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?

In the 6800 most used English words I found just over 2000 which are not completely decodable )which I have listed on the Sight Words page at www.EnglishSpellingProblems.co.uk ). They all contain one or more letters which can be pronounced in different ways (man ? many, maple; trough, tough, cough, although).

In the 300 most used English words, nearly half are like that and they make it harder for children to grasp the basic phonic patterns, e.g. EVEN HERE THESE ever every everyone never there there?s were where eyes key EACH EAT PLEASE TEA-- great head ready bear.

Synthetic phonics is synthetic in the sense that it does not use the words ? phonics? or ?decoding? in their normal sense. In SP, teaching small groups of words in which the same letters have alternative sounds (shout ? should, could, would) is still teaching ?decoding?, and no problem whatsoever.

But anyone who listens to children learning to read and makes a note of the words that they stumble over, soon finds that the alternative sounds are what causes all reading difficulties. I found that when I taught primary in my younger days, with my own kids, when I did learning support recently and now again with my grandchildren.

My 5-yr-old granddaughter explained the situation to me very clearly a couple of days ago, ?You can?t sound out ?was?, grandma. You don?t say w ?a-s. You say ?w-o-z?. You can?t sound out all words. Some are a bit tricky.?

Yes but most teachers and five year olds would disagree with your lists Masha

I have to say I have found reading this thread very interesting. I teach mainly KS2 and being in an international school I have taught children of many different language abilities over the years. The teaching of reading has rarely been an issue as by the time they arrive in my class they have usually learnt to read to a good standard. My issue is with spelling. A good reader is not always a good speller. If you look beneath the surface of a poor speller it is generally in my experience a child who does not have a good understanding of SP. If in the early years of their education we do not correctly teach SP they will have problems later.

Mrz: "most teachers and five year olds would disagree with your lists Masha".

Is that why hundreds of people use them every day and many write to thank me for my work?

I think parents are perfectly capable of judging for themselves whether words like 'said, any, many, people, other..' are tricky or not. All they have to do is make a note of the words their children stumble over when they listen to them read.

And a good way of helping children to read those words better is to write them on little cards and help them to part decode, part memorise them by going over them again and again.

But teachers and five year olds don't use your lists - all that proves, Masha, is that lots of parents seek guidance on the teaching of reading. And some parents and children will inevitably become further confused, particularly when confronted with one of your crazy spelling reform rants.

No parents who want the best for their child can easily be conned persuaded that they will help when in fact they are doing the exact opposite Masha

Re "lots of parents seek guidance on the teaching of reading". They do indeed, and only because learning to read English is exceptionally difficult.

And roughly every 10 years some new evangelists pop up, like the current SP lot, claiming that they have found the holy grail of English literacy teaching.

But given the inconsistencies of English spelling, the best way to teach children to read and write remains what a teacher's handbook advised in 1776:

"1. Begin with the words that are absolutely regular, in the sense that they are pronounced in the way children would expect.

1. Build into the exercises material that unobtrusively revises earlier work.

1. Give special emphasis to the pronunciation of c and g, the first big difficulty.

1. Introduce other difficulties progressively..."

In other words, start with basic phonics, using regular cvc words, and keep building on that.

But this 'SP lot', of whom you are so contemptuous, are real teachers, with many years' experience of teaching children to read successfully using good phonics teaching, without exception. We aren't just ranting bloggers, with a huge grudge against the English language.

But Masha- isn't that what the current synthetic phonics program being advocated in schools does? Starts with basic phonics and builds on it. Most teachers start wit satipn and begin word building from there onwards..??

I'm afraid that Masha doesn't actually know what synthetic phonics 'does'. Whenever we try to explain it to her she shuts her eyes and puts her fingers in her ears and says 'la, la, la' very loudly...

maizieD that isn't fair! she puts her fingers in her ears and posts a link to her lists ... U should be ashamed of suggesting otherwise

3. Give special emphasis to the pronunciation of c and g, the first big difficulty. to whom?

c and g are difficult to master, because they are said the same way.

try it in your own mouth.
g is slightly lower in the mouth, but they are the same.

c is a voiceless velar stop whereas g is a voiced velar stop which applies to speech but not really to letters on a page

they both sound voiced to me.

anyway, i was referring to the phonic noise it makes, so Gat sounds the same as Cat even if it doesn't look the same.

