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 understand what you are saying: that despite your DD not being in the top phonics group you believe that your approach has given her the advantage that has enabled her to be one of, and possibly, the top reader in her year.

Now I am wondering if your school requires the children to read all of the books in each stage before they can move up? The reason I ask is because the spread of readers in DDs reception class is much wider. So ranging from children on pink band (stage 1) to white band (stages 10&11).

The school use PM benchmarking so children are assessed on fluency, accuracy and comprehension (not phonics you'll note). They are assessed regularly and moved up as required, sometimes skipping a number of bands in one go. Children change books every day (i.e. as soon as they've finished the book) and sometimes take more than one book at a time.

No reception child can achieve levels like 10 or 11 (in school - they could be reading chapter books at home) if the school has a policy of making children read all the books in a stage - unless they benchmark and the child is already reading at say level 4 or 5 when they start reception and the school is happy to start them there.

IMO the children in DDs class that are reading at purple band (stages 8&9) or above either have very good visual memories or have parents that support their phonics learning over and above that which the school provide (or they may have both!) because they receive no phonics teaching at school over and above phase 4 Letters and Sounds (well apart from me and I'm just a parent helper)!!! To be able to decode look and say books you need to have learnt phase 5 (and possible 6) of L&S even for pink, level 1 books. Phases 5 and 6 of L&S are, however, more normally taught in year 1. This is why DDs school have to rely on most children using picture clues in addition to phonics. After all most parents don't have the time or inclination to teach their DCs phonics and most child do not have very strong visual memories - good yes, but not that good.

I agree that regular reading each day makes a marked difference in how quickly most children learn to read. I also agree that we can't compare methods and your own DD is receiving phonics instruction and applying it too, so she is not learning to read solely by the look and say approach. I think that one disadvantage of word lists is that there is less time to practice sounding out and blending and the more you do it the quicker you get (all other things being equal).

Whilst the majority of children do indeed get there, too many who could, don't. 40 odd percent failed last years phonics check and I am willing to bet that even when you account for SEN not all of the children remaining are blessed with an excellent visual memory ...

I am willing to bet that even when you account for SEN not all of the children remaining are blessed with an excellent visual memory ...

SEN does not always mean that a child cannot learn to read. It is worrying that people seem to think that it does. Difficulty with learning to read can just as equally be caused by ineffective teaching methods. Many SEN children learn to read perfectly easily.

It would be interesting to see if Benjamintheblue's dd continues to make good progress with mixed methods teaching. There is a limit to memory for words learned as 'wholes'.

I certainly wouldn't recommend that anyone does the same...

My SEN child was able to read the Financial Times fluently aged three with no instruction ... certainly no excel spreadsheet

Maizie - apologies, I should have been clearer but I do go on rather as it is!

I mean once you've excluded children's whose SEN mean that even with the best synthetic phonics teaching they won't pass the phonics screening check in year 1. There's bound to be a few, but generally I think that the 40% reflects the poorer teaching that is also out there.

And of course a child with SEN can be twice exceptional Mrz - I was told that DD1 was reading at senior school level whilst early on in primary - it's a shame no one checked her comprehension though (including sadly me) but I was young and naturally trusted that what the school told me was the whole picture - it wasn't.

Interesting thread. My dd school teach phonics and send home ORT. I personally hate ORT. I'm a secondary SENCO and every year I get half a dozen children who, in 7 years in primary school have failed to learn to read anything. What is utterly depressing is that they almost always make good progress when taught to decode. I used an American scheme called SRA. Not everyone can use synthetic phonics, there is a form of dyslexia where the brain just stubbornly refuses to get it, but that is very rare. I have just got a set of read write inc books for DD and I much prefer them, they make more sense to me.

What really depresses me about ORT is that for some children they are the only at home books they get, they make reading boring and difficult for lots of children.

I'm intrigued as to how they became popular and why phonics was rejected so widely.

tiredbutnotweary.

Interesting about the range being different in your DD's school. Some on stage 11? :) I am beginning to wonder whether her teacher was correct, as it makes sense that there would be children further ahead than Caitlin with her being an August baby. They do make them read every book in the band. I had sent a spreadsheet in with the words Caitlin could recognize, in the hope they would move her up a band, but they wrote a note to me saying that although it was impressive, it was very important that Caitlin needs to understand the meaning of the word and answer questions on the story. I do not think she is the best reader in the year, as although she knows many words, she doesn't have much interest in reading a book. I wonder if the poster below is correct in that the ORT books are not very exciting. I know that she always wants me to tell her made up stories about witches and pirates. She loved the 'Palace Statues' ORT book because it had 'robbers' in it . I loved the Griffin pirate series when I was 5, and I cannot imagine Caitlin loving the ORT books as much as I did them.

