biff and chip again (sorry)

[Wheresmycaffeinedrip]

I posted a few weeks back with regards to my dd being bored with the books and finding them too easy. She did get moved up a level and things got better. The school uses the ORT reading scheme. To start with she was given "traditional tales" and really enjoyed them. The trouble is now she is really not enjoying the biff and chips books. Any other book she is given she will happily read.

We read books from the library all the time and she is progressing well and enjoying the books we get and has a good understanding of the stories she is reading. My question is how the hell do i get her to understand that this is the reading scheme that the school has and like it or not she is gonna have to just do it. some of the books will have these two characters and if she just gets on with it we can go back to a book of her choice. i have tried the firm approach but i feel thats just punishing her for having an opinion :(

magic key definitely a step forward. though as a narrative device it arses me off big time - it's like every play I did as a child when the harrassed teacher would say... 'and they woke up and it was all a dream...'

bestest I am loving that idea!!!! better keep it clean incase teacher moans :o I do try and make it interesting if she looks like she looses interest after page one I start telling her it says something completely random on the next page and she does look and them correct me and tell me I'm silly. But obviously can't do that every page for 16 pages lol

hungry I have to say they sound dreadful lol I hated that kind of cop out ending as a child lol

I have to admit I was tempted to write my own version and throw in a death or affair or DNA test evil caffeine :o

SunshineOutdoors might not be an expert, but she's hit the nail on the head. The pictures are there precisely to help the children and give clues and the advice to cover them up is ridiculous. The first books in the series don't actually have any words, so children get the idea of telling a story through the pictures. If a child is reading whilst covering up the pictures, they perhaps need to move on to another level.

Biff and Chip books are excellent. The humour in the illustrations is great and I do miss the books now that my DCs have moved on from them. DS1 reads Darren Shan books, which thankfully have no illustrations.

" The pictures are there precisely to help the children and give clues and the advice to cover them up is ridiculous. "

Couldn't disagree more. Looking at pictures to guess words is not reading - it is guessing - or possibly memorising. Children best learn to read through a phonics-based method - they should be looking at the words, not the pictures.

My gripe with Biff & Chip is not the merely the tedious nature of the stories (although I will concded that some children anjoy them), but that the books are full of non-decodable words.

I can still vividly remember one of the first books ds brought home: "The eggs, the flour, the frying pan...the pancake". At least half of the words were completely undecodable given his knowledge of phonics at that point. It's a ridiculous approach, in my opinion (i.e. teaching children phonics and then giving them non-decodable books to "practise" reading).

I also don't like the way that some of it is "baby talk" tbh. If kids r going to learn to read or recognize a word it should be a proper one. Agree very much with the" patronizing" comment. The kids even pick up on how incorrect things r :)

The pictures are there precisely to help the children and give clues and the advice to cover them up is ridiculous.

As Bradbourne says, using the pictures as clues is NOT reading, it's guessing.

Yes, the main problem with ORT is that it's a look and say scheme which includes words which children cannot decode using their early phonic skills. So children are taught one thing at school and asked to practice something different at home. Later ORT schemes such as Floppy Phonics and Songbirds are decodable straight away.

I thought you use the picture to help you work out the word and also understand the story... then when you see the word again you recognise it without the picture.

The picture can give you clues but you can't guess the exact wording from a picture. You have to use other skills e.g phonics knowledge, whole word recognition, checking for sense, context of sentence in addition to the picture to be able to read a sentence in a book.

Sorry, this is not the point of the thread is it ?

The picture can give you clues but you can't guess the exact wording from a picture. You have to use other skills e.g phonics knowledge, whole word recognition, checking for sense, context of sentence in addition to the picture to be able to read a sentence in a book.

Or you could just use phonics to, you know, just read it. Much easier

U guys go ahead :) it's nice to know im not only one who hates them and has a dc who hates them too. I can see alot of what they r trying to dp but I don't like how some of it is done and children like stories so non stories based on gibberish sounds are not gonna appeal to kids. I'm relieved to find out my dd is not difficult she just is one of the many who don't care for them. :)

you could ask school to benchmark her reading ability.

you could also note ( repeatedly) in her reading record that she did not engage with this book as she dislikes X & Y .

You could ask if she can have some non fiction.

you could note in her reading record what she HAS read in addition and do the biff n chips as a shared read to make them go quicker.

There are ORT books that are not biff and chip. The "robins" set IIRC and maybe the "magpie" set. They do have a stock of characters, William, Hamid, Kate etc but are more varied and don't all have the same setting as Kate lives now where near Hamid.

The pictures are there to enhance the story and often have their own separate story running alongside the text ...they are not there to help work out what the text says.
The reader needs to read the words which is made more difficult because Biff & Chip were written for the Look & Say method which relies on the reader memorising the words if a child has been taught well (and given books that match their needs) they don't need to learn whole words or use mixed methods to read.

