I'm not sure that I am impressed with new schools approach to reading (reception) should i worry or am i being pfb?

[littleducks]

We moved and dd started at a school i would not have chosen (too far and good ofsted versus outstanding) on paper but that seems ok on visiting. She seems gto enjoy it, although is struggling to make friends atm.

DD previously was in preschool, she knows her full alphabet and the initial two letter combos (sh/ch/ng/oo/ee etc) and has a vague idea about 'magic e' words. She is familiar with some 'tricky words' (the/i/said) and can read this from memory.

Her preschool followed the ruth miskin, read write inc programme and was very keen on phonics being a code children could use to break down stories to learn to read.

I attended reading info session and am a bit surprised and disapoined with new primary school. They said that they encourage learning stories by repeated reading and we should encourage children to guess words in reading books based on context.

This seems like a big no, no to me. I know dd can learn stories off by heart (we can do bear hunt etc with no books) but i dont want her to start guessing words rather than bothering to try to decode them.

The school wants to concentrate on teaching children letters now, based in kinaesthetic groups: this is c, this is a, which is a c with joins then flicks, this is q same as c but with a tail etc. And for us to read to children and encourage them to pretend to read by memorising stories/guessing words they dont know by context.

[maizieD]

nemofish
"I think the current wisdom is that mixed is best"

I'm afraid that you couldn't be more wrong. 'Current wisdom' is that systematic, structured explicit phonics is the best method for the initial teaching of reading.

The strange idea, which is heavily promoted by people who are ideologically opposed to phonics teaching, that learning to read what a word says somehow prevents a child from understanding what a word means is a complete myth with absolutely no research evidence to back it.

I spend my working day helping KS3 children who 'struggle' with reading and spelling. The root cause of the problems of most of them is the 'mixed methods' teaching which they had in KS1 & KS2. I am very encouraged, by some of the replies on this thread, to find that many parents can see that systematic phonics instruction is by far the most effective method of teaching reading.