phonics advice please... books seem to be too difficult

[PourquoiTuGachesTaVie]

Ds is 4 and in reception. He's brought his second reading book home today and I've just gone through it with him. It's a level 1 "spiral starter" book (as was the first book he brought home) which focuses on the word "my" plus a range of other words, some of which he can have a go at decoding (such as bed and doll) and but most of the words are impossible for him to decode yet (bike, paints, flower, brother, shoes).
He's getting quite frustrated that he can't read these words and I don't blame him.

Is this normal? These books were published in 1995 so I'm not sure if they're entirely suited to phonics but that doesn't appear to be the case so far.

Are there any reading scheme books I could look into getting for personal use that could better support how ds is learning to read?

Also; can anyone link to a reliable resource for a list of "tricky" words so I can start practicing these with him.

Also, which are the best workbooks to get to practice phonics? I've only looked at jolly phonics so far but I'm open to suggestions.

No you're right I didn't. Nor did I read it fluently or by any form of word recognition. It was more a process of educated guess work. Which is a strategy I don't ever use when reading so I'm not quite sure what that proves.

Papermover, I've only read your op in the thread you linked to and its scarily similar to my issues here! I'll read the whole thread tomorrow morning, it looks like it will be useful thanks. (I'm in the North West by the way, if you are too then I can be more specific?)

This is fascinating. DS started school in September and is doing Jolly Phonics but is coming home with pink band 1b books from the Collins Cat range and I don't see how they are supporting what she is doing in class. The books follow a pattern of having the same words on each page but DS isn't in a position to sound them all out yet. For example, in early October, the book went "we can see" on each page and then "frogs", "birds", "dragonflies" and "pond skaters". "We can see" was bad enough as DS hadn't learned the "ee" sound by then but how in earth was he supposed to figure out "dragonflies" or "pond skater". The current book is "a cat has" - all of which he can sound out - "fur" (fine), "legs" (fine), "ears" (no), "teeth" (doesn't know "ee" or "th"). When I have commented on this in the reading record, the reply has been "reading the story from the pictures is important at this stage". Is this right? I feel not from your comments above.
At the same time I have been doing some Songbirds at home with DS and he is loving decoding them. We're doing some Biff & Chip ones too which DS doesn't enjoy as much but likes the fact he can figure them out.

Was thinking about you the other week Papermover. How is your DD getting on with her reading?

It took us a long time and a lot of fighting to get our early reading books replaced with phonics books as our literacy coordinator was very 'old school' and didn't like it.
She held the purse strings and wouldn't part with any money for new books as we already had books, despite those books being very outdated.
I would talk to the teacher about it and ask the best way to use them.

As for reading as adults, I'm with Charles. We don't decode. We know the shape of the word. That is why when we write a word incorrectly we know that it doesn't 'look right'. Anyway, as anyone who has ever taught reading will tell you, half the words in the English language aren't decodable.
I'm sure everyone can read enough, cough, thought, through and though, but you didn't decode them, you could read them because you knew what they said.

Agree with Yoni and Charles Ryder. To be honest, I ignored reading books sent home by the school until my children stood a good chance of being able to read them. Decoding using phonics is necessary but dull, and I found it easier to do that little and often on sound-by-sound, word-by-word sort of basis. By the time my children were reading books to me, they actually were reading and it was a lot less tiring for both parent and child.

Why do you ask Papemover?

And back to decoding as adults, there are some phonic sounds I didn't even know existed until I started to teach them. Ou as in loud and sound, ure as in pure and mature and oi as in coin and boil.
I had simply never noticed them before, so how could I have be decoding?

Not in London papermover. We got decodable books about 4 years ago now when the old literacy coordinator retired.

I'm still reading through all the resources that have been linked to on this and papermover's thread, but I've ordered the songbirds set and I will start teaching ds the rest of the letter sounds. I've left a note in his reading record that the guesswork is frustrating him and asked if he could be given books with words that can be decoded in them. Got parents evening next week so I'll raise it then too.

Anyway, as anyone who has ever taught reading will tell you, half the words in the English language aren't decodable.

Stoke?

What is 'Stoke' meat to mean?

Meant, even.

See above Ofsted report I linked to.

Proving what?
I agree with teaching phonics. However grown adults who can read do not decode. They just plain don't.
Just like I can make a sponge cake without looking at the recipe each time.
Or I can spell a word from memory rather than sound it out.
Phonics is a great place to start and will get a child going, assuming that they have the correct books in their school.
But, look at most of the high frequency words that we teach children to learn by heart. Does any child sound out go, no, to, the, was?

And why do you question this comment: "Anyway, as anyone who has ever taught reading will tell you, half the words in the English language aren't decodable."

Are you saying that all the words in the English language are decodable? Like 'are' and 'you'? One of the hardest tasks when teaching children to read is to find up with sentences that are completely decodable using phase 2 and 3 phonics.

www.ofsted.gov.uk/news/too-many-primary-school-children-stoke-trent-are-falling-behind-their-reading-ofsted-finds-0

Pigbin if words in English weren't decodable you wouldn't be able to read or write them which clearly isn't the case

How are he, the, you, we, no decodable?

What isn't decodable about the word 'are'? Or 'you', for that matter. Or any of the words you mentioned in your above post, such as through.

Must tell our Y1 children to stop learning the code for these pesky words, they are clearly deluded when they show me how to say each phoneme.