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?

When you read, do you sound everything out?

When I meet an unfamiliar word, yes I do.

It's a higher figure in the USA where whole language/word prevails
FOUR in TEN children can't read

www.ldonline.org/article/6394/

www.readnowbc.ca/assets/pdfs/k12/reading_breaking_through_the_barriers.pdf

www.nrrf.org/essay_Illiteracy.html

Memorizing all high frequency words by sight became the major main of learning to read in whole language approaches, a detour from the original definition. The terms "Sight Words" and "High Frequency Words" are mistakenly used interchangeably.

Math - mrz, feenie and Maizie all teach all of their kids to read using exclusively phonics ( and Maizie is teaching 11 year olds who have had years of being failed)

Ofsted did a study called something like '6 of the best - how the best schools teach reading' - and found that all the schools they studied that were very successful at teaching children to read also exclusively used phonics.

There were interviews last year with the HT of a school in Oxfordshire who was the most improved school in the country and she too said what she had done was introduced exclusively phonics teaching into the school.

(sorry can't link to these studies because I'm on my phone)

Anyway, can you link to any case studies of schools who teach 100% of their students using mixed methods?

www.ofsted.gov.uk/resources/reading-six-how-best-schools-do-it

reading by six - how the best schools do it

There are loads and loads of teachers on MN. And we have had loads and loads and loads of discussions about mixed methods vs phonics. I dont remember hearing any of them claim that they use mixed methods and teach all their children to read.

most improved school explains success

I find it interesting that the pro-sight words/mixed methods people keep demanding evidence from the pro-synthetic phonics people, yet they never provide any empirical evidence to support what they advocate.

literacyblog.blogspot.co.uk/2009/10/personal-beliefs-or-evidence-based.html

''I am constantly coming up against people who think that their personal opinion, based on nothing but their practice and beliefs, has the same validity as research in the field of teaching reading and spelling.
According to Caroline Cox*, there are four principal grounds on which teachers justify their practices. They are: 'tradition (how it has always been done); prejudice (how I like it done); dogma (this is the 'right' way to do it and ideology (as required by the current orthodoxy).''

Although just using phonics doesn't mean you will teach all of your kids to read. It is more complicated than that.

You certainly need ferouciously high expectations as well, and excellent SEN interventions and a culture of learning from your mistakes. And of course you need very good teachers.

But, it certainly seems from all the evidence and all the case studies and all the anecdotes that teaching phonics exclusively is definately a necessary part of teaching all kids to read.

My junior school only uses phonics to teach reading - the reason why it fails to teach all children to read is:

• it doesn't have high expectations - it doesn't believe it's possible to teach all kids to read
• it doesn't have excellent SEN interventions - it has lots of them but the quality of them is not brilliant,
• not all the teachers are good,
• and there is no culture of learning from your mistakes (or admitting your mistakes) and doing better next year.

(when I talk about teaching all kids to read, I am excluding the very,very few children with severe learning difficulties who attend MS primaries but then go on to attend a special school at secondary. Less than 1% of the MS school population. Those are the only children I'm excluding)

When I arrived at my current school and suggested we might use the reading budget to buy something other than Ginn 360 I was met all 4

It is really hard to take seriously anything the education clique here says about phonics, or reading instruction in general, when you continue to equate the whole language method with any use of sight words, or high frequency words, or whatever else you wish to call them, alongside phonics instruction.

If you believe that use of sight words or high frequency words alongside phonics means this sort of classroom practice then you are mistaken. (scroll down to 'A Typical Whole Language Class')

• from the ldonline link.

'One philosophy of teaching reading is usually called "whole language" but many other labels are used to describe it, such as: the whole-word method; language experience; psycholinguistics; look and say; reading recovery; balanced literacy; or integrated reading instruction. The "whole language" or "look and say" method teaches that children should memorize or "guess" at words in context by using initial letter or picture clues. According to estimates given in one widely used "look and say" reading series, a child taught this method should be able to recognize 349 words by the end of the first grade; 1,094 by the end of the second; 1,216 by the end of the third; and 1,554 by the end of the fourth grade. Learning to read this way is supposed to be more meaningful and fun. This way of teaching is currently used by nearly all of the schools in the United States. It is clear that the current high illiteracy rate is directly due to this scientifically invalidated approach to reading instruction.' (from the nrrf.org site)

'This way of teaching is currently used by nearly all of the schools in the United States' -- baloney...

It should also be clear that your idea of what constitutes whole language instruction and use of a sight word list of, for instance, 220 words as in Dolch, are not one and the same thing.

Mrz, wrt that dubious '4 out of 10 US children can't read' statistic -- 6 out of ten can read, by my calculation. Are you claiming that this 6/10 were all taught by phonics and phonics alone? No sight words? No helpful parents at home bumbling along using methods that are a far cry from pure phonics?

And in the American case, no parents at home who don't speak English?

You cannot make claims for pure phonics if you are sending children home to a world of parents and family members and tv and 'educational' toys and internet material all helping with reading differently, with an effect on a child's reading progress that is impossible to measure.

