Non-decodable book sent home

[drspouse]

DS has just started Y1, he's decoding nicely and building up fluency. He is still on Red partly I think because he tends to mix up some of his digraphs.
I've done the Yellow digraphs on Hairy Phonics and read a few bits with him too. But if they feel he needs more practice on Red that's great.
However we've just had a non-decodable book from school. New Zealand publisher, 1997, all repetitive/guessable, and on every page is the word Time. He's not done i-e. The title contains i-e too.
Shall I send it back and say maybe it's in the wrong band?
He's started trying to guess words which we have firmly discouraged and I try not to say "you've seen this word before" unless it's an official "tricky word" but that's how he'd have to read this book.
Maybe advice from @mrz?

If there is a slight movement from that pattern, then it's a major issue?

No one is suggesting limiting a child’s reading

It's not me that's limiting it - it's the books that he can't read.

Why don't you just do what the rest of us do

When he encounters a word that he hasn't yet learnt to read, you just say the word to him, sound it out if you're comfortable with ohonics, and move on. It'll get covered in his phonics lesson at some point and in the meantime he reads what he can with your help. Maybe he will remember the word anyway.

It doesn't have to be so rigid.

So poor from school. I'd definitely use your own decodable books. No reason to make reading a misery with dull books that are too hard when he could have fun books that he can read. A child's confidence and enjoyment of reading does matter.

We have generally been using your last strategy but when there are SO MANY words he can't yet sound out - and which don't have the "yellow" phonemes in them - it gets a bit ridiculous "that word's a bit hard for you... so's that one... and that one... OK that's a tricky word you know, can you remember it? OK now give this word a go.

Exactly. If it's the odd word, you can just circle it in pencil and keep going. If it is a lot of the words, it is frustrating and demoralizing for kids. And it encourages them to start guessing and memorizing their way through books.

This discussion is so strange. It almost seems unreal. Limiting a child's reading by adhering to a rigid rule that requires a child to only read books through a scheme and nothing else.

I'm afraid there have to be some limits on what they can read when they can only read some words and not others. Kind of like, you don't take a child who can only barely swim a little bit and just chuck them in the deep end of the swimming pool without anything inflatable.

There is nothing to stop parents reading any books they like TO children, in fact they should do this as much as possible ("real books"). And when there are little bits in your "real books" which you know they can actually manage, you can pause and ask them to read that word or that sentence, no problem.

But non-decodable B&C graded readers are such a waste of time because they don't actually fulfill either role!

They frustrate kids who are trying to learn to read.

And they also are not wonderful exciting stories full of rich vocabulary, so nobody with a brain would bother to "share" them with kids just for the sake of listening to the story.

OP, I don't think you're serving your kid well by telling him he "can't read" any word that isn't decodable. Reading "nocturnal" and not knowing what it means is great for phonics but bad for reading comprehension. Reading comprehension is going to start mattering more and more and is not worth ignoring.

Honestly, if your kid is confidently blending multi-syllable words, it is time to introduce irregular words. That's the only way to read with comprehension.

By the time my kids were reading yellow, they'd already encountered lots of words with phonics they hadn't learned. They saw soft C letters, and I just said that it's pronounced that way. Funnily enough, they then started reading other soft C words, also without needing to be told. Reading is pattern recognition, so give your child the opportunity to see the patterns in language that extend beyond one-sound-per-grapheme.

It's another story if you have a non-blender.

Whoever said about other countries: they do start reading at 6/7 in Finland, for example. Not in kindergarten/nursery. In school. I learned at 7 too. Had no interest before that. Luckily the language is something like 99% easily decodable by simply putting the consistently same letter sounds together (unlike English!). So all children seem to learn very very quickly.

I'm lucky in a way that DS taught himself to read at 3. Was amazed when I realised. He'd just worked it out himself. Now at 8 he uses mixed strategies (phonics from school too) to read and is very advanced in "decoding" and comprehension. Phonics help, but (as someone with a very straight forwardly phonetic mother tongue language) to me there seem to be so many exceptions to the already copious "rules" in English (which I learned mostly through osmosis/sight), so I'd have a hard time trying to support DC with the phonics style! To not be accused of bragging, I should add that DS struggles a bit with maths.

“Reading "nocturnal" and not knowing what it means is great for phonics but bad for reading comprehension.” Simply not true. We expand our vocabulary when we meet new words and we need an effective strategy to read them. Then we can discover what they mean. The OP asked what it meant and presumably explained. That’s what reading with an adult in about at this stage in learning.