I agree that Caitlin is slower at sounding words out, but I disagree with the poster that there is a limit to how many words you can remember as a whole word. I'm no memory expert, but surely its not like a child get to 2000 words, then their brain is too full :) After reading these threads, I will continue with spreadsheets and games, but maybe I should start Caitlin sounding out more words. Maybe that is the reason she gets very tired reading. i.e Remembering is not as hard as working it out, and so she doesn't give her mind any real work. She is limited not because of her ability to learn hard words, but by the energy and concentration needed to read the sheer amount of words. Maybe we did take a shortcut that will have consequences.

Perhaps you should look at the work of those who are "memory" experts

mrz

Thx for the advice. I dis a quick google, but its over my head. I will however post here when she slows down learning new words due to her brain running out of word storage space :)

The brain doesn't run out of space Benjamintheblue ...

I wonder if Benjamintheblue thinks that a child could remember 2,000 discrete telephone numbers? After all, phone numbers work on much the same principle; each symbol represents a quantityor concept, unique sequence of symbols represents a discrete phone number...

to quote Benjamintheblue " but by repeated tests, she is well on her way to 1 million words by sight."

Mazie - its possible given time, but remember, I am talking about pattern recognition, not memorizing phone numbers out the phone book. That was the point of my original comment. Excel calculates the average of my 450 word list below for stage 1-5 as an average of 5.3 characters, so lets say 5. Phone numbers average 11 digits. Example random number - 56,843. Yes given the motivation, I think a child could instantly recognize 450 numbers 5 digit numbers, and instantly say the name of the object I associated it with. Possible combinations = 9^5 = 59,049, so the numbers wouldn't have to look similar. If they looked similar, it would be harder, but you put £10,000 up, and I would have your child and mine instantly recognize 450 five digit numbers as everyday objects inside a year (without having to sound out each number).

LOL - I am spending my time arguing with people having a little snipe at me, when I only came on here to help people such as the original poster. I could have taught Caitlin 5 new words. Here is the full list of words in character number order for 'pattern recognition' difficulty. Not phonics difficulty. Excel cannot do that, but I am sure MRZ can have his child sound them out over the next 2 years and compile his own list (lol only joking) I think any child is lucky to have parents that care and they will all do well.

Words from the ORT Stage 1-5 + extra books.

