How best to help DD learn the keywords sent home by school.

[Readytomakechanges]

I've started a thread previously regarding my frustration at DD (5yo, just started reception) being sent home key words with instructions to learn them by sight and then reading books which consist almost exclusively of these words.

At home we used Jelly and Bean books to start, but now Songbirds and have a reading chest subscription.

So far, I've been showing DD how to sound out the keywords and then practice this until the sounding out is seamless. It then seems as though she can read them by sight and can also transfer the sounding out skills to other words with similar spellings. I discourage guessing.

However, as the keywords are beginning to become a little more complicated, I'm feeling a little out of my depth.

The current key word set has thought, through, friend, laugh How do I support DD to learn these without resorting to 'just learn it by sight?'

Thank you.

Thank you. We laf, rather than larf around these parts.
The positive that I've found so far, when teaching the key words phonetically rather than by sight is that she's able to transfer her skills to other words.

That's the benefit. Learn one word as a whole and you can read one word learn to decode a word and that knowledge can be applied to any word containing those sounds

Aren't these words also commonly termed 'tricky words'? As in they HAVE to be learned by sight as you can't sound them out. My reception DS brings home 'word boxes' these are words that can be sounded out/blended and then has 'tricky words' that have to be learned by sight.

This is such a common myth!

I've cut and pasted this from something I wrote on another thread. Please take note...

On the matter of 'tricky words' any idea that they are somehow 'not phonetic' (which is a meaningless description in itself) is one which has come from teachers who still believe the 'Look and Say' teaching myths or who haven't read the Jolly Phonics handbook...

I know both the authors of Jolly Phonics and they would both say that 'tricky words' are words which are decodeable but with a 'tricky' bit (i.e. a sound spelling which is unusual or they haven't yet learned). As they seem to be the people who invented the term I think we should take note of them.

I'd add that it must really distress them to have their concept of 'tricky words' mangled so badly.

Boiled7Up was absolutely correct in her post on Monday 21.16