'Behind the scenes, wars still rage among academics over whole language versus phonological instruction.' (from readnowbc.ca link) This opinion paper is a part of that debate, not original research.

Maths - no one is saying that some children who are taught dolch words won't learn to read. Those 60% of American kids who learnt to read may well have been taught sight words / whole words / dolch words / mixed methods - anything.

The question is what does it take to teach all kids to read. If you are a teacher, that is the only important question.

And if 40% of American kids aren't learning - then clearly whatever methods they're using aren't effective.

Do you have any evidence to back up your gut feeling that learning dolch words is an effective way to teach all kids to read?

It is really hard to take seriously anything the education clique here says about phonics, or reading instruction in general, when you continue to equate the whole language method with any use of sight words, or high frequency words, or whatever else you wish to call them, alongside phonics instruction

Whatever. We'll carry on actually teaching children to read successfully then, and you carry on arguing bollocks on here.

As you were.

'The question is what does it take to teach all kids to read.'

And the answer, as demonstrated in the Stranmillis QUB study, is 'not necessarily exclusive phonics'.

If you come up with a better one, make sure you are nominated for a Nobel prize. The answer hasn't yet been found.

I don't hold the opinion that dolch words plus phonics is the way to teach all children to read.
What I have said here is that one apparently well designed study in NI has showed that phonics alone still fails to reach the tail of underachievers that is also resistant to other methods. Clearly there are many effective methods, but there is no one perfect one that will work for all children.

Assuming for the moment that the unattributed US figure supplied by Mrz of 4/10 unable to read is correct, and that UK figures are similar, we are still left with 6/10 who somehow manage to read.

Can you please link to the QUB study.....

In the UK we teach approx 80% of kids to read.

If you don't believe there is one way to teach all children to read - does that mean you believe Maizie, mrz and feenie are lying when they each say they have taught hundreds of kids to read using only phonics, and they only failed to teach a very small number?

Do you mean this study on linguistics phonics which says:

In summary - The results indicate that the linguistics phonics approach has been particularly successful in raising reading standards amongst primary school pupils. ..... Having started with low baseline scores, over a six month period these pupils went on to outperform their peers in schools using other approaches

Seems an odd study to use to support your argument

Mrz already did -- here it is.

I have no reason not to believe them, but the plural of anecdote is not data.

So you believe Maizie, mrz and feenie have taught hundreds of kids to read using only phonics, and you believe they have failed very few kids but you don't believe all kids can be taught to read using only phonics?

'A very interesting finding in the report about writing and gender:

'Within the LPA schools there appears to be a gender difference, as girls showed an ability to write longer, more complex stories, use punctuation other than the full stop, and use a wider range and complexity of words. This gender difference occurred only in the higher reading ability group.
However, across all three ability groups within the nLPA schools, girls were writing longer stories and were more proficient in their organisation and in the use of connectives.
Girls, in all three groups by May, were also using a greater range of vocabulary than boys, including good use of adjectives and adverbs. For example, in the lower reading ability group, 2 out of 3 girls were using a range of vocabulary in their writing in the final writing sample and none of the 3 boys in the sample were deemed to be demonstrating this in their writing.'

This is also interesting:
'In schools A, B, C and D, spelling difficulties with words of 2 or more syllables were persistent. There was continuing confusion about homophones (are/our, to/too, there/their etc.), and little confidence about using connectors or about punctuation. In the middle group, some progression in confidence, in spelling and in ability to structure a piece of writing was evident, but pupils with severe literacy difficulties or chronic spelling problems showed very little discernible advance in any area of writing skills. Of the third who showed the most progression, the majority were from the middle reading ability group.'

I already quoted these paragraphs from the Stranmillis report -- they seem to contradict the 'particularly successful in raising standards' bit that you found..

I said I have no reason not to believe them....

Some strong feelings here.

Perhaps there is room for both approaches, or actually more than just two approaches. Our brains are fantastic and respond to patterns. Patterns are in language itself, in context, in sight, in sound, in memory. Some brains are better than others,and better at different things too. Anything that works for those that find reading hard is good. Sometimes one thing becomes fashionable, perhaps for a reason (it works?), and if that thing is easily teachable then it becomes the way forward. Teachers need methods.

So, in the past flashcards, look and say worked for a lot of us- I think I was taught like this and with some sounds too. Now sounds (phonics) work and generally it is accepted work better for children struggling. But ANYTHING that works should be considered and it is short-sighted and dare I say foolish to declare one method the only way to do something. There are many ways to skin a cat. My Uncle was taught to read by my Grandfather reading his comic to him 6 times and then told he had to do it himself. He was about 7 or 8. It worked.

That is how I feel about it Tgger.

Cool.

No Math I'm not claiming the six out of ten were taught to read by phonics what I'm trying to say is the USA is failing almost half its population with its methods (something your government recognises - the 40% is their figure so could be higher)
Ok if you are one of the six not so good if not!
Some schools in the UK are faced with pupils who have a hundred plus different home languages so I don't accept that as an excuse and neither should you!