Reception reading - give me your tricks please

[DrowninginDuplo]

Ds1 is bored of learning to read. Started off all enthusiastic, but as far as I can tell doesn't see the point of the effort for the sheer naffness of the stories. He can sound blend etc

Conversations on the subject tend to go as follows:

"very good darling ds1 but look at the words on the page"
"sweetie good try, but the word by for finger is the one we are after"
"look at the word on the page darling, don't just guess"
"LOOK AT THE JEFFING WORD ON THE PAGE" (obviously don't actually swear)
DS1 then read the words moderately well.

So any tips? Is everyone else having as much fun? Tell me he'll get the hang of it soon? Please? Pretty please?

(Not that I know, by the way, I just thought all schools had to broadly follow the same curriculum?)

Nope. Pick a book, any book. No coloured bands, no grades... fabulous.

I assume the teacher picks an appropriate book for the "reading to the teacher" sessions but, TBH, I have no idea. Each of the three SmallDragons learnt to read by Y1 anyway :)

My dd made progress when I followed the advice of MIL and some MNers and stopped making her do her school reading. I simply said 'No, you haven't got to do your reading any more unless you want to' and put a note in her reading record to say I wasn't doing it any more. She used to cry and say the books were too hard (they weren't, they were piss easy).

And then she discovered Pippi Longstocking and suddenly decided she want to read them herself. So I would sit with her and help her slowly decipher sentences that were way beyond her appropriate reading level. Having given up on Biff and Chip at the slightest hurdle she was prepared to try really hard with Pippi because she was so inspired by the character.

So from my own experience I think there is a lot in what SoupDragon says. Motivation is everything.

We had this kind of problem with DD1 who was very slow to get the hang of reading - really only by late Y2.

Our tricks were these.

Keep positive. (If you're tired, ill, crabby - maybe a good night for them to chose a book you read to them).

Hunt out phonemes (sounds either unblended 'a' = ah or blended 'ch' = chuh) they're working on in class and then work on those as and when they appear in reading book.

If communication with school isn't great - jolly phonics does some lovely colouring books/ writing books that help with letter sounds step by step. We discovered these by the time DD2 was starting to read - she really took to them.

Rotation - don't just read school book for 7 nights. We opted for at least 2 nights a week for the school book. 2 nights a week DDs could chose their own book but had to do some reading. 1 night a week we'd read to them from a book (whole family together) and the other 2 nights depended on how things were going. If school book was long or good fun, we might read it again one more night. We'd also sometimes just read one of the magazines the DDs get now and then. We try to get them to at least sound out words/ signs as we drive about or go to the shops.

HTH

Teachers often give boys in particular non-fiction books to read as they can struggle with the ORT ones. Worth requesting. This helped my DS when he was in KS1.