Is this how children learn to read these days?

[Bananaketchup]

Am genuinely asking. DD is in reception. She started late at the school and has only been in full-time since xmas, so they don't really know her too well. She loves being read to, she can sound out words when she's in the mood, but is also one for the easy life. She reads once a week 1-1 with a TA at school, and brings the book home afterwards until it's swapped a week later. The books are of the 'this is a house, this is a garden' level. In her reading record it will say 'DD read the book and enjoyed it'. But when she reads it at home she rattles off the sentence on each page and has clearly just memorised it, and isn't actually reading. If I mix the page order up, she can't read it. If I hide the picture, she can't read it. She will make wild guesses without even trying to sound out the word e.g. she will guess 'the' for 'house', just pure guesses. This weekend she got in a strop because I wouldn't let her see the picture (as she was just guessing from this and not reading the words at all). She then said 'but Mrs X (The TA she reads with) says look at the picture, then read it'. So my question is (if you've got this far without dying of boredom), is this how children are taught to read - to look at the picture to know what the words say? Because DD isn't paying any attention to the words, just gabbling off what's in the picture, and I can't really see how this is teaching her to read. I am minded to speak to school, but don't want to be 'that' mum if this is genuinely a method children learn to read by, which I'm unaware of. Can anyone advise please?

Personal attacks aren't going to improve your arguments.

If you've got a point to make just make it.

yes a Wymondham always gets thrown into the mix it's nearly as predictable a ghoti and Michael Rosen

Not true Feenie, I'm just bored of going round in circles and I've got things to do! Haven't you?

there's another "word" where the is representing the sound /i/ [rolls eyes]

Well, if you find another word then you won't need to rely on ghoti to be your only other earthly example of o making an i sound.

Then you can cross women off the list of words which have to be remembered as unique words.

And that would be because?

I told you the difference between memorising by whole word and memorising by decoding and blending a week or so ago. You didn't believe me then, why would you believe anyone now.

Have you heard of the Third grade slump? I would keep quiet about your DDs' reading prowess until you've passed that milestone. That's when learning words as 'wholes' turns sour. It's a big worry in the US, where your methods are favoured.

no sense of humour either [rolls eyes again]

And yet you still have time to read the thread.

Rolling you eyes till they fall out of your head won't improve the quality of your arguments.

It wasn't a personal attack! It was an observation.

Column, moving away briefly from the unique words - let's look at much more frequent 'alternative' ways to pronounce a grapheme (as the thought process is exactly the same, it illustrates the point).

For example, when teaching the grapheme th, children are taught that it can make the sound as in both, or the sound as in thus. So when decoding, they can sound it out in two alternative ways, to find out which creates a word (and, in the rare cases where both alternatives produce a known word, a word that makes sense). Similarly oo in cook, or oo in zoo - most schemes teach the two alternative phonemes side by side, and children try out both alternatives, the most common first, to decode the word.

(I appreciate that there is also further guidance that can be gven to children as to which is more likely in certain places in a word etc, but in my experience, children tend to sound it out in the first way, then try the word with the second way, and prounounce the final blend with an 'ah, that's it!' tone).

However rare the phoneme / grapheme correspondance, if children have a knowledge of the possible correspondances andjhave been taught them systematically, they can work their way rapidly through the options to decode the 'unusual' part of the word successfully (I mean, children don't know that 'women' is the only word with that correspondance. It will be common for the, to have some correspondances that are rare in their experience, and so they will adopt a systemaic approach to tackle them. Whether the correspondance is also rare in an absolute sense does not affect the process). .

Australia reports similar issues MaizieD

Personal attacks are always observations, they're just rude observations!

cg,

If you're really worried about how phonics instruction deals with all those unusual correspondences you should read Share on how phonics instruction promotes a self teaching mechanism.

Oh, I forgot ; you don't read anything that might inform you about the teaching of reading.

Well, I am very sorry that you thought I was being rude as I didn't intend to be rude. However, here we go again, getting bogged down about something which does not add to either your or my positions.

Column reports that her elder DD has now worked out the phonic code for herself - or been taught it well in school - and prefers to use that to decode unknown words. So luckily the third grade slump shouldn't affect her. She is, of course, very lucky to be in the 80%.

Definitely no sense of humour

But by Y3 they may at least have grasped that Biff does gymnastics

Well she's complained often enough about the school using phonics and phonic books ... so I would say her daughter has been taught the phonic code and unlike mum realises that it's more efficient than trying to memorise thousands of whole words.

Unlike the poor child taught phonics who would be able to read it in Y1 feenie

I'll let you know tomorrow if my 2yo can read it. Maybe not, but who knows.

Still that anyone would 'never expect' a Year 1 child to read it - or even recognise it again till years later. It's truly an eye opener.

This is fine, enjoyment of 'reading' and book is the most important thing, they will be doing phonics to supplement reading. Both mine learnt this way and are great readers now.

OK, she can distinguish (by holding the cards up) between gymnasium, gymnastics and gymnast

but she can't pronounce any of them.

Why don't you tell her what gymnastics says and see if she can then pronounce gymnast? Just as an experiment.