am , down , time
at , draw , time
be , drop , took
ch , fair , very
do , farm , wait
go , fast , walk
he , feed , want
in , fire , well
is , five , went
it , four , when
me , free , will
my , from , with
no , fuss , zero
oh , game , alive
on , girl , angry
sh , gold , apron
so , good , began
th , hair , bikes
to , have , boots
up , help , buggy
we , herd , burnt
air , here , cakes
all , hero , came
and , high , camel
are , hole , canoe
Ark , home , can't
bad , idea , catch
bee , it's , chart
boy , jeep , class
buy , joke , climb
can , jump , could
dad , know , crane
eat , lake , creep
eye , left , cross
for , lend , dirty
get , life , drown
got , like , eight
gym , lion , fairy
had , lips , fence
her , look , field
hey , love , fight
his , make , funny
not , milk , giant
now , news , going
old , next , going
one , nine , green
out , Noah , hands
pie , over , honey
put , park , horse
red , paws , liked
saw , pink , liked
see , play , lorry
she , poor , magic
six , pull , money
sky , push , Nadim
ten , race , nails
ten , read , nasty
the , ripe , party
toy , said , patch
two , sale , print
why , save , quick
yes , says , right
you , show , river
baby , slow , robot
ball , some , saved
barn , soon , Screw
bear , stop , seven
biff , such , sharp
blew , suit , shiny
blue , suit , silly
boat , tent , sorry
body , that , start
book , them , stems
chip , they , sweet
come , this , teeth
there , orange , planted
these , people , pointed
thick , pirate , pressed
three , please , puzzled
tiger , posted , rangers
tired , prince , running
toast , pumped , sailing
tooth , purple , scruffy
under , rabbit , shouted
upset , rained , snowing
Vicky , rattle , sponsor
video , runway , swapped
wakes , safari , swooped
waved , scared , thought
what's , school , through
where , spring , Tuesday
where , stones , village
which , stream , volcano
witch , summer , watched
wrong , Sunday , weather
zebra , supper , whether
across , thorns , winning
Africa , trench , worried
amazed , trolls , barbecue
autumn , twelve , children
babies , upside , clippers
barked , washed , couldn't
beauty , wheels , drawings
behind , whoops , football
blocks , winter , goldfish
bought , wolves , hospital
bridge , would , lollypop
broken , yellow , material
burned , animals , mountain
bushes , another , postcard
called , believe , princess
castle , biggest , Saturday
chased , blowing , Scotland
choose , bounced , shopping
colour , bicycle , sleeping
cooked , camping , suddenly
danced , chicken , thirteen
didn?t , circles , Thursday
digger , climbed , tomorrow
dinghy , clothes , tracking
dragon , cobwebs , umbrella
drawer , coconut , adventure
driver , cottage , beautiful
eleven , crashed , brilliant
engine , cushion , classroom
falcon , diamond , crocodile
farmer , display , dangerous
flying , doesn?t , elephant
forgot , escaped , everybody
Friday , excited , expecting
garden , fishing , farmhouse
gasped , flicked , ice-cream
gloves , floated , Noah's Ark
hadn't , flowers , scarecrow
helped , goodbye , Wednesday
hooray , groaned , wonderful
hungry , groaned , bridesmaid
jumble , growled , frightened
jumped , harness , frightened
kipper , holiday , helicopter
kissed , holiday , photograph
landed , journey , playground
licked , laughed , river weir
lifted , mattress , skateboard
listen , mistake , television
little , monster , photographs
mended , no-one , blackberries
mobile , paddled , measurements
Monday , pageboy ,
nobody , painted ,

oops it came out not formatted. Oh well, if anyone has Excel, just paste in and sort.

I'm in the fortunate position that my children have never had to read ORT books Benjamintheblue my son was past that level by the age of two I'm afraid.

Ok, so having read the whole thread, and being now utterly confuzled, if I want to teach my 3 year old to read, and the school he is going to in sept uses jolly phonics and biff, chip and kipper books, what do I start with please?

If the school is using the old Biff & Chip read them to him if you really feel you must and focus on phonics

HomageToCannelloni

Australia SPELD-SA (Specific Learning Difficulties Association of South Australia) provide free books online which follow the Jolly Phonics GPC introduction order. N.B. a couple of these books contain words that some parents/teachers may feel uncomfortable about young children reading e.g. 'bum' and 'spat'

www.speld-sa.org.au/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=105&Itemid=182

HTH

LOL - I am spending my time arguing with people having a little snipe at me, when I only came on here to help people such as the original poster.

I'm not sniping at you, I am telling you that you are misguided and that your 'method' of teaching reading would be best ignored by the OP!

MRZ, Well I have no way of knowing that. The internet is a place that people can exaggerate to strengthen their argument. I am not one of those people, and you have misunderstood what I was saying. I was saying in my child's case what worked the fastest. There will always be little geniuses, and there will always be parents who would rather sit and read books each night, rather than take their child to play out at the park where they learn different skills. So comparing kids has little value. What's important is trying both methods on your own child, and see which one works best. For Caitlin there was a huge jump in 2 months after struggling to get her to want to read a book. I believe you excel at what you enjoy. For my child, that was seeing if she could remember 10 new words to win a reward. Maybe it was because I have touch screen, and she paints the word out with her finger. Maybe its because the ORT books bore her, and it takes longer to read the high frequency words in a stage 6 book than learn the 10 new words it contains. She still uses phonics, as I also believe in getting her to write the word. I had forgot about that. There is definitely something to writing down things to remember also. Each parent will knows their own child. Sometimes parent intuition can be more important than the opinion of a critical thinking child expert. For the simple reason that you know your child. So there is no best way for every child. Only the best way for your child.

'If the school is using the old Biff & Chip read them to him if you really feel you must and focus on phonics'

Lol at 'if you feel you must' having been through them all with dd it's the last thing I want to do...but I'd like to help him as much as possible with reading having seen a big disparity between boys and girls in the kids I hear read at the school every week. Which phonics maerials can I get my hands on that will compliment the Jolly Phonics/biff and chip style of teaching?

