Bit conused about this whole ' reading' thing. reception year.

[redderthanred]

DD cant read. I know this. She doesnt even know all of her letters.

Shes had two reading books last week. One which she could ' read' cover to cover. In any page order.
She was not ' reading' it. She had memorised it.
It was things like ' dad is frustrated' 'kipper is hungry'

So i know she was not reading that. Tachers comments in reading record said ' superb reading'

Today, shes come home with two books and a comment that shes read one already with the teacher. The comment was ' excellent reading, very fleunt and fantastic sounding out when stuck'

This is the book:
Chip wanted some sugar
He went to the supermarket
He got some crisps
he went to the shop
He got a comic
He went to the market
He got a ball
he forgot the sugar.

Ive sat down with her to ' read' it quickly. and yes, she ' read' it. But she didnt really.

Please somone tell me the teacher doesnt actually think shes reading this?

Or, what do i do if she does?

She only started 10 days ago???!?!?!?

In which case, a teacher may write 'good comprehension', or 'good understanding'.

Thats what got me. Good understanding, or read book together or something is fine. Even managed a few words.

Not good reading, fleunt and sounding out words when stuck.

Im just going to wait a few weeks i think, see what happens.

Shouldn't a good teacher use a variety of techniques to teach reading? I can't see anything wrong with saying 'good reading' at this stage. The alternative with a non-reader is 'Blimey,that was crap'. Hardly encouraging. You need the child feeling excited and enthused about it all, surely?

We get 2 books home, one a phonics that they attempt with support, one a general reading book for sharing. If my DS can spot a word he knows in the much harder sharing book I lavish praise - but I am NOT dim enough to think for a moment he is reading the entire book, and nor is the teacher.

Out of interest for those slating the whole word approach to learning to read - thats how I learnt, I absorbed the whole word, can still remember very clearly being totally flummuxed by it when teacher did phonics. Just did not make sense to me at all. So, full circle to my first comment - surely a good teacher uses a range of techniques since children don't all learn the same way.

I agree with OopsDoneItAgain. Maybe there is a bit too much hyperbole going on in this case, but I know parents who have complained about excessive honesty in the reading diaries of very young children and that this is putting their children off. I do think a word with the teacher would be a good idea, though - not to question her techniques, but to understand what they are and how you can support them or encourage progress at home.

ps I and my children all learnt to read before starting school, without being "taught" at home - just lots of being read to while looking at the book at the same time. The process started by memorising favourite books, so obviously this is not a stupid way of learning to read, and allowing your child to pretend he or she is "reading" in the home environment, even when you know they aren't, can be very encouraging for them. I'm sure this is why my children are such expressive readers, now - because their first "reading" experiences involved putting on dramatic voices and narrating entire stories, whilst turning pages and pretending to be like Mummy or Daddy. However, it is possibly a stupid way of "teaching" reading, as not all children can actually learn to read like that and many become very effective at pretending they are better readers than they actually are (as long as they have books with pictures in). These children will generally get caught out as the text gets trickier, as the pictures will not provide enough of a clue later on to get exactly the right word and they will have to start sounding out more.

"Learning to read initially should not involve anything other than learning letter/sound correspondences"

This is very prescriptive, especially considering how little research there has actually been into reading. For anyone who is interested, Ben Goldacre has an excellent article on the topic 'Schools need large, robust randomised trials to help them decide which teaching methods to use'

Haven't time to read the posts but wanted to say, mine does the same. She reads, but in actual fact she can read all the small words and the rest is a combination of memorising it from the first time she read it with the teacher, and also the pictures giving it away.

So, I write down the harder words on flash cards and every couple of days we will run through some of these - then I get to see which words she really knows and she gets a chance to learn it properly.

Also, my aunt is a principal and she says, it doesn't really matter in some ways, as some words they will just learn from seeing/reading the word over and over and recognising it immediately, like my daughter knows sunflower now because she had a book on sunflower's and ask me to teach her how to write the word and she drew lots of pictures of them etc.

