Non decodable books in reception

[Sleeperandthespindle]

My DS was so excited to bring home his first book with words today - then disheartened to find he couldn't read it. He is doing well with blending with the phonemes and graphemes he knows, but of course hasn't been taught 'pp', 'er' and 'wh' yet.
Is it worth mentioning this to school? They must know that it's utterly pointless sending home such books? There's a printed page at the front of the reading record that mentions 'looking for clues' and 'encourage to guess'...

[TeacherBob]

Also, how do they teach phonics?

Letters and sounds, jolly phonics, read write inc or soundswrite (or another but they are the main 4 in my area)

[Feenie]

You need to see an everyday phonics lesson being taught - children have no problems substituting an /o/ sound after a w or accepting that is a 4 letter string that is an alternative spelling for /oo/.

The problem with picture cues is that children who can't read rely on this method of guessing, and it fails them miserably because it isn't reading. When we have children who join us from other schools as non-readers it's incredibly difficult to get them to stop guessing since some idiot has told them early on that it's fine. Undoing that damage is hard.

As for posters who claim decodable books are boring,, thee genuinely boring books are look and say which hammer words home over and over again.

[Feenie]

That should have read as /oo/.

[JassyRadlett]

You need to see an everyday phonics lesson being taught - children have no problems substituting an /o/ sound after a w or accepting that is a 4 letter string that is an alternative spelling for /oo/.

I'm not disputing that. What I'm saying is that there is no way a child to come to 'tough' without having encountered it before and decode it purely using phonics - ie knowing which were the correct combination of sounds for the letters presented to them in a previously unseen word.

I'm a huge fan of phonics, but stretching absolutism to the point where it's suggested that all reading can be done just by phonics undermines it.

[JassyRadlett]

(And I have seen phonics lessons taught, cheers.)

[Mistoffelees]

TeacherBob the sentence is "Is it a spaceman?" Biff, Chip and co are watching each other make shadows inside a tent and dad straps stuff to himself so his shadow looks like an astronaut, none of the children I've read this book with have known that that's what he was trying to be even after I've told them the word so I avoid giving it out now.

[catkind]

DC loved the phonics books.
DS new school sent a non phonics scheme book home before they realised he could read. "This is a horse. The horse is in a field. This is a baby horse. The baby horse is in a field..." Ugh.

OP, do the book people have Songbirds on at the moment? They're lovely, very engaging. We also had some read write Inc phonics books from them.

[Feenie]

What I'm saying is that there is no way a child to come to 'tough' without having encountered it before and decode it purely using phonics - ie knowing which were the correct combination of sounds for the letters presented to them in a previously unseen word.

Really? You need to come into my Y2 classroom then - my children know that if they encounter anywhere other than the beginning of a word, it's an alternative spelling for /f/. They do this automatically to read lots of words - laugh, photograph, enough. It doesn't cause them the problems you imagine it does - it's just part of the complex code that we teach them every day.

[SecretSaffron]

I think it is really sad that Phonics is now taken to the extremes it is , with children not learning other ways to read. Yes, phonics is helpful and useful and essential to reading. BUT it is not the ONLY skill needed to read.
my eldest DS and DD didn't learn to read using phonics. They learned using key words in the days pre-phonics. And yes, they were also encouraged to use other skills such as using picture for cues. I don't think it has harmed their academic progress too much as other posters may suggest....DS1 is off to Cambridge University next week, and DD1 has just got 4 A* and 6As in her GCSES and is now doing A levels, including English!
When my other children were younger and bringing home the purely phonics books I noticed their reading progress was much slower than with DS1 and DD1 so I made a point of reading NON decodable books with them to teach them the other skills along side phonics!

[GraceGrape]

Secret 80% of children always learned to read perfectly well without phonics. The issue is the 20% who did not. Synthetic phonics has a much greater success rate at getting all children reading. (I am sure there are exceptions, but in my personal experience since teaching phonics I have not had a KS1 class where anybody left without being able to read).

