Phonics and high frequency words.

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My son started reception last week. Today he brought home a pack of phonics cards in the order of jolly phonics they are expected to learn 4 a week which will match what they are doing in clas. Great very effective.
However he also brought home a home made 'my first reading book' and a sheet of high frequency words which matches the words in the book. They are meant to 'learn' 1 page a week.
Week 1: I am ....
Week 2: I can play
Week: 3 I like to play

This doesn't seem like good practice to me, he can't decide play or like with his current phonics knowledge and is just meant to learn them .
Should I query this ?

You're right it isn't good practice or good phonics.
The ideal would be to wait until he's covered at least one spelling for all 42 sounds taught inter JP prog.

When you meet words he can't decode yet get him yo say the sounds he knows already ( don't imagine they've covered /k/ /l/ or any dugraohs yet?) then provide the information he needs in order to decode the whole word. That way he isn't getting the message that these words can't be decoded.

People more qualified to comment than I am will probably be along in due course. But I am afraid there are STILL schools using some 'proper' phonics books and methods, but unfortunately alongside outdated methods such as 'searchlights' and 'look and say' methods.

This may be because they haven't yet invested in enough Phonics books, or they are teachers who have been there 'for ever' and don't see why they should their methods.

I should have guessed! mrz got there before me!

It's not current good practice, but I must admit my DS1's very experienced Reception teacher did similar and it worked for him. They had a handful of sight words to learn alongside phonics sounds in the first few weeks before they started bringing books home as she said it helped their confidence if they recognise words immediately in their first reading book, so experience success straight away. They had a range of reading books though and not all completely decodeable at their level.

It may help the confidence of the children who are able to remember those word as 'wholes' but it does nothing for the children who struggle. They just learn very early on in their school career that they are a bit of a failure..

There is absolutely no reason why children should be given books to read which contain words which are beyond the limit of their current phonic knowledge. It just seems to indicate ignorance on the part of the teacher..

N.B 'Very experienced' does not necessarily mean 'good'. It quite often means 'completely ignores all up to date research evidence in favour of the way they were trained'.

Funnily enough their last Ofsted report praised her as a skilled teacher and mentioned how well reading is taught

how long ago was that?

Thank you for your replies, and advice how to teach him the words.
I think it'll be a struggle to learn words as a whole.
Teacher who is also head of ks1 and literacy phonics is well past retirement age and stuck in her ways. We have also been told to tell children to read using the pictures . How is that reading?! DS looks at page. 'Hat'? 'Dog'? 'House' 'garden' guessing away

Many schools teach reading very effectively without sticking to 'pure' phonics.

A few H F words with unique or very unusual spellings (I, to) are more efficiently learnt as wholes.

Isn't this teacher simply gently introducing children to the fact that some English words are a bit tricky to decode, without making a big deal of it?

I and to don't have unique spellings Masha try "of" as the word in the 100 HFWs with a unique representation for the sound /v/ but of course it's so High Frequency we don't have a problem "normalising" it.

Last year mrz.

The main sound for a final o is as in 'no, go, so, ago, polo, zero',
except 'do, who'.
'To' has two pronunciations:

1. As in 'Where are u off to'?
2. And as a barely audible schwa sound before verbs,

e.g. to go, to play, to stay....

To and do in the reception hfw masha?

So not unique if the spelling appears in two very common words?

Same pronunciation in some accents

Very lucky snoss obviously the inspectors haven't read the Ofsted report on "teaching reading"