Learning to read using Look and Say

[ApplePippa]

DS is due to start reception in Sept. He is autistic, with significant speech delay - he has only in the last few months started to put single words together together. His speech is also extremely unclear and his sound production very poor. His understanding however is way ahead of his speech.

The ed psychologist thinks that given the level of his speech, he may well struggle with learning to read using phonics. She has recommended in her report that he is taught using Look and Say.

From googling this, it appears that this is a method using whole word recognition rather than decoding using phonics. I can see definite pros and cons in using this approach.

Does anyone have any experience of either teaching or having a child learn to read using Look and Say?

And so is penguin. And countless other words - that's partly why the alphabetic code is so complex. Doesn't stop children from learning the code and how to read those words, so no idea what your point is really.

The point was made ages ago. Now we seem to have drifted into an admiration of how many foreign words there are in English.

I taught my dd to read like this. I bought a Glen Doman kit from America and used some Peter and Jane books. It's how my mum taught myself and my brother to read.

It worked well, dd has never had any problems reading. My sil used it for my nephew as well and he can read really well. Dd is 12yo now and nephew is a bit younger.

learnandsay Would you still want a child to learn phonics if they could? If that is what contemporaries will be doing? Why should this boy be excluded from these lessons in this instance? (No matter what you think about look and say methods).

Yes, I would. (But I would object if she was learning to spell words using made up spellings.) In general I think the more education a child gets the better. I've never had a child with difficulties but if I did I'd certainly visit as many experts as I could. That doesn't mean I'd take their advice. But I'd certainly listen to it.

I agree with you there learnandsay.

Funnily enough in Japanese they write all their foreign orgin words in a separate alphabet. In fact they have two alphabets one for foreign words and one for grammar words. Then their non foreign origin nouns are picture symbols which don't use an alphabet at all. No idea at all how they get taught to read (guessing mixed methods with memorisation / look and say for the symbols and phonics for the two alphabets) or what kind of literacy rate they end up with. Does show though that there is some flexibilty in how children can learn a written language.

CottonWoolWrapper But here we are taught using phonics and to this end are tested. OP's boy has already shown some understanding. Why should he be excluded from this teaching?

Japanese has THREE separate alphabets plus "romaji" which is basically phonetic.

Daftdame, I am no expert in this area. Was just thinking about the chat mrz and learnandsay etc were having about foreign origin words and mixed methods. I think that phonics is the best way for most children to learn to read English. It certainly seems like a good starting point given that we have an alphabet.

OP, could you get a second opinion?

No just doubled checked on the wiki mrz and they have two alpabets as well as kanji. These are adopted chinese characters which are one symbol per word. They can't be sounded out and so must be memorised. Some how the kids must learn how to do both things. But I don't want to hijack the thread. It was just that the discussion made me think of it.

Many people learn Japanese with the romaji alphabet, which is basically phonetic spellings of the words with our Latin alphabet, but romaji isn?t used as often as the three principle alphabets: hiragana, katakana and kanji. Kanji is the oldest written alphabet in Japan because it is actually a collection of Chinese characters that are still in use in modern Japanese. Hiragana is the basis of the Japanese writing system and is largely phonetic. Katakana was developed a little later than hiragana, but was based almost exclusively on Chinese characters.

Roughly speaking, kanji represents blocks of meaning (nouns, stems of adjectives and verbs) and hiragana expresses the grammatical relationship between them (endings of adjectives and verbs, particles). Katakana is used for foreign names, the names of foreign places and words of foreign origin.

Sorry cotton. It just really rankles with me that this child could possible be denied phonics teaching especially when he seems to be able to understand a reasonable amount of what he has been taught, especially as he has not started reception yet.

From what I understand Look and Say methods don't use any phonics, so this child could potentially be denied phonics teaching. So this is much worse than 'mixed methods' (which in my opinion can be confusing for some children.)

Mrz, you are right though that they have romanji as well for when they use the computer. Surprised really that they don't have a 90% illiteracy rate with that lot.

Going to rush off and make DS toast now before posting any more irrelevant comments.

Look & Say doesn't have a rule book. Different people will use different systems and follow different gurus.

It is very common for EPs to state that groups of children will not be able to learn in a certain way because of their SEN I'm afraid daftdame.

This does go against the CoP though doesn't it, mrz?

The child does seem to be able to access phonics teaching (at the moment). He should be taught it, in my view.

How would you recommend the OP deals with the LA (?) EP? and the recommendations?

They would argue it is the child's best interest and all too often parents and teachers listen to the "expert".
If I were the teacher and I could see that the child was accessing phonics I would talk to the parents and then continue regardless as a parent I would tell the EP I disagree and want my child to continue with phonics (carefully monitored) but I'm saying that with hindsight because I was the parent who let the "experts" convince me my son didn't need phonics.

I would also put my concerns in writing to the LA and seek legal advice if necessary.