Reading in reception- am I being pfb?

[Pozzled]

I suspect the answer might be 'yes', in which case I will be glad to stop worrying!

DD1 started reception with a few key skills mastered. Certainly not a reader, but able to read cvc words, and have a go at longer words if phonetically 'regular'.

I'm doing a lot of work with her at home (I'm a ks2 teacher) and she's making good progress. My concern is that the school don't seem to be recognising where she is, or moving her on at all- she had homework for the first time, which was practising sounds like 's' 'm' 't' which she's known for months.

Also, they're not using a synthetic phonics approach- they use ERR and she was also sent some high frequency words to learn, some of which were 'tricky'. I end up teaching her the alternate sounds (e.g. she was given the word 'he' so I taught her that it's 'h' 'ee' and that we, she, me, be are the same.)

But I feel like the school should be doing this with her.
Do I need to chill out a bit?

I am on scotland, is reception p1 or is it still nursery?

P1 I think.

I mean it's the first year of school, not nursery.

In that case it would not be unreasonable for them to be doing a bit more, although I am sure others would disagree.

I think you should talk with the child's teachers about their plan for teaching literacy.

Definitely talk to the teacher. My ds is 4 and started reception this year. He was at a very similar level to your dc when he started. School noticed after a couple of weeks and have brought him on already, he's now bringing home 'blue' band books and has improved loads since sept. I try and hear him read to me most days at home too though school are giving him slightly harder books than I do with him at home!
I'd just have a word to see if they are aware and what their plan is. But then ds's teacher is very approachable so I know it might not be as easy, they shouldn't mind though.

I'm not sure about sending the phonics sounds home to learn. My daughter has just started Reception. She can read simple chapter books unaided. Their entire class started on Letters & Sounds. We got a letter with the phonics actions described on it. My daughter doesn't need to know how to pronounce the sound mmmm and rub her tummy. (She has known both the letter names and sounds since she was two.) But apparently she loves doing it! Her first book home in her book bag had no words at all in it. We wrote the story ourselves, she read it and I put it and a description in her diary and book bag. The next book was really strange, (Julia Donaldson? Tom got a pot, tap tap tap, pat, pat, pat) I think it said. I'd never read anything like it in my life! Even when she was two the things she read made more sense than that!

Anyway, the long and short of it, I think, is that it's not unusual for the things the children get asked to read to look bizarre to the parents. I think you can ask for your children to get given proper books to read. But whether or not anyone takes any notice of your requests is a different matter. My solution is to buy some books and borrow endless real books from the library and have my daughter read those. We still get phonics readers from school every other day and they take about two minutes to read. But our home reading strategy is based on real books.

DS was like that and it took a while for the school to recognise it but once they did they were very good. When is parents' evening? We raised it then with examples of what he was reading and it soon got resolved. In my experience though he still gets home books which are easier than the books he reads at home but we do other things with them. I think that it can take a while to get the children settled. I know I was getting quiet worried because DS was listened to read once in the first half term but things are great now (just started Year 1). His reception teacher was also an NQT...I don't know if that made a difference?

It's strange because DS is getting harder books home from school - usually I read on here that their school books are too easy!
It's no problem though as they are not hard enough to erode his confidence, though he does find them hard work. I just make sure he reads other books with me that he can manage at least 90% of the words independently to build his confidence and reinforce some of the easier words.

I was suprised that my son's book was changed again to another level yesterday, i thought the previous level was just right and would have been content tbh to let him continue on those for a while, it's funny cos, mostly you hear that parents feel their kids are being given books way too easy for them and their teachers are not appreciating their ability, I am lucky as I have the total opposite feeling so far at my DS's school - they seemed thrilled with him and are totally encouraging him

Thanks for all your replies.

I'm not concerned about the books she's getting, although I don't think they're hugely useful- too many 'context' words that she can't possibly read independently yet. It's more the fact that she doesn't seem to be learning any new sounds unless I teach them.

I don't want to be pushy though, so I'll carry on as we're doing for a bit longer- maybe till after Christmas? We have already had parents evening, the teacher said that DD1 was doing well, but didn't seem to recognise what she could already do.

Maybe they are moving very slowly with the sounds as you say. I did teach DS a lot of them myself in the end for this very reason. They got through them eventually, but he needed them sooner than they were taught. He enjoyed going over them again though, children do like repetition it seems! I don't think the teacher would mind if you asked roughly what the time scale for learning the sounds was or some other general question to do with it.

What is ERR??

Do you think they have not realised that your child can read at all??

I definately think an appt with the teacher is needed..

Chill. The vast, vast majority of people who go to school learn to read. We can all read. You would be better focusing on develop a love of "story", modelling reading for pleasure (looking at books) and letting your daughter develop at her own pace.

I'm not really sure what ERR is, it's the reading approach they use and apparently it includes a lot of 'learning by rote'.

WipsGlitter I agree with you completely about the love of reading and am definitely doing everything I can in that respect. And yes, most children will learn to read, but unfortunately not all to the same level. I have daily experience of how difficult it is for children who get left behind to catch up. Not that I think there's any danger of that yet!

I think you're right, I do need to relax. I haven't voiced any concerns anywhere other than here, and wasn't really planning on raising it with the teacher, just looking for a little reassurance.

Thanks again everyone.

Of course we can all read!

We're using a medium which necessitates that not only can we read, we can also write. If we couldn't read and write we wouldn't be using it.

But the problem is that there is a notable portion of the UK's population which is not using this site, which can not use this site because either it cannot read or write, or it can not read and write sufficiently well for it to do so.

We all want to ensure that our children do not join that portion of society. (So we're monitoring their progress closely.)