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?

oh dohnt bee like dat. I av bin teachin fonics to kids wiv lundun acksents orl day.

And failing.

U need Masha's ==dull== lists

For children who don?t learn easily, learning to read English is pretty dull. They either keep having to go over dull books like phonic readers or keep having to go over the tricky words.

No child becomes a really fluent reader until they can read at least the 300 most used English words instantly. They can learn half of those by the phonic method, but the others need quite a bit of whole practice to become automatic ? as automatic as they are for all of u now.

The phonically straightforward words are in capitals:
CAT DAD GRAN GRANDAD HAD HAS HAT MAN --
animals any many after all asked called can?t fast last plants said saw small
WANT WANTED WAS WHAT WATER ---
BABY CAME GAVE MADE MAKE PLACE TAKE are have BECAUSE laughed --
the be he he?s me she we we?re
EVEN HERE THESE ever every everyone never there there?s were where eyes key
EACH EAT PLEASE TEA great head ready bear-

BIG CHILDREN DID DIDN?T FISH HIM HIS IF IN IS IT IT?S ITS KING LITTLE MISS STILL THING THINK THIS WHICH WILL WIND WISH WITH find I?ll I?m
I?VE INSIDE LIKE LIKED TIME WHILE live lived river CRIED friends
BOX DOG FOX FROM GOT HOT LONG LOTS NOT OF OFF ON STOP STOPPED TOP FLOPPY ACROSS ALONG--
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
BUT DUCK FUN JUMPED JUST MUCH MUM MUST RUN SUN UNDER UP US pulled put
ABOUT AROUND FOUND HOUSE MOUSE OUR OUT ROUND 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 - BOY-- Mr Mrs narrator suddenly .

Does anyone understand that? [puzzled]

Masha a page from a phonics reading scheme book

Paula is a vet
and a very good vet.
She opens the door
and she calls, "Next pet!"

or from another publisher

Will sat up.
"There's something in the garden," he said. "It's a monster. I can see a monster!"
Decodable and much less dull that Look Look Look!

Have been reading with interest as my DTDs have been sent home with Ginn books too, though they've also had some Rigby Star and have had Collins Big Cat for the last few days.

We got most confused when we moved from "Sam wants a book... Sam wants a ball..." to "Rosie saw a Corythosaurus... Rosie saw a Tyrannosaurus" (sorry - no doubt that's very badly spelt) though they are doing dinosaurs as their current topic, so it makes sense. Kind of.

I've not heard of storychest. Can someone link it please?

I think the poster was talking about reading chest as that's what I mentioned in the first place.

mrz,

masha doesn't want synthetic phonics to be successful at teaching reading and spelling. If children's reading and spelling were to greatly improve as a result of SP teaching then she would lose a significant part of her argument for spelling reform.

Have you noticed that she has now modified her campaign to include belittling SP teaching at every opportunity?

Thanks StrawberryMess - that's really useful.

I wonder if Masha were to spend time on visiting inner city schools which teach synthetic phonics efficiently, thereby producing children with competent spelling skills - instead of endlessly trying to derail excellent reading instruction - whether she might then re-direct her energies towards something which is of positive benefit to children and realistic to achieve?

All these thousands of posts seem like the work of a spoiled, attention-seeking child who is hell-bent on destroying anything she doesn't approve of. What's required is for all teachers to understand systematic synthetic phonics - at the moment, many don't get the training they need and deserve.

To the evangelists of synthetic phonics my word lists are a bit like a cross to the devil, because they show what learning to read and write English really involves. And so they resort to abusing me, instead of commenting on what I say.

I admit that I would like to see learning to read to write English made easier, with reductions of needless, confusing nonsense like ?paid, bed ? sAId, sound, scoop ? soUp; ouch ? tOuch, car, care ? arE? . ? Such inconsistencies are the reasons why so many children find learning to read and write extremely difficult.

