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Primary education

Join our Primary Education forum to discuss starting school and helping your child get the most out of it.

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Original poster

Reception class / reading stage

58 replies

Btfly · 13/12/2013 23:08

Is there any mum who have a dd/ds in reception class? I want to ask that which stage level reading book is your dd/ds reading?

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addictedtosugar · 14/12/2013 19:45

Ok, that makes sense, mrz. Thank-you. So the length of the sound doesn't immediately matter.

Still don't know what to do about the rest. Would it be foolish to assume school would say something if I was doing something wrong with the books sent home? If all they expect me to do is get him to pick out some of these 45 words, why can't we have something a little more exciting to read?
I honestly have no ideas what he has been taught at school - he's more bothered about telling me what toys were out in the busy or messy areas, and nothing has been communicated regarding how to learn to read.

Thank you for comments.

mrz · 14/12/2013 19:48

I'm afraid the 45 words are a throw back to the old (scrapped) literacy strategy, it seems the school is continuing with mixed methods.

addictedtosugar · 14/12/2013 19:48

That is definitely NOT the case, MaizieD. We've had trumpets, flutes, pianos and guitars in this weekends book.
I'll have a read of your link.

allyfe · 14/12/2013 20:10

This thread made me giggle because I was looking at previous threads on the same topic yesterday. I actually found it a very therapeutic experience because there were some really interested comments and it helped me to keep in check my pushy-mum propensities (I'm going just to add that I'm dyslexic so I am probably a bit over-keen that my dd reads because I'm hoping for her sake she isn't).

My DD is on red books. She was getting pink from school, and reading state 2 at home, but they did some reading with her at school and now home and school are more similar. I'm super happy with where she is - I'm just so thrilled that she is making progress

One thing I would really like to know (my friend was asking and I was wondering) is what the difference is between the pink 1+ (which are lilac) and the red 1+ (which are also lilac) and the red ones (which are green). Are their just two sort of phases in each colour (e.g. pink, blue)? It doesn't matter at all, I'm just curious. Anyone know?

TwinklesTheXmasFairy · 14/12/2013 20:11

our school uses this Jolly Phonics which I find dead fun doing with DD2 (reception year) and at home we use this

Oxford Owl which has lots of books you can read on your laptop/pc/apple/ just pretty much any device, you sign up and then you can get into the library. At the kids school the word groups they learn go Blue, pink, green, orange, red, yellow, white and that's as far as we are in our house. DD1 has set herself a target when she reached this level, she wants to be free reading before year 3, so by the schools standard that's 6 levels in 6 months, gonna be hard work lol...

Onelittlebugbear · 14/12/2013 20:14

Ds is four and a half and they use dandelion readers at his school. I much prefer them to ort. Ort is really random IMO. Even the early books have words that the child can't sound out.
He is on phase 6 now but that is NOT stage 6 equivalent in ORT!
It is mainly CVC and hfw. I've no idea how he compares to his class. I do feel they could move him on more quickly since he's been able to CVC and blend since last christmas.

Onelittlebugbear · 14/12/2013 20:15

Oh and I would say there are two or three sentences on each page.

mrz · 14/12/2013 20:20

If he is reading unit 6 books it is likely that is the unit he has just completed in class (sounds j, w, z) and is working on double consonant spellings.

Onelittlebugbear · 14/12/2013 20:36

Yes I think so. They don't seem to have let them move on until they've taught the sounds in class even if they already know them.

Some of the children are having books with no words, some are still on unit 1 and doubtlessly some are miles in front of ds. I think there's a really wide range.

Onelittlebugbear · 14/12/2013 20:37

We've had "ff" "ll" "tt" in his phonics book.

leeloo1 · 14/12/2013 21:02

I think DS is apparently on purple books? But I don't know how they know really as they're not in a scheme - he doesn't seem to get one every week (sometimes just random story books), but a couple of times its said 'Frog and Toad (purple) in his reading record. Any idea how to find out how they've levelled them to be purple?

Bakerof3pudsxx · 14/12/2013 21:08

Ds is 4.7 and on stage 2 ort books

He has been on these for about 3 weeks and recognises or is able to sound out about 90% of the words

His brother however at 5.11 is on stage 3 and although I think he is capable it is difficult to engage him in the reading a lot of the time

freetrait · 14/12/2013 22:18

Errrrrr, probably red, or red/yellow. She's reading the simple stuff very confidently, but hasn't learnt stuff like ai, ow, ou, ar or any split vowel diagraphs. She has great phonics based books and I would put any others in the bin (so to speak).

