What is wrong with Biff, Chip and Kipper?

[NotLostJustSomewhereSafe]

Have read a couple of threads where some posters obviously think these books are not good. I'm sure it's been discussed before but I've missed it. What is wrong with them? Or right with them?

Our school have ditched them now, I can see that they aren't very phonic based, but DS loved them. I think they peaked in interest at about Stage 5, we loved the one where Gran punctured the bouncy castle with her knitting needles, the one with the strawberry jam spill at the PYO farm and the go-kart race one. Below that stage they were too simple, once they got to about Stage 7 they got too long and worthy .

They were a bit dated though - Mum why are they taking their camera to the chemists shop? What's that wiry thing on top of the telly?

LOL I liked the one when gran was on the bouncy castle too

Oops that was supposed to be a [saddo] not a

The Time Chronicles series is fab - a great spin off!

I agree on the times chronicles - DS has just read the one about the Great Fire Of London having studied it in yr2. He loved it and read most of it himself without me to help/listen.

Picking up on a few points. Yes I now know of two schools where these are the only reading scheme and they are gone through in strict order. And the very idea that the look and guess look and say approach helps engender a love of reading makes me rofl. These books -when forced on kids for days at a time as in ds's old school, so they can "memorise" them (which ds did in one sitting) - is the quickest way i can think of to put kids off reading for good!

Well in DCs school you get one book per day, its read at home over night, and changed next day. Not like when I was at school when we had a book for a week or more, until it was deemed we had read it. Which later on involved answering a whole book of questions in full sentences; which meant a book lasted a term or more as I refused to answer the answer booklet and preferred to "pretend to read" and daydream instead. I read at home.
DCs school has lots of free-readers in year 2, and all are (pretty much "free) in year 3.

I think they were/are good. My kids loved them and their school allowed pupils to change a book each day so long as their reading record was signed by someone, so they never got bored.

I LOVE the Biff and Chip books!! All my 3 DCs read or have read them and I never tire of them, especially the Magic Key Adventures.

I like the quirk of there always being a pair of glasses illustrated in every book, a bit like Where's Wally?

There's nothing intrinsically 'right' or 'wrong' with the old ORT. It's just that they are written for 'look and say' teaching (hence the repetition of words in the early books) and don't fit in with early phonics teaching as they contain words which are beyond children's phonic knowledge and don't give sufficient practice in consolidating the letter/sound correspondences children are learning.

Once children have learned the correspondences and are secure with decoding and blending they will be as capable of reading the later books as they will be of reading any other books. then it is just a question of personal preference.

While I am sure that mumsnetters' children aren't put off by them in the slightest many children find the inclusion of words that they cannot yet decode very discouraging.

And at least decodable books don't have to constantly repeat the same words over and over and over again in order for children to 'learn' them as wholes. There is a far wider vocabulary available from an earlier stage.