But what is far more important to me is helping people to understand why and how current English spelling conventions impede the learning and teaching of reading writing. Many of the posts on this website, and the TES one and many others, makes it very clear that there is still a vast amount of confusion about it. This makes it easy for evangelists of particular methods to manipulate teachers into adopting the latest fad and spending money on new schemes which rarely offer anything really new.

Ever since the 1950?s, ever since there has been much greater awareness that 1 in 5 children in all English-speaking countries leave school functionally illiterate, there have been people blaming this on wrong teaching methods and trying to persuade teachers to adopt new approaches, from i.t.a., to whole word, whole book and various kinds of phonics.

People who understand clearly what learning to read and write English involves, (that it consists of an easy phonic part and the much harder part of getting to grips with irregular spellings) are IMO likely to approach the teaching of reading and writing in a more rational way and see through the false claims of scheme sellers ? something which the advocates of particular approaches don?t want anyone to be able to do.

Ofsted concluded a couple of weeks ago:
Effective phonics teaching was found at all of the primaries inspected, with pupils taught "letter-sound correspondences", "how to blend individual sounds together to read words" and "how to break up individual sounds to spell them". ....
Inspectors observed a "wide variety of effective approaches" using phonics, and there was "no notable difference in attainment" whether schools devised their own programmes or used published schemes. ---
I am sorry if I go on a bit. But I hate people being fooled and ripped off.

Like the people who are unfortunate enough to have bought your books, Masha?

On the subject of synthetic phonics you're speaking from a position of ignorance, masha.

You're a retired secondary teacher who has never taught synthetic phonics in any shape or form.

The Ofsted report was referring to a "wide variety of effective approaches" all using systematic synthetic phonics.

Wise-up:
www.dyslexics.org.uk/main_method_3.htm

Thank u for mentioning my books Feenie. They do explain and show clearly what learning to read and write English involves. They can even be used for teaching both.

But my 2004 book is a bit of a hefty tome. And in 2006 I discovered that I can provide the same information for free, to far more people via the internet, via a website and with blogs.

No Masha to teachers working day in and day out to teach every child to read your word lists are a bit like an old joke book ... they were funny once but now they are just old ... and anyone wanting to know more about learning to read would be better off buying the Beano...

Why does this have to get so rude? Can't people debate in a friendly way? Surely there are more approaches in learning to read than phonics. I am a good speller and enjoy reading and was taught in the 70s with Peter and Jane books.

magdalene perhaps you haven't been subject to Masha's constant insistence that English is responsible for all the world's ills and if only we had a spelling system such as in her homeland of Lithuania we would all be happy and spell you as U.

Masha isn't interested in debating, magadelene - she just wants us to reform the entire spelling system.

Thousands of posts from Masha - no debate as far as I can recall. That's why I would suggestd a sabbatical and a visit to the 12 schools mentioned in the recent Ofsted report, praising synthetic phonics.

We had our first Ginn book home last night, wehay! I loved it. It had real words in it, the days of the week, the month of June, ordinal numbers for later days in the month with abbreviations, double p/single p, and other stuff too. Wehay!! I loved it. My daughter actually learned something from a school reading book!! (It was after a note I added asking for ORT stage 5s to be added alongside the stage 2s she's getting at the moment. The teacher said she wants to progress my daughter sequentially through the scheme but is taking a break and giving her what she describes as "a lot of books" before moving her up. I suppose she means non decodable ones so she can tell what my daughter can read and what she can't. And I think that means at some point we're going to go back on the fecking stinky useless learn nothing ORT readers some time soon. Oh my God I hope we never do. Give me Ginn, Give me Ginn! Wehay!

I don't know what you're getting so excited about, learnandsay. Unless they are Floppy's Phonics, the ORT books aren't decodables either...

I prefer Ginn to ORT too
More plot less repetition.

More believable. More discussion points.

The stinky ones, mazied? Indeed they say fully decodable on the back and precious little in between the covers. It would take quite a while to collect enough of them to make a half-decent bonfire.

DD has jolly phonics books which are fully decodable but not much scope to talk about what is going on/ what might happen next etc etc...