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?

I shall watch what my daughter does with a more critical eye! Thank you Feenie for sharing your knowledge! I feel I have a better understanding now. You must get fed up of explaining it to us phonics plebs over and over again!

I wasn't trying to irritate you sorry, I can see it is something that you are passionate about and I am not trying to start a fight or an argument. I am genuinely interested.

I can't remember learning to read and I am finding going through the process with my child fascinating. And as I have said I am kind of in the situation where I am doing it myself and "making it up as I go along" I have no idea if they do daily phonics lessons in school, I know they did a sound a day for the first term but these all seemed to be the basic first learned ones. As a parent I have had no guide lines on how to help her learn new things I am just doing what I think is right. Luckily as you point out it seems to be working for her at the moment.

I just honestly can not see what the harm is learning some words as just words. I am not saying this to disagree with you I am saying because I don't understand where it goes wrong for those few you are talking about and how the two are so mutually exclusive. I also don't see how everything can be explained in phonics in a way that is less confusing than just saying "this word says x". Take the word their for example. How would you explain that word in phonics and are the rules for that word just for that one? And then wouldn't they have to recognise that word by sight in order to implement the special rule.

Again this is not written n an argumentative tone just interested.

"Houseworkprocrastinator the rule you describe(split diagraph) is taught in Y1."

My kids retro I told her it was a magic "e" :)

If you learn to read the word said by sight how many words can you read? ONE! If you learn "ai" can represent in some words how many will you be able to read? Well said to begin with,and again and bargain ...

Mrz.
Does it not also depend on accent? I would say again with the "ai" making the "ay" sound they are initially taught. And bargain with the "ai" making the "i" sound so that rule would not work for me.

I teach split diagraphs in reception because we start early and faster than letters and sounds.
The ultimate aim is for children to read all words automatically without conciously sounding out but being equiped to read new words when they meet them rather than flounder.

"ai" represents so the child would try that first (most common) when it doesn't sound right they will have learnt to try other posibilities so will try s e d... The thing is because the brain is amazing as tgger said it learns to do all that it miliseconds ... If it has been trained to otherwise it has to recall te whole word from memory if the child has memorised it many children struggle to do so

So as long as the phonics is being taught properly and effectively and the children know the rules and have the tools to decode new words, how can learning some words by sight along side this harm the process?

I agree phonics is very good. But is there not a place for learning frequently used words by rote as well as?

'If you learn to read the word said by sight how many words can you read? ONE!'

I don't agree. I think people go from strength to strength by continuously reading in a process of cross fertilisation, so to speak.

'If you learn "ai" can represent in some words how many will you be able to read? Well said to begin with,and again and bargain ...'
So basically, there is a list of words where that rule holds true??
Or you can guess whether it is bargayne or sayed or agayne or med (for maid) or ped (paid)...

'Or else you are one of the lucky 80%. Lucky you! And sod the other 20%.'
Luck has nothing to do with it. A method that works for 80% of children is one that has something going for it surely?

'How do you know she has learnt words by sight, out of interest?'
How do you know a child has learned words through phonics, since by your own admission a child may often be faced with a choice of two pronunciations and have to guess in some circumstances, and has a 50/50 chance even using sound phonic principles of getting it right or wrong?

'The problem with using the mix of the two approaches is that you can't predict which children are going to be confused until it is too late.'
Is there research to support that assertion?

'So the bottom line is that the children who are capable of learning sight words would have also learnt to read using pure phonics '
There is research to support the opposite, i.e. that children who can learn through phonics can also learn through a mix of phonics and sight words, and more importantly there is research supporting the contention that a mix of phonics and sight words combined with encouragement to progress to real reading and not stick to the graded reading levels associated with phonics alone makes for enthusiastic readers who gain skills as they go along. There is also plenty of research indicating that phonics alone results in poorer comprehension skills as children advance through school.

Sorry math but if you are 5 or 6 years old and you are taught to read the word said the only word you can read at that point is the word said until someone teaches you the next word and then you can read two words ...

Asking children to memorise scores of high frequency words (e.g. Dolch words, or the HFWs listed in the DCSF's Letters and Sounds programme) as random strings of letters without phonic decoding is a dangerous practice, and why no genuine synthetic phonics programme expects the learning of more than a handful of words as logographs. Firstly, because words viewed as whole units form abstract visual patterns which humans find difficult to memorise; examination of different writing systems reveals that the usual memory limit for whole words is around 2,000-2,500, since no true writing system, past or present, has expected users to memorise more than this number of abstract symbols. When children reach their visual memory limits they will struggle to read texts containing more unusual words if they haven't, in the meantime, been taught, or deduced the alphabet code for themselves. Secondly, for most children memorising words seems easy at first and, if its use is encouraged, it will become their main strategy, subverting their phonological abilities and setting up a habit or reflex in the brain which can be hard to shift.