I'm afraid OP there isn't much you can do if these are the books the school uses other than read more interesting/appropriate texts at home.

Not really, when a can be a short vowel or a long vowel, ie can be pronounced as in pie or as in piece, ea can be pronounced as in pear or as in peach, and some words such as colonel just don't seem to make any sense phonetically. I'm sure we all use a variety of strategies when learning to read and when reading.

Sorry, that was in answer to Feenie, lots of posts while I was writing.

But it can be very damaging to teach early readers to rely on picture/context clues to guess words. It isn't reading, that's for sure.

Most words are decodable, when children are taught properly.

Yes agreed, I might help a child who was struggling by prompting them to look at the picture for a clue but then talk to them about the letters in that word and how to break it down into sounds.

I've just never heard the advice to cover up the pictures, in fact I have heard the opposite. It feels a bit like testing the child by taking away some of the information rather than encouraging them to enjoy the book.

I hope I'm not coming across as argumentative.. I don't mean to be, I'm just interested in this topic and people's views on it.

SunshineOutdoors there isn't ever a valid excuse for telling a child to look at the pictures to read a word.

I agree, the pictures should stay so that children enjoy the story. But they shouldn't be used in any way to help guess words, and especially not if they are a struggling reader. Many readers who struggle have difficulties because they have been taught to guess using picture clues.

I don't understand the mumsnet antipathy to Biff and Chip. If you are 5, they are funny, slightly subversive, sometimes, particularly in the later ones, exciting. And they are a bloody sight better than, for example, Mr F*ing Blue Hat and his differently coloured hatted cronies.

I have never met a child who didn't enjoy them- unless they had picked up the "anti" vibe from their grown ups.

Has her teacher actually said that she must read them?
With Ds1 we stopped reading the school books for ages because we had other books that he preferred reading. And because his teacher knew that he was reading well she said that this was fine.

Hang in there- we were lucky and didn't have the pleasure of ORT until Stage 5 (Magic Key starts here ). Then DS got strangely addicted and whizzed through the levels- at home anyway. In the last month I have weaned him off them and he is now reading all sorts of stuff from the library which I am certainly enjoying more (he was very attached to Magic Key- some of the adventures are quite fun actually).

School are still stuck somewhat behind and handing out a Magic Key book Stage 7 once or twice a week (he can choose from a pile so at least that's something!), although I have made a comment in his reading diary now that he has branched out at home and will see if they follow suit (hope so but don't mind as we have interesting stuff at home).

I think the main thing is your DD is reading, enjoying it and progressing well. It's frustrating if she's not enjoying the school books but most excellent that she's picking up library books. Have you tried her on some of the higher levels of ORT Magic Key etc online- Oxfordowl has quite a lot- perhaps if they could put her up to Stage 5 or 6 she might enjoy it more? We had phonics based books before Stage 5 which were good but actually had their own frustrations- stories were weak/concepts not that relevant. I tried DS on Pirate adventure on Oxfordowl as he liked the look of it and then we went from there. I think a lot of early reading books have some frustrations so you are doing well to find ones in the library she enjoys- I never found library reading books that DS liked until his reading was much further on.

Sorry for long post, but I think if you can get her to read the school book- give her the clear message she needs to and make it fun in whatever way you can, then she can read whatever she likes after it.

Not a fan of Biff and Chip, either (the pictures are the best bit). DS read them when they came home in the book bag, supplemented with more interesting stuff. Felt like a chore for both of us to plough through them, but sometimes they do just have to suck it up and do what the teacher asks.

seeker I can introduce you to dozens of children who loathe Biff & Chip possibly more than I dislike Ginn360, Roger, Billy, Johnny, Jennifer and Percy and the bliddy Fat Pig (Gay Way)
the early books introduce children to words they can't possibly read independently so they are told use the picture clues and that isn't reading.

I can assure youseeker that u have tried very hard to be as enthusiastic and encouraging as I can ve with her books. Her thoughts on the books r her own :) her exact words being " I've had enough of biff snd chip I've had them along time it's boring" I was originally of the " suck it up" mentality but the more I think about it the more I question if it's the right approach. I will as suggested above write in her diary about her not engaging in these books but that she has been reading .... Along side.

I have seen some books... I think they're ort but I'm not 100% that do have only words that are decodable using letters and sounds phase 3 and 4 or have the 'tricky words' at that level. It is very hard to find books like that though.

I wish I could remember the process of learning to read better, I think it's really fascinating.

I would definitely have a go at getting them to change her to something else at school then, hopefully they do have something else . Have you had all the levels up to 4, I bet that's deadly- surprised you have survived that long.....how to put a child off reading......