Year 1 Reading & Abroad

[pawre]

Hello,

My DD is in Year 1. We are also abroad at the moment and with the school not being much help (another story), need some info/advice on what's a good series/book for learning to read. Can anyone suggest what to buy to help my child with her reading.

Ideally we would like to keep up with what you're all doing! Been away for a few years now, but only have seen Band this and Colour that of what kids are doing at school!?

Appreciate the helpfulness of this site! Many thanks!

Also abroad (France) and I used Jelly & Bean to teach DD to read, with help from some tutors. I highly recommend!

Also abroad and quickly abandoned the utterly dire ORT and used Headsprout online, for a month or so, and then just read normal children's books along with her.

Where we are, in schools, they don't use phonics, synthetic or otherwise, so it seemed more logical to me to not use them in English either, once we'd done the basics with Headsprout.

ort floppy's phonics

ort songbirds are very good.

fun with phonics (bbc words and pictures resources) have 5 books in the reading pack to go along side other phonics schemes.

read write inc start off at a basic level and progress slowly.

what can she do at the moment?

My son was born in Germany and I taught him to read with ORT. We thought we would go back to the UK and I wanted to use a scheme that would enable him to easily slot into a primary school. Never went back, but he really loved ORT. With DD I have used songbirds and my old ORT books. She is at an international school and the school uses ORT, Ginn and Jelly and Bean. J and B is dire in my opinion - so boring!.
Also used Jolly Phonics with DS.

Also abroad and I bought the 'Read, write inc' series off amazon and claimed it back on our tax. My 4 year old uses 'reading eggs' on the computer.

Oxford Reading Tree and Songbirds also All Aboard. These books may not appeal to adults but they are brilliant to teach reading. They are well thought out and built up vocabulary and sentence structure in a well thought out way. Clearly reading any other story books on top is brilliant. You can find quite a few books on ebay as well if it is difficult to find them where you are. And on Amazon of course.

Shanghaidiva - how funny that you thought Jelly & Bean was boring. My DD and I found it by far the least dull of the fully decodable reading schemes (which by definition are not going to be gripping stories), in large part because the pictures were lovely, as opposed to the really awful illustrations (we particularly hated the ugliness of the Songbirds illustrations).

Thank goodness that there are lots of schemes to choose from for different tastes!

my 5 year old is doing well with online 'reading eggs'

Hello! thank you so much for your response! great help. Why didn't I ask earlier!? Also one more thing, does anyone have use any books...for year 1, that would be key stage 1 right? (sorry i'm also canadian!) books like Carol Vorderman's. Any to recommend? Will look at some bookshops to order.

Many thanks!

Bonsoir - so true about the different schemes. Many people find ORT tedious!

TBH the English decodable reading schemes are gripping innovative works of modern literature in comparison to the French reading schemes

Do the phonics stuff first- well worth it- they teach them phonics first for a while here then start the reading and it's much easier. Then do the schemes that use the phonics (!- some don't and it's really hard and boring for the kids).

My son is just starting reading really- he loves the songbirds (Julia Donaldson) from ORT- got up to about level 3 in quite a short time. (whereas when I gave him one or two from ORT supposedly same level they weren't phonetic, and he was immediately discouraged so watch out!!).

Oh, yes hold on a minutes someone posted me a brilliant site- here you are www.oxfordowl.co.uk/FindBook- some e books for free and they tell you when they are phonics based ones.

Good luck!