Galena · 15/12/2013 07:46

There's a big range in DD's class. DD is not typical though, so I'll bow out now.

addictedtosugar · 15/12/2013 09:28

Galena
How is you DD doing?
I remember you (as a different user name) from a why won't my 6 month sleep, and then when you were off to Bristol. How are things?

Those of you talking about diahraphs, hfr, cvc. How do you know all this, (yes, i know some are talking from a teaching perspective, but where have the rest of you picked it up?) I understand sort of what your talking about, but couldn't confidently write a sentence with them in context.

Galena · 15/12/2013 09:44

We're doing great, thanks - she's walking again, although needs to improve her gait a bit. However, the operation did exactly what we hoped for, and it's all improvement from here. :)

And as for the other bits, I was a teacher, so understand the phrases/abbreviations.

catkind · 15/12/2013 10:05

addictedtosugar, our school had a briefing session at the beginning of term with those sort of things.
OTOH I'm confused about the negativity around mixed methods. I thought we were using a phonics method but there are high frequency/"tricky"/sight words too, is that not good? It seems a good thing to me as it massively increases the range of what he can read. Ditto the odd "harder" phonics word showing up in the books, then when he officially learns a new sound he's seen it before and the connections are already half built.

mrz · 15/12/2013 10:08

It's just the sight word bit catkind many people seem to confuse high frequency with the need to memorise.

catkind · 15/12/2013 12:03

I'm not sure I see the difference. DS doesn't suddenly turn off his phonics knowledge when it comes to tricky words, e.g. he can see that "the" begins with a "th", and that helps him remember, but we haven't explicitly told him that e can make an uh sound, just that that word is "the". Okay or not okay? He is going ahead of where they are in school in reading stuff at home so I'd like to be doing it the right way.

RosemaryandThyme · 15/12/2013 12:08

some authors can be costly and may struggle to engage whole school - we tried a performance poet instead, he was great fun had fast pace humourous material for all ages and was cheap as chips - stayed all day for petrol money, school dins and £20 cash.

NotCitrus · 15/12/2013 14:21

I have no idea about coloured bands but ds (one of the oldest in YR) got a sticker after half term to say he has moved from phase 2 of phonics to phase 3, which seems to mean "mostly knows what to do with double consonants, some double vowels, and panics when a word has more than one syllable". He's getting X-phonics books which are quite cool, numbered 6 to 8.

There's been a couple sensible lists of tricky words to learn, like to, do versus no, go, so, also, Flo, Mo, and he, she, me, and the. But only after they can sound out the words, so it just lowers the tedium of hearing t-h-th-e-the multiple times on every page - they are still sounding out all the other words.

LittleMissGreen · 15/12/2013 15:50

DS3 is on red books - they tie in with the phonics they have covered in school.

columngollum · 15/12/2013 15:54

I think the best thing to do with phonic knowledge is to turn it on and off again a bit like morse code. Wouldn't want to go around remembering anything, now, would we. And if we get to a word which is only partly comprised of regular graphemes then we can read only half of it and come back and read the rest later, (next day maybe.)

sashangel · 17/12/2013 00:11

My daughter school uses rwi and it is fab!

I was very againt phonics when my sister told me about it. However, my daughter is a fab reader and speller because of it. She started school in September is currently reading yellow books (easy apart from a few very hard words that haven't been covered yet) with a few odd blue ones thrown in as they work on things at school. She also brings home 2 or 3 sheets with 8 new words on each week. She was doing rwi in the school nursery from Christmas to the july the year before and I got stuff and played games with her at home too.

My nephew is in the same class and attended the same nursery is on pink books. He is however better at maths than my daughter so they all learn at different paces at different things. which is annoying as i am better at maths than phonics.

For the best way to learn the sounds you can go on youtube and type in rwi pure sounds and they will tell you how to say them. The only problem is that some sounds are slightly different due to regional accents. I found this out due to a teacher from being from the south and she has to slightly change the way she says it to the way we say it in the north east.

Danann · 17/12/2013 10:51

DD is on red books at the moment, has been for about a month, but I think she's ready for yellow now. We've already broken up for Christmas and having got her glasses she's reading red really easily now, I gather a lot of the pauses were she was struggling to see the letters!

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