Peter and Jane books - How did you find them?

[MonsterCar]

Just wondering if you found these books very beneficial?

Also, what would level would an average child who has just turned 6 be able to get to?

DS struggled with starting to learn to read so I'm trying to help him as much as I can so he keeps pace with the class.

He started school at age 5 (we are not in the uk).

DS started on book 1a about 4 weeks ago and will be moving on to 4a soon.

They are obviously very good for the common sight words - but do you think it's ok to stick with these books for now or should I be mixing it up with phonic based books.

I'm inclined to stick to these books as it's kind of amazing to see the progress

[MyYummyMammy]

First day on mumsnet - easy to rub people up the wrong way.

Let me explain. Where I come from, the phrase “good trick!” is commonly used to mean something like “nicely done!” or a generally friendly non-judgmental “good job accomplishing that cool thing you just did” or generally a thumbs up of approval.

I wasn’t referring to it in a pejorative sense, with the sense of diminishing the achievement, or relegating it to a bar stool party-trick, or trying to make any serious cognitive psychology point about how precisely to rank the achievement of discerning how to read, in various ways such as whole word recognition versus other ways like phonics or gradually working it out yourself, or suggesting that all children should be left to learn or even could learn this “trick”, or assuming that it’s a good idea.

[user789653241]

I think it's kind of trick, mrz. It's quite easy to see the difference between child who has figured out the code and child who is just memorising words. Child who figured out code could read anything in front of them, while child memorising get stuck with new words. But the thing is, the child with good decoding skill doesn't necessarily mean good reader with good comprehension. Thus, I think it's kind of a trick.

[Norestformrz]

It's not a trick. In the absence of direct teaching the fortunate among us are able to work out the relationship between spoken and written words. Those that don't will struggle and some will sink.

[MyYummyMammy]

Good trick!

[user789653241]

My ds learned to read without phonics teaching. But not by memorising either. He figured out code himself .

[MyYummyMammy]

I’m showing him what I learned. I can see a lot of benefits of phonics too. Both approaches obviously have pros and cons. There is no apparent confusion so far. I was just asking for others opinion who have gone before me.

[user789653241]

If he is learning to read using phonics, why do you want him to memorise the words as well? If the child is actually decoding, I'd imagine they will never hit the wall.

[MyYummyMammy]

Thanks for the response, it makes sense. I can see already some fairly similar looking words are easily confused.

[HarveySchlumpfenburger]

Yep. That was the first thing I did after I pressed post. There seems to be a recent I sh YouTube video as well.

[Norestformrz]

She's still at it on Twitter apparently

[HarveySchlumpfenburger]

It will happen at different points for different children. Children with a very good working memory can memorise a fairly reasonable number of words before they hit that wall. Children who struggle with working or visual memory will hit it earlier.

[MyYummyMammy]

I’m wondering whether other parents find the “look and say” method of P&J means the child kind of hits a wall in reading, and hard to “memorise” so many words and apply any of them phonetically. And roughly when does this happen? He is at level 5a now but I can see the level 8 and beyond look very challenging if you are only going by memorisation.

[MyYummyMammy]

Hi, it sounds like a contentious topic that has started revolutions! I was just trying to get a feel for whether parents were using Peter and Jane much.

I am doing it a bit with my child, it seems to help alongside the phonics in school. It worked for me and my siblings. We’re going ok so far. We tend to read each one twice on each level, which takes a month or so. It’s fun now that he can read lots of the words of the Julia Donaldson books. I think they complement each other fairly well.

[Feenie]

[HarveySchlumpfenburger]

Didn’t she get distracted by something else. I’m sure I remember seeing something about her giving up on spelling reform for a bit.

Anyone for a list?

[Norestformrz]

I wonder where she went

[MyYummyMammy]

ok sorry first time on mumsnet

[Feenie]

Ah, Mashabell and her nutso spelling reform!

Definitely have not missed her, I'm afraid!

[LetItGoToRuin]

ZOMBIE THREAD

[MyYummyMammy]

@DeeWe
Your own reading of Lord and the Rings at 6, and your children finishing P&J at 3.6 is extraordinary, and exceptionally rare.

What do you think were the reasons for this outlier-level of performance?

The only clue from your post I could get was that "you can get a long way without phonics"?

thanks,

[Seryph]

Except Masha that if nothing else "its"/"it's" and "there"/"their"/"they're" are all DIFFERENT WORDS and are spelt differently. To start with "it's" and "they're" are abbreviations the words are actually "it is" and "they are", the fact that some people are too lazy to think about what they are writing to do it correct is ridiculous. And before you say it I'm dyslexic and dyspraxic so if I can manage it so can everyone else. Oh and "their" comes from the Old Norse genitive plural "þei(r)ra", where "they" could be spelt "þeir", "þær", "þau" or "þá" depending on case and gender. Weirdly the Old Norse people had no problem understanding what they were going on about, so maybe we should be grateful English is much simpler.
Basically all I can gather from your many, almost identical posts, is that you have a rather basic understanding of the English lexicon and how it came to look the way it does, with a few points that you hang on to for dear life.

Since you are willing to accept that spelling reform really isn't going to happen with at least British English any time soon, perhaps you could stop just throwing your opinions on it at people asking for help with the CURRENT English language and their children's learning of it?

[Mashabell]

Seryph
There is no chance of English spelling being reformed any time soon. If there was, then getting rid of different spellings for identical words would be a good thing, at least those that people keep misspelling all the time, like 'its/it's' or 'there/their'.

Their identical sounds never cause the slightest problems in speech, any more than just the one spelling does for the 2,500 English words that have several meanings, such as 'mean, lean, found, sound, ground....'. Abolishing all heterographs would save a great deal of learning time and reduce spelling errors enormously, but adults who have been brought up to believe that they are essential would find them shocking at first.

The current system is totally nuts. 'Tear' for example spells two totally different words [tair] and [teer], but nobody objects to that. Yet the idea of reducing 'their/there' to something much more sensible like 'thair' seems outrageous to many people. - Brainwashing which starts at a young age and continues for many years is a very powerful thing.

[catkind]

Seryph, perhaps she wants us all to adopt newspeak and get rid of these anachronisms?
Masha, think the German Rechtscreibung reform gives you an idea how little appetite people have for changing spelling. Fact is English is a product of its long history, and will doubtless continue to evolve. You can't just redesign it.

[Seryph]

Oh Masha, I've been meaning to ask you (or should that be u? Or ewe? since you think they are the same) in your strange attempts to make English "logical" what would you like us to do with other English homophones? Like tear and tier for example, should we just spell them all tear and guess the meaning? Because that would obviously be so much easier, right?!

On the Peter and Jane front, I'm sure reading one of them through once probably won't destroy a child's ability to read but frankly phonetics are the best method and I wish I'd been taught them!

[mrz]

Reading Wars ???? ???????????????? hilarious!