The Teaching of Reading: What can parents do???

[Catflap]

Hi there to all who have followed my phonics ramblings on many a thread, and indeed to those who haven't but are interested in this thread title!

I have commented a lot on the state of poor reading teaching in schools and described the effective method of synthetic phonics which is beng taught in a few schools but largely ignored by the educational establishment.

It has been fascinating reading the comments and observations that everyone as parents has on their children's reading - it amazing how many of you pick up on things that the teaching profession are not accepting. I have always found parents to be a preceptive lot. However, what is also sad in this case is how many of you put your trust and support in your children's teachers - which I wholey support because we are losing that fast - but in this case it is sadly misplaced.

The Reading Debate is discussed quite widely online now and has made its appearance in the news recently. You can do a search for 'synthetic phonics' and it will present you with plenty to read, but a thorough site for discussing the issues and providing you with information is the Reading Reform Foundation website

The thing is, lots of you are recognising the issues and are understanding the sort of methods that I describe and see that it makes sense. But what do you do??

I thought I would just post with a few suggestions, as it would seem pertinent after all my advices to offer some pointers for more positive action! Thing is, it's not that rosy an outlook, all the while the Government continue to rrefuse to accept that there might just be something in this synthetic phonics lark and teachers are driven by pressure from above...

However, should you believe that there is something in it and feel it could help your child, I would personally suggest that you have the following options open to you:

1. Do nothing. The chances are that your child will eventually struggle through like many thousands have in the past and will read successfully, or in some fashion, or will struggle and be offered some sort of remedial help eventually.

2. Teach them yourself. Get your hands on some resources and information and provide your child with the skills and knowlegde they need. This is of course is labour intensive, has some financial implications and could be seen as not your job...

3. Find a reading tutor that practices the same philosophies. This could be hard as there are few scattered around, but by posting on the messageboard of the above RRF site, I'm sure you will find someone who could help. (I myself am planning to get into that at some point, but not whilst dd is still so small and more are planned!)

4. Hound the teacher and then the school. Equip yourself with all the necessary facts and information and maybe get a team of parents and ask questions and get answers. Maybe even contact your LEA.

Meanwhile, online tuition will continue to be available whilst I am still managing to access this board!

Hope this helps give a bit more direction and a conclusion to previous discussions.

Aah - just printed this thread off to read later and it's run to 40 pages - feeling guilty about trees now!!!!

DS still getting those silly books with no words!

Catflap, I respect your post but I think we'll just have to agree to disagree on this.

Having taught in schools where SP is the sole focus throughout KS1, almost all children do come up to the juniors able to decode and read words very well. For some of these children, however, the comprehension has not kept up with the decoding skills and for others a love of reading has not yet been fostered. It is only when other methods are employed and they are introduced to real blokes that everything falls into place for them.

Let me clarify that I'm not against the SP approach, far from it. In fact I think its importance is highly underated. I am just making the point that IMO and IME as children progress they need something more to become enthusiastic competent readers.

Lol, should be real books not blokes. That's a different lesson altogether!

lol - different lesson indeed.....!

I can see where your views come from and that really is a shame. The school really do seem to have spent more time on word work then without aiming more widely for the overall purpose... That isn't really the idea, as you have noticed.

In my personal experience, it has always been the decoding ability that has enabled the children to become enthusiastic, competent readers - because they can. With a lot wider literacy appreciation work, they really are able to enjoy books reasonably effortlessly. COmprehension alongside decoding really is a must for the decoding to have any purpose. Ah well.

Thanks for your comments homemama.

Catflap - need to catch you quickly! Haven't caught up on this yet so excuse if it has been mentioned. I heard last night that my 13 yo nephew is unable to read particularly well. Are you aware of any schemes that would be of help to him? Don't think JP would appeal at his age. School has not as yet picked up on it but his Dad (divorced and nephew lives with Mum) noticed that he is unable to read articles in newspapers, etc. Any advice appreciated.

hi yoyo - I am not the best person to talk to for older children's remedial work, so I sought the advice of someone who does know:

"well - really for his age he would benefit best from 1-1 remedial programme -SRS is the only SP one at the moment BUT there is SP remedial one now available online -looks good: Reading Rescue: Malkin Dare's FREE, online, remedial reading programme here A one-on-one remedial reading program for students of any age who have already received some reading instruction but who are struggling with reading

This is from Susan Godsland whose website here - Dyslexics.org.uk will provide a wealth of information and further links for you. Don't be put off by the 'label' - it is used to describe anyone with reading difficulties.

