book for parents about learning to read

[hettie]

Hi, ds is in reception and starting to learn his phonics.... thing is I have no clue how this is done and fear I may be giving him the wrong sounds/or approach. I could do with a good guide to phonics/learning to read book for me to help support him. Any recomendations?

You will find lots of very helpful information HERE

The owner of this website is the Phonics consultant for OUP's new Synthetic Phonics programme and range of books, so you can be absolutely certain that she knows her stuff!

You could also look at this site

Have a look at Reading Magic by Mem Fox. Lots of learning to read approaches. Mem also is on YouTube and is worth a look. Which phonics programme is your ds's school using? Ask if you can have a look at the scheme so that you can learn the actions/ songs.

thanks all, I haven't got a clue what the approach is at school or what system they are using.... we have an open evening coming up so I'll find out more then. It's not really about teaching him to read (tbh my view is that he'll learn when he wants to/is enthused) just making sure that I am not saying/doing something wrong

Google letters and sounds. This goes through what the sounds are and when they teach them. It really helped me when my ds was learning to read.

I would back up maizieD's suggestion to look at this free booklet:

www.phonicsinternational.com/guidance_book.pdf

thanks- the leaflet is really helpful and I now have some resources if I need to becoe a bit more 'involved'..... I have naivley assumed that it's the teaching staff's job to teach ds to read and that they will ask me if they need me to do anything additional at home.... However, he is at quite an academicly focused school with a high percentage of parents that are pushier than I, so perhaps they assume that I am doing stuff/know what to do?

There's lots of info on the internet - a good video on Read Write Inc which is the Ruth Miskin version of phonics (sorry - can't do links, but you can search for it).

Basically just make sure you are saying the short sound eg 'm' is not the name (em) or a long sound (muh) but just 'mm' said with lips still together. This will make it easier once they start to blend sounds.

The whole phonics system takes a long time to work all the way through, and there certainly are times where it seems very confusing. I've had to learn a lot to help DD read, but it now seems to be making sense to her (just started Yr2).

hettie

Unfortunately those who write books etc regarding reading tend not to really have an understanding of the neurology of how we learn to read, and many are only promoting some form of teaching program or support program.
Have a look at the CiteULike Group: Reading: Acquiring and Developing the Skills and Abilities library of research papers, which tries to share the best research based information regarding learning to read.

Please talk to your reception teacher and let her/him give you some guidelines as to how to help and what to do. There are more approaches and ways to do it and the last thing you want to do is end up confusing yourself and your child.

My son is in reception and has brought home a composite phonics book that the teacher has made up

I was clueless when my ds first started in reception and had actually been 'teaching' the sounds in the wrong way. I would recommend the bbc 'jolly phonics' dvd so you can listen to the phonic sounds together.

try www.oxfordowl.co.uk/Question/Index/3
you can listen to the sounds and there's lots of information on reading and ebooks too my favourite website

hsmile

Hettie
Some of my blogs explain what learning to read and write English involves.
U might like to look at those.
It's against MN rules to give links to your own stuff, but u can find them by googling Masha Bell.

I have also bumped up the thread about phonics for your benefit.