Key Words Rant

[crazygracieuk]

My youngest is in Reception.

At our school they get a variety of reading schemes as their reading book which is good and key words to learn.

Key words are sent home in groups of 10 and the teacher sends home another set once they are mastered.

The problem that I have is, the teacher does not consider the words to be mastered if the child sounds it out. I think that's crazy. As an adult I scan all letters in a word before saying it out loud which is surely a form of sounding things out?

Ds is at pink level reading so (quite rightly!) sounds out most words. According to the teacher he's supposed to recognise the word based on it's "shape" .

My motivation in complaining is that ds is getting discouraged and thinks that he's not a good reader as the teacher has sent home the same key words for the last 2 months and he likes to practice them.

AIBU to think that it's perfectly ok to sound out keywords?

yabu, i'm afraid - the idea of the key words is that tehy are words that come up over and over again in life, and you see the whole word without soundign them out - you learn them by rote.
if you're sounding them out, you haven't learned them, you're just reading them.

You are.
He needs to know them confidently.

(...and giving him the first sound, or showing him the shape of your mouth as if to say the first sound doesn't count either).

It'll come.

How old is your little one?

I'm not sure if this helps but my DS was given simple words to learn when he was at Kindy 2 days per week in Australia so was about 4-4.5. He had to sound them out loads. It's only just recently (around Xmas) that he started to pick up the shape of words and he could then learn many but before he just wasn't ready. He still guesses some for example love and have will get mixed up. Sometimes he tries to sound out. He's progress ok but I do think it is a combination of the two that works. Also DS has got much quicker at the blending bit so that it now appears he is just reading them but I know he's sounding them out in his head but just faster.

I hope this helps in some way.

How do you sound out said? Do you see the problem? It's a bunch of words that they just have to learn to spot.

Don't stress about it though - some children get it faster than others. My son is y2 and only just getting to grips with those first 45 words.

Thanks for all opinions- including the ones that say Iabu.

So.. should I be encouraging him to look at the word before sounding it out? He generally reads by blending words in succession (they call it robot talking at school).

He can blend them while he's learning them, you can give him clues - whatever helps.
The more he sees them - the more familiar they will become.
Eventually he'll just recognise them.

(I don't think he'll be able to do anything but 'see' the word before he sounds it out, so I'm not sure what you mean).

i think i know wehat you mean - you mean to look at the whole word rather than always looking at it as a series of letters.

yes, you will need to do that - the more he sees the key words, the more he'll know them by sight.
then words he doesn't know by looking at the whole word, he can sound out.

as others have said he need to know them straight away without sounding out. at my dd's school they have to pronouce them exactly right or they will have the again.

dont get him to even try to sound them out. ask what they are and if he cant tell you without sounding them then tell him what it is and get him to repeat it after you.

I don't think the school will want you to do anything to teach the words as such. I imagine their theory is that when he's seen them enough at some point it'll click and he'll know them. Bit like I know that one day, dh will explain the offside rule and I'll finally get it! Word recognition comes from seeing the words a lot and being in the right developmental spot to 'get it'. So if you let him see them every day he stands a good chance. But phonics still key to most reading.

I am with you crazygracie. My DS was doing fine at nursery where he was sounding out, but he really struggles with 'sight words' as they call them at his school. I can see why they have to just recognise some words, but I feel he has taken several steps backwards and just struggles with combining the 2 methods. He used to love trying to read, but now he just finds it tedious.

I guess different children's minds work in different ways.

I would make sure that he reads lots of books with the words in then they will be re-inforced over and over. When my children were learning the HF words if they stumbled over one I would find a book that focused on that word and read it. Most of the ORT early books say on the back which HFW they cover and they can be bought cheaply from Redhouse and The Book People. This is also very good for understanding the meaning and then being able to use them in context when starting to write.

While you say that you scan all the letters, as a form of sounding out, before reading a word, do you really? I don't. I bet you can look at a fairly long word and read it instantly and then look away and may have to think for quite a bit longer about how to spell it, so you haven't actually sounded it out at all.

evolucy, you so confidently tell people completely wrong things about reading. Are you a teacher/former teacher?

Thanks everyone.

