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Original poster

'this' is a tricky word and can't be sounded out ...

107 replies

rushofbloodtothefeet · 07/12/2011 17:02

So goes the teachers comment in DDs reading book.

Aaargh!

I hereby give up all hope of her school teaching any child to read effectively. I shall continue teaching my daughter to read at home - where she is happily reading the Songbirds books. (And she was able to work out 'this' by herself before she even started reception)

OP posts:
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Feenie · 07/12/2011 21:18
Grin
mrz · 07/12/2011 21:24

yes it was me rushing a post and not reading what I had typed ... my fingers working faster than my brain apparently my apologies

Jezabelle · 07/12/2011 21:56

I'm with hocuspocus. It is indeed a tricky word if she doesn't yet know the "th"digraph. From what you are saying she does know this digraph, but if she hasn't been taught it in school then maybe the teacher was just giving the class a generic set of tricky words to learn and this was one of them? Fairly lazy and pointless seeing as your dd can already read it, but just thought this might be the case.

Just a point about guided reading; quite often the teacher moves round the table to hear children individually during these sessions, so they are getting one-to-one. However, I too would like to see that my dd had been heard read a whole book by herself at least once a week.

mrz · 07/12/2011 22:06

How are high-frequency words dealt with?
It has been common practice in schools to treat high-frequency words as ?sight recognition words?, even when these words are phonically decodable (by 'decodable? we mean words that can be sounded and blended for reading). However, it is not clear that it was ever the intention of the authors of the previous Primary National Strategy programmes that high frequency words should be taught without attention to letter-sound information. Indeed, on page 7 of Progression in Phonics (DfEE, 1999) it says that The high frequency words listed in the back of the Framework are not intended to be taught by rote. A sight or rote approach with decodable words is undesirable in a synthetic phonic programme, as the aim of the teaching is for children to recognise words by a mature form of sight-word reading well underpinned by letter-sound information.

maizieD · 07/12/2011 22:13

However, it is not clear that it was ever the intention of the authors of the previous Primary National Strategy programmes that high frequency words should be taught without attention to letter-sound information.

It is definitely not the intention of the Letters and Sounds authors that the HFWs should be taught as 'sight words', but they are Xmas Angry. Give a 'mixed methods' teacher a millimetre and it will become a kilometre in no time at all Xmas Wink

Original poster
rushofbloodtothefeet · 07/12/2011 22:49

I have no idea how they are approaching the HFW in class. We have been given a pack of them and asked to 'use' them on a daily basis. An insert also states they continually teach and asses recall of the words in school and they will add new words regularly when the child is confident.

So, DD can read and write them all with confidence, yet we have not had any new words for at least 3 weeks. Gentle probing with DD and she claims no use of the words in class - though I appreciate a 4yos perception of reality is somewhat skewed.

I have made numerous comments in her reading book about her progress with the words - and never get more than a smiley face back

OP posts:
Original poster
rushofbloodtothefeet · 07/12/2011 22:50

I'm starting to worry that DD's teacher will be looking daggers at me tomorrow morning, I'm sure I've given enough info to be identifiable Sad

Perhaps a name-change is in order.

OP posts:
IndigoBell · 08/12/2011 07:10

I wish you'd given enough info to be identifiable. :)

Unfortunately the situation you describe is extremely common up and down the country.

Wallace · 08/12/2011 07:28

In JP there is "th" as in path and th as in this. I was Shock when our teacher said they were only doing "th" as in path so they didn't confuse the kids!

Same with oo as in roof, but not doing oo as in book.

jamdonut · 08/12/2011 07:39

Wallace... that's a bit shocking! We don't do JP at our school we go by Letters and Sounds, but we always teach "long" oo - moon and "short" oo - book and also both "th" sounds (One is quiet the other noisy)

Bonsoir · 08/12/2011 08:41

"What we at Sounds-Write keep arguing is that all teachers teaching children to read and spell need to be properly trained. You can't stick a manual in the hands and expect them to make sense of it."