Just something too add. We got 10 new words today.
First time we looked at them she already knew 6.
God knows how.
I'm a bit baffled.
Then she made some sentences with them and I made some that didn't make sense and she spotted that and put them right.
Note in book today. Group reading. Your dd helped the children with their words.

So??? Maybe I'm not giving her enough credit, I was/ am just confused because I'd not done anything like this at home.

Well, HelenBa,

In the absence of large, robust, randomised trials, which the Reading Reform Foundation for one, and the House of Commons Select Committee on Education for another, have called for in the past, but the Dfes seem strangely reluctant to carry out, I will go with the accumulated evidence from hundreds of reputable research studies over the past 40 years which have led to the conclusion that skilled readers use decoding and blending as their method of choice when working out unfamiliar words; that children learn to read best when taught letter/sound correspondences and how to decode and blend; that children struggling with reading (aka 'dyslexics') are best remediated with systematic, explicit phonics instruction (with brain imaging studies to prove it)and the published data from schools using structured, explicit phonics programmes/instruction which show that a just about all of their children learn to read competently.

I will also go with the many teachers I have encountered on various message boards who have said that they just cannot believe how well children learn with explicit, systematic phonics instruction and how they would not use any other method.

When I've exhausted all sources of affirmation I will look at the children I work with daily, who have all had a good dose of 'mixed strategies' at their primary schools and come to us, age 11, after 6 years of education, barely able to read anything. Funnily enough, once I stop them using the 'other strategies' and insist on nothing but sounding out and blending they start to improve, to become confident about reading and writing and to achieve in all areas of the curriculum.

I am not, faithful Guardian reader though I may be, at all impressed by Ben Goldacre's pronouncements. When I tried to interest him in the teachng of reading a few years ago he told me that it wasn't 'scientific' and was all just a matter of opinion. I think he needs to be just a tad more knowledgeable about the topic.

Excellent post, maizieD

My DH uses Jolly Phonics, with songs, puppets etc to teach his Reception children to read. Unfortunately, as it is a Primary School, and senior management all tend to be from a Junior school background, it is also school policy to keep using ORT books as well. Even though he doesn't like them. Jolly Phonics is expensive - I know, because we've bought loads of the stuff out of our own money! - and ORT has always been there, so schools around here like to keep using it.

You sound cross Maizie, I'm sorry, all I was objecting to was the prescriptivism because my feeling (as a teacher too) is that one size hardly ever fits all and in the absence of proof why exclude other possibilities?

I'm interested in what you say about BG - can you tell us more? (and I really mean that genuinely)

HelenBa & Maizie,

Ben Goldacre was quite right when he stated that 'Gold-standard' randomised trials were established early in the history of compulsory education. His mistake is that he assumes that this form of research was discontinued. It was not. What happened is that these research studies continued to be implemented, mostly by medically-trained pediatric specialists (eg, NICHD, CHERIE - Goggle these acronyms for more information) but were ignored, and continued to be ignored by the Education Establishment aka The Blob.

There is a big difference between no Gold-standard research and The Blob ignoring the findings of Gold-standard research.

HelenBa, who describes herself as a teacher, is typical of many/most teachers in that she is ignorant of the massive amount of research into beginning reading, the results of which were summarised the several meta-analysis including the US National Reading Panel Report 2005, the Australian National Inquiry into the Teaching of Reading 2005, and the UK Rose Review 2006.

The research findings have overwhelmingly found that the most effective way to teach all children to read and write is direct, explicit, intensive and systematic instruction in phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension and that the most effective form of phonics instruction is synthetic phonics.

To dismiss Gold-standard research findings on the grounds that it is 'too perscriptive' demonstrates the sort of fluffy thinking behind most reading instruction in schools. This reaction is equivilent to a doctor refusing to treat an infected wound with the established protocol of antibiotics on the grounds that this protocol is 'too perscriptive' and choosing instead to make up a treatment based on something that struck them as a good idea at the time.

