Ok, I know I sound pushy but why do they still need to do all the phonic stuff when they can clearly read?

[AudreyCox]

DD is in reception. SHe has always been a precocious reader and could read basic reception type stuff at 3. So at that point I did all the jolly phonics stuff with her with she took to like a duck to water. So by the time she went to nursery last year she was reading and they supported her in that. Now in reception she is having letter sheets home with all those sounds we did 2yrs go. She is spending whatever literacy time they do in yR doing phonics but she knows all this. The teacher has assessed her and admitted her reading in around y2 level but her comprehension around y1 level. It is probably true that she reads better than she understands but clearly she understands better than basic letter sounds. Her teacher has basically just said that they all need to work through the programme then they can move on.

So I'm asking if ths is usual. Is it not the standard thing to spend the first few weeks assessing and then progress each child from where they stand?

Phonics is 15 minutes a day at our school.(Reception) and covered writing, blending, segmenting and the "normal" letter name. (At, bee, cee..)

They are already differentiating for her as your dd and the other boy are doing different stuff from the rest of the class, so the teacher has presumably assessed her already and considered her to be further forward. She has then given her different work to reflect this.

Perhaps you should respect the teacher's professional judgement about the right place to start? There may be excellent reasons for going over the sounds that she is currently doing.

Incidentally, my dd also started reception reading very fluently, but this was just something that she picked up naturally, and wasn't the result of me teaching her. You say you weren't "hothousing", but working through the entirety of a structured phonics programme sounds on the pushy side to me, so perhaps not surprising if the teacher was bit . I would be the same!

I would say that your daughter is in the minority, and probably the only YR child capable of that level in that school.

In my dcs school phonics are taught to reception as a whole class activity and it really is only 10-15mins per day. Because it is a whole class activity she is restricted to learning the same sound on the same day as everyone else, and the only scope for differentiation would be in the activities she does with the sound.

What is more flexible is the reading books she is given - are you happy with that? If so do the phonics handwriting homework which you say is of benefit and spend more time reading. Not a big issue IMO.

At our school once they reach yr1 the whole school is streamed so the yr1s have the flexibility to be boosted to a yr2/3 classroom for their phonics session. Even then tho you will have to let that be based on the schools assessment. Also be aware that (i think) that even at the end of yr1 many schools still won't have completed the 40ish sounds and I'm not sure how many years ahead they would boost her as she may have limitations in.other skills that would negatively impact on the session with a much older group.

Jinsei, she did pick up reading naturally without any teaching from me. However, I had read here and elsewhere that the sounds are just as important , if not more so, than being able to read by sight so even thugh she could read, I went through the sounds, isolating them and making sure she was clear what sounds letter strings like, igh usually make rather than just being ale to read the word, night.
I have read all your comments carefully and I appreciate everyone taking the time to answer. Many of you have pointed out the social aspect of reception which I know is important and she certainly isn't more mature socially than her peers so that is crucial.

As for reading books, they don't have them yet. I've been told they don't start having books home until after Christmas as they concentrate on ensuring they know the sounds first to be able to read. I think that's why I'm so worried as its as if they're ignoring the fact that she can read. I will wait and see but I will be very dismayed if come January she brings home very simple starter books.

It is my DD who is reading with another boy not the OPs DD.

Have you got a parents eve before they get books?? Maybe you could talk to the teacher then....

Forgot to say, I did not teach DD to read either. I don't even remember working out that she could read I just remember going to the library and getting basic reading books for her just before she started nursery....

We were in the same boat last year, Audrey - DD picked up reading at home without being taught and could read pretty fluently when she started reception. I don't think our school handled things brilliantly (and we still have a teacher in Yr1 who is convinced that we have locked DD in a garret for 5 yrs and not let her do anything except read) but they did do more than nothing. After the first term she and another girl were doing workbooks while the other children were doing the basic phonics, and they did also try to find her suitable books.

Do you have a parents evening soon? If so, it's probably worth waiting until then and using that as an opportunity to find out exactly what level they think she is and what they are doing about it. Then if the answer is nothing, it's worth taking further.

