Has anyone used Ruth Miskin books

[Reallytired]

My son's reading homework is dire and insultingly easy. He has only been given one reading book and a list of sight words to learn. He already knows the sight words and the list looks totally uninspiring. My son has really strong decoding skills and needs to work on comprehension. I fail to see how a list of sight words that he already knows will improve his comprehension.

He had a fanastic reception teacher and was doing far more challenging and interesting work. He followed jolly phonics with a lot of sucess. I just hope that the year one teacher is as good.

Why not just read "off piste"? And then talk about what he has read - what has happened? What will happen next? What do these words mean? etc etc

We do read "off piste". However he still finds decoding very tiring. Sometimes he can read words well, but have little understanding of what he has read. Many children's books can have quite challenging words in.

The advantage of a reading scheme book is that it is all at a level the child can read on their own. The decoding level and language of a good reading scheme book gradually increases in difficulty and stops the child's confidence being knocked.

His school uses the Oxford Reading Tree, we have some jolly readers and jelly and bean books at home. He is on Oxford Reading Tree level 5 and its about the perfect level for him. I want him to have a choice of reading books. I don't want to buy Oxford Reading Tree books.

I have heard a lot of good things about Ruth Miskin's books. I wonder what sort of level is the equivalent of Oxford Reading Tree level 5.

Have a look here to see what stage would be suitable.

The Ruth Miskin books are fab! Unlike Oxford Reading Tree they are decodable, but they need be used alongside a genuine synthetic phonic programme to be really effective.

Schools should NOT be giving children words to learn by sight. That is a whole-language practice which has been shown to be damaging to children's developing decoding skills.

Have a look at the pages on teaching reading, here:
www.dyslexics.org.uk

maverick,
I have used your website before. Its brilliant.

I have also used debbie's website and the reading reform website. It is partly thanks to you that my son is so good at reading. I tested him last June at the age of 5 years and 6 months using the Burt test on the rrf website and he had a reading age of 8 years and 3 months. I don't think that doing too partly for a little boy who has hearing problems.

Before my son started school I was really worried that he would not be taught to read properly. In fact I shouldn't have worried, his reception teacher taught reading using pure synthetic phonics. My son and his classmates were extremely lucky children.

Unfortunately my son's new teachers don't seem to have a clue about teaching reading. We have sight words like "adventure". I am really worried that she is going undo all the good work that the reception teacher did.

Anyway my son has read a lot of the Green Jolly Readers. What level of Ruth Miskin Books do you think would be approipate?

Hi, Reallytired. This is a long post, but hope it is helpful. I used some of the later stages of the RM books when DS2 was learning to read. Each book focuses on a particular sound and its different spelling correspondences, so they can seem to vary in difficulty. They get progressively harder througout each colour set.

For info, here are some brief extracts from the top 3 levels:

Yellow Level Book 1: The duckchick

Mama hen had a problem. Things began to go wrong in the spring, when she was sitting on her nest on her six eggs. Egg 6 was very big. Mama hen sat on it a lot and went "Cluck" at it a lot, but she felt a bit upset that it was so big.

Blue Level Book 1: Barker

Let's start at the beginning. With Grandad's slippers. Barker had lots of fun with them. One night, when Grandad was at a darts match, Barker got hold of one of the slippers and ripped it apart! Grandad said "No, Barker". And Barker just laughed.

Grey Level Book 1: Big Dude to the rescue

This is Luke. The big bloke with the shaved head and the tattoos. And this little pug with the blue velvet collar is Luke's dog. His name is Bruce. Cute, isn't he? Not so much little as minute! Luke likes to take Bruce to the park. Bruce chases sticks (well, twigs) and barks at the ducks, while Luke sniffs the roses or reads 'Gardening Today', humming a little tune.

I would say that the yellow books would probably be a good match for ORT 5 or so. The sentences tend to be longer, but decodable. By the grey books, the sentences are quite long and some of them are more enjoyable for a 5 year old than others. DS was in early Reception when he read them.

I bought the black and white books which are good value and thought they were excellent - comprehension questions and speed words to read fluently, which DS bizarrely enjoyed.

Let me know if you want any more info. You used to be able to download samples from the website, but not since ORT bought them....

singersgirl,

Thank you for your post. Its exactly the information that I needed. I shall now go and search the web to find the best price.

I am amazed that your son was reading the equivalent standard of ORT stage 5 at the start of reception. Very few children are of that standard at my son's school at the start of year 1.

Di your son's school use pure synthetic phonics? Or do they use the hideous mixed methods? We been having problems, because his new teacher is telling my son to guess from the pictures.

His decoding is pretty strong, but words like adventure are fairly challenging. I am trying to teach him the extended code, but its really hard as I am working full time.

Actually I taught him to read when he was 3 and a bit, as he was very interested and asked to learn. I used Jolly Phonics for a few minutes a day from about February, and when he started Reception, at just 4 (late August birthday), I and his teacher discovered he could read up to ORT Stage 7 or 8 without any problems. I used the Ruth Miskin books at home in the first term of Reception to give him more sophisticated decoding skills - he was only at school in the mornings. In the grey set there are books that focus on, for example, 'ture' and 'tion' suffixes.

Perhaps he would have learned to read easily anyway, as he was keen and has always been very verbal, but the synthetic phonics was perfect for me and him. He is a brilliant speller now too.

Your son sounds as if he is doing fantastically and I think the Ruth Miskin books will be an excellent reinforcement to the phonics skills he already has.

I am proud of my son. He has hearing problems which make it tougher for him to learn to read and write. He was late talking and it would have been impossible to teach him to read at the age of three.

I introduced him to Jolly Phonics just after his fourth birthday. We just did a few minutes a day whenever he felt like it. He got blending and segmenting very quickly. I think it helped him being in a quiet enviroment and having one to one attention.

When he started reception he could read simple Jelly and Bean books. His teacher had a policy of not letting children have a reading book until they could prove to her that they could blend every word in the Jolly Phonics word boxes.

My son was put on to stage 2 ORT after his first term. He really struggled because it had words like "ice-cream". His school then got some ORT songbirds books and things got much better. He was then issued with some nhs digital hearing aids and jumped two stages of ORT in two weeks. He finished reception on ORT stage 5.

Ruth Miskin spectacularly good but I agree about the need to be used as part of a synthetic phonic 'programme' The Book People are doing a FANTATIC offer on Miskin books at the moment.