Redderthanred,

The best infomration that we have about the training that most teacher's get which qualifies them to teach is that they are given little to none information about how to teach beginning reading effectively. The reason your child's teacher is writing positive comments is probably because she has no idea what else to say and that a good report usually stops parents form asking difficult questions.

Teachers can't teach what they don't know and few teachers know enough about evidence-based beginning reading instruction to teach it.

To work out for yourself if your child is receiving effective instruction, there are various checklists you can refer to. There is one on the Reading Reform Foundation website, another on the Department of Education, Rose Review - synthetic phonics website and another on the (US) National Right to Read Foundation website. A bit of Googling will find them for you. Also on the National Right to Read Foundation website is a page titled, (from memory) "What to say when your school tells you, Of Course We Teach Phonics".

Another good website that will give you a lot of infomration about beginning reading and the difference between someone who has mastered the skill of reading and someone who can read a bit but not well enough to survive in school and work because they have been taught to use memorisng and guessing instead of decoding and have 'hit the wall' with these ineffective strategies is the Children of the Code website.

Isn't part of the problem that there is some confusion in peoples' minds between encouraging a child to enjoy picking up books and to want to pay attention to the written words as well as the pictures (ie wanting to learn to read); actually teaching to read as in sound out and decode the words; recognising that some words are really quite illogical and need to be learnt as deviations from the general rules; and ensuring a child understands the meaning of the text they are decoding? Does synthetic phonics make a more clear delineation between these aspects of reading than other methods of teaching? And what happens to the children who have already worked out the former two aspects of reading for themselves when they start school (I know, eg, that whilst I learnt to read without needing to be "taught" and was never taught any phonics, I did learn by developing an understanding of how words are made up of different sounds blended together and that those sounds are written in a limited number of ways)? Is sitting through phonics lessons still beneficial for these children, or a waste of time?

A majority of children learn using most methods. But that can mean a large minority don't but they would with explicit systematic phonics. Phonics is also often quicker. It also helps children with their writing and spelling as a previous post said.
If you were told: Do you want the surgery that works in 80% of cases or the sur
gery that works in 99% of cases and leads to other beneficial outcomes, I know which I'd choose.
Also although most children get through primary with reading skills that are effective enough, those that don't read alot don't infer phonics skills naturally and continue to rely too heavily on context and other cues. The reason our stats on reading in this country are so bad is because many children can't access secondary level texts effectivley. If taught with phonics they can.

Oh just to say the 80% and 99% aren't the real stats! I've not got time to research it but know that was the basic message...

Rabbitstew,

You are right about there being 'confusion'. Actually the 'confusion' is to confuse the requirments for spoken language and the requirements for written language.

To teach and learn spoken language, we need lots of talking and listening.

To teach and learn written language, we to 'break the code', ie, learn which symbols represent which sounds and how to put those symbols together for spelling and how to take them apart for reading.

The 'big breakthrough' endorsed by the Rose Review was not so much advocating synthetic phonics as the most effective way to learn to break the code, but stating that the teaching and learning of beginning reading should be based on the "simple view of reading" which is "decoding plus comprehension equals reading".

The reason I describe this as a 'breakthrough' is that in a brilliantly simple way it clarifies the difference between spoken and written language.

Camecaze,

The best information we have is that almost everyone can learn to decode if decoding is taught effectively. Assuming that everyone gets the same effective instruction, there will be differences in that some people will pick it up quickly and easily and some people will find it harder and it will take them longer to learn it. The available research indicates that as little as less than 1% of the population cannot learn to decode if decoding is taught effectively.

I understand that you were using stats (80%/99%) to illustrate a point. If you decided to do the research and find out what the exact stats are, you would discover that, at present, no one knows the answer because there is no consistency from classroom to classroom in how beginning reading is taught.

What we do know is that when the dominant method used to teach is not evidence based, then the overall percentage of non-readers will be large. However, whatever the percentage of non-readers that The Blob will admit to, when the stats are broken down, they demonstrate that while children from a wide range of socio-economic levels will be represented, there will be far more children from lower socio-economic levels. Yet when the school switches to evidence based teaching of decoding, non-readers evaporate from the stats.

