The school is teaching phonics in class and sending DS1 home with ancient Ginn books...

[StrawberryMess]

The phonics book that comes home with him in his book bag shows that the kids have just done x v and z. The class have only learned simple sounds - the only digraphs are ff, ll and ck.

He's coming home with some reading books including lines such as "Tilak saw a castle". "Rosie saw a ladybird". "Mrs Hall's class saw a play". "Sam couldn't sleep".

DS1 is very frustrated that his reading books he's sent home with consist almost entirely of words that he can't decode. He knows the basic sight words but it seems bizarre to make a child learn "couldn't" by sight before introducing "could". And "castle"? Even I couldn't explain the phonic rules for that.

When I ask him, after hearing him read, what he thinks I should put in his reading record, my child who had previously said "write DS1 read perfectly" is now saying "write DS1 read stupidly and I don't love him" . He's being melodramatic, but I can see that these books just confuse him.

I'm thinking of taking out a Reading Chest subscription so I can give him Collins big cat phonics, which a friends DD at another school has, and some other phonic books in the holidays, so he can be logically and gradually introduced to the trickier words. Does this seem like a good idea or should I stick with the school reading scheme?

StrawberryCake - that is the most depressing / shocking post on here I have read in a long time.

You don't even have enough books to send the kids home with a reader!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I presume your kids do really badly at learning to read?

What on earth does your school spend it's money on if it can't even prioritise it's spending to buy enough books for children to learn to read?

If it's anything like our school, they might be sending the old books home because they can't afford to lose reading books in the new schemes. We had ours sorted into sets of 6 and the children took home odd ones. Not ideal, I know .

Indigo-our school actually performs above others in the area. Then again I don't know many parents who read/ work with their dc anyway. The odd times I've sent home books they haven't been used or returned. Depressing, but that's our area and also part the reason we have so few books.

Our school spends money on salaries, pencils, exercise books and the bare basics. The priorities have been things like fix gas leeks, replace led on roof, make toilets safe. We don't even have glue sticks, paints in a range of colours. Not unusual.

I don't get it.

I'm a school governor. I have seen the budgets of 2 primary schools. There is enough money in them for books and other basics.

Do you have an unusually high number of staff? Or an unusually high number of well paid staff?

strawberrycake there are separate budgets for books = wages - building maintenance which isn't interchangeable so money earmarked for books can't be used to fix gas leeks or repair the roof.

squeezedatbothends have you read Letters & Sounds?

Perhaps the PTA could buy new books?

Nobody whose child is making good progress with reading needs to read the boring Gin or ORT books at home. Better to read with your child more interesting books, like Dr Seuss, yourself and let them to have a go when they want to.

Gin and ORT are mainly for teaching words with tricky bits in them ?here ? there; ear ? early ? tear?. U might as well teach those directly, a few at a time.

Among the 300 most used English words, half have some tricky letters in them or are confusing when compared with other spellings:
even here these - ever every everyone never there there?s were where; eyes - key ;
each eat please tea - great head ready bear;

man - any many after all asked called can?t fast last plants said small
want wanted was what water;

are have - gave, care; laughed; the - be he he?s me she we we?re;

find I?ll I?m
while - live lived river; cried - friends;

box dog fox- cold old told - another coming don?t most mother oh once only other work;
go going no so - do into to two who ;
clothes home over - one come some something gone;
under up us - pulled put;
about around shouted - could couldn?t thought through would you your;

food room school soon too - book door good look looked looking looks took;

down how now town - grow know snow window;
give - giant; people.

?The English written language is? definitely not ?totally phonetic? as maverick claims. Finnish is. It uses just 38 spellings for its 38 sounds.
English has 185 spellings for its 44 sounds, and many are used for more than one sound (sound/soup/southern, on/only/once/other, supper/sugar, the/he....).
U can see them all on my blog www.englishspellingproblems.blogspot.com

English spelling is chaotic, and that's why learning to read and write it takes a long time, and why quite a few kids never learn at all.

Strawberry...I would have thought the best way to learn to read is exactly like this a combination of methods.

They are learning phonics to help decode the decodable words. As well as learning other non-decodable words through reading books with them in. Presumably the books have a picture of a castle or ladybird? Surely if your son sees that the word begins with c and there is a castle, so the word must be castle? This is about understanding what he is reading and the concept of a sentence making sense, so using various skills to work out the words. How else is he going to learn such words? I don't see why he should be taught could before couldn't? Whichever comes first makes the other one decodable it either has the n't added or taken away, so once he knows one can work out the other.

