Why is MN so obsessed with reception reading?

[skiphopskidaddle]

It's a marathon, not a sprint. It doesn't matter if Johnny is on red and Amy is on lilac as (a) different schools go at different paces and (b) children develop different skills in different order.

I can't quite believe the number of reception reading threads I've seen this week along the lines of "what colour book is yours on?". I'm going over to the behaviour/development board now to check for obsessive posting about when children learn to walk. Cos it doesn't matter either, in general.

Yes I think it wud bee a gud ideea if everithing woz compleetli foneticali straitforward then orl ower problems wud bee solvd .

We could even spell differently to allow for regional accents as well and then souterners could spell words with extra r's in them like barth, and northerners could just write bath.

Well you have answered the questions I was wondering about wrt teacher training anyway, Feenie. And I'm not sure it even encompasses the basic theory, given some other posts here.

You can larf all you want about Masha's points here, but in countries where language and letters correspond more closely, far less time tends to be spent on the basic decoding that is required in order to learn to read English. More time is spent on maths, science, other languages. My Russian friends were appalled at how much classroom time was being used up just in order to teach reading to their DD and her class. Apparently with Russian what you see is what you say and there are no orthographical quirks, certainly not enough to devote years and years of practice to. They themselves learned English in Russia along with German and French and found English much the hardest. They assumed children exposed to English every day would have an easier time of it but were proved wrong.

Mrz, no, I have not taught 4 yo children in a school. The idea of introducing 4 yo children to any formal teaching makes me feel faint with horror, tbh. I have seen a different approach with my own eyes and it has a lot going for it. So far, you haven't been able to say what teaching 4 yos has to recommend it or what theory of learning or what neurobiological research lies behind the approach followed in the UK but hardly anywhere else on the planet.

Actually Mathanxiety if you look closely at what happens in other countries their "pre-school" -"kindergarten" provision is very similar to that found in the UK EYFS. Interestingly Ireland has a compulsory school starting age of 4 while in England and Wales it is 5

The compulsory starting age is 6 in Ireland, though national schools take in 4 year olds (about 50% of 4 yos attend) and 5 year olds (about 100% of 5 year olds attend). Some private schools do not take children until 6 but most do. In 1999 a new 'child-centered', play-based curriculum was introduced that was supposed to replace the existing teacher-centered practice; it is hoped the trend will bring Ireland into line with practice in places like the US and some other European countries.

Research summary and policy statement on the 1999 Irish early childhood curriculum, with basic philosophical foundation mentioned.

IndigoBell -

I've just read your reply from Monday - and this is very distressing. I hate using messageboards to advertise but if you'd like to e-mail me at [email protected], I'll send you some sample books from an SP scheme that has helped children with very, very severe difficulties.

You must be fed up - but you can look at the website and I'll gladly send the books if you feel that they might help.

Msthanxiety - what do you actually do, may I ask?

Bunny
"if everithing woz compleetli foneticali straitforward then orl ower problems wud bee solvd".
Aul our children would then undoutedly take much less time tu lern tu reed and rite, as happens elswair, as Mathanxiety has aulso explained. And sloer lerners would bennefit moast of aul.

Yor respellings sho, that like moast adults, u spell without beeing awair of wot the main Inglish spelling patterns ar. With consistent spelling 'everything' would bee 'evrything', completely - compleetly, phonetically - foneticly, all - aul, 'our' is fine aulreddy (but not 'your').

But not aul bad spellings need tu be improovd tu make Inglish spelling much mor lerner-frendly than it is now, and certainly not in wun go. Wee could improov just the words that make children misreed and misspel moast of all.

The spelling of the short oo (good would put)would bee the hardest tu improov because it is the oanly Inglish sound that has no spelling of its oan. That is probbably aulso the reeson wy the pronunciation of oo and u differs from reegion to reegion.

The compulsory school age in NI however is 4 mathanxiety.

www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2006/02/06145130/4

Bertram & Pascall International Perspective

Depends how you speak Masha- speech and language are constantly modified over time and across different regions- I pronounce 'our' to rhyme with 'hour' and 'everything' with an audible 'er', therefore spellings would never be completely phonetic to every region- eg, my husband pronounces 'laugh' as 'larf' whereas I pronounce it with a short vowel as 'laf'. Niether is incorrect, but whichever spelling was chosen, a whole section of society would again be finding certain spellings to be phonetically 'tricky'.

...and I am fully aware of English spelling patterns , thank you very much! My example was a quickly written dig at you, I haven't spent long periods of time working out what the language would look like if we were to revise it, like you obviously have.

Why bother with y at the end of words when you can use i- isn't that simpler than having y making more than one sound?

By the way- do have any formal teaching qualifications, or are you just a self professed expert??

She is a retired secondary teacher, BunnyWunny - she does not teach children how to read, she just lectures teachers on the internet in how to do so.

No, be fair Feenie. She's a woman on a mission to change English spelling, so she accentuates what she perceives to be the negative...

Good structured synthetic phonics teaching poses a significant threat to her case...

Niether is incorrect, but whichever spelling was chosen, a whole section of society would again be finding certain spellings to be phonetically 'tricky'.