'If children 'receive contradictory or conflicting instruction, most children prefer to adopt a 'sight word' (whole word) strategy. This seems 'natural', it is easy to do initially, and has some immediate success, that is until visual memory starts to overload...becoming a whole-word (sight-word) reader is not due to low verbal skills, but is a high risk factor in the general population, and something that teachers should curtail at all costs.'
(D. McGuinness. RRF newsletter 51 p19)

Homeschooling dad, Timothy Power, learnt the dangers of teaching global sight word memorisation the hard way. He says, of his small daughter, ''The skill of sounding out simple words, that she had been able to do shortly after she turned three, had been completely lost. If she didn't know a word by sight, she was stuck. Now, with that memory of hers that was able to memorize the 50 states by age two, she could get around this problem without too much trouble: she could just get someone else to read it for her a time or two, and then she would remember the word thereafter, and could even recognize it in new sentences. But this was still a work-around (although an effective one); even if a word was in her spoken vocabulary, she couldn't recognize it on the page if she hadn't seen it before in print, even if it was totally phonetically regular, with all short-vowel sounds. And when she came to these words she didn't recognize, she would try to guess, coming up either with nonsense words or with words that were similar-looking (same starting and ending letter, totally different middle), or with a synonym that bore no visual resemblance to the correct word on the page.'' tdpower.blogspot.com/2007/09/phonics-vs-sight-recognition-reading.html

''There is also plenty of research indicating that phonics alone results in poorer comprehension skills as children advance through school.''

No there isn't.

A myth, disseminated by the whole language advocates, is that using synthetic phonics to teach reading leads to lower comprehension levels. This is absolutely not the case. The Clackmannanshire researchers Johnston and Watson say, ''Much is made of the fact that the synthetic phonics programme in Clackmannanshire led to much greater increases in word reading and spelling skill than in reading comprehension, implying that reading comprehension did not benefit from the intervention. However, it should be noted that at the end of the seventh year at school, reading comprehension in the study was significantly above age level, in a sample that had a below average SES (socio-economic status) profile' (RRF newsletter 59. p3)

A follow up study by Johnston and Watson found that, ''The children in the Clackmannanshire study (taught by the synthetic phonics method) were reading words about two years ahead of what would be expected for their age. Their spelling was six months ahead of what you would expect for their age, and their reading comprehension was about right for age. However, although the pupils in England (taught by the NLS analytic method) from similar backgrounds were reading words about right for their age, their spelling was 4.5 months below what is expected for age, and reading comprehension was about seven months behind'' (news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/7147813.stm)

But as a child reads more and more they will sound out less because the words become familiar to them automatically. So they are learning to look and say purely by practicing reading. They still have the tools when coming across a new word to sound it out but the need to do so won't arise as often.

So does this mean they loose the ability to sound out because they are not doing it as often? And if not then why is it such a big issue for them to learn by sight the most common words that are used.

There are words in books my daughter brings home that she hasn't officially learned the rules for yet in school. Like the magic e words and things where the c makes the s sound, I am not sure what the rules are for that last one myself to be honest but she can read some because she has asked me what they are and I tell her. In doing this would I be causing her problems in the future? Or should I say no you can't read that word yet because you haven't learned the rules. Should the school not send home books that contain words they haven't learned the rules for? I think this would really hold back a child who is raring to go and has an intrest in it, and that in itself would not be good for some children.

From what I can gather from all this phonics is the best start for all children, it gives them the initial building blocks with which our language is based on. Some children then learn better using this method alone think it was 20% mentioned that this is best for them. But that still leaves 80% that the combination of the two works. This also seems faster to learn the few words by sight because it enables a child to go on to read a greater variety of things in which they will come across new words quicker. Rather than wait to know all the rules before being able to do so. (eg. A child who has not lerned in school yet that the "a" when put after a "w" makes a "o" sound would not be able to read any book with the word "want" in until that has been learned. Could this not demoralise those 80% that could manage that? Would they not loose interest if they werent aloud to read at a level they are perfectly capable of reading at?

Also would this not have an impact on learning as a whole as reading is the key to accessing all information so using a process that seems slower would keep children behind in all areas?

And if they are ment to purely use phonics then why in the first phonics handbook that a lot of schools use it there the list of tricky words but the hand book does not contain the rules to decode these words?

It seems most schools do opt for phonics based but with a small amount of learning the whole word for the frequently used ones, I would be very interested to see some research based upon comparing children who have learned these frequently used words (which there are not that many anyway) alongside all the phonics stuff, and the children who have learned just phonics and not any sight words at all.

''But as a child reads more and more they will sound out less because the words become familiar to them automatically. So they are learning to look and say purely by practicing reading''

It's a myth that eventually all common words become 'sight words', going straight to meaning with any phonological decoding as the whole language advocates would like you to believe. The empirical evidence indicates that expert readers ARE decoding all words, but subconsciously using parallel processing.

''(O)ne should never think that just because "it seems like" we
read instantly, this is, in fact, what we do. Our brain processes
millions of bits of information all the time that we are not consciously
aware of, because the processing speed far outstrips our ability to be
conscious of it. An efficient reader has "automatized" or "speeded up"
the decoding process to the point where it runs off outside conscious
awareness'' (D. McGuinness)

I know this is not actually true research and was a bit of a hoax but if our brains do still use the phonetical process but very quickly and we actually don't sight read the words how would it be possible to read this so easily...