HTH

Thanks Catflap. Will pass that info on to BIL.

rainthepain, this is where I got 20% from!
Happily my ds isn't one of them but it doesn't stop me being concerned about those who are.

wordgirl ive read your attachment with interest. It might not be 20% at your sons school but 40% at another if we are talking about percentages taken from a national average then we should expect the results to be a bit distorted. I dont believe there has ever been a golden age from where we can take a benchmark and say things have gone down hill since then.There have always been kids who struggle to read. However I feel that the introduction of national cuuriculum has compounded the problem because so much other stuff has to be taught leaving less time to be spent on basics.

Went to a large WHSmith at the weekend and was impressed to see kids from 5 - 18 buying books and heard them saying "Icouldn't put it down", books are big business at the moment more so than when I was young. There are bookshops all over the high street all over internet sites at carboots and charity shops. More people are reading than ever so something is going right. Admitted there are many who have poor reading skills and cant access books but there has never been a better incentive to try to read. Lots and lots of wonderful kids books out there at the moment. I would have had a ball when I was young if these were about then!

My 16 yr old daughter has gone to town today to buy some new paperbacks. she is distinctly average at school but the books she reads get her hooked!

I'm pleased you highlighted that article wrodgirl - it's important news and sadly makes the headlines so often.

You can as much incentive and motivation as you like to read - you've still got to be able to do it - otherwise all the motivation just turns into frustration followed by low self-esteem and disinterest.

oops, ironic typo, considering....

Hi there, I wonder if anyone could give me any advice at all. We live in Spain and my son has been attending a spanish nursery since he was 10 months old, he is now 27 months. His command of the english language is excellent and he seems far more advanced than our friends daughter of the same age who live in England. He speaks nothing but spanish for 8 hours per day and yet he can still speak what I consider excellent english. I dont want to appear to be ´just another proud mother but I am becomming a little worried about how I can teach him to read english. He recognises letters and numbers and will often point out "M"for mummuy and D for dady etc, something our other friends three year old can´t do, but this time next year he will be going to school and I am scared. My nieces who were also brought up here struggle to read in english, although the 11 year old is getting better thanks to magazines aimed at her age group etc, however the 7 year old is most upset that she can´t even read my son´s books. Can anyone tell me when I should start to teach him to read, how I do it, what books are best to start with etc, it is a great life over here, but I do fel a little bit in the wilderness sometimes !!

By the way, he has got as couple of phonics books, Posy the Pig and Jen the Hen and he also "reads" them from memory as he does with quite a few other books. I thought I read somewhere that this was a sign that he was ready to learn to read, even though he is not yet 2.5 .... Help !!!!

tobysmommy - I suggest you get hold of a copy of the Jolly Phonics Handbook - it's a good place to start as it provides a programme for the first year of learning to read and write. It has photocopiable pages for teachers, but is also very useful for parents to use. Have a look on www.focusonphonics.co.uk - it's a site aimed at parents who want to help their children learn to read with phonics. They will deliver to other countries but best to email first to check on delivery costs to Spain.

My oldest daughter is 8 and according to her teacher she's the best reader in her class. We didn't do any phonics before she started school - but she had "books" in her cot from the first week she was born. She loved books with pictures of other babies in them and I read to her from an early age - but just for 5-10 minutes a night and often the same book for days or weeks at a time. I think the biggest thing she got from this was a love of reading plus a great vocabulary. How can you learn to read a word if you've never even heard of it. We did lots of rhyming picture books like Hairy McClary and at age 4 we moved onto chapter books. I thoroughly recommend Enid Blyton's, The Enchanted Wood. It's a page turner (they love the idea of the slippery slip - a slide down the middle of the faraway tree). We moved onto Roald Dahl and C.S Lewis and others including non-fiction as she likes history. Now that she's 8, I read for 15 mins with my 4 year old whilst Taz does some times table practice and then Taz reads for 15-20 mins to me. She reads a poem and then a "quality" book (it has to be something that will stretch her vocab. and that I'll enjoy too!) - currently it's Noel Streatfield's, Ballet Shoes. Then I say goodnight and she can read whatever she likes for half an hour - maybe Jacqueline Wilson or Mary Kate & Ashley. She associates books with lovely times with mum & dad and I think that's why she's grown up with a love of reading. Whatever reading scheme you use - it still takes lots of practice so the most important thing is that you get into the library or onto Amazon and find books that you will both enjoy - even if you have to put up with Captain Underpants for a while!

Scattercat - I'm just going to link that site here as it's got some really interesting articles from the papers about synthetic phonics.

Gobbledispook - that link doesn't work could you try again, please?

lisawithtwogirls makes an important point with language development - it is vital that children have a good command of spoken English before or alongside learning to read - it is one of the vital pre-cursors to learning to read and why sharing books and talking all the time is such a valuable activity with toddlers - even babies.

