How can I 'motivate' dd to learn her words? (reception) apologies if it gets long

[MrsBojangles]

dd got her first lot of words to 'learn' yesterday. 10 in all, some of them key words some of them just words relating to traffic (why? no idea).

asked teacher what 'learn' constitutes and she just said play games with her, sound them out etc. I even did a sheet of paper with the words on them and pictures where I could find, i.e. car, van, bike etc. so dd can match them up and has an optical aid. Problem there though is she's not trying to 'read' them or even tell me the letters she recognises in the word. All I keep getting is a 'don't know' which of course is plain nonsense because I know which letters she knows if that makes any sense at all. Oh and she does the same to the teacher!

I appreciate that after a day at school she's shattered, but e.g. tonight she actually wanted to do her words however that didn't last long and she was just clowning around...

Also got some of the 'I can learn' books, which she loves because of the stickers which she does get when she's done well - i.e. yesterday she recognised 3 words immediately and she got a sticker. However we were doing one of the excercises she chose, which was basically 6 pictures (3 starting with c and 3 starting with o) and the task was to pick out which ones start with c or o. You get the picture. So she kept saying everything starts with c... first of I was still in good humour and saying so Octopus starts with a c? to which she goes YES. argh.

Anyhow... Questions:

how can I get her to concentrate instead of clown around?

what attention span can I realistically expect of dd after a day at school?

do I try to enforce her to sound out the words or should I just be glad if she matches like with like?


I'm new to this 'homework' melarchy and am not coping very well as after 10 mins of her messing about I sort of loose my rag...

HELP and advice highly appreciated

[MrsBojangles]

kid I hope the teacher will adjust. During parent evening she told me that dd managed to stump her that very day because there was a slight skirmish with dd poking one of the boys (dd is one of the smallest there so I did have to giggle)... however when teacher tried to find out what happened dd simply 'shut down'. Teach didn't know how to handle it ... I told her just to leave dd alone or remove her from the situation. Also found out afterwards that dd hadn't eaten... she then usually gets rather 'physical' as too tired to debate things... just like her mama

As for what they use at school... I think they mentioned phonetics, but they seem to do a mix

[MrsBojangles]

and maybe a stupid question but how on earth does one sound out 'the'?

[kid]

they don't!
They see it so often that they memorise it. Some words can't be sounded out so its really hard to teach them how to sound out and then say no you don't sound that word out. How are they supposed to know the difference!

[hotandbothered]

the - t + h = th

• th + e = the
  
  does that make sense? I teach the blend 'th' so children automatically put it together in words

[soapbox]

Haven't read all the responses but here is my tuppenceworth

Get two tins (big enough to fit the words into).

Your tin has 10 sweets in it (or stickers or football cards or whatever is likely to motivate her).

You take the words out of her tin and when she knows any word straight away, it goes into your tin and you swap it for a sweetie. Every so often try her with one of the words already in your tin, if she doesn't remember it it goes back into her tin and you get the sweetie back. Once her tin is completely empty then she gets to keep the rewards that are now in her tin. Her tin is filled with new words and yours with sweets and you start all over again!

If she needs more frequent rewards, you can do it with 5 words rather than 10.

Turning it into a game like this hopefully will make it more fun for her!

This is the way the SENCO at my DCs school does it - and the children love going to see her.

[hotandbothered]

That'll teach me to post at night - 'the' doesn't work - I was thinking of 'them'!

[MrsBojangles]

dd is driving teach nuts with not 'wanting' to grasp 'the'

[frances5]

We have the following tricky words

the
he
she
me
I

I make a game of it by diliberately saying them phonically. Andrew ends up in stitches. We have also been pointing them out in story books.