The other thing is to watch your DD's behaviour, and if she's getting disenchanted with school or playing up, then I think you do need to say something. DD here got v frustrated because everyone else was getting praise for things that she could do easily, but what she could do didn't get noticed. And at Reception, certainly at our school, they are much more receptive to 'my child is unhappy' than to 'my child isn't being taught'...

Are you sure they aren't splitting the children into ability groups for phonics? My Reception child goes into Yr1 to do phonics as he is a very able reader. I'm happy for him to continue doing phonics because it is helping his writing and spelling. He came home yesterday with the 'b' handout, the sound he has known since he was 3 but he had been forming the letter b which he does need practice with. They are all taught together.

The reading books would concern me a little and I would speak to the teacher at parents evening about that. My son has had reading books from Nursery and since moving up to reception in September, his teacher has assessed him and moved him up 4 levels of reading books.

I think it's still early in the school year for the school to be pushing reception children into ability groups etc. maybe that's just my perception as dd started school able to recognise her own name, mummy, daddy and could 'read' two specific books as she had learnt them off by heart rather than recognising what she was reading. In terms of the rest of her class, she was probably way behind as they had done a full year or more at preschool, learning letters, numbers and tracing their names. Whereas dd's nursery skilled them all to lowest/ youngest in her room so she did mark making, painting, more play and less learning. Different environments there though. What I'm saying is, I am sure the teacher will ability level your child soon enough. Ours are bringing home reading books after half term. But how far up the school do you expect her to work so early? If she's doing work too much ahead of her year, she will only get bored at some point when inevitably she will duplicate work a year or two down the line. Continue to encourage a love of reading and learning, talk about the story after to aid her comprehension. But maybe find her other fun stuff to do as well, craft activities, games that aren't necessarily educating her directly. I'm not saying slow her down. But encourage her to have fun too. It's as big an education socially as it is academically.

Op, I can see this from 2 different perspectives, from my 2 elder DSs. DS1 was reading Harry Potter by the time he was 5. I never really taught him to read - I had taught him the basic phonics when he was 2 as he wanted to know his letters. Then he realised at 3 how to blend them and it wasn't long before he could read well. If he came across a digraph he didn't know he would ask what the word said, asimilated it into memory and then used it to work out new words. So he never really had any formal phonics teaching. Now in year 6 his spelling is horrendous and I am doing a remedial spelling programme with him.
DS2 started school having become interested in phonics 6 weeks before leaving nursery (Attached to the school). He picked it up very quickly and as he completed phase 1 phonics in nursery, they put him straight onto phase 2 in reception, and gave him reading books (not standard practice for his school to give out books straight away) and the teacher read with him daily in class. By October 1/2 term he was at year1 level phonics so they put him into year 1 for literacy (phonics, reading and writing), rather than teaching him 'individually' in his class. I should say here, it is a small school so not like being at a big school where there could easily be several children working at an 'advanced' level. By working through the entire phonics programme with him albeit at an advanced rate, they can be sure he has covered everything. He is now in year 1 and still doesn't have as advanced a reading age as DS1 had at that point, BUT, his spelling is already better than DS1s, he is more confident that DS1 is in working out new words.
I guess what I am trying to say is, your teacher has assessed your DD and knows she can read - but she can see gaps in her knowledge (hence saying her comprehension is behind what she can physically read - I could read the Encylopedia Britanica and Dickens by the time I was 4, I can be fairly confident I didn't actually understand them!) so, if she is just making sure your DD has definitely got all the ground blocks in phonics (preferably working through them at a faster rate) then I wouldn't have a problem. If she is working at a slow repetitive rate at stuff she already knows and is getting bored then I would have more of an issue. Equally, if she can read the phonics but hasn't been taught how to correctly write the letters then that is part of learning phonics that she would need to be taught, so she will need to go over all of them.

The children in my Y6 class that are poor spellers are those that have not embedded knowledge of digraph blends and alternative phoneme spellings for homophones.
Utter carp.
The children who cannot choose the 'correct' their/there or hear/here are not doing so because of an insufficient grasp of phonics. - They have difficulty coping with the inconsistencies of English spelling.

