Change in teaching methods in Reception

[sittinginthesun]

I'm just curious, as I have read a lot of threads from teachers on here about the new phonic based teaching methods in Reception, and just wondered whether it makes a huge difference?

I have one child in Year 3, who read mainly Reading 360, with a few ORT thrown in. Some phonics, and a lot of "key" words. He picked it up quickly, and it clicked just before the end of the first term.

DS2 is in Reception, and has a whole load of obviously new books - Songbirds - which seem very phonic based. He is loving them, and is blending pretty tricky words.

I find it has completely changed the way we do reading practise - with DS1 we looked at pictures and read along together. This time, DS2 is having to read all of the words, and looks at the pictures after to confirm he is right.

What I'm wondering is, will it make any difference? It seems very strange that I am helping my two boys, only 3 years apart, and it feels quite different. Will DS2 read quicker, spell better, or will it make absolutely no difference?

I've been teaching for 6 years and i've only ever taught chn to read using phonics... i don't think its new.

As long as you are supporting them and reading everyday then im sure you boys will thrive. :)

They aren't new methods sittinginthesun far from it, but lots of schools have tried to use old reading scheme books rather than replace them. It costs thousands to replace entire schemes so there has been a mix match of what is taught and resources used. I would expect your younger child to find it easier to progress through the scheme if the teaching is as good as the new books.

I'm not an early years teacher (training to be an English teacher) but my experience as a governor for many years at my children's primary school tells me that introducing a structured programme of synthetic phonics has made a big difference to how quickly and easily our foundations stage children have learned to read - there is a significant and measurable improvement. However, I don't think you can extrapolate that to the level of individual children, simply because not every child is going to respond to it in the same way. But yes, I was sceptical at first and am now a big fan. Having said that, it is not a panacea and some children will still find whole word recognition suits them better.

Hopefully he will read quicker and spell better :)

Of course 2 kids ain't a statistically significant sample, but by and large that's what you'd expect.

By read quicker I mean get to the point where he can read any word. ie at least be reading chapter books.

And by spelling, again I don't mean how quickly he learns to spell the 100 HFW, but how good he is at spelling in Y6 and Y7.