Forced baby behaviour?

[learnandsay]

Are simplistic phonics books good, bad or neutral? If a Reception child can already read Ladybird stories such as Three Little Pigs, Where the Wild Things Are, Dr Seuss, etc, etc, etc but they're bringing home apparently the whole ORT 1+ range comprising of nothing but CVC words which present no challenge and no learning opportunity either, is reading them:

(1) a waste of time, reading time is precious, doesn't it make more sense to spend it on reading words which present a learning opportunity?

(2) potentially leading towards reading becoming uninteresting

(3) promoting ignorance - if the child can read the names of countries already the child could be reading sentences like: The Nile is the longest river in the world, instead of sentences like Dot got a pot and Bot got Dot's pot. Pat pat pat, tap tap tap.

In summary, would the time be better spent reading something useful?

If you are unable to influence the sweet-buying activities of your child's other parent for the good of your child, then there are bigger problems in your life than split digraphs....

I read with yr2 kids yesterday in my DC school and some of the books looked quite wordy but in error one child turned over 2 pages stuck together but recited the words from the previous page totally correctly...

DD can recite The Tiger that came to Tea word for word so if she "read" it to a stranger it would look impressive but I know she is not reading it properly iyswim....

However there are harder books that she can read properly because she has not seen them before (flora the Fairy being a current fav)

When DD has to read her dull school books I bribe her by saying she can choose a book of her choice to read with me afterwards (or 2 if they are short and she is not tired).

She also takes a book up to bed to read to herself before lights out.

It's quite sweet really , I nipped up to the loo 10 mins after she went to bed this eve and could hear her "Topsy and Tim went to the party etc etc" as obviously she still reads aloud...

I can't influence the buying, but I can influence the consumption. (The wasted money is not something I can do anything about.) Well it is. Holidays seem to have become more expensive in our family for some unknown reason.

Why can't you just tell him (or her) that lollies are a shit idea? I really think that you would be crazy not to do that. Are you in some kind of abusive relationship? Because if not, then just say 'lollies are unnecessary, they are bad for her teeth and you are teaching her to rely on an external reward for something that ought to be fun in itself'. That should cover it.

And to your DD, the line is 'there are no more lollies in the house, you can scream all you like but there won't be any in the future'. Might be 1 uncomfortable evening but it should stop pretty quickly.

Make him take her to the dentist. Its not nice watching a child have a filling.

As for influencing the buying, what kid of relationship do you have that you can't have an adult to adult conversation about the health and wellbeing of your DD, in which views are aired and a sensible decision reached?

And if the relationship really is that bad, then as I said above, there is more worng chez L&S than split digraphs.

It is not nice watching a child have a filling, Kew is right. It is even worse watching a child having to have a GA to have teeth taken out because she has severe decay. Honestly, look up my other posts this evening and bin the lollies.

I'm in danger of doing armchair psychology now, but I think the lollies are bought out of guilt. The other half is away a lot and brings back all kinds of stuff, but gets requests for sweets lollies and brings them back in bags. A fair degree of sweet things just go straight in the bin. Some lollies get kept in a cupboard. A couple of years ago we were at a lolly a day. Now it's one every other month or so. So, on the whole I'm not too stressed about it. I don't think nagging is the way forward. I get to decide who eats what and generally speaking sugar and sweets are last.

The lollies are one every two months now? So, it that how often she reads new books?

Maybe she only reads a new book every time a new range of washing powder is brought out or every time the car gets washed or whenever some other completely irrelevant event happens!!!

The real answer depends on what you mean by a book, she reads three new phonics readers a week but they take two minutes each, or less. She reads a chapter of an intermediate level children's reader every couple of weeks. And she reads a couple of ladybird, three little pigs level stories a week. Last night she read three all in one go, but that's unusual. (I think I'd just washed the car. Or maybe a new star had just been discovered.)

Learnandsay, as a parent who is not a teacher, but has two children who have been/are in the process of learning to read, I still think you need to pull back from the idea that reading is just ploughing through levels.

I know I mentioned this upthread, but when they get into juniors, and can "read", the emphasis seems to be on the comprehension, story structure, characters etc. The words are only part of it.

As I said earlier, my eldest son (who is working at a high level in year 4), struggles most with the idea of what the characters are thinking. What motivates them.

