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.

I'm going to have to walk away from this thread as it is making me so stressed I am shaking and I really really don't need any stress today.

All I was trying to say is that literate adults, and I suspect literate children don't decode every single word they read every time.

Ofsted found that many schools in Štoke weren't sending home decodable reading books pipbin ... You can read how this was reflected in their inspections and pupil reading achievement if you follow the link

Interesting thread here. I'm an upper juniors teacher so, to be honest, I don't know much about phonics and reading strategies as, thus far in my career, I've been blessed with readers who range from the slow but steady to the fully fluent.

However, this year, I have found myself with 3-4 very poor readers (and spellers). What's puzzling me is that we have had external advice from SEND support agencies and they have suggested that 2 of these children need a visualisation strategy to help them read and spell. I haven't quite got my head around the report yet (received two days ago) but it suggests methods for encouraging children to form pictures and memorise shapes of whole words. The report is very against returning to phonics and learning phonemes etc. as it is felt that these two children just aren't those kind of learners.

This seems to fit in more with what Charles and Pip are saying. I guess it's about never just assuming a 'one size fits all'. Yes, some strategies might be more effective for the majority but, as teachers, we need to be adapting and responding to the children and their best ways of learning - particularly those with SEN.

As a Senco I would say you have been given very outdated advice and that you should look at current research.

Then you would be very wrong pipbin literate adults decode words or do you still rely on pictures when you encounter unfamiliar /technical names/words

But the advice for the other child they reviewed is to go right back to phonics, so it's not like they're just advising "outdated" advice because they don't have anything else to offer.

Giving different advice doesn't negate the fact that the advice is outdated

There is plenty of evidence to show learning whole words by sight is an ineffective strategy.
If on the other hand they mean that the children need to be taught to look closely at the spellings for the sounds in words to help them recall which alternative to use in their spelling ??

I've dug out the paper work.

This is the sort of thing being discussed.Particularly the bit that says: A small number of children with the most severe difficulties may never crack the ‘decoding code’ and alternative strategies such as focusing on units of meaning and compensatory tools like text to speech software are needed.

Point being, there will never be a 'one size fits all' strategy (much as I would bloody well love one).

What are they calling 'a small number' though? 1-2%?

How do you teach spelling, DameDiff?

Well, as I said, I've had several comparatively easy years in upper juniors (5 to be precise - 150 children) and this year I've got 3 extremely poor readers, one of whom needs to go right back to KS1 phonics (he joined our school in Y4). So, out of approximately 180 children, 2 are in that 'small number of children with severe difficulties'. That matches your 1-2% suggestion. These 2 children are not far off high school and they have just never managed to get the hang of decoding. We have to try something else for their sake.

As far as spelling goes, we use the Read, Write Inc. materials.

I've been doing simple phonome/graphemes and DS seems fairly confident about matching letters and sounds.

I've been steering clear of alternative graphemes as there are so many that I don't know where to start and don't want to overwhelm him. Are there any resources that show which order of alternative graphemes to introduce first as I don't want to confuse poor DS.

Full disclosure: I am an Early Years Teacher but have only ever worked with birth - nursery class aged children and don't know how best to proceed from here. With children exceeding higher than their age-related expectations in nursery, I've usually started off with simple letter combinations like "sh" "ch" but I've not yet encountered a child who seemed ready to progress beyond that before they went to reception, although several have left nursery confidently reading many CVC words. Any advice? I'm always happy to pursue CPD Mumsnet must count surely

So phonics then. Was puzzled at your not knowing much about phonics comment.

I've only ever known 2 children in 20 odd years who didn't learn to read using synthetic phonics - both went on to attend special school settings after primary schools.

Try Phonics International, phonyics.

How refreshing to see a teacher posting who wants to develop their subject knowledge!

And MN definitely counts!

This is a very interesting discussion. I just wanted to add something that probably isn't particularly enlightening for most of you but it was a bit of an "a ha!" moment for me...

When I was learning French I discovered that once I had been studying it for a couple of years, you could show me a French word I've never seen before but I'd still be able to pronounce it because the majority of the time I could recognise the "patterns" in the way it was spelled. At the time I knew nothing about phonics so it was a bit of a revelation when I started looking into how phonics works in English (to prepare myself for when ds started school) and I realised it was the same concept I'd been using in my French studies.

It's also similar to how I remember learning to spell a lot of common words (although I learned to read using the look and say method), as I was told that once you know how to spell the common endings (-ould, -ough, -ouse for example) then you can spell any word that follows that pattern just by changing the beginning of the word. It's seems a bit like doing phonics backwards iyswim?

Feenie, I don't know much about phonics - I'm an upper KS2 teacher and we've been using the Read, Write, Inc materials for just over a year; hardly an expert. Not really a cause for your confusion.

Previous to that it was death by rote learning / weekly spelling tests. I'm thrilled it's changed and it's a real eye opener for me to see how we can build on the phonics knowledge that they developed in KS1. I hope that this will get even better as it properly rolls up as a consistent scheme throughout all of Infants & Juniors.

However, these two fabulous little people who just can't read and just don't get it and cry frequently over it? It's not the way for them. (Whatever Ofsted say.)

I'm sorry Pourquoi - I totally hijacked your thread to help me get my head around something pretty new to me...that's terrible etiquette and I do apologise!

Oh, and Feenie - I think you're right about the "special" school comment (well, apart from calling it "special" school). At least one of these children needs a lot more than what mainstream can offer and there have been efforts to make this happen sooner rather than later. Unfortunately, it's probably going to wait until the end of year 6. In the meantime, I want to do everything I possibly can for them...and it isn't phonics.

If you've been teaching phonics for spelling for a year, then I think you are selling yourself short by saying you don't know much about it, tbh.

Just continue to read as much as you can - try the RRF website. Onwards and upwards!

I'm still reeling in amazement at Pipbin's statement that s/he teaches nursery.

Why on earth is a nursery teacher arguing the toss about advanced code words when all that nursery children need to be learning is simple code lettter/sound correspondences? if they do, indeed, need to be learning them at all.

As for how skilled readers appear to read, it is completely irrelevant to the fact, endorsed by all cognitive science research into reading, that the most effective route to successful reading, for all but a tiny percentage of children, is learning letter sound correspondences and how to use that knowledge to decode and blend in order to work out what the written word 'says'.

I'd also suggest that 'I've got a degree in nueroscience' reads Stanislas Dehaene's 'Reading in the Brain'.

Or watches his Youtube lecture:

Thanks Feenie, the second link on the free resources page of Phonics International was called "Order of Introduction of the Letter/s - Sound Correspondences" so exactly what I was looking for!

Not sure what is wrong with special - unless SEN, SENCOs or SILCs mean different words to you.

Excellent, phonyics

Don't worry about it, I'm learning too so it all helps!

Dh's little sister could not manage with phonics and it wasn't until she attended a school that catered for children with learning difficulties that she made any progress with reading. She's at high school now and is set to achieve a ridiculous number of really good grades thanks to receiving the right support, but phonics just wasn't for her. She has a sister a year older than her who never had any issues so it wasn't the teaching in that case, so I can understand how it isn't necessarily for everyone but then that would be the case with any method of learning.