I haven't been able to decode your op? What are you talking about? Children's books or something?

“When he encounters a word that he hasn't yet learnt to read, you just say the word to him, sound it out if you're comfortable with ohonics, and move on”
That’s great if it’s a word here and there, not so great if it’s most of the words in the book because it sends the message Reading is too difficult!

“Reading "nocturnal" and not knowing what it means is great for phonics but bad for reading comprehension.” Simply not true. We expand our vocabulary when we meet new words and we need an effective strategy to read them. Then we can discover what they mean. The OP asked what it meant and presumably explained. That’s what reading with an adult in about at this stage in learning.

The child cannot read simple words like "day" and "time." A book about nocturnal animals will surely contain sentences like, "Nocturnal animals sleep during the daytime." Knowing how to sound out words like nocturnal is great, but understanding that particular sentence requires both the vocabulary and the phonics aspects. It requires absolutely no reading comprehension to be able to sound out. I "read" Malay fluently with phonics (and get asked by my kids to do so for fun) but have no idea what I am reading.

Phonics is exactly that: an effective strategy for approximating the pronunciation of new words. Fluency in reading and good reading comprehension is helped substantially more with pattern recognition that allows more automaticity.

By pattern recognition, I mean that having learned the word "time" but knowing nothing about split digraphs, magic E, or even long vowels, a child who sees that pattern can work out the words "tide" or "slime" without sounding out or having explicitly learned the phonics rules. Teaching kids who are confident blenders common words that allow them to expand their experience with words independent of phonics lessons is a good strategy.

Parents have been frightened into thinking that any way a child approaches a new word besides phonics is going to lead that child to fail in reading. That is simply not true. The much-cited statistic that 1/5 kids don't learn to read using mixed methods doesn't consider introducing irregular words to confident blenders either.

As one example, I worried about my child who learned to read before phonics instruction at school and actually struggled more with simple nonsense words than complicated multisyllabic words. Phonics proponents warn that this sort of reading will give disastrous results in older children, but my very good reader is still a very good, voracious reader. I write this not to say that every child learns like mine, but to say that the fear about non-phonics methods is not invented and not particularly useful.

OP, I don't think you're serving your kid well by telling him he "can't read" any word that isn't decodable. Reading "nocturnal" and not knowing what it means is great for phonics but bad for reading comprehension. Reading comprehension is going to start mattering more and more and is not worth ignoring.

I also don't agree with this. Knowing or not knowing how to read a word properly using phonics has nothing to do with comprehension. At least in my experience with DS2. Comprehension comes from understanding what the words mean, because he has encountered them before, or an adult has used them and explained the meaning, or he has heard them and used them in his daily or spoken vocabulary. So for example, DS2 can read anything in English because he learned all the phonics and worked out the patterns, and is able to read fluently and beautifully like any native speaker, but until not long ago if I asked him about what he read he wouldn't know because his vocabulary in English was limited compared to his vocabulary in his other language.
Whereas the OP's son presumably knows the meaning of the words he cannot read yet (e.g. time, day, knight, etc), but doesn't have the tools to read them yet. Once he has, he'll be able to recognise them as words he knows already in his vocabulary. And if he is able to read a word he doesn't understand like "nocturnal", all he needs to do is ask an adult what it means to learn it. That's the way to build up his vocabulary and how comprehension improves.

“Phonics is exactly that: an effective strategy for approximating the pronunciation of new words.” It’s exactly what phonics isn’t. Phonics isn’t about pronunciation!

“Teaching kids who are confident blenders common words that allow them to expand their experience with words independent of phonics lessons is a good strategy.”
Teaching children who are confident blenders how to decode common words is a more effective strategy. Teach one word as a whole and the child can read one word. Teach a child twenty words as wholes and they can read twenty words. Teach them the knowledge they need to decode those words and they can apply it to hundreds of words.

“The much-cited statistic that 1/5 kids don't learn to read using mixed methods doesn't consider introducing irregular words to confident blenders either.” Actually that exactly what the statistic is about. Children who have been taught a mixture of phonics and whole word memorisation (with a bit of guessing thrown in to fill the gaps).

“ I mean that having learned the word "time" but knowing nothing about split digraphs, magic E, or even long vowels, a child who sees that pattern can work out the words "tide" or "slime" without sounding out or having explicitly learned the phonics rules.” How about give and live and olive and massive etc?^*
*^
Children who learn to read without instruction have generally worked out how our written language works for themselves (phonics) but even they benefit for explicit instruction.