I cnduo't bvleiee taht I culod aulaclty uesdtannrd waht I was rdnaieg. Unisg the icndeblire pweor of the hmuan mnid, aocdcrnig to rseecrah at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno't mttaer in waht oderr the lterets in a wrod are, the olny irpoamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rhgit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whoutit a pboerlm. Tihs is bucseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey ltteer by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Aaznmig, huh? Yaeh and I awlyas tghhuot slelinpg was ipmorantt! See if yuor fdreins can raed tihs too.

I think saying we do it so quickly the decoding process is out side of our conscious is kind of like saying you can't "learn" what a cat it by sight but your brain figures it out by the pointy ears, fur and whiskers so quickly you don't realise you are doing it. I would still call that a knowledge rather than a process.

''I know this is not actually true research and was a bit of a hoax''

Yes, it's a load of rubbish.

www.mrc-cbu.cam.ac.uk/people/matt.davis/Cmabrigde/

I know it was a hoax I did say that but interested why you can still read with ease... The link was interesting.

"There are two ideas that are being suggested in this sentence. Essentially, the author is correct, people do not ordinarily read each letter in a word individually - except in a relatively rare condition following brain injury known as letter-by-letter reading, as described in the following:"

"There is also evidence to suggest that information in the shape of an entire word plays an important role in reading. For instance, "CaSe MiXiNg" substantially slows down reading:"

This suggests that we do Process whole words to some extent not just from the actual letters but shape of the word as well.

"Clearly, the debate about whether we read using information from individual letters or from whole words is far from over. Demonstrations of the ease or difficulty of reading jumbled texts seem likely to play an important role in our understanding of this process."

There doesn't seem to be an exact answer to how we learn to read at the moment so I am going to have to give up trying to understand it.

But Housework it was 'actually true research' - there is a link to a summary of Graham Rawlinson's 1976 thesis (the 'hoax' seems to be it was at Nottingham University, not Cambridge). The author of Maverick's link tracked Rawlinson down as the original demonstrator of letter randomisation.

Maverick, as Housework demonstrates above, the author of your link doesn't seem to agree with you that it is a 'load of rubbish'.

'There are words in books my daughter brings home that she hasn't officially learned the rules for yet in school. Like the magic e words and things where the c makes the s sound, I am not sure what the rules are for that last one myself to be honest but she can read some because she has asked me what they are and I tell her. In doing this would I be causing her problems in the future? Or should I say no you can't read that word yet because you haven't learned the rules. '

There will be absolutely no problem for her in the future.

'Sorry math but if you are 5 or 6 years old and you are taught to read the word said the only word you can read at that point is the word said until someone teaches you the next word and then you can read two words ...'

Mrz, that is not how it happens in the classroom...

Maverick, I could write a blog saying the exact opposite of what Timothy Power says about my DCs learning to read. DDs 1 and 2 started between age 3 and 4, with absolutely no phonics instruction whatsoever, having been read to a lot by me and having watched Sesame Street and a few other tv programmes. They opened a book one day and read out loud. They started out reading books I had already read to them, moving their fingers under the words as they read as I had done, and never looked back. DD1 moved to Nancy Drew books at 6 and kept going. DD2 had a similar trajectory. DS learned at 4.5 after little or no phonics instruction and started reading books about planes. He has never been a literature person but he loves technical stuff. He can digest textbooks and set reading very efficiently. DD3 and DD4 learned in school with a mix of phonics and sight words (new teacher). They are all excellent readers; all have consistently scored in the top percentiles in reading.

'It's a myth that eventually all common words become 'sight words', going straight to meaning with any phonological decoding as the whole language advocates would like you to believe. The empirical evidence indicates that expert readers ARE decoding all words, but subconsciously using parallel processing.'

This is a purely semantic argument. 'Subconsciously using parallel processing' means 'by sight'. When you automatise the reading process you are doing it by sight. Houseworkprocrastinator is absolutely correct in her description. You are making claims for decoding that are just a matter of cloaking another process with the phonics blanket.

Zebedeee the follow up research (math dismissed it some time ago I think) suggested that it works to a point but if you mix up all the letters especially the first the brain takes far longer to work out the word because all you are doing in reality is solving an anagram.

Well duh, Mrz:

the olny irpoamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rhgit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whoutit a pboerlm. Tihs is bucseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey ltteer by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe .

Zebedeee the follow up research (math dismissed it some time ago I think) suggested that it works to a point but if you mix up all the letters especially the first the brain takes far longer to work out the word because all you are doing in reality is solving an anagram.

Math it doesn't matter how many times you say it it's still not a fact.

Really math how many classrooms have you been in to know what happens?

But surely that mixed up writing proves that we DON'T process the word as a whole? If we were "sight" reading, then we couldn't recognise for example recgosine, because the word isn't the right shape once the letters are mixed up.

What we are doing with the "meixd pu wrosd" is looking at the letters and the sounds they make, and working it out...presumably using our phonics knowledge.