DD (reception ) still not bringing home first reading books!

[fixarupa]

My DD started reception in September and has still not been given early reading books home. The kids are allowed to chose a new book every day to bring home for us to read with her, which we have been doing. I thought by now they were meant to start on the picture books, then books with a couple of words and so on. Speaking to friends whose kids are at different local schools they have been bringing home early readers/picture books (to talk about with the child) from the very start of term.
I can't work out whether my school is just very relaxed about actual learning to read and want to encourage a love of books (brilliant) or just a bit slack and lazy (crappy). When I asked the teacher she just said they will be starting those books soon, but no other explanation was given.

We do lots of reading with her at home and she really is a bookworm, but she is not yet reading herself. She is a June birthday so 4 and a half. Should she be reading by now?? MN Wisdom would be greatly appreciated!

But in the end I don't think phonics was ever intended to cater for every word you're ever likely to come across (I know on mumsnet we argue about it as if it was.)

But in reality it's just a system for teaching children to read. And as long as it does that then that's fine.

Adults can argue about Cello, Wymondham, St John, and Siobhan until the cows come home, if it amuses them. But in the end, unless the child is called Siobhan St John and lives in Wymondham (with her cello) and can't read any of that, then there isn't a problem.

Siobhan and Catriona are not English names. Our language is littered with foreign imports and kids will learn these by having correct pronunciation

There are plenty of other examples of words that phonics give a bum steer on: love, rough, though.

I believe phonics works really well and should be the first and sole method of teachiing reading but I also believe many kids are totally able to learn exceptions to rules and deal with them. That is the nature of our innate language learning ability.

Having their pronounciation corrected and remembering, that should have said.

We get a book a week and a story book a week and a worksheet a day.

Worksheet goes in bin - reception dc is not interested - I read the books to them. They are 4.9.

Oldest dc was reading at 2.6 and youngest (2.10) is streets ahead of my 4 year old at reading letter sounds.

What I am trying to say is they all learn at different paces - none of it worries me.

Also ds school uses jolly phonics and u believe it's confusing him.

Zzzz is not for buzz is it!

::Waiting for half a dozen primary teachers to pop in to explain how to decode 'George'.::

There are plenty of other examples of words that phonics give a bum steer on: love, rough, though.

I don't know. The phonicsy people probably wouldn't agree with that. I'm not a phonicsy person myself, but they'd probably say something like

love
dove
shove

rough
enough

though
dough

all they're really doing is pattern matching from the language and then turning it into a theory. I don't much like the theory. But lots of the patterns make perfect sense. (Some don't.) A poet would probably come up with the same, or similar patterns, independently of phonics.

::Waiting for half a dozen primary teachers to pop in to explain how to decode 'George'.::

as most 5 year olds would tell you is a spelling for the sound "j"

I'm afraid you've got the process backwards learnandsay

as most 5 year olds would tell you is a spelling for the sound "j"

Note that the 'ge' spells a /j/ at the beginning and end of the word. Without 'ge'at the beginning the letters would spell 'gorge'.

If the 'ge' really bothers people they could start spelling their dc's name as 'Jorge'. Working in a school you get used to very strange spellings of names.

I'm still wanting to know what 'phonetic robot reading' is all about.

I wondered if it was "Fred Talk"

It well could be, mrz.

I must admit that as a blending technique I don't like it, but as far as spoiling a child's enjoyment of reading is concerned I doubt if it is particularly significant.

Having now read the original post I don't think it's "Fred Talk"

I think it's one of those idiotic, meaningless soundbite phrases, on the same lines as 'barking at print'