Oxford Reading Tree words

[schmee]

My twins are supposedly learning to read with phonics and are just doing phonics at school (learning the letter sounds) but they are coming home with books with lots of sight words in them. I think they are say and see books?? Apologies this is all very new to me. One is using the Oxford reading tree (they are in different classes).

Should I be doing something to reinforce the words they don't know? At the moment it seems quite random. Also, I've lost track of the new sight words or tricky words (e.g. ones with sounds like "ay" and "ow" that they haven't learnt yet). Does anyone know if a list exists that gives the words in the order they appear in the ORT?

As they are using different books in the different classes, I find it really hard to remember whether each child has encountered the word before!

I suspect that the only thing that is 'mixed' is masha's concept of phonics teaching. Though 'muddled' might be a more appropriate word [hwink]

In all fairness, explicit phonics teaching is not necessary as on the whole we are capable of deducing the 'code' for ourselves. It is simply a method that attempts to ensure that less children fall through the net but it is not a panecea as there are still individuals for whom this method will not work. So can you all keep a bit of perspective .

The mixed methods that Masha advocates are what a mature brain moves towards as it reaches 'automaticity'.

With regards attempting to simplify english spelling Masha, it's simply not necessary. The brain is capable of much more than we know - not less!

panacea even

With all respect pickledsiblings the evidence from current brain research suggests that is not the case and that the brain of an expert reader processes the word sound by sound just as in speech.

i did not say otherwise mrz, you are of course correct, but the brain can do so without explicit phonics teaching

That would by why mixed method teaching has been deemed a huge success?

there is still a lot to be known about how we learn to read, and fwiw, i believe teaching phonics is a step in the right direction

Pickled,

It seems to me (maybe being too simplistic here) that if SOME children can learn to read without explicit phonics teaching but ALMOST ALL children will learn to read with explicit phonics teaching, then phonics should definitely be taught explicitly because it increases the number who attain the goal (of reading) so markedly....

It's like saying that some children will work out what we call times tables through repeated addition calculations (counting on) or by visualisation of arrays - it is still worth teaching and learning times tables explicitly to give all children that basic tool of mathematics.

So can you all keep a bit of perspective

And your perspective is what? Parent or teacher?

ishmael1 quote"What you can?t do is to remember by sight over a million words in the language."

I like to think of it as pattern recognition. When I read, I don't sound anything out. I just know the pattern of the word. So its logical that this is the method I use on my 4 year old. I bypassed all the advice, and gave her lists of words on an excel sheets from the oxford books. Now there maybe disadvantages of this, as by reading a book, she understands the meaning of the word, but for shooting ahead on the Oxford tree levels, there is no faster way in my child's case. I tried the book methods, and she learns about 2 words a day, instead of a potential 10. I do tend to make a story out of the words if they are new, but by repeated tests, she is well on her way to 1 million words by sight. ( or by patterns ) :)

If your child knows almost a million words by sight she is amazing ...

what language is she learning?

Obviously I didn't mean a million. I wouldn't have even bothered commenting, but I just thought- who said we cant memorize a million words? Its amazing what any kid can do with their memory. Why put limitations on them? Aim for a million. In fact aim for 10 million.

I actually decided this method from having an interest in chess and how Grandmasters learn. Usually from an early age, they are exposed to complex patterns again and again, until they can instantly recall which famous game a position was from without thinking about the individual position of each piece. OK, we are all different. Some kids will probably have better pattern recognition, and some kids will probably calculate better by sounding the word out. Some children are just patient and good workers.

perspective :-
I am not a Teacher. I have no knowledge of teaching other children. My child allegedly is the furthest on her reading in her reception year as well as being the 2nd youngest and so it was natural for me to want to comment. But each child is different and its logical different methods will work on different children. A teacher is obviously better placed than me to say in general the best way. I just wanted to say - Aim for the stars and .......... they will at least win the bookworm of the month :)

strandednomore: my kids learned to read in school that did not 'do' phonics in reception. they are fluent readers now (a year on). they learned through what I guess is a classic 'mixed' method.

the only real impact of formal phonics lessons in y1 is that my children, like yours, have developed terrible spelling. they can't get why writing down phonetically correct sentences nearly always equates to the word being incorrectly spelled. I share their frustration.

hopingforbest if your child was taught mixed methods then they will have "done" phonics in reception ...