But it doesn't matter really if a child articulates "c" as "g" or the other way around it doesn't stop them learning to read using phonics. I've taught some children with desperate speech problems but they could still read and write well and the daily phonics enhanced speech therapy and had beneficial results.

I don't know if it does - I was only commenting on the point made above about c and g being problems.

Ido believe that there's more than one way of teaching to read, though.
I never understood synthetic phonics when I was a child. just couldn't get on with them.

This is an interesting debate. I can really see the logic and sound research base to phonics but, like every orthodoxy, it leads those less skilled perhaps in understanding or delivery, to rely on a set of rigid rules that makes no allowance for the differences in children.

I'm not sure all 4 or 5 year olds are actually ready for formal learning, let alone the monotonous rules they are forced to learn from day 1.

It seems to me that this all threatens to take the simple joy of opening a book and looking at the pictures out of the reading experience.

I have had two boys start reading with schools which spend copious amounts of time with lists of words and pictures of phonic sounds and magic rainbow sounds and picture cards with letters on etc etc and I have watch both slowly start to wilt and decide that reading was just too hard and too boring.

Why? Well in their case, it seems to be a case of it all becoming a rigid exercise in decoding which undermines their confidence and takes away the fun.

My son is on 1+ ORT at 5. He's really struggled to get in to reading. He could probably have done with another year to play and not sit and learn sounds. His teacher recently decided to keep him on the same book for two week as she felt he had not 'mastered' all the words. Good try though she says.

So, I have a 5 year old who comes home with the same book and has to wait for a week or so until it's his turn to be read with again when he can try and prove himself worthy of a new book.

So, is he interested in reading? No.

Exactly the same thing happened with my now 8 year old. And I had to buy books and spend time trying to repair confidence myself.

Job well done schools! Common sense not didactic phonics mantras is needed.

benito alongside learning about letters and phonemes children get to experience lots of lovely stories and to share wonderful books every day.
I would suggest from reading your post the school your son attends doesn't really understand how to teach phonics

Yes, I think you are right. Your posts are always so thoughtful and committed but not all teachers are the same.

Phonics is dangerous in the wrong hands!

Mrz - apart from ORT (which is all they do at school) are there any other ranges you would recommend for very early readers?

I would never ever recommend ORT (although I am waiting to see their new phonics range edited by Debbie) Personally I like Songbirds (published by OUP written by Julia Donaldson)Rigby Star, Ragtag Rhymes (Dr Seuss like) and Collins Big Cat.

Thanks - I will go and look them up.

what about the ORT Floppy's phonics books, mrz?

I'm just not a fan of Biff Chip et al and struggle to see why they couldn't create a new scheme with different characters (nothing wrong with the books just personal preference)
I've just ordered some Project X phonics for some boys in my class

nickelbabe:

"Ido believe that there's more than one way of teaching to read, though."

Unfortunately 'belief' is not a good foundation for choosing a method of teaching reading. While there are few research studies making a direct comparison between synthetic phonics and 'other methods' there are plenty of studies which provide evidence that the components of synthetic phonics teaching produce better outcomes than 'other methods'. And, of course, there has been the vast unofficial 'study' conducted in the UK over the past 30 or so years when Look & Say and 'mixed methods' were advocated and taught and reading attainment among children plummetted. Added to that there are many, many teachers like mrz, who have used synthetic phonics for the initial teaching of reading with outcomes which are far better than the 'norm' and there are people like me, who work with older, struggling readers, who find that following the principles of synthetic phonics is more effective for improving reading skills than 'other methods' (and I have used 'other methods', so can directly compare the two).

"I never understood synthetic phonics when I was a child. just couldn't get on with them."

As good synthetic phonics teaching has been very rare until quite recently I very much doubt that you were taught by that method. You may have experienced some rather confusing 'analytic phonics' or a bit of incidental phonics teaching, but it is highly unlikely that you had proper SP teaching.