The best way I've found to describe this is that while non-evidence based beginning reading programs disadvantage all children, they don't disadvantage children equally. Those children who are more intelligent, more motivated and get more support from home will still learn. The children who need their teachers the most, ie, those kids who do not have additional resources outside of school, fall the further and further behind.

'This reaction is equivilent to a doctor refusing to treat an infected wound with the established protocol of antibiotics on the grounds that this protocol is 'too perscriptive' and choosing instead to make up a treatment based on something that struck them as a good idea at the time.'

If I may say so, that seems a rather simplistic analysis. I don't imagine that teachers are simply teaching reading 'based on something that struck them as a good idea at the time', but they do have to work within the constraints of funding/training, don't they? Just as NICE/GPs (to continue the medical analogy) don't in fact always provide the optimum cutting-edge drugs and treatments to patients, because it's simply too expensive. Schools simply don't have the funds available to either train teachers in the latest 'gold-standard' reading techniques or to replace entire reading schemes throughout their schools. One of our local primary schools did the calculation of how much money they had available per child, once overheads were paid for. The result? £18 per child per year. To cover books, pens, paper and other stationery, games equipment, library books, everything. To simply say 'ah, most teachers don't know what they're talking about' is really rather insulting, and ignores the hard facts, IMO.

'To dismiss Gold-standard research findings on the grounds that it is 'too perscriptive' [sic] demonstrates the sort of fluffy thinking behind most reading instruction in schools. This reaction is equivilent [sic] to a doctor refusing to treat an infected wound with the established protocol of antibiotics on the grounds that this protocol is 'too perscriptive' [sic] and choosing instead to make up a treatment based on something that struck them as a good idea at the time.'

You might want to re-read I was commenting on a user telling a mother what she should do with her child and I don't think there is such hard evidence that she and her DC should be constrained to only type of reading. I am interested in the projects you mention though, thanks.

I am a new member, and this is only my second 'post' - I have worked in primary schools for 25 years, first as a Parent Helper, then employed as Teaching Assistant.
Now retired, I am a voluntary helper in a small Primary school.

It seems horrifying to me that Reception children and their parents are being subjected to so much pressure and confusion, when this should be a happy, productive time for you both.

Our Reception children start with picture books that have a 'story' but no text. The child talks about the pictures, and makes up a story if they want. Some new children cry if you so much as look at them; others refuse to answer their name at Register Time. One I knew, years ago, was scared to go out into the playground.

Please don't try to 'make' your child 'read' yet: just talk about the pictures, tell her the story if you wish, but keep pressure to a minimum - best for both of you!

I support older readers as well, and being 'voluntary', am in the fortunate position of being able to spend 15, even 20 minutes, with a child, reading, talking about letters and sounds, checking understanding, wondering what might happen next.

Talk to the teacher or appropriate person in school, and I'm sure this will all resolve happily in a few weeks.

Midnightexpress,

I'm always delighted when someone brings up the, 'we can't teach effectively because it's too expensive' excuse because it shows the basic flaw in our entire Education System.

Teachers attend University Schools and Faculties of Education for 3-4 years in order to attain the necessary qualification to become teachers.

How much does that cost the individual and/or the taxpayer?

Why is it in all the time and money that is consumed by the established teacher training institutions, nothing or next to nothing is taught about how to teach beginning reading effectively and nothing is taught about the evidence base that supports effective instruction?

Direct your criticism to the Ed Schools which waste huge amounts of time and money training teachers in faddish, non-evidence based approachs to teaching and learning.

We have the hard data that demonstrates how much it costs to provide remedial teaching for students who are not taught effectively in the first place and how much money can be saved if all students received effective initial instruction.

Why is it that The Blob is only interested in throwing good money after bad, and is not at all interested in using the money they have to teach effectively in the first place?

Why is it that we are spending more on Education today then we have ever spent, yet our results are worse then they have ever been? Please don't try the, 'we get more 'unteachable' kids these days' excuse. We have always had kids who are stupid, difficult and come from bad homes.

