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?

[maizieD]

Bumpsadaisie asked a while ago about ORT. ORT comes in 2 flavours! There is the old Look & Say ORT and the new decodable version (Floppy's Phonics). So, in the early stages you need to be sure that you've got the 'phonic' version.
Of course, once children know the code all text is 'decodable

Noumena:
In the philosophy of Kant, an object as it is in itself independent of the mind, as opposed to a phenomenon. Also called thing-in-itself.

[Bumpsadaisie]

Thanks Maizie. At the moment my DD has got an ORT book called "Spots" to read in the hole - it says Level 2a on it - do you know if that is old or new style?

[Feenie]

That's not a Floppy's Phonics one.

[maizieD]

Thanks,Feenie. I've tried to answer this twice already and my tablet refuses to post or loses the answer

[Bananaketchup]

storynanny I had slightly wandered off, having inadvertently started some professional infighting. The book DD had didn't have a story - it was page after page of 'here is a roof/chimney/path'. DD said it was boring and she was right, it was. She now has one called 'dressing up' which has pics of children in fancy dress and text of 'I am a rabbit/pirate' etc. She looks at the one which is 'I am a dinosaur' and says 'I am a crocodile'. She's not looking at the words at all. I did manage to catch her teacher who kind of agreed the books are boring, and suggested encouraging DD to borrow a story book to sort of co-read at home, as well as her set reading book, to keep reading more interesting/enjoyable. We're now on half term so we'll see if it helps.

[mrz]

Sadly Bananaketchup the books you describe are Look & Say the child can't read them without guessing from the pictures.

[storynanny]

Banana, I don't blame you for wandering off. Too many of the threads on education seem to develop into professional disagreements and the original issue raised gets sidelined. I have made it my personal mission to get the threads back on track and try to return to the original query.
I think the best thing is what you have already started to do, ie talk to the teacher.

[Feenie]

I have made it my personal mission to get the threads back on track and try to return to the original query.

Yes, I noticed that by the way you said Heaven forbid looking at the pictures should be outlawed. That might be what the TA meant when she was working with your daughter.
Of course I strongly believe that excellent phonics teaching is the way forward. But over the last 35 years I have also taught children with photographic memories who learned to read bypassing phonic training.

Which would in no way provoke more of the same professional discussion whatsoever, oh no.

[storynanny]

Fair point, however I am realising that we are not helping the original poster now and am least doing my bit to return to her query now.

[CecilyP]

The books that OP describes sound as if they are designed specifically to be read via the pictures. The purpose of them is more to hammer home the high frequency words this, is, a, here, I, am, rather than to actually read the words that are illustrated. After a month in school, any school, she would be highly unlikely to be able to decode the illustrated words, (so covering the picture was bound to lead to problems) nor would she really be expected to remember those words either, though some children will. They do sound boring and I think the teacher hasn't really answered OP's question but rather side-stepped it by suggesting story books because it will be the OP rather than the DC reading these, which I am sure she does anyway.

[Pythonesque]

I've read the first few pages of this thread and of necessity skipped to the end ...

My mother's been a (private) remedial teacher for decades (not in the UK) and has been there seen that so far as reading theories and teaching fads are concerned. In reality more than 50% of her work has represented picking up the pieces after failed teaching (she always knows when a school is failing because she'll get one child and suddenly has several from the same class ...). But she has also picked up the pieces when special reading interventions have failed a child. The think these situations most often have in common is that a single strategy is being pushed to the exclusion of all else. If that strategy is look and say, some children will get it, many will struggle. If that strategy is "pure" phonics, more children will get it, some will still struggle and fail. And so on.

By dint of experience and (dare I say it) common sense, my mother has always tailored her approach to each student and uses a variety of material with all of them. And definitely she has taught numerous children, often with "specific learning difficulties" for whom phonics is a relatively unhelpful approach. Other strategies will allow such children to make progress, and specific efforts will be needed to give them the decoding skills that phonics provide. An interesting subset are those who turn out to have a high frequency hearing loss (or in some cases a very patchy hearing loss hitting small frequency ranges only) - if you can't hear the difference between a set of consonant sounds then focussing on those sounds isn't going to help you read very much!!

[mrz]

Pythonesque you don't say which country your mother practiced her skills as a remedial teacher but I would point out the phonics employed for example in the USA & Australia are very different to those taught in the UK so perhaps her experience isn't the same as very experienced UK teachers who do not encounter the problems you mention.

[mrz]

thinkingreadingwritings.wordpress.com/2014/02/15/code-teaching-or-code-breaking/

[mrz]

www.societyforqualityeducation.org/parents/bkgrnd1.html#responses

[MuddlingMackem]

Interesting link mrz.

[Spaghettinetti]

I totally agree with swimmingwithsharks. There are loads of strategies that we employ when reading a text. I teach adults nowadays and use flash cards with images and words to introduce new vocabulary (I teach foreign languages). Eventually, my students remember the words, recognise them in texts and write them independently. The same thing applies for little ones...especially visual learners.

[mrz]

When was the last time you used pictures to read Spaghettinetti? or read the research on learning styles?

[columngollum]

images and words to introduce new vocabulary

isn't the same as

used pictures to read

(Just as swimming isn't the same as drowning, even if they happen in the same pool.)

[mrz]

are you an expert in teaching MFL too columngollum?

[Spaghettinetti]

I'm actually learning German and using images to help me interpret text all the time, the same ways little ones do when reading story books. I actually did my Primary PGCE in 2008 and have continued CPD since then, so am quite up to date on learning styles, thanks.

[maizieD]

There is no such bl**dy thing as a 'visual learner'.

And even if there were, what is NOT visual about learning letter/sound correspondences? You SEE the letters and say the sounds.

And how on earth did they learn to talk with nothing there to 'see'?

[maizieD]

so am quite up to date on learning styles, thanks.

OMG! Where on earth did you do your PGCE?

www.senseaboutscience.org/blog.php/77/neuromyths-and-why-they-persist-in-the-classroom

[mrz]

You obviously aren't up to date on learning styles ...
neurobollocks.wordpress.com/2013/05/23/why-learning-styles-dont-exist-by-daniel-willingham/

fluency21.com/blog/2014/02/18/deconstructing-the-myth-of-learning-styles/

www.edudemic.com/the-myth-of-learning-styles/?utm_content=buffer97af3&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

reedgillespie.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/the-pitfalls-of-learning-styles-and-how.html

www.danielwillingham.com/1/post/2012/06/teachers-dont-need-to-learn-neuroscience.html

[mrz]

"Sometimes people speak about a “visual” learner or an “auditory” learner. The implication is that some people learn through their eyes, others through their ears. This notion is incoherent. Both spatial information and reading occur with the eyes, but they make use of entirely different cognitive faculties. Similarly, both music and speaking activate the ears, but again these are entirely different cognitive faculties. Recognizing this fact, the concept of intelligences does not focus on how linguistic or spatial information reaches the brain—via eyes, ears, hands, it doesn’t matter. What matters is the power of the mental computer, the intelligence, that acts upon that sensory information, once picked up."

[MuddlingMackem]

FWIW I would say I'm a visual learner. I remember stuff much better if I've read it than if I've heard it. DS is the same. I failed miserably to learn any Italian from cassettes, but an old 'Teach Yourself' book had much better results. :)