Diane McGuinness has a fascinating book called 'Growing a reader from birth' that discusses these issues in great depth - showing how babies can even dicsriminate different speech sounds from within the womb and how having a good vocabulary is essential for the acquisition of good reading skills later.

I still have to say, though, that while children seem to acquire the necessary skills and knowledge for reading quite effortlessly, often from mere exposure to lots of good books, they are teh lucky ones who are able to learn about the alphabet code almost by themselves with some incidental teaching along the way. This is not, however, how it works for many children and should not be relied upon to get children reading.

Hello Tobysmommy - we live in France with boy 9, girl 7 yrs. I spoke to many linguists before moving and placing our kids in school where they didn't speak the language. I was advised not to teach my daughter to read in English (she was 5 when we arrived) as once she could speak French (fluent after 10 months) and taught to read in her second language, she would apply the sames rules to her mother tongue. It is working. For my son, however, he was 'labelled' in the UK as a "not quite dyslexic but has a problem but dont know what it is" and was over a year behind his contemporaries on the reading front, even though both my children have an excellent command of english and extensive vocabularly as we have read to them from birth. We have two sorts of reading in our house, books they read/look at themselves and books we read to them which stretch their imaginations and vocab. My son needed extra help. In the UK I was told it would be down to me due to lack of funds. Here, I was advised to seek help of an orthophonist (sort of speech therapy) and through various 'games' she played with him, within weeks he was reading. I spent many hours fretting about him as academically he is considered very bright and has a superb memory, can learn his spellings in record time, but he couldn't read! This was upsetting. Now he has turned 9, he has matured and since this summer loves to read, its been a long haul, but constant reassurance, stimulation with different books and he will get there in his own good time. This latter statement may not be of much comfort, but different systems work for different children its a matter of finding the one that pushes the right button. Lots of my son's problems stemmed from the fact he found the reading series at school in UK boring, he loathed the oxford reading tree series and couldn't see the point of the stories and prefers non-fiction. Trying to find non-fiction for young children is difficult! Finally, little and often. Word games help, but again, our son didn't follow the 'norm', if there is such a thing. Here, 'memory skills' are taught and he has a poem to learn off by heart each week. I am convinced this too has helped him along a very difficult path. Good luck.

catflap, the link you need is www.focusonphonics.co.uk - if you paste that into your toolbar it should work! Or you could try clicking here

hope this works

Thanks for that - have had a quick persuse and while generally good and informative, a couple of things did make me scream!

Fisrtly, when talking about a good phonics scheme, they mention Letterland - bleurgh!! This is not a good phonics scheme, for many reasons I can divulge if anyone is interested.

Secondly, the mention of sight words - those with irregular spellings that cannot be sounded out. Lists of such words always give away the thorough nature of a phonics scheme to me - or not, as the case might be. On this list, was said, have, was, one, the, my and she. Aarrgh! The only one i would consider to be a true sight word there is 'one' as the sounds: w-u-n really do not match up to the letters in any sensible way and does not feature in any other word, except 'once' but this is equally as tricky! (there are links with done and one, but still the absence of the 'w' sound!)

However, the rest are prefectly decodable with a little but of understanding of alternative spelling sounds. I would like to explain for anyone who cares to be indulged:

have - h-a perfectly regular. v sound on the end - the letter 'v' never appears by itself at the end of a word; it is always accompanied by an 'e' so the 'v' sound at the end is always spelt 've' and I show it ' -ve ' to show that there will be the beginning of a word first. However, in most words, the 'e' is also there for the long vowel digraph, doubling its purpose, but should 'have' be sounded out 'h-ai-v' it will quickly be spotted that this is not a word and my kids are used to trying alternative related sounds if a word sounds not quite right.

'she' - sh is regular; 'e' for 'ee' occurs in may one syllable words e.g. me, we, he, she, be

my - m is regular; 'y' for 'ie' is common in one syllable words eg. sky, fly, by etc

said - nearly irregular, except if you count 'again' which is often pronounced 'agen' so the 'ai' for 'e' occurs twice here. The rest of it is quite decodable, rendering it only slightly tricky.

was - w is regular. s at the end is frequently for 'z' as 's' is usually spelt 'ss.' The 'o' sound is always spelt 'a' if it comes after an 'w' sound e.g. wash, wasp, want, was, swan, swamp, squash etc

the - th is quite regular - and 'e' is never for the 'e' sound at the end of words - there are no other vowel letter for it to be with so you try the schwa - the indistinct, vague vowel sound as exists at the end of this word. Sometimes it is pronouced 'thee' (when the next word begins with a vowel, as with 'the end' when the word fits in with the me, he, she, we, be list.)