I'm really surprised at the answers but have taken note.

crazygracieuk how long has your child been in reception and how many sounds have they been taught?
As a reception teacher I would expect all/most children to be sounding out words at this stage of the year (as they become more experienced this becomes less obvious as they can do it in their head but they still need to sound out words).
Learning words by shape doesn't work for most children as so many words have the same shape only the letters help us read.

Someone asked how you sound out "said" /s/ /e/ /d/ the /e/ sound is represented by "ai" which children will be taught when they learn all the different ways of representing sounds in English.

maizieD...interesting comment what do you view that I have so confidently said that is completely wrong?

The ORT books are Look & Say so rely on children memorising words (or guessing from pictures) which is why they are repeated over and over and over and over and ...
I'm not sure what you mean This is also very good for understanding the meaning and then being able to use them in context when starting to write.

I would be very impressed with anyone who can read a word correctly without scanning the letters.

"While you say that you scan all the letters, as a form of sounding out, before reading a word, do you really? I don't"

How do youo know you don't. There has been some research recently that has shown that we scan all the letters at the same time, then our brain works out which word the letters are similar to. You are just doing it so fast you don't notice. It's called parralel letter recognition

mrz...I think you know what I mean about scanning the letters, I did not say that a person would not scan the letters, I said that it happened so instantaneously for most adults now, that they were not sounding out at all, and it would actually take far longer to sound out the word, or spell it, than it originally took to read it.
The OP talked about High Frequency Words and as I said that ORT have a guide as to the HFW in the early books, nothing to do with phonics or not, and actually there are phonics ones, Floppy's Phonics.
I am surprised that you don't understand what I mean by learning to read the HFW in a book in a sentence and how this helps children a) to learn them and b) to learn how to write with the words. An example straight from a Stage 1+ ORT book, 'I'm very good, as you can see' surely it is better for a child to see the words in a sentence like this then just on a flashcard. They can attach a context to the words and then when they start to write will have had more experience of how the words they have learnt to spell can be used. In my view some of them are not actually words that they may very often use in their everyday language, obviously the majority are but there are some that are not.

bruffin...I don't think that is new research is it, but that's exactly it, 'we scan all letters at the same time' we don't sound it out! I did have trouble with 'parralel' in your post though, wasn't a word my brain knew

no evolucy7 I don't

You don't what? I don't know what you mean you don't to? The scanning of words?

evolucy7 Tue 08-Feb-11 18:55:38

mrz...I think you know what I mean about scanning the letters, I did not say that a person would not scan the letters, I said that it happened so instantaneously for most adults now, that they were not sounding out at all, and it would actually take far longer to sound out the word, or spell it, than it originally took to read it.
just because the brain processes the information almost instantaneously doesn't mean that isn't exactly what a reader is doing
Dr. Sally Shaywitz has found a window on the brain through a new imaging technique called functional MRI. These medical scientists have identified parts of the brain used in reading. By observing the flow of oxygen-rich blood to working brain cells, they have found that people who know how to sound out words can rapidly process what they see. a ten year study published 2 years ago.

I am surprised that you don't understand what I mean by learning to read the HFW in a book in a sentence and how this helps children a) to learn them and b) to learn how to write with the words.
Highly disputed and certainly not in line with Letters & Sounds and the Rose Review.

Im my view, I find it hard to understand what can possibly be disputed about learning words through a combination of seeing them alone and also in a sentence in a book? And by reading them in a sentence of course it helps children to understand how to use them to then write their own sentences. A line of thinking other that this seems a little rigid and I am certain cannot possibly be suitable for all children. You seem to be forgetting that the OP said her DS was struggling to recognise the words instantly so perhaps the method of just flashcards isn't working that well.
I repeat I did not say that the brain was not processing the information of course it is as I have said numerous times, but it is 'almost' instantaneous, and in terms of the sounds and letters in the word, you would actually have to then think about spelling it out, as an example, there must be hundreds of words that some people can read fairly quickly but perhaps could not spell very easily. Their brain can process the information to work out the word, but if someone just said the word to them they may not be able to spell it correctly, so they are not sounding out the word when they read it, their brain already has knowledge of this word.

I thought that everyone already knew that the brain processed letters very quickly in order to read?!

Many HFWs can't be sounded out easily. I don't call a child fluent if they sound out words. My level descriptors don't either.