Mixed Reading Methods -help

[MrEBear]

DS, has just started P1 (YrR). He has been coming home with sounds to learn, which is fine, letters so far are S, A, T, I, P, however
he knows most of the sounds from my efforts and nursery.

He also has a tub of flash cards so far we have; a; at; the. To be taught as whole words. I'm not convinced that is the right way to go about it. Should I go with my belief that a & at should be taught phonically or will that confuse him?

I did try teaching him to read a year ago but never got very far. So concerned that he would end up bored in school if I did suceed I sat the reading to the side.

My 2 got words home in a word box too in P1. They also did phonics alongside them. Worked ok for them and they are both great readers

I would go with your belief. The words he's being sent home with are so frequent that he might move to reading them without overt lending anyway. And that should tick off whatever box the school want to tick.

The only slight issue might be that someone in school might tell him not to blend, but that may never happen.

Think they are called high frequency words and not all are easy to sound out using phonics

'At' is fine to sound out but once he knows it he should be encouraged to sight read it. 'The', and others he will probably bring home will need to be learnt by sight as they are phonetically irregular. That's the approach we use at my school anyway.

These are the first three words in a list of 100 high frequency words. We do SAFMEDS at our school, the child is shown the cards one by one and asked to read the word. They have one minute of just reading these words, it has more to do with memorising the words instead of blending. Maybe he'll have these words this week, then the teacher will tick at the end of the week which words he can read straight away and give him new ones.

A good explanation of how yo teach High Frequency Words
http://literacyblog.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/more-on-high-frequency-words.html

http://literacyblog.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/high-frequency-words.html

Thanks for your confirmation on what I was thinking if they can be sounded out get him to sound them. And aim for fluency that way. Mrz thanks for the links most appreciated

Pixie while I get most children will not have a problem with sight words there is a history of dyslexia in my family and I am mad keen to make sure DS gets the best chance / start he can get.

I can remember being P6 scratching my head trying to spell "be" I had the "b" but what the heck came next? It's not even an easy word to reword a sentence to avoid, I don't think anyone realised my strategy of reword a sentence to dodge the words I couldn't spell.

I'd teach that the spelling can be /e/ or /ee/ and in be we spell the /ee /sound e. Then I'd teach he, me, she, we (common words HFW with the same spelling for the sound).
Because these words are so common they need to be introduced early.