Lara2 - I think that initial sounds are sometimes only taught; because sometimes they /are/ !! I didn't mean that was happening exclusively everywhere, just that sometimes this is the main focus and this is often what areas of the NLS promote. It is also common practice for general basic phonic work: a is for apple, b is for ball etc
Why do you think that children need to be familiar with initial sounds before they can blend? Why can the two not happen simultaneously? For example, following Jolly Phonics work, children learn the letters and sounds s, a, t, i, p and n and then blend them to form words such as sit, nip, tap, snap etc
If pictures aren't important, why are they in books? Well, in realy picture books they are certainly there to enrich the story and make many beautiful, amusing and engaging story books. However, when teaching children to read is concerned, pictures are there because decades ago, someone with too much ignorance than sense figured they /had/ to be there to /teach/ the children to read. They are put there precisely for that reason. However, there is overwhelming evidence including real live practice in classrooms to show that this really isn't necessary. Of course, the odd illustration helps enliven a piece of text and makes it more attractive and warm, but an overall picture of the whole text is all that is necessary rather than guided pictures to point to the meaning of every sentence.
Do I actually think any child would learn to read without pictures??? YES !!!!! There are *thousands of them doing it! What a silly thing to ask! All you need to know is the sounds and letters and how to blend and away you go! Once you know the sounds for the letters s, u and n and can blend them you have read the word sun. You don't need a picture of the sun right next to you to help.
With pictures, there can be too much distraction and ambiguity. With the actual letters - which, after all, are there to represent the words - that's how our written language was constructed - there is little if any ambiguity once the alphabet code has been mastered.
Your description of a child reading a word beginning with 'd' wrong from the picture who is encouraged to look at the picture and word again is very laborious, especially for the struggling child - which ca be very disheartening and in the end turn a child off reading - no matter how exciting the pictures are. I've seen it happen. I know it happens from countless other people. If that child just knows all the letters in that word in the first place, the word can be read straight off and independently. Surely that's better?
You really teach children to read individually? Isn't that a huge waste of time and your resources, including you? What the are the rest of the class doing while you are teaching one child? Surely it would be better to teach the class as a whole how to access these words and then have them all practice and reinforce this work and you monitor it on a more efficient basis?
I have no issues with how my dd is taught - I know that when the time comes, she shall be taught effectively and if I have any issues, I shall take it up with her teachers. My concerns now, are for the hundreds - thousands - of children who are struggling and even failing and never learn properly because their teachers are not properly equipped with the adequate knowledge and skills needed to teach reading properly. I know you are probably steaming at that last comment but I know it's true because I hear hundreds of teachers and trainee teachers worriedly expressing how they have never been taight to teach reading properly. And I was one of them. After teaching Year 1 for three years, I faced a move to Reception and whilst I had always had the majority of the class sailing through the reading scheme, realised that I always had this group that struggled - and even for those that succeeded, I was aware my teaching was limited, incomplete and lacking in a really secure foundation of understanding from me. Could I teach chidlren to read right from scratch? Well, I wasn't going to find out by trial and error - when the error would impact on children's lives. I found the book 'Why Children Can't Read - and What we Can Do ABout it' by Diane McGuinness. It was the most enlightening thing I have ever read - and once I had finished it all seemed so screamingly obvious. All teachers should read it. It should be on all TEacher Training Institutions' reading lists.
I have taught the way prescribed in the book ever since and all my children have learnt to read without fail (albeit still at varying progress rates, of course) as well as with more knowledge and understanding than ever before, and quicker than before.
Quite the NLS team are still refusing to acknowledge all the research out there to show how effective this is for all children is beyond me. And quite why teachers do not analyse their teaching more and persist with ineffective methods is beyond me. That is my problem. And, from reading boards like this, I have found that parents are often smarter than the teachers when it comes to this sort of thing, which is worrying.