[Feenie]

That's great for YOUR children - not so great for the 20% it harms. That's one child in five. With no way of predicting which children it will be until it fails.

I think you would be posting a very different story if your children weren't part of the successful 80%.

[mrz]

Jassy why would you ask a beginner reader to independently read words beyond their ability?
Would you ask a reception child to solve a quadratic equation before teaching mathematical symbols and numerals? So why use reading scheme books to practise independent reading containing so many words the child can't read independently (without guessing) they do nothing to enhance the text and send the message that reading is too difficult for the child.

If your child has the word "tough" in a story book you're sharing it's a really simple matter to explain that is the sound /u/ and is the sound /f/ Debbie Hepplewhite refers to it as "incidental teaching" ie: teaching the knowledge when it's needed.

[mrz]

Actually, with 'spaceman' they'd be encouraged to look at the picture and the first letter of the word; 's'. 'A' is the first sound taught so they could use the strategies together to read the word.

Terrible reading skill but great guessing

[Bitlost]

We had the same problem, ditched the school books and bought Julia Donaldson's Songbird series. From that moment on, our Dd progressed very, very fast.

[JassyRadlett]

Really? You need to come into my Y2 classroom then - my children know that if they encounter anywhere other than the beginning of a word, it's an alternative spelling for /f/. They do this automatically to read lots of words - laugh, photograph, enough. It doesn't cause them the problems you imagine it does - it's just part of the complex code that we teach them every day

Through must be a challenge for them then.

And how do they know which version of ou to use, without vocabulary, experience, and a little of trying out the different options to see which sounds right?

What you've done is teach them that it can be an alternative but they need to use their knowledge, vocabulary and experience to determine when it's appropriate. Which is great. But it's not pure 'phonics is everything you'll ever need' and 'you can decide anything using phonics alone' as some on this thread are evangelising.

If phonics was all I'd ever had, I'd still believe awkward and orquid were separate words, pronounced slightly differently, but with similar meanings.

Mrz, I'm not suggesting that. At all, and you'll recognise that if you read what I've said.

I'm saying that the insistence that phonics is absolutely all a reader of English needs to figure out how any unknown word is pronounced is daft, makes you look quite silly and undermines phonics to the average parent. Which is a pity - but perhaps you're one of those teachers who feel parents shouldn't be interested in how their children are being educated and the attitude and approach of the person doing it.

[mrz]

Because they've been taught rather than encouraged to guess

[JassyRadlett]

This is an interesting article by an academic in the field, who decries any all or nothing approach.

Anyone who clings to a single orthodoxy and isn't prepared to question it or listen to other ideas worries me, regardless of the field they're in, or the merits of said orthodoxy. As I've said, I'm a huge fan of phonics but the near-religious fervour of some is frankly bizarre and yes, makes some parents doubt your objectivity and flexibility.

[mrz]

"I'm saying that the insistence that phonics is absolutely all a reader of English needs to figure out how any unknown word is pronounced is daft, makes you look quite silly and undermines phonics to the average parent"

The idea that phonics is about pronunciation is daft ... Unless the word is in your receptive vocabulary (you've heard it pronounced correctly) you won't know and no one has made that claim.

[JassyRadlett]

Yes, and they've been taught skills aside from pure phonetic decoding to aid word recognition. Sigh.

[JassyRadlett]

The idea that phonics is about pronunciation is daft ... Unless the word is in your receptive vocabulary (you've heard it pronounced correctly) you won't know and no one has made that claim.

Great! An agreement that skills outside of phonetic decoding matter to reading!

[JassyRadlett]

And I do apologise for using pronunciation; it was awkward (which I can spell these days) and intended as a proxy for reading aloud - which is clearly a no no in your book.

[mrz]

They don't need strategies other than decoding to read the words accurately

[JassyRadlett]

...so long as they're taught all the right language skills.

[mrz]

Why wouldn't they be?