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?

Books on the psychology of learning are of no use whatsoever to me. All I want is my youngest daughter to be able to read and she's well on her way.

So I'm alright Jack - my dd learnt to read using a combination of methods and stuff the 20% of children whose reading is actively damaged by mix of methods.

Well, if you send the 20% round to my house I'll teach them too.

You mean teach them with the method that your oldest DD rejected column?

FWIW - not much admittedly, I too taught my daughter to read at 2. Well only just 2 (i.e. nearly 3) as I felt slightly uncomfortable doing it earlier despite all of her interest in how words worked. I used phonics, and just before she turned 3 she blended her first word c-a-t and she literally jumped for joy.

I took a very low key approach (10 minutes here and there) but when it came to school and their blasted mixed methods, guess from the picture and stupid look and say books that don't match the code the DCs have learnt thus far, I took teaching her to read back into my own hands and gave her the code she needed to decode the look and say books. She finished reception on white band.

She's now in year 1 (a summer born 5 year old) and the longest book she's read to herself so far is 10 chapters and over 100 pages. She loves reading and has a decoding age of 9.5.

There is no need to guess when you can sound out and blend.

I have no problem with the idea of using other methods when children have issues that inhibit or delay them from sounding out and blending, but those children are in that 3 - 5%.

I also think there are a few children that have such excellent visual memories (photographic or nigh on) that they will learn via whole words, they see it once, and it's in there. However those children are likely to teach themselves to read and will come into reception reading fluently. They are also very few and far between.

Yes, that's right, with that method! The thing is, L&S works brilliantly on words like cat, dog, rug and so on, but it's rubbish for dinosaur names.

"As someone else said as a parent you want the result for your child not the 95% "

I'd say that's a bit short-sighted, at least if your child is going to carry on sharing a classroom with those other children. Subliteracy is a big cause of disruptive behaviour, as kids try to cover or distract attention from their inability to do what's being asked of them.

Low literacy among part of the cohort also seems to be a major reason for the kind of dumbing down that leads teachers to get kids to make posters rather than write coherent paragraphs for homework, for example. The wider the gap in ability in a classroom, the harder it is for teachers to differentiate effectively enough to provide challenging work for those of higher ability.

"As someone else said as a parent you want the result for your child not the 95% "

I'd say that's a bit short-sighted

Well, as a parent you've only got control of your child and not at all of the 95% So, even if you cared about the others there's nothing you could do about them. If you're keeping an eye on your child's progress at least you can provide workarounds where necessary. Even the children of friends, if you know they're struggling, there's not much you can do.

"how many chikldren, well taught - and I include those who have significant learning difficultiesm, as I know you have your fair share of those - have not been abkle to learn to read well using phonics?"

zero have failed to read at an age appropriate level teachwith2kids and the main secondary school the majority of our pupils move onto tell us none need support after they leave us.

Come on, cg. What 'idealogical stuff' are you talking about?

So books on cognitive psychology are no good to you? You don't have to read a book; there's loads on the web. But of course, reading about it isn't as much fun as making it all up as you go along.

Thank heavens you are not a teacher; you could be potentially damaging 30 children belonging to other people instead of your own 2.

Don't worry, next time the ideological guff gets spouted I'll point it out, don't worry.

I've damaged my children, oh, my!! They can read. Oh, horror. What ever next? Writing, maybe.

I've seen you say in other threads that you don't care about anyone else's children, collumgollum, but I'd forgotten it until now.

Well, your older child has managed to work out the phonic code from your L&S teaching, and is now able to use that in order to read. Your other DD is starting to recognise word shapes - a bit like seeing a triangle and saying 'triangle' - which is not yet reading in any real sense. However, it sounds as if she too is in the lucky 80% and so will be able to move hugger-mugger from this process to reading despite the indirect approach.

Whereas Mrz has 100% success in teaching reading to hundreds of children of very, very mixed abilities. Do you know what - I'd follow her method, myself.

I didn't care about the unread 20% until I heard that without my intervention they'd continue to be unread. But I understand that someone is bringing them round to my house for tuition.

2 children out of 2 is 100%

Your smuggery isn't funny - just the opposite, actually.

^but my English tells me that lots of our words are closely related"

"bookworm book & worm"
"handbook hand & book"

I would hope your English would tell you they are compound words

"Reception children are between four and five, usually. The children clearly have to learn the letters and their sounds before they can blend them."

incorrect assumption

The thing is, if I used my DS as my only example (as column uses her children as her only example), I could say:
'Teaching children to read is easy. You read them lots of books. After a while, they will be able to recite them from memory. Then a little while later they will be able to read anything that you put in front of them. All you ever have to do is read to them for the first 3 years of their life, they do the rest of it themselves'

However, I would never 'push' that message repeatedly on a public forum as 'the best way to learn to read, everyone else is wrong / spouting ideological guff', because I KNOW that would be ludicrous. I KNOW that statistically such a method if acquiring the ability to decode wholly unknown texts is rare, and I know it would have a massive failure rate if applied generally. So instead I learn about other, more effective methods that would work for absolutely everyone, not just my own child.

If column gave her 2 year old s a t p i n and taught her the associated sounds and how to blend, she would immediately be able to make, blend and read:
sat
sit
pin
nip
pan
pat
pit
tin
tan etc.

(at 1 sound per day, this can often be achieved within the first 2 weeks of reception)
There is no need to learn ALL letters or ALL sounds before a child can learn to blend to create a whole variety of words. With 1 nerw sound being added each day, the range of words that can be blended and read increases exponentially.

Who said anything about being the best way? So far I'm not convinced that anyone has hit upon the best way. As far as I can see there is simply an argument about who thinks what they do is the best for the children concerned. Well, OK. But I'm sure the priests in Ireland who are getting locked up thought what they were doing was best for the children concerned too.

In fact everyone believes that. Whether it's true or not is a different matter.

she would immediately be able to make, blend and read:

Not necessarily. Some children struggle to blend.

If it was that easy you'd just give the children all the sounds in one go and then the King James Bible and they'd read it by tea time.

OK, let's askl the question in another way:

• Given that mixed methods / L&S have a 20 % failure rate
• Phonics has a 3-5% failure rate, possibly less if really well taught
• Even your daughter has abandoned L&S now she has worked out the phonic code

what else would you like to see to agree to the proposition that 'excellently taught synthetic phonics is the best method known of at the moment for learning to read, as it has the greatest success for the largest % of children?'

I use Sounds~Write and after the first lesson our children can blend and segment words - mat, sat, sit, at, it, Sam, Tim, Tam ...
In that first lesson they learn to read and write words (having not previously been taught letters or sounds as columngollum seems to think is necessary)

" Some children struggle to blend."

Which is why I said 'often be achieved'. Also the reason why satpin are used is because they have a very simple sound / spelling correspondance - complexity does arise in phonics when it comes to multiple ones of these, which is why continuing to teach phonics for the at least the first 3 tyears of school is so vital.

If cjhildren struggle to blend, then help them to blend, don't say 'let's abandon phonics'. If a child takes a little while to learn to walk, we don't instantly say 'oh well, given them a wheelchair', do we?