flashcards

[sleeplessinderbyshire]

My DD is 4 and in reception at a local school. She seems to be coming on well with her phonics/reading although still on pink band books from school. We spent the day with friends in another town today who have a DD the same age. She was showing us her school flashcards which seemed to have all sorts of different words to learn to recognise (??look and say type process). They certainly didn't seem to be the HFWs that have been mentioned at DDs school (but these have not been sent home at all unless we chose that homework assignment - they do a points based menu per term and we did a few of the drawing ones but not the learning the first 20 HFW one).

DD's friend was showing them to her and they played "schools". my DD was confused why she doesn't have these. I've simply said that Mrs X her teacher does things in a different way at her school and they don't do this because they do other games at her school. Made me wonder though. Is there a role for flashcards? I've not got any feel for how they'd work and certainly DD and her incessant "sounding out" of everything vaguely letter based and her obsession with asking how to write down almost every word we say means I think the phonics strategy is working for her (but the other little girl can technically "read" more than DD and is well into red book bands - we have a songbirds red band from santa which DD can read but she still has pink from schoool

I think you are right with what you told her, the other school/teacher just does things differently.

Some people get on well with learning phonics alongside some high frequency words but it sounds like her school are concentrating on phonics which is what they should be doing I believe.

My children have learned both alongside each other but if she is happy with her red songbirds in the last few days then she is doing fine and once she is back at school they will probably see that she is getting to grips with blending and move her up.

www.spelfabet.com.au/2013/02/100-first-words/

I would suspect the other school is using Look & Say reading books and are sending home key words from the text. Yes it is faster initially but children usually hit a brick wall around the end of Y2 beginning of Y3 if they haven't got a strategy for tackling new words when they meet them.

thanks mrz. that makes perfect sense and I think the way my dd's school are teaching her fits with the ethos described

I got some flash cards from a car boot once, left in a drawer and found them just as DD was leaning to read in reception, flash cards were just words, mum, dad and so on.,....i fond they really speeded up her progression she loved doing them.

flash cards were just words, mum, dad and so on.,.

Completely pointless using flash cards as research shows that words are retained better when sounded out and blended than when taught as 'wholes'. In this particular instance these words, and hundreds more, would be easily decodable after the first few weeks of phonics instruction.

OP, no problem with your DD 'playing' with flashcards with her friend, but don't think they are a valid teaching method, they're not (whatever others might believe).