Which is precisely why written English 'works' at the moment. It is not the pronunciation of the word which is important but the significance of the 'correspondence' to the person reading the word. Spoken English pronunciation varies wildly across the whole world, but the orthography (the letter/sound correspondence 'code') can be read by all literate English speakers.

The minute you start thinking of the orthography as pronunciation 'rules' you've lost the plot

The minute you start thinking of the orthography as pronunciation 'rules' you've lost the plot.

Thank u for confirming, Maizie, that English spelling is not a reliable guide to pronunciation.

And this abuse of the alphabetic principle is why learning to read English takes so much longer than all other alphabetic languages, and why the teaching of it needs to be carefully structured.

It starts with what everyone understands by phonics: teaching sounds of letters and letter strings (on hot spot lost cloth), but in English that means just the main sounds of spellings to begin with.

The teaching then has to leave phonics behind and move on to the hundreds of words in which letters have different sounds, a few at a time, in little groups (only, ghost, most, both).

And Bunny, I got my PGCSE at Exeter in 1971. Anyone who wants to know more about me can google Masha Bell.

Thank u for confirming, Maizie, that English spelling is not a reliable guide to pronunciation.

My point is that it is not meant to be a guide to pronunciation. It is more than likely that you, I, an Australian, an American, a South African and a West Indian would all pronounce the same word completely differently. So even if you achieved 'one letter = one sound' the sound it represented could be quite different in different English speakers.

Which would still vex you mightily, I have no doubt.

Mrz, 'Ireland' does not refer to Northern Ireland. Clearly your grasp of history and geography are rather sketchy if you think the term Ireland refers to NI. If you meant NI, then NI is what you should have said.

The English R and the many different sounds it ends up producing illustrates Maizie's point. In Scotland, Ireland (and NI) at least, the R is rolled, not turned into an AW sound, and Rs are inserted in words not normally spelled with R at all. Take a look at baby name threads -- the name Orla is properly pronounced with an Irish or Scottish R, but some posters clearly pronounce it Aw-la. The reason phonics is out of favour in some parts of the US where non-standard English is spoken is due to the misperception that teaching phonics involves re-teaching English, taking something away from a culture and replacing it with something imposed from above.

MaizieD and Feenie, if you're going to talk about others in a snide way, at least get it straight who exactly you're talking about. You've got me and Masha mixed up.

FWIW, I've taught Irish as a second language and have been an adult literacy volunteer for several years. I don't really understand where you're going with a question like the one you asked above unless it is to suggest that someone who is not a teacher couldn't possibly have any insight into teaching, or learning, or methods. As has been shown here, being a teacher does not necessarily guarantee any basic knowledge of the theory underlying what you do, and not knowing that makes it difficult apparently, to answer the question of why reading is taught to 4 yos in the UK.

And I'm still waiting for an answer to one of the fundamental questions posed in the OP -- why is reading taught at such a young age in the UK? What theory is behind it, and what merits does it have compared to starting later as is done in other countries? Are parents justified in feeling anxious if their children are not making progress at age 4? If the teachers here had any clue about WHY they do what they do with the children at the age of 4, then many of those questions could be answered.

'...and Rs are inserted into words not normally spelled with R at all in other parts of the British Isles.'

Nooka, your lovely positive post about the Sound Reading System
www.soundreadingsystem.co.uk on page 7 of this thread has just been pointed out to me. I'm sorry I missed it before -thank you for your kind words
BTW, I have no commercial connection with SRS, I'm just a tutor who uses it.

"MaizieD and Feenie, if you're going to talk about others in a snide way, at least get it straight who exactly you're talking about. You've got me and Masha mixed up."

No idea what you mean - I think you are confused. BunnyWunny asked Masha if she had any formal teaching qualifications, and I told BunnyWunny she was a retired secondary teacher. And Maizie replied. No one mentioned you!

mathanxiety I'm sorry you were confused but if I had been referring to Éire I would have said so but shall write Southern Ireland in future so as not to cause further confusion.

And I'm still waiting for an answer to one of the fundamental questions posed in the OP -- why is reading taught at such a young age in the UK?

I think I'm reading a different OP Why is MN so obsessed with reception reading? which has nothing to do with what age children are first taught to read

I wasn't confused, so no need to apologise. You were misinformed if you thought Ireland meant NI. You did not cause confusion, you demonstrated a lack of knowledge of what the term you used meant.

Please do not call the Republic of Ireland 'Southern Ireland'. The name of the state that encompasses the 26 southern Irish counties (plus Donegal) is Ireland (or in Irish 'Éire'), 'Republic of Ireland' or 'Poblacht na hÉireann'.

The entire island is called Ireland. So is the state. NI refers to the 6 counties of the north east of Ireland.

MN is apparently so obsessed with reception reading because it is taught in reception. If it wasn't taught until later in childhood then no doubt there would be some focus on it too. Children in reception are children of a certain age, no? And they are taught reading?

The question is why are posters on mumsnet so obsessed with reading as it seems to be a mumsnet phenomenon not seen in other places ...
children in reception are taught to read as are children in Y1 and Y2 and in Y7 in the school where maizie works they are also taught to read in some nursery classes before they begin school so the age range is enormous