The issue with education funding is not how much money is poured into it, but how much of that money is wasted on nonsense.

I have totally given up on school supplying decent books (i.e. phonically decodable books) all they have are tatty old ORT ones where sight vocabulary is the only focus. I have invested via Amazon in a wide range of books from a variety of different school reading schemes. DD and I read twice a day and are doing very well! Don't rely on school - they haven't the time or the resources for the most part. It is worth you investing if you can.

"... I don't think there is such hard evidence that she and her DC should be constrained to only (sic) type of reading. I am interested in the projects you mention though, thanks."

HelenBa,

If you were familiar with the evidence based for effective instruction in beginning reading, you would know that direct, explicit, intensive and systematic instruction in phonemic awareness, (synthetic) phonics, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension hardly constitutes being constrained to "only" one type of reading instruction.

It does, however, inform us which 'strategies' whch have been proven to be most effective, which are neutral, and which have a negative effect on learning to read and write.

I made a mistake in my reference to the US National Reading Panel Report which should read 2000, not 2005. This is important because it was published several years before the Johnston and Watson 'Clacks' study.

If you are interested in the evidence base for effective instruction, you should start with Project Follow Through.

EFFECTIVE
School Practices

Volume 15 Number 1, Winter 1995-6

FOCUS: WHAT WAS THAT PROJECT FOLLOW THROUGH?
darkwing.uoregon.edu/~adiep/ft/151toc.htm

I suggest you then read;
Whole Language Lives On; The Illusion Of Balanced Reading Instruction by Louisa Moats

www.usu.edu/teachall/text/reading/Wholelang.htm

Then skip ahead to the Clacks study (Johnston R, Watson J, 2005, The Effects of Synthetic Phonics Teaching on Reading and Spelling Attainment: A Seven Year Longitudinal Study) and the Rose Review.

Ferguson,

I realise you mean well and I'm sure you believe you are helping children but please stop doing what you are doing because you are making matters worse, not better.

I agree about the confusion but the confusion exists because teachers like yourself waste so much valuble time on strategies and are either neutral or counter-productive for children's learning.

You worry that children and parents are 'stressed' but being taught to read and write effectively is not stressful. What is stressful is struggling with multiple ineffective 'strategies' and ending up with basic reading and writing skills too weak to access the school curriculum or to be emplyable after school.

Like many teachers of your generation, you confuse the requirements for spoken langauge with the requirements for written language and have bought into the discredited fad of 'developmentally appropriate practice'.

You state you help 'older' readers and you mention a range of 'strategies'. For anyone who wants more information on these strategies and why they are ineffective, read Louisa Moats, 'Whole Language Lives On,..." linked in my previous post above.

The following quote is from the Illinois Loop webpage on Developmentally Appropriate practice.

"The impact of developmentalism (DAP) was well described by Prof. E. D. Hirsch, founder of the The Core Knowledge Foundation, in testimony before Congress:

"To withhold demanding content from young children between preschool and third grade has an effect which is quite different from the one intended. It leaves advantaged children with boring pabulum, and it condemns disadvantaged children to a permanent educational handicap that grows worse over time."

Prof. Hirsch discussed DAP at greater length in testimony to the California State Board of Education on April 10, 1997. Here is an excerpt:

"The phrase 'Developmentally Appropriate Practice' has been very effective politically. It has played on our love and solicitude for young children. It is used as a kind of conversation stopper. If one is told that an educational recommendation is 'developmentally inappropriate,' one is supposed to retreat and remove the offending item from the early curriculum. But this retreat has to stop.

We must stand up to unsupported rhetorical bullying, and rely on the people who know the research. To cave in to intimidating rhetoric is to harm our children, not help them. (my bolding)

[It] is wasting minds and perpetuating social inequities. ... One of the greatest services we can provide to our children would be to start inducing self doubt in those early-childhood experts who have been wielding the word 'inappropriate' like a battle-ax."

Anyone going to actually answer the OPs question? Or are you just going to bandy high-brow educational theories?