I now post on here echoes her advice. I used Jolly Phonics and found it fantastic. I followed the Steps of JP as posted by Sue Lloyd on the Jolly Phonics website (www.jollylearning.co.uk - go to the messageboard, then to a post called "JP Steps" back in May 2003).

I also read Reading Reflex and found it excellent - but went with Jolly Phonics as my son had used that in Speech Therapy and he was only four.

School reading schemes like ORT are fine for reading practice once your child has some reading skills. Once my son knew all 42 sounds and could blend with ease I was hsppy to let him read these but I don't think they are suitable for teaching beginning readers. Words like "climb" and "biscuit" are just too difficult to work out when you're new to reading.

I got PhonoGraphix from the library, by the way. I bought lots of the JP stuff, the handbook, the videos, the Finger Phonics books and the readers - although my son had some trouble with these because he has difficulty pronouncing multi-syllable words. The Ruth Miskin Literacy website has some good readers to supplement the JP ones.

hth