Reception child and ORT levels

[MimsyBorogroves]

I'm getting very pissed off confused with the reading books that DS brings home. There seems to be little to no organisation of what he brings back with him. They get 2 books every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Most books seem to be ORT based, but often there is a "Spirals Starters" or other book.

With ORT, we've had what seem like the baseline books - a couple of weeks of books with no words, moving onto simple books like "Up You Go", "Six in the Bed" and "A Good Trick". He's pretty good at sounding out words phonetically, and has been slowly gaining confidence.

Tonight in his bag he has a Spiral Starters book about Christmas - which says it practices the key word "A" (fair enough), and an ORT book called "The Headache" - a stage 2 Wrens book which features words like "headache", "guitar", "recorder", etc. We've read through it, and actually I was really impressed as he managed to work out most of it by looking at who was in the sentence (e.g. Kipper) and the first letter of the word he couldn't read (e.g. 'guitar' - "it begins with a 'g', and Kipper's holding a guitar, so it might say 'guitar'")

Is it normal for them to just bring home seemingly random books in this way? Do other people in other schools find it's more standardised? And how can I make sure that he keeps his interest in reading without getting frustrated?

It probably depends on his school. The more phonicsy people say that you're not supposed to remember HFW or tricky words you're supposed to learn how to read them. But if the school doesn't believe that then it's going to have its own policy on what it requires the children to do, anything from remembering the word outright & knowing how to spell it (our school) through to being able to work the words out as you go. And the only person who is going to know which one applies is the teacher.

With respect learnandsay no matter how "phonicsy" or "unphonicsy" a person is they can't read pictures (only interpret)

Our school doesn't give out any books at all to take home til Jan in reception....

A brief update: wrote a message in the reading diary asking for clarification. Despite the diary ostensibly having been read (completed page marked with a smiley face) there was no reply, so I went back to the teacher and asked her directly. Apparently they do want them to take cues from the words and the pictures if they can't decode a word.

Today he's brought home a book that only contains the words "oh", "no", and "Floppy" and another that's a rip off of the story of the old woman who lives in a shoe.

I'm just having difficulty identifying how they're expecting the children to learn adequately when the whole approach seems so scattered. The message we took home at the introduction to school sessions was that the school believes that most learning takes place in the home, yet they're not giving us the tools to approach it successfully (IMO).

It's also a bit of a culture shock as the schools I have worked in (admittedly, in family and behavioural support NOT in teaching) prior to us moving here were schools where parents didn't read and had their own difficulty with literacy, so this approach wouldn't have worked at all, and I'm just a bit...perplexed.