Peter and Jane - best way of using it

[EmGee]

Book 1a seems to have gone down well with DD1 (4.2) Have gone through the first half of the book and she likes the pictures and repeating the words.

My question is - just keep going through it and focusing on repeating the words until she can sight read them? Then on to the next book?

We live in France so she won't learn to read in French until she is in CP (aged 6) and I have heard that it can be easier for kids who have already learnt to read in their mother tongue.

I also got a Ruth Miskin set of books on The Book People but after a quick look, I feel a bit confused about phonics. Peter and Jane seemed much simpler to me!

This thread is full of answers to that.

So the use of Peter and Jane (controlled vocabulary, strong use of repetition, new words at the bottom of each page, pictures that match each steop of the text) is, to you, a really good example of how best to teach children to read through 'learning by sight'?

but for one child it really doesn't matter which method you use as long as it works.

Problem is, you really aren't going to know if the look & say route works until about 3rd year in school when children run out of memory. If they haven't managed to intuit how phonics works in the meantime they then start to struggle. It is also worth noting that this (about age 7) has traditionally been the age when children are supposed to be able to be tested for 'dyslexia'. I wonder why?

In the USA, where look & say instruction has practically a stranglehold, it is known as the 'third grade slump'; might also note that the US has a very high rate of illiteracy.

Whereas phonics works right from the start and never fails except with a tiny handful of children (it is estimated as some 3 - 5%).

Phonics also gets children reading a greater number of words much faster because as the letter/sound correspondences are learned a far greater number of words can be sounded out and blended than can be introduced in each book for 'look & say' learning.

I suggest that the OP looks at www.phonicsinternational.com Debbie does a free information & resource pack for early reading called 'Teeny Reading Seeds' (or something like..) It is very helpful.

Sorry, didn't make the link active: www.phonicsinternational.com

If the child doesn't fail in Y3 she might run out of memory in Y4
or Y5
or Y6
or Y7

or at university

or upon graduation
or just after graduation

or

Colimn,

The point is, by Y3 EITHER the child has worked out the phionic code (or been taught it - I know that your older child uses phonics now to read, so where did she learn it?) OR the capacity for them to 'learn individual words as wholes' will tend to run out, unless of course they remain reading vocabulary controlled books or simply skip all the words that they don't kniow (because look abnd say has no mechanism for working out new words unless mediated by an adult or fluent reader).

Some children will have a larger 'capacity' than others - as I have said before, DS has an insatiable appetitite for 'pure facts' to memorise - but eventually, a child who has no capacity to work out unknown words by breaking them down into known pieces will simply be unable to assimilate any more.

Those of us who learned through Look and Say all those years ago, did learn the phonetic code didn't we. It just wasnt explicitly spelled (haha pun) out to us, in the way it is now. Us adults can break down words we don't know. Most children learning to read today, would find a way too.
I appreciate there are those for whom reading is difficult and they are helped by having the phonetic code made very clear....that they might get stuck, without a strategy to work out new words otherwise. But the majority Re not like this are they....and again, we are talking about 121 at home, not working with 30 children, of whom some are really struggling.

We were taught to spell (and thereby to remember and recognise the constituent parts of words) and to look unknown words up in the dictionary. It's not rocket science, you know.

[Which is of course in many ways ridiculous - reading means being able to read unknown words, which means that at some point ALL true readers, even those who initially learn through look and say must move from 'reciting known words' to 'being able to working out unknown words' And that must require some form of breaking down into consituent parts and reassembling them (ie some kind of phonics / word part knowledge).

However, some 'look and say' taught children 'appear to read' early in their school career through reciting known words, but do not make the jump to breaking down and reading unknown words - and that will tend to happen at c. Year 3 because that is when the vocabulary required to be read tends to expand massively. These children have not become 'proper readers' because they cannot tackle the words they need to achieve this.

It is quite hard to tell 'real readers' from those who 'appear to read' at earlier stages, especially if the school uses schemes like Biff and Chip with controlled vocabulary and lots of picture clues. So the problem only becmes visible rather later, when venturing outside this comfort zone.

Why is 'would find a way' acceptable??? Our job is to teach children to read. It's not to teach them seomthing else and then hope that they find a way from there to true reading. Why not teach true reading right from the start?? I genuinely don't understand....

If reading genuinely meant "the ability to read unknown words" then a good test would be reading a foreign language where all of the words are unknown.

That's not the definition of reading.

Phonics/whole word... Not bovverd. BUT.

Peter plays football. Jane looks on. "Well done peter, that was good," says Jane.

Jane helps mummy in the kitchen.

Peter helps daddy in the garden (and then goes for a beer, whilst watching a little light porn).

Surely this is reason enough to use P&J ONLY to assist in lighting your wood burner on chilly evenings??

I think a lot of the children mentioned on this thread would have learned to read quickly and had a love of books whatever method their parent chose as they have parents motivated to teach them, who share books with them and lead by example.

I was one of those children who learnt somehow by myself at a very young age. My DS goes to a school with a very strong pure phonics approach. He learnt to read extremely quickly with it, but I actually think he would have learnt quickly with any method. The difference is in his spelling. He is very accurate for his age. My spelling is atrocious because of how I learnt to read - for instance I've been aware at work recently I keep typing appraisal wrongly, I put the i in the wrong place. DS would never do that because he knows the 'a' sound is formed from 'ai'. It's not just about reading.

MaizieD, I understand what you are saying. In a school, its not possible to take risks and use a system where some may fall through the cracks.
I think we can be more flexible at home. So I started with Peter and Jane (aged 3.5) and at about 4 started working with Jolly Phonics. Bu that time child was at pre school and doing some phonics there too. Carried on with Peter and Jane, finishing the scheme towards the end of reception. Child also reading ORT books from school (not synthetic phonics I know) along with a things like The Faraway Tree at home. In Year One did the Phonics test at end of year and got full marks. Now reading Mr Gum, Roald Dahl etc and doing Apples and Pears synthetic phonics at home.
So we weren't without phonics. We had them. But we started with Peter and Jane. It might not have worked for everyone, but it worked for our child....and because I was doing it at home, that was all I needed to be interested in.

"Those of us who learned through Look and Say all those years ago, did learn the phonetic code didn't we." the fortunate ones did but many thousands failed to do so.

Oh no! P&J and phonics, uh, mixed, mixed, mixed

I see a slump approaching in Y3, (well or Y4)

Mrz, but no one is saying schools should go back to this mixed method or Peter and Jane. Just that it can work for individual parents working g with individual children at home.

wrong again columngollum not mixed methods

In some conversations even the phonics enthusiasts say that for individual parents the method they choose of supporting reading is OK regardless of which method it is. The most important thing is that the parents support reading.

But common sense tells us that anyway.

whole word = MM
whole language = MM

remember that?

ChocolateWombat I was commenting on your point nothing to do with going back or mixed methods or Peter & Jane.

Simply put some fortunate learners are able to work out the connection between written & spoken language for themselves others are unable to do so amd fail to become functionally literate.

You can fail to work that connection out regardless of what method you're taught by.

If you are explicitly taught what the connection is you don't need to work it out that's the point

"whole word = MM" X
"whole language = MM" X

wrong again

Lots of words don't have an explicit connection. That's the point. I know some people try to get around that problem by redefining the uncomfortable words in our language as "not words."

It doesn't matter what you call them. You can call them funny print squiggles if you like. The result is the same. They've still got to be read.