Reading issue - what to do?

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My daughter started school in January this year. She was the only child starting reception in January, the rest all started last September. In February, she was given a 'word wall' with common words such as 'the' and 'and' on it to read at home. The note that came with it was that the words would be checked on a weekly basis by the teacher and once marked off as learnt, my daughter would be able to colour the word in. Once all the words were coloured in she would get the next word wall.

After a month had gone by, and me reading with my daughter, she still had not had any words checked off by the teacher. I asked the teacher if there was a problem with my child's reading or if the word wall had not been checked, and though no reason was given for it the word wall was returned that evening with about half the words checked off. That was at the start of March. Since then, no more words have been checked off, even though my daughter can now read all of the words.

My daughter is getting frustrated at reading the same words (there are only 23 words on the page) over and over again. I have asked the teacher to have a look at her reading, and our nanny has also asked her. My nanny was a worker at my daughter's pre-school before coming to work for us, and tells me that my daughter is well ahead of where she would expect a child of her age to be, but that the school don't seem to be keeping pace with her pace of learning.

I am not one to push a child beyond what they are capable of, but I do believe that if there is no reward in it for the child you can damage their enthusiasm for learning early on. I am very concerned that my daughter will develop a 'why bother' mentality. I have no idea how to approach the school beyond having spoken to the reception teacher (who is also deputy head.) Does anyone have any tactful suggestions? I am already considerably cross with the school, as every time I point out that my daughter is not showing the level of learning she seemed to have in the pre-school, I am castigated by the teachers for having 'held her back' by sending her a term later. She is a summer baby, and was not, in my opinion, ready for school in Sept, but in terms of her confidence she was better for starting in Jan. The school will not let this lie, though.

Isn't she doing any phonics?

Is this a state school or private?

She really shouldn't be getting lists of words to 'learn' at all. It all sounds dreadful....

This is a state school, one of the better ones in the area. She does get an Oxford Reading Tree book sent home with her, but I have no idea how, when or why this is changed. Sometimes she seems to have the same book for weeks, other times it changes on a daily basis. Each time I ask something about their teaching methods, there is is a rolling of the eyes and a 'well, if you were here in September.....'

I think I'd arrange a meeting with the head to discuss your concerns. Sometimes it just makes them really assess your child properly.

As an aside - have you had a look at the Woodlands website? I found it a useful resource at primary age and may be of some use to you.

You know, there is so much evidence on Mumsnet of mixed methods of teaching reading, that I'm starting to think that Gove (aaaaaggghghgh) is right to have invented the phonics test.

When dd1 started she had a word folder like this. She started being able to read all the words on it, and was rather put out to find they didn't cross them all off straight away.

However what they did was for each word they did some games with it. They'd play pairs with them, or see if they could find the word in a newspaper article or look it up in a dictionary etc. and finally they'd construct a sentence using it to show they understood the meaning.

Even though she knew all the words at the beginning, she hadn't got all the words at the start of the summer term because they hadn't gone through them all. Once she'd understood that they had to go through the word before it was crossed off she wasn't worried about it.

For dd1, who was a fluent reader before she went to school, it didn't really matter, although she enjoyed the games. For those who reading was new to, it helped a lot because they got to understand the word, and know it really well. I think it helped their understanding of the reading rather than just to decode it.

The word folder was probably more fun for dd2, who was 3 years younger and dd1 used it to play schools with and repeat the games and sentences with her, with the result that she knew the words before the end of the first term too.