Sorry, missed the :o after that second sentence. And thanks for your help.

mrz - I think if I remember another thread correctly you realised your son could read when he picked up some junk mail? Would you mind explaining a bit more about how you think your son taught himself to read? I read a very interesting book called The Secret of Natural Readers, which was a very small study on children who learnt to read at a very young age and whose parents genuinely believed had taught themselves. What was really interesting was that not only had the children been read to a lot, but the parents played lots of games involving ... the alphabet and basic phonics (but they didn't think that was teaching their children to read because they didn't know how children are taught if that makes sense)! Once this was factored in, most children had taken about 18 months to learn to read, though to the parents it seemed instantaneous.

For what it's worth I still think some children have exceptional visual memories and can read words as wholes, rather like the people that see numbers as shapes and do their calculations with shapes rather than numbers. But I imagine they are far from the norm and may well learn or work out the the phonics code just as easily enabling them to sound out unknown words by themselves too. I've only ever met one person with a true photographic memory and as you'd expect their knowledge is encyclopaedic!

Homage, when I was faced with this and DD wanted to carry on reading school books and not only the phonic books I had at home I accelerated her phonics teaching.

To be able to decode the very earliest ORT and other scheme look and say books children need to be taught letters and sounds to phase 5 and probably 6 too (i.e. things they'd normally be taught in yr 1 and possibly yr 2). This is why it's such a nonsense for a school to say they teach reading by phonics if their take home books are ORT or other old look and say style books.

Whilst I've enjoyed a lot of this process I should not have felt I had to do it, I certainly had no inkling when she started school that I would need to do it, despite having already done basic phonics as she was keen and and interested before school. However I strongly disagreed with the look at the picture and guess approach, which is the ONLY way for children to tackle the look and say vocabulary by themselves unless they know the code. Of course reading the "look and say" words or sounding them out for the child is another approach.

To be fair DD loved Biff and Chip and is really enjoying the Time Chronicles (where the children are older and the stories far better)!

I have just read the whole thread, and I see that some people are saying that reading is pattern recognition, and some people are saying that we decode the word and sound it out in an instant. Am I correct? Gosh I must be really interested in this subject lol Well the human brain is quicker at pattern recognition than calculation. Would anyone agree with that? And phonics can get incredibly complicated to properly decode the words that you cant sound out. Would anyone agree with that? Going back to my comparison with chess. Compare, for example, how a human plays chess to how a typical computer chess program works. Deep Blue, the computer that defeated Garry Kasparov, the human world chess champion, in 1997 was capable of analysing the logical implications of 200 million board positions (representing different move-countermove sequences) every second. Kasparov was asked how many positions he could analyse each second, and he said it was less than one. How is it, then, that he was able to hold up to Deep Blue at all? The answer is the very strong ability humans have to recognize patterns. Ok my child is not Kasparov, but why cant I train her to do what humans are great at? So if all this is correct, its logical to assume that anyone who decodes words will be a slower reader than someone who knows the pattern of those words. That's my biggest thrill - when Caitlin reads as fast as me, even if it is in smaller chunks. I would not feel she was doing as well if she sounded more words out, as she would most likely get some wrong. This is why, although I let her sound the words out whilst writing and spelling, thinking about it, I would prefer to let her copy from the excel sheet. By guessing the spelling with phonics, she sees the incorrect pattern on words she decodes incorrectly. When she copies the correct spelling, she is reinforcing an image of the correct spelling in her brain. Its the same danger when studying chess games from the losers perspective. Yes you can analyse, but this information sometimes gets stored in your subconscious, and you move on bad intuition. Maybe that's why a few people on here are saying the phonics way didn't encourage good spelling. Just throwing some thoughts out there lol

omg this is a huge subject and its one of those that have different opinions. There are studies to support MRZ's posts, but also plenty of studies to support the opinion that we recognize the word by shape. So I will go with the strongest evidence for the word shape model. This is the word superiority effect which showed that letters can be more accurately recognized in the context of a word than in isolation, for example subjects are more accurate at recognizing D in the context of WORD than in the context of ORWD (Reicher, 1969). This supports word shape because subjects are able to quickly recognize the familiar word shape, and deduce the presence of letter information after the stimulus presentation has finished while the nonword can only be read letter by letter. Maybe the truth is probably somewhere between the two extremes (as usual)