Can someone PLEASE tell me how many high frequency words there are??????

[propercheesed]

DS is currently KS1 at school, I have requested a copy of any high frequency words he should be learning(along side his reading) but surprise surprise access denied!!. Anyone would think I wanted to help my son .

I have googled and googled and I keep getting different answers, please could any teachers or up to speed parents tell me where to find the answer?

The method I have seen is sight words alongside phonics, used in the DCs' classrooms and described to me by friends who are teachers. Since your own classroom is apparently a phonics only zone I think it might be fair to ask you what you know of what goes on in other classrooms, bearing in mind that it seems to be the experience of many parents posting here that their children are using lists of words as well as phonics instruction.

Eye tracking research tends to contradict the theory (not fact as you assert) of McGuinness that each word is attacked individually and decoded. When people read they skim over most of the words. Eye tracking has suggested how people focus when they read and it is not on each individual word. Hans Werner Hunziker has described the physical process, but in German so perhaps not useful to you. It is a very active field of research.

Here is a brief synopsis of the sort of questions being asked and answered.
Similar.

Why choccypig can you not solve anagrams?
So limitted knowledge math..

Maths - That eye movement article you linked to is pretty rubbish.

You def do not skim over most words when you read.

The average adult reader looks at about 150 points per 100 words - they do look at every single word.

DDs had her eye tracking measured. The reason she can't read is bloody simple. She doesn't look at the words :( Her eyes move all over the show, and she can't track smoothly across a page.

Per 100 words she looked at 700 points, with the majority of those points not being on the right word.

Actually Mrz I am not particularly good at anagrams..but am a fast reader; I think I learnt with phonics (or whatever they called it in 1963!).

Another question for the whole word supporters: If you read by recognising the whole word, how can you recognise it when it is written in totally different fonts, handwritten, bubble-writing etc.?
Admittedly most people would be slowed down by StRaNge fONts (this is the best I can manage), but we can still read it, and we'd never have learnt that particular word in a mixture of upper and lower case...

I suspect a child taught by "whole word recognition" would struggle with a mixture of Caps and smalls, whereas the phonics work just the same, no matter what the font.

IndigoBell, you def do.
Unless you have studies to show that you def don't you should not dismiss solid research. Studies is not equal to the experience of your DD.

Choccy -- it comes down again to recognition based on a few salient points, mostly the first and last letter. (Which is not the same thing as a pure anagram, Mrz.) This is not the same as reading the whole word either in the case of most words.

Are you dismissing the experience of the many posters here, including the OP, who have reported the experience I have seen, Mrz? Clearly, if all schools taught just by phonics, everyone could read; according to your logic those who can't must be in classrooms where teachers cling to mixed methods/whole word or whole language methods. At the very least we are looking at one fifth of schools, right, according to your argument?
Clearly you have not been present in all schools during all reading lessons, and neither have I.

math - I most certainly have read studies on eye tracking.

WTF do you think I've been doing for the last 6 years? Do you really think I've had DDs eyes fully tested - without understanding the results?

How much research have you done on eye tracking?

Reading Plus and Visagraph have done studies on exactly how your eyes move when reading fluently. And that is what I'm quoting when I say that you look at about 150 points per 100 words.

Sorry I can't find the paper to link to now, nor the print out I have at home.

You show a staggering amount of lack of respect to other posters.

No change there then

Found DDs results. She was 8 when she did the test. The normal amount of fixations (points you look at) per 100 words for an 8 year old is 224 with 52 regressions (ie they move their eyes right to left 52 times)

And the normal span of recognition for an 8 year old is .45 (ie they see .45 of a word at once)

However an adult would be looking at more like 150 fixations per 100 words.

I am not an expert or anything but from what you have said then a child while learning to read will look at a lot more letters within words (but still not all of them) than an adult who can read fluently. So does this not mean we are not "reading" every letter once we are fluent, rather that we recognise the whole word or at least sections of the words (the begining and end maybe if they are bigger) but not right down to each individual sound.

Indigo, I am talking the general population obviously children/adults with difficulties would be different.

Still going I see. I am going to throw the cat among the pigeons now.

Assertion- we do not really understand how children learn to read.

Assertion- learning to read using phonics has shown itself to be the most reliable method to enable 100% or children in the classroom (bar some with special needs perhaps) to read.

Assertion- a certain proportion of children, will naturally use other methods alongside phonics to learn to read. Perhaps the most obvious "method" is memory.

Assertion- the key to learning to read is an engagement with the text.

Assertion- a teacher's job is to enable this engagement, and a way of doing this is through phonics teaching, BUT IT IS NOT THE ONLY WAY.

Any engagement with the text will help the brain find it's own patterns to decode the words.

Perhaps 20% need the detailed phonics teaching that goes on, but could they be engaged in other ways? Is phonics teaching a tool to hang attention on.

its own patterns

But you don't know who those 20% are until it's all gone wrong for them already - there is no way of knowing.

