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Original poster

Urgent advice needed re. reading with my reception dd

41 replies

legocreator · 19/12/2011 10:28

My dd is 4.9 and in reception. She knows her letter sounds and has learnt quite a few combination sounds as well (sh, ch, th, ee, oo etc.). If you show her a word with any combination of sounds she knows she can read it. School are really pleased with her reading. However, when it comes to reading her reading books at home it is a different matter. She guesses words, messes about and it takes ages. I feel myself becoming irritated, but i know i am supposed to stay calm! How should i approach this? I have told her off a few times for messing about and need to change my approach! Please help me stay sane.

OP posts:
BabyGiraffes · 19/12/2011 13:58

Mine did exactly the same and I went to see the teacher about it a few weeks ago because I kept getting frustrated and a bit shouty Blush. Turns out she can read perfectly well at school. Once she knew I'd seen the teacher (I told her to learn more about how she learns to read) she knew she'd been rumbled and all of a sudden can read at home... Xmas Grin. She will still mess about at home and if I think she's too tired I let it go and leave her alone.

sleepingbunny · 19/12/2011 14:26

My dd's school (she's still in the school nursery but starts in Reception in Jan) gave us a pink bookmark. It says "say the sounds and read the word on it". When dd gets stuck, apparently this is what I am to say to her. To my great astonishment, this works. And having a "script" stops me shouting "You JUST READ THAT!" in an impatient fashion.
I also set the timer for ten minutes. At least she knows if she's not interested then we will stop then anyhow. And so she'll concentrate for that long and no further.

maizieD · 19/12/2011 14:55

The reception teacher is bloody brilliant actually and knows the government advice inside out.

You forgot to add "And is ignoring it"

She (and I) see no problem with her using the picture as a signpost to help her when she meets a word she's never seen before

Obviously not. Thus subverting the whole point of learning phonics which is to do away with guessing, 'educated' or not, and work out what words 'say' from the letter/sound correspondences.

What is your dd going to do when the pictures disappear, or, when the word she doesn't 'know' cannot be portrayed in a picture?

ShowOfHands · 19/12/2011 15:10

DD has done the phonics bit. She can read. Occasionally she gets to a word she doesn't know. So today for example it was curtain. She tried decoding it and was pronouncing it to rhyme with 'pertain' and was puzzled. In instances such as this she looks for other signposts such as pictures to work out the word, otherwise she asks and I tell her what the word is. I asked the teacher if it was alright to do it this way, the teacher said yes as it was only happening occasionally and dd was using her initiative. As I said, she did all the phonics stuff, the single sounds, then combined sounds like oo, ee, ch, then ough igh etc. Sometimes she stumbles over a word and I like the way she tries to resolve it herself. I will not tell her this is wrong or subverting the hundreds of hours of phonics and decoding she did to get to this stage.

ShowOfHands · 19/12/2011 15:11

And as I said, she does read v simple chapter books and most pages don't have pictures. She's doing just fine. What exactly is wrong with her occasionally using her initiative to learn the spelling of a word she's not seen before?

mrz · 19/12/2011 15:42

ShowOfHands curtain really is a very simple word to read and as maizie has said either the teacher doesn't know the government guidance or knows it and is choosing to ignore it because the method she is encouraging your daughter to use is very limiting in the long term.

IndigoBell · 19/12/2011 15:45

mrz - the way I pronounce curtain it ends in an 'in' sound.

Are there other examples of 'ain' being pronounced 'in'? Or is it my accent....?

mrz · 19/12/2011 15:58

I would pronounce it curtn which is an encoding issue but not really a problem for decoding.

maverick · 19/12/2011 16:04

curtain, fountain, captain.. is a schwa IMO.

literacyblog.blogspot.com/2011/06/dreaded-schwa.html

IndigoBell · 19/12/2011 16:27

So would you say (to the child) 'sometimes 'ain' can be pronounced 'in', like in 'curtain', 'fountain', 'captain'?

You wouldn't tell a child about schwa's would you? (Not that I quite get what a schwa is)

mrz · 19/12/2011 16:32

I wouldn't use the term "schwa" with reception but I would tell Y2 some vowels are weak and just give a little "grunt/moan" and we call the noise "schwa" simply because children like strange terms.

maverick · 19/12/2011 16:46

''children like strange terms'' Yes they do Xmas Grin, and most of the children I tutor happily take on the information (we do a lesson on schwas as it's important for spelling) -and like listening out for them in their reading from then on.

Kardashianw · 19/12/2011 17:38

What is "schwa". I'd like to inform my ds about this.

TheAvocadoOfWisdom · 19/12/2011 21:18

OP: I give my kids 3 small sweets for every book they read. We started with DS1 in reception this time last year when he was on the equivalent of pink band. He is now reading beast quest. And still collecting haribo, but that's a small price to pay for an hour of total silence :o

DS2 is in reception and has been reading since he was 3-and-a-half, and he likes his haribo too. We do the books in funny voices sometimes, and if we think the story is rubbish we read the words in reverse order. Occasionally, we put on dressing-up stuff and sing the reading books.

skybluepearl · 22/12/2011 23:38

can you set a timer and for full attention for 10 mins, she can have a reward? Hot chocolate?

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