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.

Sorry I didn't make it very clear learnandsay. I meant 'we' as in hints and tips given to me by teachers. However, in a professional capacity a huge amount of importance is given to how the words work with the text and what 'story' the illustrations tell themselves.

Reading schemes (and I've worked for a fair few!) spend soooo long scouring over and over this stuff Quite stressful really! So many redraws and corrections to do.

I was just pointing out that I find oral storytelling the best medium for teaching narrative. Out of interest would you consider retelling a well known children's book word for word as being different?

Not all children are motivated by pictures daftdame ...not so long ago some posters on MN reported their reception children will only read chapter books and I have a child in my class at the moment who has been highly motivated to read by a new bike.

harryhausen those are hints and tips from the old National Literacy Strategy (scrapped in 2007 because it didn't work )

mrz I don't disbelieve you re. motivation. Just don't like illustrative art being discredited in any way - my own personal bias I suppose.

Retelling a well known children's book word for word is different to oral storytelling. There is no ad lib, probably less dialect, different sentence structure, less likely to have non words like erm, ahem etc, oral story telling may also involve actions - improvised or developed over time.

Mrz, I was encouraged this way with both my dcs. Way after 2007. My eldest is 9 and an advanced reader. It seemed a great way to enjoy reading and comprehension to me. Sorry to hear it didn't work.

I'm bowing out of this. As a professional illustrator who has worked on so many of these books I felt I had something to contribute to this subject but it seems not.

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^mrz and some children do very definitely respond well to illustrations. Horses for courses and all that.

I am not discrediting illustrative art just stating that using picture clues to read words isn't a helpful way to learn to read.

Do you not use actions or dialects when reading stories ...there are no rules about storytelling are there?

Yes harryhausen some schools/teachers like to hang onto what they have always done (like a comfort blanket) that is why so many still use ORT (well that and not wanting to replace 30 year old books)

Not half as sorry as the 20% of children who failed to learn to read with the Searchlight method harryhausen.

mrz you said retelling a well known children's book word for word (I assumed that means reading word for word).

If you deviate from the text it is not reading word for word.

There are not many texts written in true dialect, since it is so dynamic, it changes so rapidly. Natural spoken language is quite different to written language in structure also.

harryhausen I, for one, am glad of the kind of work you do.

Getting away from the debate about pictures in books for a minute. Do you do reading practice with you DS when you're out and about OP? Because the first words DS 'read' were Tesco and Waitrose, our two nearest supermarkets! I imagine he guessed them from the colours having been to the shops but we used that to sound out the words. He was three. Then we left it until he started school in case we confused him. After that we got him to sound out street signs, we play phonetic I-Spy - saying the sound of the word rather than the name of the word. And we'd do things like, if we saw a cat, we'd ask DS how he'd spell cat - getting him to blend. Then we'd write down cat, kat, Kate, care, when we got home and would get him to decide which was right.

And we read to him. A lot. He had, wait for it, four stories at bed time before he could read properly - Mr Men, thank goodness, were/are a favourite and they are quick and fun to read. We'd use our finger to go along the word and, now and then, we'd ask DS what a word said. No picture clues in Mr Men, though there are pictures on each page so he had to learn the word. He now reads them to us, putting on silly voices etc.

He's now six (year one) and, this evening, was reading Horrid Henry to DH. He's not unusual in his class.

He also reads the newspaper over our shoulder - which is a pain cos then you get into a conversation about all the bad stuff in the world. BTW a very dear friend of ours told me that she learned to read using the newspaper. No pictures to help and there are some fun things in most papers. She was struggling and her dad would give her a word to find on one page of the paper. So one day she'd have to underline the word 'and', next day it could be 'can' - she got a tick for each one she got right and penny if she got ten...mind you she will be 100 years old this year and a penny was a lot then - so after a month of her getting better and better the rates changed . Before she knew it she was reading.

Then you might like the books from Itchy Coo "Braw Books for Bairns o Aw Ages"

Sorry, meant, with phonetic i-spy, that we say the sound of the first letter of the word, not the name of the first letter of the word!

mrz My point is that written and spoken language differs from each other. As oral tales are different from written.

Even though you can write in dialect, once written, it is static (although not in meaning but that is a whole other discussion), unlike a true dialect. An oral tale's dialect can develop with each retelling and is more likely to be current and regional to the audience it is aimed at.

If you are playing phonics I spy it's best to say the first sound of the word not the sound of the first letter which I'm sure is what you meant LondonJax.

You also play phonic hangman and Simon says (Simon says j-u-m-p)

But written language is a representation of spoken language daftdame

mrz exactly a representation....and not always that close, we don't speak in verse that often, I don't wake and think and speak in iambic pentameters...

But then you know all this, don't you (?)

We don't do lots of things in daily life that we might do if we were "performing" (telling) a story daftdame.

but you do know that don't you?

mrz I suspect you do know though, how oral tales differ from literature. If not I suggest you do some reading, you'd love it - narrative theory is fascinating.

Yes I studied the use of narrative as part of my masters daftdame

mrz I know that, but then isn't narrative psychological truth and so not strictly performance, more expression?

mrz see I knew you were teasing!

I'm not teasing when I say that those children who pay most attention to the illustrations are frequently the same ones who as a SENCO I am targeting for additional support with reading year after year after year.