Ah, but what is "all gone wrong for them". You keep going until they've cracked it.

My suggestion, controversial as it is, is that teachers are/have been in the past too quick sometimes to give up on children struggling. Or if not give up, then have too low expectations for them.

And yes, you should teach everyone phonics because of this percentage that we are aware of now, but you should primarily engage each child using whatever tools in your bag of tricks that you have available.

Also, if I was in charge I wouldn't start teaching them until Year 1 at least, but that's another story.

"Assertion- a teacher's job is to enable this engagement, and a way of doing this is through phonics teaching, BUT IT IS NOT THE ONLY WAY."

This is the bit I don't understand, there seems to be a culture of phonics purists. I really cannot understand why memorising a few words in order to progress (while still going on to learn the rules behind these words) can be so damaging and why phonics and learning by sight can not work together. I totally agree that phonics is the BEST start and a useful life long tool. But I still think that learning the frequently used words enables a child to access a wider variety of words sooner.

Ah, so now the 20% failing to read is not the method used to teach, but teachers' low expectations, or us giving up on them too quickly????

That's it for me - I'm out. I will carry on making damn sure that every child learns to read successfully, but I won't be sharing how that happens and has happened consistently for the last 15 years again. Not on this thread anyway.

Feenie, can I just ask where this figure of 20% came from? Is it that many children can not learn words by sight, or is it based upon doing phonics mainly but a bit of learning by sight?

And also out of interest do you know what percentage of children are thought to be dyslexic (statmented or not) or have other individual learning needs?

a child while learning to read will look at a lot more letters within words (but still not all of them) than an adult who can read fluently. So does this not mean we are not "reading" every letter once we are fluent, rather that we recognise the whole word or at least sections of the words

No, it means that an adult sees more letters at once than a child does.

And also out of interest do you know what percentage of children are thought to be dyslexic

Feenie, do you have any 'dyslexic' children in your school? Given that you teach them all to read........

Teaching Y5 at the moment - last year a child went from a 3b to a 5c in Y5 alone. I also taught him in Y2 and oversee the interventions that have taken place in between. In my experience, the methods used make the dyslexic children I have known 'take off' suddenly in Y4/Y5 (and that's not been just because I am in Y5 - I'm not always).

This year, I have dyslexic twins who have achieved much the same - from a 3c to a 4a, and the other a 5c.

PM me if you have any other questions, Indigo - I am leaving this thread now.

Housework, the 20% represent the children who leave without a level 4 in reading at KS2.

Indigo - so eye tracking can't really tell us what information our brain uses to read just how many bits we look at?

If I was a millionaire I would fund some research into this it is fascinating. :)
(although it does get people a bit cross )

so eye tracking can't really tell us what information our brain uses to read just how many bits we look at? - exactly.

Eye tracking just shows exactly what letter each eye is looking at as it reads.

No Housework but MRI and brain imaging can so I will link to some of the mAny international studies when I get back home and have full internet access, unless you want to google Dr S Shaywizt at Yale which may give you links

Shaywitz

Feenie, I did not mean to offend. But would you not agree that a teacher's expectations are paramount in helping a child achieve their potential?

Phonics is great in that it provides the teacher with a very clear tool to help children access language. Other methods, especially at the start, can put children off. It sounds like you are doing a fabulous job teaching many children to read.

I just don't believe that we all read well because we have absorbed all the phonics rules that are now taught. At some stage our brains do that magical thing, that I am quite happy not to understand, of converting patterns to words.

But I still think that learning the frequently used words enables a child to access a wider variety of words sooner.

That is probably not as significant as you think it is. Using a 'well known SP programme' as an example. Once a child has learned the first 6 correspondences it can, theoretically, access about 40+ words (including 4 if the HFWs). Once the next 6 have been learned it can access a further 70+ (total 110+), including another couple of HFWs. If the child has been taught at the recommended pace this is about 4 - 6 weeks of learning (and don't forget, it includes 6 HFWs which haven't needed to be specifically 'taught'). Once the next 6 correspondences have been taught (2 -3 weeks) the word count will be higher by at least another 100+ words and the 'untaught' HFW count will be up to 19.

The 'old' NLS taught 45 HFWs in YR/1. I believe that Letters & Sounds has 100 in that time (I can't find my copy, so can't confirm). If a child learned the 45 old NLS words in YR the learning rate would have been about 3 per week. The L & S rate looks to be slightly more (50 in YR, 50 in Y1). But, an extra 45 - 50 words compared with the enormous number which could be accessed once the first 42 correspondences have been learned (in my example we were only up to the first 18) doesn't look much like a 'wider variety of words'.

The only thing that some of the HFWs have going for them is that they enable slightly more 'natural' text to be written.