Why has DD (reception) been given 'car' and 'park' as key/sight words?

[Readytomakechanges]

I'm new to the whole school thing so have been trying to read up on the early years and key stage one curriculum in order to best support my nearly-5yo.
DD is loving school so far.
Yesterday the teacher gave me a list of 15 sight words for DD to practice at home. The teacher stated that they don't usually give homework this early in the school, but DD had asked for it. I believe this and am happy to make games etc. out of learning these words at home.
Most of the words are what I thought of as sight words; the, I, she etc.
However, I thought car and park were phonetic, using the digraph 'car'. So 'c' 'ar' and 'p' 'ar' 'k'. Just wondering why the teacher would want DD to know these works by sight instead of decoding them?
Thanks.

"Most of the words are what I thought of as sight words; the, I, she etc."

No if the school is teaching phonics correctly they shouldn't be teaching sight words they should be teaching how to decode the - 2 sounds /th/ and /schwa/ /I/ i is an alternative spelling for the sound /ie/ t kind, mind, child, wild, idol, icy, icon, giant, final, identity, slimy etc etc, she 2 sounds /sh/ /ee/ is an alternative spelling for /ee/ he, me, she, we, be, hero, lethal, evil etc etc
Car and park aren't key words or sight in any sense of the words

If you BOTH want to learn more about sounds and Phonics, the Oxford Phonic Spelling Dictionary is colourful, easy to use and contains much useful information:

An inexpensive and easy to use book, that can encourage children with reading, spelling and writing, and really help them to understand Phonics, is reviewed in the MN Book Reviews section. Just search ‘Phonics’ and my name.

She can also start learning about music, if you can afford an electronic Keyboard - at least 61 full size keys (not a toy one), or better still 76 keys, which will give the option of learning 'Piano' style OR 'Keyboard' style as she gets older. Or start her with inexpensive little percussion instruments at first and 'keep time' with TV or radio music.

and after 'ar' (presuming you've done 'er') give 'ur' a go because in the phonics screening check in the Summer it throws most of them!

None of the parents at our school would get so involved in the intimate details of yrR and yr1 reading. We do 10 mins a day of what's words or reading ever they give us to do. Very high performing school. We do what we are asked and no more no less as it works lol

We are both parents of reception age children so a year plus away from phonics test.

Mamushka - No, most parents aren't. In so many ways, MN does NOT reflect "parents across the country"

Threads like this baffle me...

me too, esp b/c OP knows a word like "digigraph" but not what RWI is.

My ds is not yet two, but this scares me. I'm a high functioning dyslexic, I'm able to read and write competently enough to have written MA thesis, but I can't sound out letters or words. I see word shapes as wholes and I know them (or don't)- I guess every word is a sight word for me.
We already read a lot, and speak, introduce and incorporate words to increase his vocabulary, but I'm going to be useless or worse if I'm going to support his language development if I'm to get involved in phonics. Ah!

I guess every word is a sight word for me.

Me too. I struggle to break words down into sounds, to me the sound is the whole word. I didn't learn to read using phonetics though, I learned by 'sight reading' everything (as did everyone back then, as far as I know) so maybe that's why.

I find also find phonetics confusing because it doesn't take into account accents. I say the 'ar' 'car' and 'park' completely differently. In one I'd pronounce the R but not in the other. It must get confusing if letters you're told make a specific sound don't make that sound when you use them yourself.

Learning every word as a whole by sight would put an impossible strain on the working memory limiting (a few thousand words) the readers ability to access any new vocabulary they encounter.
Using phonics as an adult is an automatic and subconscious action. It doesn't involve sounding out words aloud and takes a skilled reader milliseconds but we are able to apply our knowledge of how spoken words relate to their written symbols and apply this to new words.

