Gaelic
I was mostly agreeing with u in the post which got removed. It got removed because I was speculating about the motives of those who tend to be dismissive of everything I say.
But returning to topic, I think it's important for teachers and parents to understand what reading schemes try to do.
The ones with easily decodable words in which all letters have their main sound are for practising basic decoding and blending sounds into words.
After that, children must increasingly learn more and more of the words with alternative sounds for vowel graphemes and also a few consonant ones, such as s (sure, sugar).
The final aim of all teaching and learning to read is to be able to recognise all common words by sight, instantly, as all of us do now. Representatives from the 300 most HF ones which I pasted in on p5 make up half of all the words on any page we read. The ORT books therefore really push those.
The phonically straightforward ones (a, am, an, and....) children can mostly teach themselves to become really familiar with, by simply practising decoding and blending and getting faster and faster.
The trickier ones, the WRI ?red? words, need more going over before they become imprinted on children?s minds. Beyond a basic level, learning to read English is mainly about learning to read the tricky words.
Learning them in the context of exciting stories tends to be more fun than with reading schemes. And beyond the basic level, irrespective of what schools do, there is no harm whatsoever in parents letting their children read books other than the reading schemes ones.
Our son learned to read mainly with the Dr. Who books.