Jolly phonics at home alphabet song and a ber cer at nursery

[julienetmum]

I'm currently using the finger phnics books with dd aged 4 at home. She has so far done books 1-3 and is beginning to blend. She also enjoys the I Spy games.

I do find though that I keep having to counteract her trying to sound words out using a ber cer, ser was quite hard at first but she has got the hang of sssss now.

Dh mentioned how well she was doing to the nursery staff the other day and didn't get much of a reaction. At nursery they do a different letter each week, they have to take in objects beginning with that letter and colour in worksheets with animals on eg ella the elephant and practice writing the letters.

Apart from the phonics we love the nursery and the school it is attached too. Once she goes into reception next September they will be using ORT. Do schools take well to children learning a different system at home, especially one that seems to go totally against what they are doing?

I wouldn't worry. The school will almost certainly just be pleased to see that you are helping your child to learn at home, and that she is doing well at reading. Like you, I feared trouble before DS1 started in reception, but the teacher was extremely nice and encouraging. You may even find the school is not as wedded to its chosen reading scheme as you first thought; I was worried that my son who could read fluently would be forced through the reading scheme anyway (as I had been 30-odd years earlier). Instead, the teacher was happy to provide him with suitable and challenging reading material.

If I understand it correctly, ORT encourages using multiple strategies to work out the word. I would therefore not have thought using phonics at home could be said to undermine doing ORT at school. You may of course feel the ORT is undermining the phonics, but that's not a reason for the teacher to have a go at you. I would have thought you could use the ORT books as practice at using the phonics techniques, though the ORT will expose her to some tricky words for which those techniques are hard to apply. (Welcome to the real world! )

Thanks, I don't want to be seen as a pushy mum but I really like the phonics approach and am surprised the school don't do this.

She is doing really well at it, apart from she wants to rush through the books. She was in tears last night because she wanted finger phonics instead of a bedtime story, we did the 1st couple of pages of book 4 but it was too hard and she was too tired, but she wanted to finish the book.

julienetmum

I would continue with the JP regardless of what the school thinks. That's what I did with my son and he is now one of the best readers in his class.

I couldn't agree more that the phonetic approach is the best one.