Phonics isn't just about individual letter sounds but also sounds of two or three letter blocks too. So o and oo are different sounds. a and r are different to ar. The learn how to put sounds together to make words.
The vast majority of children can learn via phonics, hence why it is used. It's not as baffling as people seem to get het up about. There are lots of apps people can use if they want to look at how it works and if your school doesn't offer sessions for parents to support learning to read ( ours does)

I'd warn caution many of the apps available are produced in the US where they don't widely use SSP programs and many others are produced by people who don't actually understand how to teach phonics systematically

Phonics does take in to account accents, indeed I think having a child who knows multiple accents will make it easier as it will become obvious to them even earlier that there's no single mapping of letters to sounds, and they need to try out the possible mappings until they hit a word that makes sense.

I'm with Mamushka. I read with my son everyday and he is pretty good at reading and spelling. Some of the phrases and words use here are completely unfamiliar to me and I really don't think I need to know this level of detail to support my son with his reading.

I found it hard to follow this thread with all the technical phrases and acronyms.

Were none of you intrigued by the terminology used by your child and wanted to know what it meant? Even from a curiosity point of view never mind supporting them with their school work. Certainly remember wanting to know what a split vowel diagraph was when DS came home talking about them when he was in YR. Found it quite strange hearing my very young child using what I thought was very complicated terminology.

Although also remember feeling very stupid when he was using CVC words, and it took me ages to realise that CVC stood for consonant vowel consonant

Our school gives us a web portal and suitable apps to use. And yes I agree with complex terminology mynDC came out with from yrR and I had no idea what they were taking about until they explained it to me ( age 4.5)

I just don't think it is necessary for a child or parent to get into that sort of technical language to learn how to read or spell. It creates unnecessary complexity to what should be a simple and accessible approach to reading and spelling.

My son has nor mentioned any of these words and he reads and spells extremely well. His school is a high performing school. So not getting into the weeds does not appear to be detrimental.

Once the teachers understand the technical aspects and use that knowledge to teach the kids, that's all that is necessary.

Learning every word as a whole by sight would put an impossible strain on the working memory limiting (a few thousand words) the readers ability to access any new vocabulary they encounter.

This is exactly what readers of Chinese characters have to do. It's very hard -- but clearly quite possible.

Words like diagraph have never spilled out of DC's mouths. In school they don't say "cvc" either though I have seen it sometimes written as a worksheet heading.

Gosh, my 3 dcs are now 22-17 and I never got quite as involved as this, although did read every day to/with them when they were little but did not go into such specifics
They're all now at or heading to uni so must have got it right!
I had the added challenges of dcs being taught Welsh as well as being dyslexic

"This is exactly what readers of Chinese characters have to do. It's very hard -- but clearly quite possible."

A well educated Chinese reader will have a sight vocabulary of a few thousand words (estimate around 5000) the equivalent number of words wouldn't allow you to pass the KS1 reading test.

Ah, but mrz, the Chinese characters are used across many multiple languages each with different grammar/syntax/sounds. It's very clever in its own way, means that folk can comfortably read info in a country where they speak not a word of the local language. Not remotely phonetic, that's true!

"Not remotely phonetic, that's true!"
Im afraid it isn't

I'll never forget when my 4 year old piped up with "is lake a split diagraph?" and I had no idea what he was talking about. Got googling fast after that. THAT'S why parents know these therms- not because they care about the ins and outs of learning to read, but because their children know here technical terms. That and it actually helps when you child gets stuck reading a word that you can help them in the way taught by school. And it's really interesting.

Burn in what way is it interesting or even useful. Perhaps all this complication is the reason why the UK is not very high on the world league table with regards to pupil achievement in basic skills. We overly burden our kids with unnecessary info that is of very little use to them (great use if you are a teacher). Reading and spelling comes with practice, inluding listening. For the most part they becomes second nature.

Will they be tested on what a diagraph?

Language developed without the need to learn about digraphs, etc.

We teach sounds (rather than phonemes) and spellings (rather than graphemes) and talk about split spelling (rather than split digraphs) because it's easily understood but wonder if you'd have the same objection to mathematical terminology - circumference, vertices etc