Reception child has wordless reading books

[springchik]

Just started taking books home this week. Has had 2 such books so far. Very surprised about this not least because he seems to be the only one getting this type of book. Anyone know the reason children have these as "reading" books?

It's so they can learn how the book flows, from the first page to the last. Discuss the pictures with him. They are the very first reading books.

It's to do with storytelling, you are supposed to ask him to tell you the story and the motivations behind the pictures 'why did he do that', 'what do you think will happen next?' etc.

It is not a judgement of your child's ability.

It just seems a bit weird others have books with words in them. He enjoys the books though and am still reading other books to him so I'm not unduly worried!

didn't the teacher get parents in to talk them through this beofre giving books out?

THey talked about getting reading books and about phonics but nothing at all was mentioned about getting wordless books!

Oxford reading tree? Ours come with a parents booklet that you read to them and discuss questions with them etc. I wasn't keen but DD is really getting to like the characters of Kipper, Biff and Chip etc and some of the questions are quite thought-provoking for a 4 year old.

We get letters, sounds and word lotto to practice all the phonics and word recognition and they also choose a 'normal' storybook to share with parents, bit like a library book I guess.

Perhaps they rotate the books so next week he will have books with words and someone else will have the graphic books.

Totally normal IME. Even now DS is beginning to read well (yr1), the teacher still emphasises the importance of looking at the pictures and thinking about the story/characters and how they are feeling etc and not just reading the words on the page.

Totally normal, DD1 can read a few words and has started from 'scratch' with kipper and his weirdly named family.
She is getting word books now about 7 or 8 books in. Do you get the 'idea' card with them? Some of the ideas are a bit random but you can see how it works. It gives her an idea of how a story works without being restricted with words they give you. Now she has words they are very basic and the sort of thing a child would say for the pictures imo.

The teacher told me that dd could use the wordless book to write her own story to go with it, so she did. that was quite a successful use of the book for a child who could already write. She enjoyed it massively. Before that I was a bit about the wordless book, but it worked with that dd.

all the children in our reception class get given a book with no words until they have worked their way through 5 or 6 reading games(high frequency words). i asked for a book with words as dd is reading by sight all the yr words, teacher said no. other mums netters have advised to read and sign the diary cos it is something you have to do and carry on whatever you were doing at home. we do all the telling the story from the pictures thing with books with words in too, so not missing out on that. the teacher may not think dd can read cos she is too shy to read at school and she has taken a dislike to words with a magic e a silent e or any e at all. it would be nice to know why dd's teacher thinks she can't move on yet. trying not to find out what books other children are on cos i will only worry!

The home book is only one of many books your child will be exploring at school. Research shows that many children develop good word recognition skills but poor comprehension skills and that it is this that holds them back later. It's actually really important that the comprehension is developed and picture books are a great way of doing this as long as they are discussed. In class, your child will be reading all the time - phonics lessons for 20 minutes per day, shared and guided reading sessions with class and group readers and all kinds of other texts. Ultimately she'll probably always be reading beyond the scheme - I remember my boys racing through Biff/Kipper books as fast as they could so they could get back to Harry Potter/Lord of the Rings - it seemed a bit pointless then. At this stage though, don't worry - embrace them and see that just as a different type of text.