Phonics is of limited use in English, because English spelling is often phonically inconsistent.

I can only echo what several posters have already said. DS1 picked up reading at a phenomenal speed - he started out knowing a few words in reception, to reading at an 8 year old level by the end of October in that same reception year. Because he whizzed up the reading schemes, he bypassed many basic phonics lessons and his spelling lagged behind his reading until another teacher sat down and made him review phonics because she detected a phonics gap behind his relatively poor spelling. His spelling is still every so slightly behind his reading level, but vastly better than if he had not redone what should have been done in the first place.

I was taught reading in the now-disgraced whole word method, and I too picked it up very quickly. Unfortunately, I did not get remedial phonics and my spelling remained(s) atrocious - thank God for spell check!

My dd is similar and school are giving her fairly easy books for her to focus on clarity and comprehension. She has been taught phonics by me and knows many of the phonics but not all of them. She knows the jolly phonics sounds, and split digraphs like 'o-e' and 'a-e.' This week we are learning 'ure.'

dd's teacher said she does get a bit bored in the phonics sessions - as the rest of the class are at phase 2 - but given the option of reading a book by herself, dd would rather participate in the phonics sessions with the rest of her class. As I said to the teacher, it won't do her any harm at all! Although she reads fairly fluently, I think it is fine that she does phonics with everyone else and as the class moves on it will be more suitable for her.

I would try to relax - it won't matter in the long term and reception is about the social aspect as much as anything else.

"The children in my Y6 class that are poor spellers are those that have not embedded knowledge of digraph blends and alternative phoneme spellings for homophones.
Utter carp."
Masha, I have asked before, but not had an answer, how many English children have you taught to spell? As I would imagine a teacher would know what they are talking about. I can categorically say my son can't spell because his phonic knowledge is poor, as he is struggling to split words down into their separate sounds, irrespective of then choosing a correct phoneme. DS2 on the other hand has learnt to split words down and spells most of them correctly as he has worked out little rules to help him e.g. the o sound after a w is made using a, or the c sound at the end of the word is usually ck. Yes not true 100% of the time, but way easier to learn the odd other patterns, than to have to learn every word individually.

and at all these "Free readers" in reception classes.

So, your child can read anything put in front of them, comprehend fully, infer meaning, use punctuation to add emphasis etc? They have learnt already all they will ever need to know about the English language? Sorry, but that sounds like bollocks to me, and I think it's a crap school that would confer this "FR" status on a 4 or 5 year-old.

Op, there was a thread a couple of days ago asking if your reception class was taught in ability groups. About half weren't. It is not necessarily the schools aim to put them in ability groups at this stage. There is so much more going on in a reception class than reading.

Our receptions are going to be grouped for phonics after half term (was told at parents evening last night) was told she knows all her letter sounds (yes, nursery told me that before she left and passed that info up to school) so it has taken all this time to assess all the children and decide on groups. But already she is coming home with the top of the class stuff (the sheets that we were told would be around christmas time) so she is slowly being taught according to what she can do.
I was interested to see that her learning journey book covered so many levels. so many things being worked on and looked at, and only one was reading/phonics (social skills, pe, awareness of natural world, craft work, fine motor skills)

I think on balance that I would just let her get on with being a reception kid at the moment. As they gradually group and teach to level, then she will more and more get the input she needs. There is so much going on, unless she is bored, then I would leave it. You will probably find that by Jan she is working more at her level. That would be the point where I would start to push for her needs to be met better if they aren't being then.

I don't think it has to be all or nothing. My son, now in Yr1, was reading ORT level 4 before he went to school. He still did the whole class phonics lessons (which I think were only 10 mins or so every day) but he also went up to guided reading sessions with older children. Now he's in a mixed Yr1-Yr2 class, they all do phonics and kung fu punctuation (!) together which he enjoys, and he is in a Yr 2 group for guided reading. Are the reading books she is being sent home with appropriate to her level?

