Best reading schemes: ORT / jolly phonics / other?

[Greythorne]

We live abroad and DD1 goes to a local school, so I am having to sort out teaching her to read in English sort of by myself.

We have "done" Letterland and now DD knows her letters really wsell, we still read the books as she enjoys them.

We also have the ORT "Read at Home" box set.

Wondering if we should go for ORT / Jolly phonics / another scheme completely as well / instead of?

Also, in the ORT parents' notes, it says "please do not hide the pictures" and yet on MN I have seen that "proper" phonics teaching means that the pictures are not useful as guess aids. I think it was a poster called mrs something, sorry not to be more specific :)

Any views opn pictures / no pictures / covering the pictures etc?

We also live overseas in Spain. I have found the Ruth Miskin Reading books really useful. They are very well structured. Each book starts with phonic practice gradually building up the different letter patterns with each stage. The stories are completly decodable from the beginning so my daughter had reading confidence from the start. You can buy them paperback so they are cheap in comparision to other schemes. I bought stages one to five for about 45 pound on Amazon. Hope this helps

"Ann Steps Up" is an entirely phonetic reading scheme of 10 books, specifically written to teach the alphabet sounds.

Google "Ann Steps Up"
phonetic reading scheme

The real issue is about how your child is cognitively able to learn how to use the graphic symbols our society chooses to represent the sounds of speech.

Not all are best able to use phonics and some are not cognitively able to use phonics due a disabiliyt such as Auditory Processing Disorder (APD), they are not able to process the gaps between the sounds that can make up a word, or even the gaps between words in rapid speech, so the process of phonic blending is impossible.
These children learn to speak by learning the whole sound of a word, and need to match the whole sound of a word to the whole graphic representation of a word, or the whole shape of the text word. And pictures may help, as they tend also to think in pictures, using their visual skills and a picture can paint a thousand words, and it is about remembering which ones and in what order.

So you really need to understand the neurological science of reading and forget the marketing of the teaching programs.
Neuroimaging studies of wordreading

Unfortunately learning to read by learning whole words has lead to a massive increase in illiteracy over the past 50 years all over the English speaking world.
For something in the region of 99% of children learning to decode leads to reading fluency and the ability to 'take off' and to decode new words as they are encountered.

Well, I don't think hiding the pictures is a good idea, simply because it would annoy me if I were a child. However good phonics books should be based on allowing a child to decode the words without needing the pics. (The pics are just nice to have and do give clues.)

Having said that, the ORT Read At Home series is, I believe, based on the whole word method and is not decodable. My DD learnt to read with the Ginn series of books which were not decodable (at all!) and in my opinion made the learning to read process twice as difficult for the children. I wish I knew then what I know now: what allchildrenreading said: "Unfortunately learning to read by learning whole words has lead to a massive increase in illiteracy over the past 50 years all over the English speaking world."

Personally I like Starfall. You can print out all their little books for free here. There are also free/reasonable phonic readers here

I have also made a note of one of mrz's recommendations - free e-books at www.oxfordowl.co.uk/Library/Index/?AgeGroup=2&BookType=Phonics

thanks for the readinga-z link - I've had a look and it looks incredibly helpful and cost effective as we have 2 boys learning here already.

Absolutely, you should let the child look at the pictures. It's exactly what they're there for. They are deliberately full of clues, and the early books in the schemes without words are there for you to talk through with your child and tell your own stories/get used to picking up the clues. There's more to reading than phonics. A lot of it is about recognising the shapes of words too, rather than sounding out the letters, etc. We had an open evening at school in KS1/Foundation stage when the teacher in charge of literacy talked us through what it feels like to be a child learning to read. He had a children's reading book for Welsh children (none of us were Welsh speakers) which he got us to translate a page of, by looking at the use of punctuation and picking up clues from the pictures.

I loved the Biff and Chip books and was quite sad when the DCs moved on from them. The humour in the pictures was excellent.

It's important to guage when your child's ready to learn to read, so you do it at the right time and don't put them off. Ensure you start off with lower case letters too.

Dolfrog, should we be more worried about Auditory Processing disorder? I've never heard of it - does it affect many children?

As a mum i'm not up to understanding the nerological science of reading. I just do my best by my boys and we love our ORT school books - we just go through the scheme and they seem happy.

Katybabes
According to the Medical Research Council 10% of children have some degree of Auditory Processing Disorder (APD) including those children who may have had Otitis Media with Effusion (Glue Ear). And 60% of dyslexics have APD as the underlying cognitive cause of their dyslexic symptom. Have a look at the Cognitive Subtypes of dyslexia research paper of 2008.

Oh, dolfrog.

Do stop trying to create problems where non exist.

Our school doesn't do a reading scheme (although their phonics teaching is wonderful). DD was keen to do a scheme with levels so we did this one: Wayland books the link takes you to the first three bands (pink a and b and red). I really like them as they have a great range to suit all interests. My DD has just reached the top and we feel a little bereft!

For synthetic phonics have a look at the read write inc vids on you tube or on the Ruth miskin website - this is an excellent comprehensive phonics scheme but needs to be supplemented with joyful tales of awe and wonder to develop a desire to read once the decode has been taught.

Hopefully after five years, the OP's daughter will be able to read a little by now!