I know this might sound complicated, but when shown to the children in a structured, systematic way, it just follows all the same, usual, consistent rules that they are used to - you are just matching different spellings to sounds and giving them a means to remember it or work it out.

DOne like this, hardly any words are truly irregular.

Catflap - you are so amazingly thorough and you know this stuff inside out!!

Just out of interest, are there any names for the other methods of learning? The friend I mentioned earlier on showed me her ds's homework sheets tonight (he is 3 weeks into reception, same as my ds).

Twas strange I thought - one sheet was for 'oO' and the child had to write the word under each picture - the grid had about 9 pictures - a couple I can remember were dog, frog. Underneath it had for example d-g, f--g and the child was meant to fill this in. At the bottom was a word search grid and then a box in which the child was to write out all the words he found. Surely a 4 yr old in week 3 of reception is not honestly expected to do this? And how? What have they been taught in order for them to supposedly find words in this wordsearch??

I also noticed that his writing was not cursive either and his mother did say they are not doing cursive writing. So his 'n' was an arch with a small stick drawn on one side but only at the top. His 'i' did not have a curve under it and his 'p' was a circle, a stick below and a stick above.

Tbh, I think the cursive writing is better - teaching them to do a 'n' by starting at the top of the stick, going down, back up and over iyswim. Isn't that how you are aiming to write as an adult??

This school has excellent results though so I'm sure it must work, it just seems a really odd way to go about it. My gut feeling, sort of based on logic imo, is that this 'recognition/memory' way of learning to read probably works but surely in the long term phonics (and cursive writing) is going to be better for spelling and for identifying words not come across before?

Hi there Gobbledispook

The other sort of phonics teaching that is taught is analytical phonics. This is when a word is epxlored when it can already be read. So, a work is learnt from memory and then you are told how it works. I saw an example of this on an observation morning I had to go on once to another school. (!!) It was a year 1 class who were already fairly competent readers, generally, and were exploring '-at' words so they were hearing the two sounds 'at' and writing them and then exploring other sounds that could prefix it to make other words.... Much phonics is still done like this.

'Look and say' was exactly that - here's a flashcard of a word; look at it, I'll say it, you repeat it... ad nauseum until learnt...

Generally, a mixture of methods is promoted these days, which don't generally have specific names of their own, but involve some look and say for 'sight words,' lots of phonics as it is recognised that this is most important, but this will be analytical and some synthetic, as well as guesswork (predicting is the fancy word used...) using pictorial, grammatical and contextual cues. The theory is that learning to read is hard and can't be done in one way: plus, all kids learn differently so chuck all the methods at them and surely enough will stick.

There is SO MUCH wrong with your friend's ds's homework sheet! If my dd ever gets anything like that it's going straight in the bin. No, actually, it will be returned in disgust. Firstly, a sheet. Yuk - what reception age child learns well from sheets? How inappropriate! Learning at that age should be practical wherever possible. Most early concepts can't be picked up from the limitation of sheets. Haven't used any of those in my classes for a while now. Secondly - whatever does anyone learn from putting an 'o' in the middle of dg??? As much as you would learn from repeatedly inserting a # in the middle of ¬* I would imagine.... Lastly, a wordsearch??? Is that because in the mind of the teacher those are fun and so would make good homework?? If so, someone very out of touch...

I think it is essential that correct handwriting formation is practised alongside phonics work. Why spend longer writing letters incorrectly to only have them further ingrained upon your brain? Forming them correctly helps fluent, rapid handwriting and is the most efective way of forming the letters. Writing them also helps match them to the sounds (when said that the same time) so it only makes sense to write them the right way while you are doing it...) I used to do handwriting practice with my kids every day and they had the best handwriting!

You're right - lots of methods do generally work - that is how there has been generations of people reading and writing in this country. But how many do it with adequate skill and understanding to be fluent, to be confident, to have a competent grasp of our language and to enjoy what they do? And how many illiterate adults are there?? Our written code is a visual representation of our indicidual spoken sounds - so it makes absolute sense to teach it to children. But it is complex, so you need an ordered, logical way to go about it. Teach it fast and effectively and there is no need for all these shortcuts to make it look like children are reading. Why delay the process with guesswork? Why confuse the issue by exposing children to words they have little hope of reading? That's all that current methods do.

Hello everybody, could I have thoughts, opinions experience regarding the best type of education for my nine year old boy who has moderate ADHD and language processing problems. A recent spell in Steiner education worked wonders in my view so any thoughts either way on that would be appreciated. Please - any advice about what to push for, aim for etc would be gratefully received. I am concerned about how late it's getting. It has taken a long time to convince his current primary school of the need for significant and targetted support.