Hi again OP. On the back of this thread, I quizzed DS a bit more about school, and it appears that he is already doing a little bit of differentiation. He still does the sounds in his sound book (although I gather that the teacher has sat down with him individually and gone through all the however-many phonics sounds with him to check that he knows them all - he says it took 'days' ), but now that the class have started learning 'tricky words' (the, I etc), he spends this time doing reading games on the computer or reading a book with the TA. As others have said, I do think a lot comes down to whether you trust the attitude and ability of the school. As I said further up the thread, can you talk to other mums with older kids? One of the older children in DS's school has just won a full scholarship to a very prestigious local public school (v unusual for a state primary kid), and his mum said she has been very impressed with how the school has always supported and stretched her son, so I found that really reassuring.

iamnotminterested er.... yes, pretty much. I'm not saying I could sit DS1 down with War and Peace (or even Harry Potter, which I think would be slightly beyond him), but I could certainly give him something like The Gruffalo and he could read it with ease, understand the story and interpret the punctuation correctly (or at least some of it - he knows how to read out speech in quote marks, stop for full stops, give emphasis to exclamation marks and put on a slightly weird sarcastic voice for italics - I have never taught him any of this, by the way). The 'free reader' description came from me, though, not the school - I don't mean he's 'officially' a free reader, just that he can read freely, IYKWIM. The 'problem' I have with finding appropriate reading books for him is that he hates anything with scary bits or mean characters, so he won't touch stuff like Horrid Henry or Roald Dahl. So he still tends towards picture books ATM because he finds the stories comforting.

I think the term "free reader" is often used just to describe kids who have finished working their way through the reading scheme books. Obviously, they won't be emotionally or intellectually ready to fully comprehend material that is aimed at adults or much older children, and frankly, who wants them to grow up too soon!

My dd was able to decode pretty much anything that you put in front of her when she was in reception - much to the amusement of the TA, who used to "test" her on reading broadsheet newspapers or pedagogical texts! However, I'm sure that her understanding of these texts was extremely limited, and so in that sense, she wasn't a "free" reader at all. However, she could easily cope with chapter books aimed at older primary age children, hence she was allowed to choose any books from the school library and labelled by the school as a "free reader".

Incidentally, this wasn't always a positive as she would occasionally come home with books that weren't appropriate for her age in my view - not because she couldn't comprehend them, but because of the content iyswim. So not really a free reader in that sense either, as I used to veto some of her choices!

''The children in my Y6 class that are poor spellers are those that have not embedded knowledge of digraph blends and alternative phoneme spellings for homophones.

Utter carp.'

I think you mean crap, Marsha.
c-r-a-p
Segment and blend, you will get it right with a bit of effort.

So when the teacher has all the class on the carpet and is teaching them the sounds for the week, what would you like her to do with your dd?

"Free readers" in nursery and reception = conning parents into how wonderful the teacher/school is ... absolute nonsense unless of course your child can read any text not just the books in the class collection.

I was going to start a separate thread, but can I ask a quick question here, since we're on the subject of spelling? What are the best resources for teaching phonics-based spelling - I'm thinking of the Read Write Inc. Spelling Handbook, maybe, or would you recommend something else? We live abroad, and I'm teaching DD to read/write in English.

She has a couple of workbook-y things, but I'm looking for something that really takes you through the process of helping a child decide which grapheme to go for. E.g. DD asks me how to spell "hope". I ask her what sounds she can hear in it, and then what ways she knows of writing o. She comes up with ow first, and I explain why it's probably not that one. She then suggests oa, and I say no, not that (but I can't explain why in this case). Then oe, and I say yes, and what's it doing? and she says - going round the p, and runs off to spell it (in a birthday email).

She does have the Jolly Phonics word book which groups the similarly-spelt words and is useful for looking them up. She also knows how to look words up in a dictionary, but I don't know if I'm making the process too laborious! I try and keep it kind of light (although it doesn't sound it from description here). Thanks!

OP, it may help you to get some specific information from the school regarding about how they're differentiating for phonics, and if/when they will be working in smaller groups.

I think my dd's reception class split up around about autumn half term last year, although my observations when I went in to cook with the class a couple of times were that the teacher and TA were constantly differentiating work.