Reading scheme without pictures - does it exist?

[Munashe]

Need reading scheme suitable for my 5 year old son without pictures. He is sight reading but once we cover the pictures he really struggles with the words.

Well, yes, if you go to Koran school. But that's crazy. Why memorise the whole book when you can just buy the DVD?

Do they do DVD of Ginn360 and ORT?

I've had children who have learnt Ginn 360 by heart in the past ... turn two pages and they just keep on reciting and look very confused when there are no pages left and they haven't got to the end.

Noooo don't cover the pictures! As he is learning to read he uses the pictures as clues. My son is also 5 and someone taught me not to cover the pictures. Just keep on reading with him it will eventually fall into place. If he can read it better with the pictures continue with it to build confidence. I mean alll childrens books at ths age are illustrated. That is the nice thing about them! My son is an advanced reader, I promise, I didn't cover up the pics! His school only has a reading scheme up to stage 16, TreeTops. He now reads Harry Potter, Babe, etc.

They're not clues to anything, but I think what she's saying is that if you cover up the pictures then you make the child's reading experience a darker and more painstaking one.

That's probably both true and deliberate.

It also means that they're actually reading, rather than just guessing, which doesn't have to be dark or painstaking.

Well, no, it probably doesn't have to be. But, anecdotally, from the amount of fuss that some children make about doing it, clearly some find that it is.

ds is the same. perfectly good at sounding out cvc words if there is no picture clue... or there are 2 pictures and only one matches the text... give him an ort book... he guesses...

This is what he does.

He knows how to decode most letters but it seems like hard work for him and he does prefer short cuts.

When he is reading with the pictures he can pretty much read most times correctly and very fast too. For example "cat and dog", he will read it so fast and well with pictures. He can zoom through most of ORT books for his stage with pictures. Cover pictures and its a different ball game and that's what I meant by sight reading. My suspicion is that the pictures helps him remember the words.

Cover the pictures up then he starts to decode first saying ka -aa-ti before reading it altogether as "cat". It takes him quite a while to do this. In some cases after decoding he then struggles reading the word altogether. Sometimes he will miss the first letter when pronouncing the word altogether after decoding eg "cat" will be "at"

I hope I am making sense. Many thanks for your replies. Will go through the links posted in the morning.

By their very definition the illustrations are clues in that they clarify or explain ('illustrate') the story, and sometimes an additional story runs through the illustrations. These clues can be used and cross-referenced with the text. Children may need to be shown how and when to use the illustrations or in the current vogue word they 'intuit' this. Illustrations will clarify or aide 'decoding' a word e.g. flower could be decoded as flo-er (as in slower).

Pictures do help children learn to read (and decode).

Pictures are clues. Letters are symbols and are actually pictorial in themselves. Remove them and turn reading into a chore if you must.

They are not clues - they will not help the child read the same words later on.

We know from research that children who struggle use picture or context cues instead of simple decoding.

Those who insist he will be fine because their dc was - he might. Or he might turn out to be one of the 20% who aren't.

I wouldn't cover the pictures, I would get him practising with decidable books - something his school should be doing anyway.

Decodable, obviously

Illustrations don't help you to read the words and they certainly don't help to decode they are very good for helping you guess ...

Letters are symbols that represent spoken sounds in words ... a picture of a house could be house, home, cottage, dwelling, accommodation, residence etc which is why we write/read words not pictures.

It's one of those strange things in education. One of the EYFS ELGs was to know that we read the text not the pictures ... so dutifully every reception teacher would get the child to point to where we start reading and tick off if they pointed to the words and then some teachers would sit down and say "look at the picture if you don't know that word ...can you work out what it might be .."

OP, try writing your own messages for your DS. When my DD was beginning to read I wrote a 'secret' message on a whiteboard every night. In the morning she would decode it (with support if necessary). The messages were short, simple, and decodable using only the sounds or words she knew (e.g. We will see Nana and have tea.') DD was quite excited to discover what the latest message said.

I also did a lot of decoding practice using magnetic letters, or just writing isolated words. We also used the Phonics Play website a lot. It's a subscription One but a lot is available for free. Try the phase 2 games, especially picnic on Pluto, pirate treasure and dragon's eggs.

Now DD is getting very confident with her phonics. We do look at the illustrations when reading, and talk about what they show, but I make it clear that we READ the words. I explicitly point put any differences e.g. 'when we saw the picture, we thought x, but actually the words tell us y'.

I've been a professional children's book illustrator for 18 yrs and have illustrated countless school reading scheme books as well as many other titles. I'm quite at the idea of covering up the pictures.

What a joyless experience.

Personally I wouldn't cover up the illustrations but I do think you can still get "joy" from stories without pictures.

Of course you can get 'joy' from stories without pictures (although personally I wish we'd go back to a bit more of the Charles Dickinson 'plate' illos of the Victorian age. I don't see why adults can't enjoy pictures but that's another story) - but when a child is learning to read and more importantly learning to enjoy reading and books in general then pictures are very important to the whole enjoyment.

I've done book illustration events to 20 schools and literature festivals and the response from children is immense.

I don't know anything about the debate regagrding pictures helping to read or not, but just to say that Up and Up by Shirley Hughes is the best picture book ever. It's funny, exciting, interesting - just fantastic. Even my 10-year old stilll looks at it sometimes!