I often sit him down with DS2's ORT books and discuss the character side of things with him.

If you really want to widen your DD's reading ability, then I think you can read the early books on many levels. The words, the story structure, the characters (the expression of the secondary characters in the pictures is often a story in itself). What happened next. What would you have done?

And I have to say, I would also be worried if I was offering rewards for encouraging a 4/5 year old to read. The goal posts change very quickly between reception and end of infants, and they need to become self motivated. Which means making reading pure fun, with no pressure.

I know everyone on here has suggested you ease back and relax about it, but that is honestly because that's what you should do.

I wouldn't say that reading has anything to do with levels, but schemes clearly involve levels. I wouldn't say reading and schemes are the same either. My daughter has been reading for almost two years but she has only come across schemes recently, (and from what I can tell the scheme is only allowing her to practice what she already knows, it's not helping her to learn what she needs to know next.) It's too early for me to say if I think the scheme is rubbish but I'm not keen on what I've seen so far. My daughter's first book, a cloth book for babies, Kitty the Kitten was a lot more complicated than the books she's getting in her book bag, it had words like follows and hallway in it. She initially had it in her cot and much later, read it when she was three. It doesn't really matter what people say in their postings I'll continue to do what I think is right. Initially I just wanted to know if these simplistic books were on the right track. It seems people think that they are. So I'll just skim over them as fast as possible and mark them as read.

When we discuss characters, feelings, plots and so forth we do it with better books. We read Poppy and Max books from the library, Max is a real character and does funny things. You can have real conversations about Max's motives. There's not a lot that you can get out of Dot got a pot. And I'm not going to try.

One clear reason for me to carry on is that the teacher told me that at the end of Reception she's going to be sending out HF words for the children to learn. My daughter hasn't learned any words for over a year, she reads all new words. She can work out what a new word says, even irregular ones, most of the time.

Kitty the Kitten was written for an adult to read to a child reading scheme books are written for a child to read independently and to teach a specific skill.

One clear reason for me to carry on is that the teacher told me that at the end of Reception she's going to be sending out HF words for the children to learn.
still no reading then

I'm not sure how they do things. I went to a literacy event at the school last night and the ORT books were on display. I couldn't find one higher than ORT 1+. That doesn't mean that there aren't any, but they didn't seem readily available. Maybe they're just a bit laid back about the whole business of reading. The school has some of the highest SATs and 11+ results in the county so maybe that's just the way they do things. (I'm going to carry on teaching her to read. And the school can do its thing. I guess that way everybody's happy.)

I'm assuming they are new ORT not the old look & say books ... but perhaps not if they are into word memorisation.

No, they're the new ones with "fully decodable" written on the back. The head did tell us that he's not that worried about phonics because children use a range of methods. I guess these people are what you'd call mixed methods. They do seem pretty casual about the whole process of reading (but keen to save space in the reading diary.) The teacher who's really sweet had a brief chat to me about my daughter. We guessed she'll already be able to read the HF words. (I don't know if that'll mean she'll have to learn them too. But the teacher said the children have to learn to spell the words as well as read them. So I guess spelling is where we'll be putting our effort.) We'll see, she might be able to spell quite a few already. I'll have to ask her.

If she knows them then why would she have to learn them?

I'm beginning to share your concerns

DD has had 3 lists of HF words already and can read them all and spell/write some of them...

This seems to be her extension homework every week: to write sentences using specific HF words...

It'll depend on how the children are tested on having learned the words, I guess. If they've got "right," "sight" and so on my daughter works them out by saying "r" "eye" "t" but if they're supposed to know them by heart then I suppose reading them doesn't count. I guess it'll all depend on what they want the children to do. When the time comes, and the end of Reception isn't for ages yet, I'll ask. If they're as laid back as they seem to be they'll probably not mind her reading them.

You'll be fine learnandsay right and sight aren't HFW

and no they aren't supposed to learn them by heart although it seems many schools are still teaching that way.

I think the words are he, she, said, say, where, here and stuff like that. But my daughter can read those already. Her approach to reading is either to work out what a word says or to try (and fail unless I help her.) She used to want only to learn words by heart when she was smaller. But doesn't like doing that now. If the school want her to learn by heart I'll ask if it's OK if she reads them instead.