Benjamintheblue I'm pleased you didn't mean a million words because all current brain research using MRI suggests the brain has the capacity to remember a few thousand words not even tens of thousands ... there are about a quarter of a million words in the Oxford English Dictionary.

There is nothing 'classic' about mixed methods. In the context of the teaching of reading over many centuries it is a modern upstart youngster. In fact, it is usually a deperate attempt to 'improve' the dire 'look & say' method of teaching reading by the addition of a smattering of phonics.

Children who are taught by look & say notoriously hit a 'bump' at some point. In the US it is known as the 'third grade slump'.

Some children are lucky enough to be able to intuit the phonic basis of written language by themselves. No credit for this can be given to 'look & say' nor does it validate it as a teaching method.

The lists I used come from the ORT, stage 2 - 5 and levels 1 - 4. Also included are the extra books. These 360 words were split into 3 sheets to do on different nights. I took any challenging words at the time from each book and copied them into excel spreadsheets, so there will be many more nouns that your child will just easily know like pet, dog or cat that are not on here, but they will get very easily. If your child can read these, they will be ready for stage 6. (just my opinion as a dad based on my child - not an expert)

Monday , Wednesday , Friday , Sunday , flowers , seven ,
eat , her , said , on , barn , eight ,
my , toy , ch , love , diamond , spring ,
with , boy , th , from , lollypop , summer ,
oh , park , sh , make , pie , autumn ,
Like , went , bee , cakes , washed , winter ,
see , some look , do , ice-cream , drawer , ,
here , have , out , it , Screw , jumble ,
play , you , help , when sale , , ,
yes , me , saw , go , digger , shouted ,
get , very , for , put , trench , adventure ,
red , green , blue , orange , crane , through ,
climbed , whats , drop , which , classroom , show ,
fast , this , all , would , left , beautiful ,
slow , that , where , could , blocks , four ,
teeth , class , chip , choose , gasped , one ,
didn?t , are , poor , everybody , upside , buy ,
know , not , old , no-one , down , money ,
good , can , rabbit , girl , listen , time ,
bad , can?t , ten , hadn?t , nasty , home ,
over , school , helped , had , colour , toast ,
Tuesday , Thursday , Saturday , fence , forgot , honey ,
be , the , in , lorry , eye , behind ,
to , up , and , playground , fight , walk ,
he , they , why , driver , goldfish , paws ,
she , print , at , excited , gym , over ,
his , save , am , photograph , display , saved ,
we , next , is , wait , fair , joke ,
here , says , no , lifted , mountain , cushion ,
now , will , them , watched , snowing , nine ,
it?s , time , want , wrong , scared , zero ,
well , soon , dad , right , biggest , draw ,
yellow , pink , purple , hooray , funny , circles ,
got , nobody , so , hero , ten , feed ,
princess , climb , took , apron , two , read ,
cross , down stop , dirty , village , where , ,
come , biff , kipper , hands , princess , little ,
hey , jumped , tooth , trolls , shiny , hair ,
sorry , high , jump , beauty , wedding , winning ,
push , fairy , there , nails , married , thought ,
pull , giant , book , fuss , bridesmaid , quick ,
under , came , couldn?t , stream , pageboy , elephant ,
six , three , five , clothes , going , race ,
eleven , frightened , twelve , life , began , children ,
planted , magic , called , dangerous , bridge , crashed ,
garden , idea , suddenly , blowing , blew , growled ,
scarecrow , painted , worried , hospital , another , wolves ,
body , air , bought , lion , tiger , bear ,
alive , waved , upset , groaned , another , chicken ,
journey , grandparents , material , Nadim , mended , swapped ,
robot , wheels , skateboard , broken , building , site ,
weather , vane , licked , blind , burned , statues ,
glowing , eye , bulls-eye husky mosque , walk , , ,

Ben, I am so intrigued by your post!

As your daughter is in reception has she been taught phonics by her teachers?

Do you encourage her to not sound out new words and instead add them to your spread sheet for her to learn as wholes or do you go through books in advance and only let her read them once you are confident that she's learnt the word in advance?
How quickly does she pick up words by sight (I imagine this varies by word)?
How many different scheme books do the school use (i.e. just ORT or do they use other schemes as well)?
You say that you only read words as wholes, i.e. you don't sound them out, but what happened the last time you came across a word you didn't know? In case it's been a while how about lalochezia - what process would you use to say it out loud?

