AAARRRGGGHHH! (Frustrated Emoticon like banging head on brick wall!)

[Rhubarb]

dd started her new school this term and I know she is behind with her reading as they do this later in France. She came home with the Biff and Chip books, ones with a green sticker on. We've been listening to her read one every evening and she is getting extra tuition at school, she moved up to the grey sticker ones at one stage but is now back to the green again.

This evening she brought back the very same book she first had from school, so I expected her to sail through it! But no, she struggled to read simple words like 'was' and 'could' and when she did eventually read them, she forgot again a sentence later when they repeated those words!

I just don't see that she is progressing at all. She can read a word over and over but the next day she'll struggle with it. It's as if she isn't listening or concentrating, yet it appears that she is trying.

So what are we doing wrong? I'm not one for pushing children at all, they will learn in their own good time, but I did think that with all this practice she'd be a little better at it by now!

So tonight DS gets out his word sheet. Reads first couple of words easily. Comes across "be" - says he doesn't know that one. Next one is "we" - which he reads no problem. So I try to get him to sound out "be". "Bed" he replies. No I say, if a 'w' and an 'e' are we, then a 'b' and an 'e' is??? "Beckham" he shouts! "No" i say. "David Beckham!" he says!!!!! Aargh!!!

PMSL at david beckham!!

Beast - give up. Give up now while you have your sanity!!

willowcatkin, is there really a "code" for this?

I can't pronounce correctly at all, but then I'm German, so I do not count.

I'm intreagued to hear what this text is like to read for people with English mother tongue.

There is a 'code' for all the words in the poem - it's just that some of the symbol-sound correspondences are more common than others. English, because of its different origins (Romance/Latinate versus Germanic/Norse) has a much more complex code than most languages, so context certainly comes into play when determining, for example, whether to read "read" with a long 'ee' sound or "read" with an "-e-" sound.

I agree that phonics is definitely the way to learn reading in the early years. We had a meeting at school when DS had just started where they explained how important phonics and learning the 'code' was.
They also showed us an excerpt of that poem that Giulietta linked for us ... to explain that in some circumstances the brain needs to 'memorise' a word .... for pronunciation.

I am sorry, but I don't understand this "know 30 words by the end of reception then forget 10 of them by the beginning of Y1" ... why don't they teach them to read ie work out the code so that they can work out the word when they see it?

I am in NZ and I have been nothing but impressed by the way DS has been taught to read ... phonics and high frequency words together ....

Rhubarb ... I really agree with willowcatkin that you should look at getting some phonics books for your DD ....

Honeysuckle sugar lamb! DD2 did that whole regression thing. Know what I did? Nothing. Read with her, got her to read with her siblings (I have older and younger... so the older ones listened to her and helped and she read stories to the wee ones.... and they tried to eat her books... sigh.............)

Honestly, don't sweat it. It will click in completely one day. She'll be fine. I'll never forget my frustration with DD2 reading the word THE. Tuh, Huh, E, Tuhueee! No you daft child THE THE THE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Managed to hold that inside and was convinced my child was out to torture me. I look back now (just a couple of years) and think... bloody hell she's a good reader.

Actually I listened to readers in DS2's Y1 class today and one lovely articulate 5 year old said to me: "I can't really read this book. I just look at the pictures and guess and try and remember what it said last time".

That is precisely why we should teach phonics - this little boy was perfectly able to sound out words with short vowels when I encouraged him(the only sound-symbol correspondences he has been explicitly taught, I imagine) but didn't do it because so many other words in his'look and guess' books didn't obey the rules he knew - eg laughed, elephant, children.