Reception flashcards

[TheMitfordsMaid]

DS has come home with this second lot of flashcards to learn. The first lot had Biff, Chip and Kipper and we've just about got there. This next lot are words like "it" and "have" and I am struggling to understand how I'm supposed to help him learn them.

He is pretty tired after school and struggles to keep still for more than a few minutes. I've tried doing them in the morning but his brother interrupts. He is bright, but won't even try and I don't want to turn him off reading

Any tips?

I wouldn't bother. Learning words from flash cards is not how reading should be taught, not even the so called 'tricky words'. Isn't he learning any phonics?

I've no idea, he tells me nothing!

maizieD is right. Your child's teacher seems to be way out of line with what schools are expected to be doing in the way of early reading. I hope Ofsted isn't visiting his/her classroom soon.

I suspect that this teacher is using the classic ORT books too, but she needs to know about the new DfE criteria:

In Oct 2010 the DfE introduced a revised set of criteria for synthetic phonics programmes. Note that it includes new advice on early texts to practise reading: '(E)nsure that as pupils move through the early stages of acquiring phonics, they are invited to practise by reading texts which are entirely decodable for them, so that they experience success and learn to rely on phonemic strategies. It is important that texts are of the appropriate level for children to apply and practise the phonic knowledge and skills that they have learnt. Children should not be expected to use strategies such as whole-word recognition and/or cues from context, grammar, or pictures.'
dfe.gov.uk/schools/teachingandlearning/pedagogy/teachingstyles/phonics/a0010240/criteria-for-assuring-high-quality-phonic-work

Oh dear. Am a governor, but new to it. Will obviously need to find out more about this. Thank you.

I've never known a phonic in my life, so it is all Greek to me. I tried spelling out r a t s to him the other day and he told me it was mice.

I should add that his teacher was an NQT last year, so presumably you'd expect her to be up to date?

With the mice/rats confusion, was there a picture? I was doing work experience in a primary school recently (hopeful PGCE applicant) and I noticed that whenever the children got stuck on a word and there were pictures, they would look at the picture and fill in the blank.

I'm sure it makes everything more fun, and can be helpful, but I got a lot more out of them once I had asked them the words with the pictures covered up and focusing entirely on letters. We then looked at the pictures and discussed them.

Disclaimer: no idea if this was a good thing to do or not, but it helped these year ones and twos, so may be worth a try?

Great ideas, thank you. I particularly love the big flashcards and will give those a go. He is a bright, clever boy but can't keep still and needs a lot of physical exercise, so I think that might appeal to him.

In the link it says that HFW words are still expected to be learnt though.

Play fastest finder - lay all/some face up and ask him to find a particular word before you do.

I used chocolate chips for mine.

Buy 100g chocolate chips. Go through cards with child, every time they got one right give chocolate chip. It worked for me, anyway :o

Thank you all. DS is thrilled with his giant flashcards and we will try some of the active ideas over the weekend. I've add a few extra words too - poo, bogey and bottom to appeal to his silly side. He has already got the hang of poo!

On the subject of high frequency words:

''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 [it's of Dutch origin], has two of the three phonemes represented with regular graphemes'' (DfE. Letters&Sounds Notes of Guidance p16) .