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?

What are these irregular words columngollum?

Words aren't irregular! Some may have unusual or unique spellings for some of the sounds but that doesn't make the word irregular.

Apart from people's surnames such as Featherstonehaugh or Cholmondley there are very few irregular words.

Maizie that would be a fantastic thing to have if you were able to do it.

for you.

Thanks Feenie for the link. Very helpful.

Thanks mrz too for the explanation. I get it now.

I'm sure there are people who believe that phonics alone is sufficient. There are also people who believe in ghosts, black magic and the devil.

You will find plenty of serious scientific research showing that synthetic phonics alone is sufficient for 95%+ of all children. You will struggle to find any serious scientific research that supports the existence of ghosts, black magic and the devil. Given the lack of serious scientific research that supports your position it would make more sense to lump your beliefs with ghosts, etc.

Do you need a scientist to tell you that the word women has an irregular phoneme/letter correspondence in it?

Do you need a scientist to tell you which way is up and which is down?

No columngollum we just need our eyes and ears to work out that the spelling for the sound /i/ in the word women is spelt ... and we don't need to learn the word by sight or to use flashcards

Regardless of how the learning takes place it is necessary to remember that this word has a unique spelling.

Or it can be accepted (by some people) that having an ignorance of unique or irregular words does the pupil no harm.

ciolumnn, the reading reserach that quantified the success of phonics looked at the readiing of ALL words - ie 'real reading of unrestricted texts', which of course will include a sprinkling of the words with some unusual / unique graopheme / phoneme correspondances.

You seem to think that it says '95% of children will learn to read phonically regular words through phonics'. It doesn't. It says 95% of children will learn to read, full stop - yes, including words like one and women and yacht. Whereas 80% of children taught to read via mizxed methods will achieve the same.

Is that clearer?

Previous arguments in this thread have stated that phonics alone is sufficient. teacherwith, that would not concur with your last post. I would in fact agree with your statement. Phonics plus whatever else is necessary to teach the children to read is sufficient. Yes.

So it does not say, for example, that the 95% will NOT be able to read 'One of the women walked down the street', and that this is OK because it contains two words containing unusual phoneme / grapheme correspondances. It says that the children who have learned using phonics will read that sentence, and many other texts, whereas 15% less of a L&S-trained sample will not read to the same level of fluency.

"Phonics plus whatever else is necessary to teach the children to read".

No, that is the 'mixed methods' bit that fails children.

The point is that children who learn to read BY PHONICS ALONE, including proper teaching of unusual phonemes / graphemes, will read such sentences USING THEIR PHONIC TOOLKIT.

Columgollum phonics alone is sufficient for reading ANY word because all words are made up of sounds and those sounds are represented by letters in texts. Of course if the word isn't in the reader's vocabulary they may struggle with comprehension but that applies equally to your flashcards (as you found with gymnastics)

By which I mean, instead of somneone saying 'because there is an unsual pgc in women, here is a flashcard with a word on it', they provide exactly the explanation that mrz and orthers have posted already, which is an exactly analolous process to the teachign of the two ways th is promounced, oo is pronounced etc etc. Good teaching of alternative pgcs is a critical part of good phonics teaching - and, to be fair, the bit that is usually missed out in poor phonics teaching, which may explain your scepticism.

(Excuse appalling typing. Keyboard issues.)

Let's just remind cg of the practices which SP does not 'allow'.

Do not teach children to guess unknown words by using context, picture or initial letter 'clues'.

Do not teach words as 'wholes' (i.e as a whole unit without regard to the significance of the letters of which it is comprised).

Do not give children words to read (in text) which contain letter/sound correspondences which they haven't been taught.

There are very sound cognitive reasons for all these. It is not at all difficult to teach children to read well without using these 'strategies'.

I expect cg can be forgiven for pooh poohing this as there are plenty of teachers around who do the same. If teachers can't get their heads round the psychology of learning why should an uninformed amateur do any better?

If teachers can't get their heads round the psychology of learning why should an uninformed amateur do any better?

Except an awful lot of 'amateurs' do do better. There's many a child been rescued by parentally taught phonics

I agree, mrz. All words are made up of sounds which is why ghoti is a valid word. (It's made up of sounds.)

I also agree with maizie. Don't teach words as wholes. So, teach the o as i sound in women, tell the child that the o letter can represent the i sound, but don't tell her which word it occurs in.

(The danger of revealing the word is that the child will remember the word with its unique spelling.) (Only L&S children are allowed to know that piece of information.)

Sorry columngollum but are you really as obtuse as you are trying to portray in your posts?

You really are posting absolute rubbish!

A personal attack isn't an argument, mrz. You either agree with your own statement or you don't.

I disagree with your interpretation of my statement columngollum ...hence the rubbish comment!

all words are made up of sounds and those sounds are represented by letters in texts

The word ghoti appears in countless texts and its sound letter correspondences represent the word fish.

Except in English the spelling never represents the sound /f/ at the beginning of a word and the spelling never represents the sound /sh/ at the end of a word ... other than that you are correct all words are made up of sounds and those sounds are represented by letters

Interesting someone who has shouted loudly about the use of pseudo words should attenpt to further their argument with a pseudo word