This is so true. What I just cannot fathom is what the hell trainee primary teachers do all those years when "training". Surely teaching children literacy (to read, write and spell) is the single most important thing that happens in a primary school? And, if it is, shouldn't trainee teachers be spending a very significant part of their training learning how to teach literacy?

tabulahrasa · 08/12/2011 08:55

Completely OT...

My th's are the same in all those words up there

choccyp1g · 08/12/2011 09:02

Surely when letters or digraphs have more than one sound, you should teach both at once?

I appreciate this might seem to overload DCs, but if Mrz class can cover so much in half a term, why cant most other children?

choccyp1g · 08/12/2011 09:03

Ooh my apostrophe`s have turned back to front!

fraktious · 08/12/2011 09:13

I am depressed by the number of primary teacher friends I have who don't know the basics of phonemes, morphology etc. They wouldn't be able to explain why thee and three are different, nor the fairly basic rules for working out which one to use Angry

Phonics in the wrong hands is worse than no phonics at all.

Bonsoir · 08/12/2011 09:16

fraktious - it's very odd how primary teachers don't know the nuts and bolts of language and literacy. We don't expect music teachers to give small children sheet music and hope for the best...

maverick · 08/12/2011 09:20

Bonsoir, you can get a good idea of what is happening in ITTs all over the country when it comes to what they tell their students about teaching literacy -see juniper904's post p3 on this recent mumsnet thread:

''My uni was very anti the Rose report, and one of our assignments was to do a presentation about how poor the data were, and why the whole lot of it should be taken with a pinch of salt.''

Trying to see the positives in Biff Chip et al
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/primary/134 ... -etal?pg=1

maverick · 08/12/2011 09:22

In his article, 'The Education White Paper: a CPS Postnatum' (Nov. 2010), Tom Burkard wrote that, '(T)eacher training was first identified as the major obstacle to the implementation of effective practices in the 1996 report, Reading Fever. In an unpublished CPS report that was sent to Nick Gibb just prior to the general election, we suggested that new arrangements were needed to train teachers to use synthetic phonics effectively. We included a survey of reading lists for 46 initial teacher training (ITT) courses, which revealed an overwhelming hostility to this method, and indeed a profound disagreement with the coalition?s overall vision of educational reform.

www.rrf.org.uk/pdf/ITT%20reading%20lists%20Jan%2010.pdf
Burkard: 46 ITT reading lists.

Bonsoir · 08/12/2011 11:12

maverick - this is frightful, and interesting. But why are teaching instructors so against SP? Is it because they preached another religion for a very long time and refuse to examine any evidence contrary to their earlier beliefs?

IndigoBell · 08/12/2011 12:01

Seems to me a lot of teachers are against anything the govt is pushing.

If govt preaches SP it must be bad. :(

Feenie · 08/12/2011 12:09

I can understand that point of view - so many directives are borne out of sheer political whimsy. It's rare to find one that comes from sound, solid research - like SP teaching. It's incumbent upon all teachers to do their own research and find out the facts.

Mashabell · 08/12/2011 12:23

This reply has been deleted

Message deleted by Mumsnet.

Feenie · 08/12/2011 12:33

Genius timing as ever, Masha Grin

camicaze · 08/12/2011 12:57

What scares me most about the OP is that the teacher is pushing ahead with 'reading' when children haven't even learnt to recognise the basic one on one letter sound correspondences. If I wanted to create reading problems in children that needn't have them, thats exactly what I'd do...
Surely you should send home reading books to be read together until the child can at least recognise all the individulal squiggles on the page? The teacher's logic means its unclear why she bothers teaching the letters at all, if recognising them is so unnecessay to begin reading. The shocking thing is she would claim merrilly that the school 'does phonics' and the parents would assume so too.

Tiggles · 08/12/2011 15:24

DS2 has been learning his JP phonics in reception this year. I can safely say he has not been at all confused when presented with oo as in look and oo as in moo at the same time. He told me very proudly yesterday that his class only have two more to learn. I have no idea how true that is but they have done loads so far. One or two a day (except Fridays). Yesterday was 'ear' as in beard. He can confidently remember all of them. And he could certainly sound out 'this' a while ago...

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