To all those worried about helping their reception child with their reading.......

[QueenOfQuotes]

as some of you may know, I posted a 'desperate' message last night (or was it the night before LOL) saying how frustrated I was, and how I didn't know how to help him.

Well tonight we had a parents evening at his school to give us a brief guide on what and how they would be learning during their time in reception, and also how to help them with their reading. We were then given a sheet to take home with 'guidelines' on how to help them - some of these may not be applicable to your schools way of 'teaching' - but I thought I'd copy them out for anyone that was interested - I'm sure they certainly going to help me (some may also be glaringly obvious too )

• Share may different kinds of texts, stories, non-fiction, poems, comics, laels, signs and so on...as well as their school reading book

• The best time to share books is when you and your child are both enthusiastic - make it a happy, relaxed and fun time

• Spend plenty of time dicussing texts - the story, characters and pictures

• Encourage your child to use the pictures to help them read the text (do not cover up the pictures)

• Remember memorising text is an important first step in reading.

• Rereading a book helps build on initial decoding to allow your child to enjoy the story and illustrations

• Encourage your child to use the pictures, sight words and phonics (letter sounds) to decode words (as they progress)

• Record brief comments in the red Reading Book, and read the teachers comments

• Bookmark words should be practised in a random order (they get given 'bookmarks' with about 5 'sight words' on which are words they should learnt to recognise without trying to 'decode' - these are often words which can't be worked out phonically - such as "like"

• Bookmark words need to be learned by sight, so they can be recognised in any context (i.e. any book, sign etc..)

• Children learn at their own pace and build on their individual strengths, please do NOT make comparisons

HAPPY READING

Your guidelines are brilliant, QoQ.

When DD1 started school - way before National Curriculum - the school's English co-ordinator handed out to all the new parents a little hand-made book with with a few images labelled with words made up of her own invented hieroglyphics - the idea was to demonstrate how hard it is to know what symbols mean when you've only just come across them. (I suppose she could have used Greek or Cyrillic to the same effect for most of us.)

That was nearly 19 years ago and it has stuck with me - although I have to admit it didn't stop me expecting far too much of GeniusPreciousFirstBorn DD1 at the time! ()

May I highly recommend this book if you would rather play an active roll in teaching your child to read? It takes out the guess work and my children loved having the one on one time with me. (Sorry I couldn?t seem to find in on Amazon.co.uk which is odd because I did order it from them...)

Queen of Quotes,

My ds1 was in Reception last year. His school held a reading evening for the parents and we were given similar advice to you.

My son had problems with his speech and later in the year I learned that children with speech problems often go on to have reading problems. I didn't want this to happen so I decided I would teach him to read myself. However, I also realised that I didn't know how to do this (despite the reading evening and accompanying booklet). At about the same time I came across some posts by Catflap on this site and I have to say that I cannot recommend her advice highly enough. Do a search on her username and you will find brilliant advice on teaching children to read, much better advice than you have received from school. She is a teacher and she really knows what she is talking about. Basically, despite what the school tells you, I would say that one thing is of utmost importance: teaching your child the letter sounds and to read by sounding out the letters in words. Blending, in other words: c-a-t "cat". There are about 42 sounds in the English Language. You can find them on the Jolly Phonics website (www.jollylearning.co.uk - along with the JP Steps which are posted on the messageboard back in May 2003). I have taught my son to read using these steps and he is now one of the best readers in his Yr 1 class, despite being one of the youngest children and having ongoing speech problems.

Personally, I would discourage my child from guessing at words from context/picture/initial letter clues. Schools teach children to read by using a mix of methods. This approach works for about 75% of children - the other 25% will fall behind with their reading because they haven't had enough "phonics" input.

I have posted similar information on a few other threads tonight in the hope that you will see at least one of my messages.

By the way, I used the Ruth Miskin Literacy books for reading practice. You can get them from the Ruth Miskin Literacy website. I bought the black and white versions because they were cheaper and my son doesn't seem to mind at all!

Good luck, I hope it works out well for you. As Catflap says, the Reading Reform Foundation's site and Debbie Hepplewhite's Synthetic Phonics site provide lots of information and support for parents in our position.

I like these guidelines QoQ - they are similar to those given out by our school, and we have largely followed them with our boys when they were learning to read.

I like them too.

ahh - but they're nonsense apparently - should be learning synthetic phonics [frown]

Seems like you've had a lot more advice about reading than we have, QoQ.

Now, can someone explain to me HOW do I get DS1 to LET ME teach him reading? He won't let me teach him anything, gets very cross if I try.

Why don't you let the school teach him then, zeb?
I always think of itchiness when I hear the word "synthetic" personally. I also hate jolly phonics because all the poor animals are squished uncomfortably into restricting looking letters. Still, seems to work for some kids eh?

scumymummy - I think you are thinking of another resource that is not actually JP; there are no animals squished into letters in JP! (Letterland is a bit like this; yuk)

Ah! That's the one- letterland! Sorry to wrongly dis Jolly Phonics.

DD is currently obsessed with a Letterland book (gift to us, btw, I am not trying to push it on my 4yo!). She esp. likes the droopy eared puppy... but she is starting to recognise all the others, though.

ScummyMummy -- DS1 is supposed to do homework, including his reading book. So whether I like it or not, I am put in a teaching-type role. And yet I haven't a clue exactly what the school expects me to do when he is looking at his reading book & trying to identify words; the school has given no guidance on how I should help him figure out which word is which, or indeed, whether I should try to help him do so. It's only now he's on Y1 that his teacher has sent back a comment about which words he doesn't know that she reckons he should. So presumably I should work on those words?

Last year he had flash cards in his bookbag but we were never advised what to do with them, or whether to do anything. Different flash cards this year, but still no advice what we should be doing with them. Should we look at them every night, do you think? DS1 was good about trying to guess them the other day when they were brand new in his bookbag, but normally he refuses to do anything like that -- he hates it if I try to make him work hard on anything.

In the meantime I get the impression from MN that DS1's literacy homework is very much less challenging than what other people have described for their Y1 child. It's the same for the whole class, & seems about right (to me) for his age, but makes me wonder if I should be coaxing him into reading better. We also know a home-ed'd boy, same age, who can read much better than DS1.