Book people have some v good stuff in the Ruth Miskin Read Write scheme. V phonetic and reasonably amusing. Have only used the early levels, but he likes them. Also the oxford reading tree songbirds went down well. Good signposting of what sounds are being practiced.

Ginn is a shocker and shouldn't be used at all in my view.

I'd second trying out some of the phonic based reader packs from the book people or red house. They offer them at reduced prices for a set. Then higher levels can often be bought on ebay or amazon for reasonable prices. This might be worth it if you have younger dcs who could use them too. Otherwise have a look at story chest. As your ds seems upset and confused and may be losing confidence I really wouldn't stick with just the reading scheme if you can manage/afford to do differently.

FWIW
I like:
Songbird Phonics and
Read Write Inc( especially the early books)

Try something (either buying or via story chest) and see how you go! If it doesn't help then stop. I bet it will though!

mrz - I not only read it I was consulted on it so I know what I'm talking about. Cheeky mare.

Well almost everything you said earlier is incorrect so I assumed you hadn't
squeezedatbothends Mon 31-Jan-11 14:52:24

There'll always be a problem regardless of the scheme because our language is not phonetic Yes it is!

• no, I, go, to, the - really basic words do not fit the phonics scheme, Yes they are!

Even the core of high frequency words which are not transparently decodable using
known grapheme?phoneme correspondences usually contain at least one GPC that
is familiar. Rather than approach these words as though they were unique entities, it is advisable to start from what is known and register the ?tricky bit? in the word. Even the word yacht, often considered one of the most irregular of English words, has two of the three phonemes represented with regular graphemes.

There are 100 common words that recur frequently in much of the written material young children read and that they need when they write. Most of these are decodable, by
sounding and blending, assuming the grapheme?phoneme correspondences are known, but only 26 of the high-frequency words are decodable by the end of Phase Two.
no, go, to, the etc are decodable once the grapheme representation is taught but not at the earliest stage

Well said, mrz

Like people have said, it's just money and it's a common problem. DS's school cannot afford to replace the ancient non phonic stuff either. I just read the stuff he can't do myself and let him try the stuff he has a chance of doing.

Have a look here for free decodable texts:

www.rrf.org.uk/messageforum/viewforum.php?f=6

We had this. My dc's learnt all about phonics but they both learnt to sight read because of the scheme they red and they find applying their phonic knowledge very difficult, they read well but they do not stop to decode new words - instead they mumble over them and try to guess the meaning.

No idea why our school didn't buy new books.

pink cushion: "instead they mumble over them and try to guess the meaning"

Yes, I had this too. Even though my DD was getting excellent phonics teaching at her school, the Ginn readers they used were not decodable so this encouraged guessing. The readers are so expensive that once a school has them, they keep the series for years and years.

The postman has just brought us a package of Collins Big Cat Phonics and Yellow Door phonics from reading chest. :)

Pinkcushion,
I think your school probably did not buy any new phonic readers because all specially written phonic books are pretty dull. - It?s difficult to write interesting stories while avoiding the most used English words. I pasted in the tricky ones from the 300 most frequently occurring ones earlier.

There is no real need for many contrived phonic books anyway. Many real books that children enjoy don?t have masses of tricky words. And there is no reason why schools and parents should not go all out to teach the 150 or so most used tricky words quite early after covering basic phonics, so that children can start reading real books without being tripping up too much.

My granddaughter?s school sends home weekly word lists for practice, divided into regular and tricky ones (with many more regular ones than tricky ones). She flies through the regularly spelt ones (like those on the Learning to Read page at www.EnglishSpellingProblems.co.uk). The tricky ones need more going over, but she is getting there with those too, and is really enjoying trying to read real books, with a little help from her parents.

"I think your school probably did not buy any new phonic readers because all specially written phonic books are pretty dull."

That's a pretty ignorant post, Mashabell - beginner readers in sight reading schemes tend to be very dull because endless repetition is essential here. Children need to come across the words over and over again because they have to be able to recognise them repeatedly to be able to read them.

Not so with phonic schemes - even just the first six letters s a p i n t can be blended together straight away to form lots of words, and the more phonemes a child learns the more possibilities there are.

Masha have U actually looked at any of the new generation of phonics reading books. I'm sure U will be surprised how much they have changed.

U are very naughty, mrz!

U are probably correct