Non-phonics reading suggestions for 5.5 year old

[JustAnotherDad]

I have started reading together with my 5.5 year old son, who is a bilingual English/Japanese speaker. We live in Tokyo so we are not going through the UK primary school system. He can read Peter and Jane 3a stuff like this: "The boys and girls go to school. They go to school in the bus. The boys and girls like to go to school in the bus. They have fun in the bus." I do not know what level or band this would be in the UK. It seems basic to me, but I'm not pushing him and he is happy.

He doesn't appear to struggle unduly with English words of conventional spelling and when he encounters new words he doesn't know he seems to memorise them well enough by repetition. I think this is a valid approach. If you learn (as I did and he will) Japanese characters there's no way through it except down the heavy repetition and rote memorisation. So while I respect the right of other parents to teach as they see fit, I do not want to muddy the waters by introducing phonics, which I myself do not understand.

On the other hand, I would like to introduce some variety. He likes Peter and Jane but we are going through the series rather quickly and I will need some new material for him soon. As he's going to a Japanese language nursery school, the teachers there cannot help.

So... Does anybody have some non-phonics book recommendations for a 5/6/7-year old to read by himself with the guidance of an adult?

Thanks in advance
JAD

There are plenty about. Just look for the ones teachers advise you should avoid!

Oxford reading tree do both phonics and look and say books. The Biff, Chip and Kipper books that my ds reads in school are not phonics based. Some don't like them but ds loves the stories. You could get an idea of the level you would need from the Oxford Owl website.

"Just look for the ones teachers advise you should avoid!"

Thanks, I think I understand your point. Unfortunately I don't have any teachers near me who speak English so that particular tactic isn't going to work for me!

JAD

Even if you are not specifically teaching phonics ( and I would, there's plenty of online help available!) I would use phonic based books. Your son will (probably) pick up his phonics knowledge as he reads. If he HAS to memorise Japanese, why add to the problems by having to memorise whole words in English too? There are far fewer phonic rules than there are words in the English language

The ladybird books progress on from Peter and Jane. They cover all sorts of topics from classic stories to the history of metal and how things work. They are fairly accessible online for purchase second hand.

I'm in Wales not England so we don't seam to have the English reading levels - my children are bilingual Welsh/ English but they have enjoyed free reading the little Thomas the tank engine books and the mr men books because they are an achievable length to get to the end of the story.

snowball3, I appreciate the point, but surely either way you end up memorising the words. 30-year old lawyers who were brought up reading phonics don't really read corporate emails by decoding each individual words according to phonics rules do they?

If my son ends up struggling with the traditional approach, I will certainly consider phonics. For myself, neither I nor my elder sister used phonics and we were fine. My younger sister didn't read as well and struggled with spelling. Perhaps she would have benefited from phonics; I do not know. For as long as my son is happy to read the traditional way we will take that route.

JAD

"Oxford reading tree ... the Oxford Owl website."

Thanks Goldenjubilee10, I can't believe I missed this. Looks like a potential goldmine. And ebooks too for use on the tablet!

JAD

JustAnotherDad I'm very confused with this statement "If my son ends up struggling with the traditional approach, I will certainly consider phonics." as phonics is the "traditional approach" in that it has been the main method of reading instruction for hundreds of years until the relatively recent introduction of the approach you intend to use

How 30 year olds read as mature readers isn't an important point in how to teach a child to read, and mature readers do decide when they encounter a novel word. This is a feature of alphabetic languages.

In UK "the traditional way" is phonics. Look and say has been used only since about he 1970s, and then not universally. So you need to look for any reading scheme published between about 1970 and 2000.

Though I think you might want to consider looking at some of the parent material for phonics schemes to improve your understanding of what it is you are rejecting. For ESOL teachers in China/Japan etc use phonics for learners of all ages, for it gives better outcomes and eases the learning burden. When you understand what is meant by the approach, perhaps you will make a different decision - so I like snowball3's suggestion.

"How 30 year olds read as mature readers isn't an important point in how to teach a child to read"

That may or may not be a valid point, but it is unrelated to the argument I was making. snowball3 suggested that memorisation of spelling implied an extra burden. I pointed out that either way we memorise the words, so the burden is ultimately the same.

Maybe the phonics vs traditional issue is largely a matter of semantics. Putting labels aside, all I can say is that I learned to read by being told how to pronounce something and being corrected repeatedly until I memorised it. It worked (very well) for me.

If the method just described is phonics, then my son and I are using a phonics approach. If the method I just described is 'whole word', then we are using a whole word approach! Whichever it is, the current approach is working for this particular child so I'm happy to continue using it. I don't want to make it any more complex (or, from my perspective, time-consuming) than necessary.

JAD

mrz, you may be right - please see my response to EdithWeston, who makes the same point.

JAD

If you are teaching him that whenever he encounters say 'p' he needs to pronounce /p/ so he can take his knowledge acquired from one word to another, then you are indeed using a phonics approach.

"then you are indeed using a phonics approach"

Well, there you go. I'm apparently an advocate for the very approach I thought I was trying to avoid. A little ignorance goes a long way...

Just to clear this up, what is the distinguishing feature of the alternative approach?

JAD

Children with the right mental set-up can learn to read perfectly well by memorising a whole bunch of words and then unconsciously generalising the phonics rules behind them in order to read unfamiliar words - in much the same way that they learnt English grammar in order to construct "natural" English sentences of their own.

It is not practically possible to show a child all the tens thousands of words that they will need to be able to read, so that they can memorise the shapes of each one and even if you could teach a child to read like that, they'd be screwed the instant they opened a book by Roald Dahl, or any Science Fiction.

Some children of course can't work out the generalisation process unconsciously and will need to be taught all the phonemes specifically by a good teacher, (which is why schools, who have to cater for a mix of children should teach phonics explicitly) but all English speaking children need to learn the rules one way or another.

OP, it sounds like your DS is doing fine, and a big cheap batch of Biff Chip and Kipper from the Book People will do him no harm at all - but a cheap batch of phonics-based books won't harm him either, and may speed up the process of making connections. I used the old Ladybird phonics books with the DCs - I didn't teach them explicitly, just read them the books (which were a very good fluid funny read) but they certainly learned to read very quickly. Just go with whatever seems interesting, well-written and simple and your DS will be fine.

JustAnotherDad books like Peter and Jane, Janet and John, Biff and Chip rely on repetition so that children memorise the words they need in order to read the books in the scheme. What they don't do is equip children to read unfamiliar words. Yes some children, as Dilys says, will work out the complex rules of the English spelling system for themselves over time but others will struggle. Regardless of whether your child falls into the first or second category or somewhere in between, explicit phonics teaching makes the process easier.

My daughter is enjoying the usbourne first reading books that we are currently borrowing from the library. A range of traditional and new stories and they are graded......