sight word lists

[savoirfaire]

We went to the 'induction' meeting for DS's new school (starting reception in Sep, he is an August babe) today. Did a presentations about various things including how we as parents can contribute. One thing mentioned was about reading with them at home, including listening to them read their books they get sent home with and also "assisting learning of sight word lists". I thought this was no longer best practice. Should I (politely/tactfully) ask about this? DS is reading a little already and knows a number of words 'by sight' but can also decode reasonably well, so I am not at all worried about him being confused, but I wonder how schools are supposed to stay up to date with the current and quite how irritating (or important??!?) it is to be told by parents (or worse, prospective parents) that we don't approve of your techniques..... Advice please?!

i suspect it has a lot to do with them not being able to afford to replace all their reading books with phonic ones.
it does apparently confuse some children but for virtually all the ones i know it has just meant they learn some words and decode others.
i wouldnt get involved with their teaching methods personally unless you felt it was a problem for your child

It's not best practice, and sends the wrong message to children (that some words can't be decoded using phonics skills).

However, I'm sure the school are well aware of the government recommendation of synthetic phonics- they're just choosing to ignore it. I suspect that talking to them about this will not go down well. You could perhaps ask why they send home sight words, but they'll almost certainly just tell you they believe it's the best way (and ignore all the research).

DD1 is just finishing reception in a similar school. When we had word lists sent home, I got her to practise decoding the ones that she could, and explained the 'tricky' part of the others. If there were any that I felt were too advanced, I simply ignored them and came back to them later. I carried on doing a LOT of phonics work at home and she now knows all the school's sight words, not through 'sight' learning but through phonics.

Thanks this is helpful. I think DS has quite a visual memory so stopping him from memorising words by sight will be quite tricky, however well he is able to decode. I shall keep my trap shut about school methods and make sure he is well able to use the phonic techniques at home.

Savoirfaire I don't think you physically can stop a child with a strong visual memory learning words by sight... all you can do is encourage them to use phonics when they come across a word they don't recognise. All readers become sight readers eventually, otherwise reading would be incredibly tedious and labourious.