Sorry to bombard you with questions but I took the complete opposite approach with my daughter (also reception) and am very interested in the process of learning to read. I was also choosing to go against advice - the advice of the school, which was to learn the tricky words as whole words and let them use picture clues to guess all of the words which aren't tricky but for which they simply don't know the code yet because the home reading books are nearly all look and say type books.

My thinking is that only children with very good visual memories can learn to read successfully (by which I mean beyond a limited vocabulary) using only the approach you are using with your daughter. Of course, it's just a point of view!

What a waste of effort I can't believe there are still schools working this way ...have I slipped back to the 1960s

Teaching a child 360 words from ORT means they can read 360 words and guess a host of others

mrz - are you really that surprised though, after all there have been a number of threads with people expressing surprise that despite being taught phonics children are being sent home with look and say books. Locally I know that DDs (outstanding) school is not unique.

In the Evaluation of the Phonics Screening Check 67% of literacy coordinators agreed with the following statement:

"A variety of different methods should be used to teach children to decode words"

Well what different methods could they be referring to other than the mixed method approach of guessing decoding words?

No not surprised just saddened ... then they make excuses about "good readers" being thrown by non words never considering that these children can only read the limited number of words they have managed to memorise but have no strategy for any new word they encounter.

In the Evaluation of the Phonics Screening Check 67% of literacy coordinators agreed with the following statement:

"A variety of different methods should be used to teach children to decode words"

That would explain why the national pass rate (58% I think?) was so atrocious then.

I'm not a teacher and my DD is only Y1 but I have always agreed with the posters on phonics threads who raise issues with "memorising" words as a way of supposedly learning to read. My DD, who has been taught phonics (and no other mixed methods as far as I can tell), reads exceptionally well and is therefore always coming across unfamiliar vocabulary in the books she chooses. Most of which she is able to sound out perfectly and then we discuss what it means. I'm afraid I simply can not understand why a parent would prefer to produce excel spreadsheets of hundreds of words and get their child to memorise the words instead of learning how to read properly. Maybe benjaminte blue just has a lot of time on his hands!

tiredbutnotweary

Yes she does do phonics in school, but she is in the 2nd set in reception. Its a school where you know every parent cares how well their child is doing and the top 15 kids out of approx 60 are in the top set. Yet at the latest parent meeting, her form teacher said she by far the most advanced reader in her class, and as far as she knows, the year. So the 2 are not necessarily important to each other (in Caitlin's case). When she doesn't know a word in a book, she does sound it out, but when using the lists, i start off when the words are new by making up a stupid story. I will tell her the word and add it into the silly story. i.e 'the scarecrow planted the seeds and behind him was a racing car'. She might already know scarecrow and so guesses the word 'planted' by remembering the silly story. But repeated telling of that story can get her to recognize the word without ever having to sound it out. For some reason she prefers it this way and uses her memory. I say we are going to read a book, and she says she wants to do words. Maybe she prefers stories that are silly. Maybe its because she is finishes quicker. She has got a good memory, in that she rarely forgets the word if its done on consecutive nights, and once she gets it a few times, its seems to be remembered for ever, but its not a photographic memory. Caitlin can read the words in stage 8 books like 'Pocket money' and 'Emergency', but when it comes to reading a stage 5 book, she can only read approx page 8 pages and either becomes tired or bored. She just gives up. I am hoping her concentration levels grow. She won't even begin to read the stage 8 books in the form of a book. Its very hard to compare methods because like someone hinted at below, its also how much time you put into it. Just the fact we all care, will mean all our kids will be good readers. What is the fastest method is individual? If my child was forgetting the words, and it took several nights to remember a word like 'dangerous' it may well be better to get her to to sound it out. But if i tell her ' the scarecrow didn't like being held upside down because it was too ?????????' and I and swing Caitlin upside down to in a fun way, I never have to tell her that word again. She knows where it is on the list, and I don't need to tell the story. She does then recognize it anywhere, as I jumble the words up once she starts not even looking at the page. As I am reading now, I am taking in the word as a whole pattern and saying it in my head. I don't believe I am sounding it out in my head. My daughter (as most kids) has a better memory than me, so is even more capable of recognizing the pattern of a word by memory and keeping it stored for ever. I know a friend used to allegedly be able to remember a pack of plain cards sequence as a party trick. He used silly stories to remember the order of the cards. He then would go on to remember that sequence for ever by the silly story. He maintained it was the method he used rather than a gift. Just a thought :)