How do you use the non-phonic ORT books?

[Purplelooby]

Just that really! As my son's reading improves they are sending him one phonic and one normal reading book (mostly but not exclusively ORT). With the second type - do you read it first to them or what? The Biff, Chip and Kipper non-phonic ones seem to contain a lot of words that aren't in the top 100 most frequent and aren't decodable which I'm guessing is on purpose. So far he's figured it out by context or by the pattern of the book - is this how it goes?

Rafa, it's not just about phonics/reading though.
I have heard it first hand, and seen the post on MN about not being able to go beyond year group because of mastery.
I know it's not true, since I read post written by teachers here.
But why does that happen everywhere in England?
Why there are so much knowledge gaps between teachers?
It is indeed depressing.

Because they believe rumours rather than research for emselves

Them

Exactly Irvine. In the last month alone I have heard:
introduction of spelling tests in year 1
cursive handwriting in reception
not being able to stretch higher attaining pupils by going out of the objectives for the year group

All blamed on Gove and the new curriculum. You can probably add a focus on chalk & talk/rote learning and drilling to that. Although I don't think I've heard that for a couple of months.

Then during Key Stage 2 or 3 it means there are many poor habits to break with struggling readers

And yes to this. Our local secondary has started using SoundsWrite. I can't help but think this is a little late.

I can see this is an emotive subject! I've seen some MN posts where schools haven't even had decodable books and I would certainly been furious of my son had been sent these books at first

This isn't an argument, I'm genuinely interested to know...

• How do tricky words fit into phonics teaching?
• Why does the ORT have the two strands (i.e. phonic and non-phonic)? Is the ORT actually a really crap reading scheme?
• Could the non-phonic books be being sent to aid comprehension?

My son started school with strong phonics knowledge (bordering stage 2/3) because we'd played lots of phonics games at home but he'd never really read a book himself. I'm not advocating this because I'm honestly only saying what's happened for one little bit, but I wonder whether in the case of my son they are targeting something specific by sending one non-phonic with non-phonic, e.g.using tricky words amongst decodable or using pictures in the books. Our school has excellent phonics screening results and all of his class learning has been phonics-based and it is fine daily. I've noticed that if I comment in a specific mistake he's made then they send a book that deals with that phonic skill. He only had phonics books until the last two weeks... Just wondering anyway.

^ Should have previewed. Sorry.

The label is misleading the words aren't tricky they just contain spellings for sounds that the beginner reader hasn't been taught yet. They should be taught in the same way as any other word . The child identifies the sounds they know and the teacher/parent fills in the missing information to allow the child to decode the word.

It's one of the myths that "tricky" means learn as whole word ...it doesn't!

A man I right in thinking that the non-decidable ORT books are older than the phonic ones?

Yes. The non-decodable ones are the original series. As far as I know they aren't making any new non-decoables series for the early stages. I think they are still printing those.

Once the Rose review came out they moved to decodable books. All of the newer stuff is cumulatively decodable in the early stages and then you can switch to the appropriate point in the non-decodable series once all the phoneme/grapheme correspondences have been taught.

Thanks. In theory it should work well. But if schools have not yet swapped over it stays confusing as the children are expected to read on many different levels at the same time

Now I'm REALLY confused! What about the word 'the'??

Can we have an edit button too? That 1st paragraph should say they aren't creating any new non-decodable series but are still printing and selling the ones they already have.

- How do tricky words fit into phonics teaching?
Tricky words are just words that contain a bit of the code that children haven't been taught yet. They are taught by pointing out the bits that the children already know and explaining the bit they don't. They can then blend like any other word.

• Why does the ORT have the two strands (i.e. phonic and non-phonic)? Is the ORT actually a really crap reading scheme?

Below about stage 6 the non-phonic strand is just the older scheme. After that point children should have been taught all of the alphabetic code so it is all 'non-phonic'.

• Could the non-phonic books be being sent to aid comprehension?

They could be. Whether they should be is a different question. I can't think of anything you can do with a non-phonic book that you couldn't do with a phonic one. Other than encouraging children to use unhelpful strategies for decoding.

And please note that I'm genuinely interested, but arguing with you. I joined that website 'the school run' and it said that learning certain tricky words was part of one of the phonics stages... is this old? Even the decodable books we've had have words like 'the' and 'to' so are these books actually not great? Except I think the Alphablocks and Comics for Phonics we had might have been literally decodable at that phonic stage, but I might be making this up.

Oh man I though I generally understood all this, but now I feel like I know NOTHING!

"The" is phonetic though, isn't it?

Sorry cross-posted but a few new questions above (and thank you for taking the time to answer all of this).

TBH, if your dc is doing well now, you don't need to worry anyway, I think.

not arguing with you it should say above.I also need an edit button (on phone is my excuse).

www.theliteracyblog.com/

I think that's the right link. Hopefully it will take you to a blog about teaching tricky words.

'the' is really just 2 sounds /th/ + [schwa]. The 'th' part is very regular. The schwa is representing by the spelling 'e'.

irvine his teacher said his reading is excellent but I really want to support him in the right way. He's prone to becoming demotivated although he's loved the (as I now know) older ORT books. I suppose I would worry if they are stopping him from getting faster at phonics or if his spelling was to suffer later on.

Biff chip and Kipper have been around for around thirty years. They were created in response to the whole Word philosophy popular at the time and have hung around despite their failings.

x-posts.

IIRC the Alphablocks and Comics for phonics books are part of phonics bug. On the inside front cover they have the tricky words taught at that level with 'sound buttons' underneath for children to practice blending before they read the book.

"And please note that I'm genuinely interested, but arguing with you. I joined that website 'the school run' and it said that learning certain tricky words was part of one of the phonics stages... is this old"

Not old just incorrect

Schwa is the most common sound in the English language (unstressed vowel).

I'm afraid it's too early to tell problems with mixed reading methods often manifest around Y3/4