'Using picture clues and context are great for developing comprehension'

[Sleeperandthespindle]

This is the response I got to asking for decodable books from school for 4 year old in reception who is guessing from pictures when presented with Biff and Chip.

I don't agree. I can ignore the books sent home and give him others, I know, but he is clearly being taught to 'guess' in school.

The school are unlikely to change their mind, I realise, but older DC (in the same school) is struggling very greatly with literacy and the general approach seems unhelpful.

My children use picture clues to support the words so they will look at the picture and then read the words with the picture helping when they are stuck. Hasn't done my eldest any harm. I assumed it was a pretty common way of learning. If you are concerned supplement it with alternative books at home

It was a common theory in the 80s but it failed so many children hopefully most schools have abandoned multi cueing.

It has added to my daughter's difficulties too, mrz. Can you suggest a way to approach with school? Their reading diaries (ready made things) also refer to 'guessing' and 'reading ahead' as useful strategies to help children read so I was never confident in their approach to phonics.

Dyslexic DD (many threads, some old user names) is being utterly failed too.

I still get copies of reading diaries in the post (as Literacy lead at school) that ignore the national curriculum and give that kind of scrappy advice - I chucked one in the bin this morning.

Shame you can't do the same with the school! Suggest using Reading Chest for decodable books and ignoring school. I think you're right - you've done your best, you know the current curriculum and research findings better than they do but they aren't going to change their minds. Poor kids with less knowledgeable parents.

Scrappy Crappy!

:( Our school go on about picture clues too.
I volunteer in year 1 and spend half the time having to remind the children not to guess. Really frustrating.

No advice on how to approach with school, but our local library stocks lots of reading books, from a variety of reading schemes. Some Biff, Chip and Kipper, but also some from more decodable schemes like Songbirds.

Useful if you want extra reading books without the expense.

I think I must be missing something here. I'm a primary school teacher and have successfully taught children to teach using this approach.

You can't rely on one method to teach reading, phonics is just one method. Context, picture cues, initial sound are other methods. Good reading books for children will not contain words that are only decodable. A significant number of words in the English language aren't decodable, therefore we wouldn't be teaching them to read if we only taught them to decode.

For example, if you're reading a book and the child comes across the word dinosaur, I would ask them what the initial sound is and then use the picture to help. Over time, they will come to recognise the whole word and won't need the picture to help. Many children struggle to segment and blend and learn to read by recognising whole word patterns.

Please let the children use pictures!

Boys I thought that method wasn't allowed at all now!!! Guessing isn't learning to read.

Boys, all the studies suggest that reading should be taught through phonics, not mixed methods to obtain the best results for all children. The national curriculum states that phonics must be used. It's really quite concerning to hear that some schools still haven't git the message.

If they cannot read the word dinosaur in R or year 1 it should not be in the "phonically decodable" school reading book. The should however be able to decode diplodocus.

Or got the message!

Of course phonics should be used and it is. Phonics is taught every day. We all teach common exception words and they aren't taught by decoding.

Does it say in the national curriculum that we shouldn't use context or pictures to help to read? How would you help a child read a non-decodable word in a book without context or pictures?

I thought that it was thought you shouldn't teach context or pictures and it was one reason why fully decodable books were important.

Our school hasn't got fully decodable books in entirety so we were supposed to.just read aby "tricky" bits of words they hadn't learnt to sound out yet to a void them guessing.

what's a non-decodable word? Surely every word is decodable, you just have to teach the right code!!

Wow, I can't believe a teacher is actually saying this.

That's to Boys.

Non decodable is just shorthand for non decodable at that stage of learning. My reception kid can read things she can decide but not all things as my she's not learnt all the alternatives yet.

I have just posted something on this matter... The title didn't seem relevant to what I wanted to talk about, so I never read it until now.
Some words are not decodable: says, does, of, often; others are part of a very small subset (oul, for example; is it worth knowing about it?) and others can be read in more than one way (ch, ou, oo to name just the first three I can think of), however I have come to realise phonics IS important. Perhaps one shouldn't try to teach 100+ different phonemes...

Using pictures to help work out what the word says is helpful. Some tricky words are learnt by recognising them by sight not by decoding with phonics. If a child is able to work out a tricky word by looking for clues in the picture it helps the brain to recognise it next time. Phonics are great but you can use other methods alongside. My dyslexic children can't use phonics to decode so have to learn what the word looks like as a sort of picture.

Yes it does say in the national curriculum that those methods shouldn't be used.

I can't remember the exact wording but it's something along the lines of children should be given books to read that match their developing phonic knowledge and do not require them to use other skills to decode words.

common exception words are taught by decoding. The method in the NC and letters and sound involves drawing attention to the unusual or not yet taught piece of code and then blending or segmenting as they would any other word.

Perhaps one shouldn't try to teach 100+ different phonemes.

rather that than teach 1 million different words!

The problem is that the phonemes are often not unique, or so rare that it seems like a waste of time. Like when we did "Ch", as in a "k" sound. Leaving Christmas and chemist aside, I doubt you need words like "choral", "chorus" or "chord" which you need to know anyway to read the correctly.

Well, the word "school" might come in handy!

Or "ou" as in routine or coupon as you need to know these words anyway.

Besides they added "should" and "would" to the list and that is probably wrong, because they need "oul", otherwise you a letter short.