Learning to read in English and German at the same time?

[SSSandy]

I chose not to send dd to a bilingual school and I'm really happy with the German school she attends but I'm not sure how to tackle reading.

The school is teaching phonemes so they look at a picture and learn the sound, sometimes represented by a letter of the alphabet, sometimes just by a symbol. So they'll say Lama - la la (sign like a V with an arm pointing to the right), Kamel - ka ka (letter K). The teacher then writes something on the board using a mixture of these signs/letters and the children guess out the sentence.

This is how she explained she'll begin teaching them to read, then they move on to reading books just in the Roman alphabet.

Not sure I like this sign business TBH but ok keeping an open mind. So I asked should multilingual dc put back reading in other languages and concentrate on German whilst they're learning this system or should we continue reading to them in their mother tongues and start teaching them to read say in English at home at the same time.

Didn't get a clear answer. We're definitely just a small minority in the class, so don't think she'd thought about it beforehand.

So what do I do? Will she get confused learning to read in English at the same time? Difficult just to read out to her because she's at a stage where she'll recognise words in the text and start spelling them out anyway.

Thanks geekgirl, have to go and collect dd now. I'll read through the site this evening. Would make sense to buy a pack or two and try it out I think.

The oxford books are good, we had them. I taught my 2 dc's english alphabet and abit ofreading before school butwhen 1st year started I totally stopped and explained to them that they were going to be learning the german version which has different sounds. Then when they were comfortable with taht I started where we had left off with reading in englisha nd spelling practise etc. Ds sometimes gets confused with numbers like funfundzwnzig is twentyfive so he writes it wrong way round , so when he has homework for Maths I speak german so he doesn't get confused.( That is the only time I speak german to them!) Also we always read a book together in english at bedtime.
My ds now writes in that awful curly loopy german schreibschrift! He learned one version ofit in Schwaben land and then moved to Berlin and had to learn an even curlier version of it as they used a different style..! But I practise loads with him so he can also now write in nice plain not joined up style, really neat handwriting is important so I do that alot with him and dd sometimes writes so nicely that it's a shame she will be starting schreibschrifft in school this year.

A friend (my friend of 1000 afternoon activies) just told me the Europa schools use the ORT books. The English speakers learn to read in English and in third grade learn to read in German. So I'll leave it I think (lazy mum alert!) and let her learn the German system first. Thinking those ORT books might be too childish for a 7-8 year old.