Reading in reception state primary?

[SlinkyPebbles]

Is it right that DD should be bringing books home without words in at this point in the year? She's doing well at phonics, and can sound out many three letter 'green words'. Why wouldn't she have a book with words?

PastSellByDate do you think that's going to happen while the major publishers make lots of money producing wordless reading books (there's an oxymoron if there ever was one)

Gah. Phonics makes for bloody awful reading books.

No phonics would make worse reading books because we'd have no words aufaniae

You know what I mean mrz! I shall rephrase:

Books designed specifically for phonics reading schemes make for bloody awful reading books.

Better?

Have you read them all aufaniae?

aufaniae, I think some phonics readers are dire. The Usborne Frog on a Log ones are quite good. I like them.

I think if you compare Sam's Pot with the same stage Ginn 360 book (look & say sight word )

Look
Look
Look
Look
Look
Look
Look
Look
you might discover it isn't so bad after all

Neither of them are particularly intuitive. I think after pseudo words my daughter's first word was cat and then dog.

Mrz - assessed by who? There's no such thing as a visual learner, or a kinaesthetic one, or an auditory one... Read the work of neuroscientists like Jonathan Sharples and the like who have poured scorn on this nonsense. All our thinking patterns are multi sensory. Now, as far as picture books go, one of the biggest difficulties children have in their reading is their comprehension. Word recognition is the easiest part of reading. Comprehension encompasses a whole range of skills - 'reading' visual and social clues for example - what we would call visual literacy. When we teach children to read, it's vital that we support the WR skills but also that we continue to promote their visual literacy because this will form the bridge to being able to interpret the semantic process of comprehension. All world experts in reading agree on the importance of talking about pictures as part of the reading process. Look at Robin Alexander's research at Cambridge if you want to know more about the importance of this dialogic process. To help your child to be a better reader, and a better writer, you need to talk with her about what is happening in the pictures. How do the characters feel? What does she think might happen next? Once her WR skills are developed, she will be able, like you, to be able to use text to stimulate her visual imagination to the extent that, like you, she no long even realises she's being visual. Until she gets to that point, she needs pictures. Embrace and enjoy them together. And learn some manners - you've been really rude to some of the people trying to help on this thread!

I don't see the problem with phonics readers. I'm using Songbirds and Reading Corner phonics with my daughter, and I think the stories are fine, she seems to enjoy them. Certainly better than the Big Cat non-phonic readers we're getting from school. I recall one about a picnic:
The rug.
The sandwiches.
The cakes.
The wasps.

Dull as anything, and not a chance of DD reading the words without taking a random guess using the picture cues.

I suppose it depends on what you're trying to achieve. When I saw the first non decodable Ginn reader with the days of the week in it and double digit ordinal numbers in it I thought the series might contain the months of the year, written times, maybe the planets, who knows what? I thought we were off. It turns out the other books are fairly pedestrian. But I guess whether or not one likes the books comes down to what one is trying to do with it.

I think you will find that neuroscientists recognise that learners use different senses for different tasks squeezed however rather than saying I'm a visual learner I should say I have a good visual memory and a shockingly poor auditory memory and since I'm dyspraxic my kinaesthetic isn't too hot either

do (picture-only) books help them to read or help language development?

Yes with language development. Definitely. Absolutely yes.

But do you have to pay a publisher for that? Couldn't you just as well develop language by bringing in photos of your family holiday and talking about those?

But we don't have kinaesthetic, auditory and visual memory systems either mrz. Where are you getting this from? Some neuroscientists simplify memory down to spacial, narrative, procedural, semantic and working memory systems, but even these are not entirely accurate. A moot point though, the main point was that wordless books are a valuable resource, but that parents need to be guided in how to use them. Incidentally, graphic novels such as The Arrival by Shaun Tan have been shown to dramatically improve children's comprehension scores even when they are fluent readers - a picture forces you to look closer and find the meaning.

Yeah you could do. BUT

Family photos will not tell a story the way a published story does. The type of narrative is different. The fact that the child is consulting own memory and recognises people and places from other memories, as well as visual clues, is different.

Plus most early story books tell different types of stories, funny usually. The children engage in a different way.

There are lots of wonderful wordless books for children learnandsay that are fantastic for developing language/vocabulary/imagination so I will stand by my opinion that there is no need for ORT wordless books.

I thought this was the same thread where I posted this yesterday but realise not so this may clarify my position squeezed
mrz Sat 24-Nov-12 18:39:56

mention ORT wordless books and my reply is based on those books ...personally not a fan of The Snowman but Jan Omeron's Sunshine and Jeannie Baker's Window are wonderful wordless books. I've used Free Fall and other books by David Wiesner to stimulate talk and writing but would never use wordless ORT as a stimulus.

Thank you mrz, that does clarify and I would completely agree with you - these are great examples.

and I agree with your recommendation of Shaun Tann I love the Red Tree

My DS received wordless books and library books in R for the first three weeks of term. They were for him to read to me and for me to read to him. He has now read the limited number of level 2 books. I hope they give him something exciting soon. both his teachers are quite good at assessing reading ability but at the same time need to ensure they all have the same solid phonics base.

level 1 books sorry - not 2

My DD is in reception and bringing home no text books all the time. The teacher said that its an important part of learning to read, in that it makes them think about the story, they have to tell the story from the pictures, rather than ask for somebody to read it to them, which they do if there are words in the book. She said that it encourages the imagination.

DD started off with SATPIN letters and has now moved on to others. She has started to spell out a lot of words phonetically now. She wants to spell everything she sees.

The teacher said that the government set the way that the kids are taught, but that they vary it a bit, to use a tried and tested method.

(Had to laugh at DD's interpretation of a no text story though, dog goes for walk, gets wet, gets in car, wees on floor...... the wee was the water dripping off the dog!)

Wow, loving the debate!

To answer a few questions - yes, she does choose her own library book each week (and that one always has words, some of which she can read, but not all). And yes - there seems to be a staggered system where some kids have been given books with words ahead of others (she seems to be one of the last.... )

At the level where the school doesn't seem to be supplying words, the easiest thing to do is get a sheet of A4 paper and a marker pen.

We have a whiteboard......... Best thing we got- we are a bit strange, but it's fun and both kids write on it now (it's in the kitchen).