A book about nocturnal animals will surely contain sentences like, "Nocturnal animals sleep during the daytime."

No, it had an entire sentence that he could decode:
"The barn owl is nocturnal" [from memory]
(as AR, OW and UR are all yellow level digraphs)

So as he already knew what "barn" and "owl" meant I asked him if he knew what "nocturnal" meant, he didn't so I explained.
It's notable that he decoded it not because it's a complicated concept but because it's a relatively long (3 syllable) word with some consonant pairs and a digraph that he's only just learning.

Whereas he can't read "come" or "made" which are in the actual school book, even though they are much shorter and don't have pairs of consonants, because he hasn't learnt A-E yet (and OK maybe he's supposed to know "come" as a tricky word but if he is, he's forgotten it so I'd still have to tell him).

They are also learning IGH so he can have a bash at both "light" and "night", and "sleep" is from a former level where he learnt EE. He read "talons", "hoot" and other relevant words using his existing skills and learned both some new words AND some things about owls.

PS I also learned something. I didn't know that barn owls were screechers not hooters.

“I worried about my child who learned to read before phonics instruction at school and actually struggled more with simple nonsense words than complicated multisyllabic words. “ unlike you I didn’t worry about my precocious early reader who learnt to read without any instruction prior to nursery, surely he’d be fine because he was reading fluently any word he encountered. Unfortunately I was wrong. Yes his reading was excellent but he didn’t have the knowledge he needed to spell as he he progressed through school.
It’s extremely common for children who learn to read words as whole to stumble and fail as the vocabulary they encounter in their reading becomes more technical and subject focused. The problem for parents and teachers was we didn’t have a way of knowing which children would work out phonics for themselves so have an effective strategy for the future and who would struggle. The phonics check goes some way to early identification but only if schools take the results seriously. I’m not sure a school using mixed methods will do so.

Mrz, the problem with waiting for phonics to explain "give" versus "time" versus "light" is that a child who is ready to handle the pattern differences is told that they cannot read a simple word because they haven't learned it yet. That's a shame. Point to the (non-decodable) word and say what it is. Say you don't know that pattern yet, but you'll learn it. This will not tank their reading or spelling ability.

For what it's worth, my kids learned "give" and "come" and "time" and all the other words without anything more than knowing what letters say. No phases of phonics. My younger one started spontaneously reading in our second language without needing to know the new phonics rules (like the varying j, g, and vowel sounds). It made perfect sense to them, and they could use the knowledge of "give" to work out "massive" and the knowledge of "groot" to work out "boot" in our second language (and no, neither of those rhyme with the English word root).

My older boy hasn't yet covered "tion" in year 2. My reception boy can already read unfamiliar words containing "tion." It hardly makes any sense to not let a child read "train station" when that child loves trains and stations and hasn't yet learned "tion."

Once a kid is blending well and not guessing, you can indeed wait for school to present the information to them, or you can provide that rich language with real books and let them develop. There are so many more real books than decodable books, so your child gets a much richer level of exposure.

“the problem with waiting for phonics to explain "give" versus "time" versus "light" is that a child who is ready to handle the pattern differences is told that they cannot read a simple word because they haven't learned it yet”
Why do they need to wait? You teach them how to decode and encode the word from the start. When they need it for reading or spelling. There isn’t any waiting.
“In this word igh is the sound /ie/ can you read the word?” Then they can read light, night, fight, fright, high, sigh, might, bright, delight etc etc etc by apply that knowledge instead of just one word.

“tion “ is three sounds it’s easy enough to explain that the spelling ti is the sound /sh/ but many programs don’t even cover the consonant alternatives expecting teachers to know when they’ve not had any training so it gets left. Which is why early high quality phonics instruction is so important. It shouldn’t be left to chance. If the child has action in the book simply explain then they can read action, addition, fiction, collection etc but also initial, partial, essential by using that knowledge.

“No phases of phonics” good those stupid phases are only a feature of letters and Sounds and one of my big pet hates.

Given all of that, mrz, why are all of the complaints about non-decodable books coming home? Your method (explaining that in "action" the "ti" says, "sh") is remarkably similar and likely similarly perceived by a child as letting them know the word and moving on to more familiar words.

You could then use a book with "time" on every page to explain split digraphs. Seems like the problem is solved. Seems like this is advantageous over fully decodable books as it allows for better word choice (and books on topics like monkeys, tigers, or penguins, instead of cats, dogs, and frogs).

Why because many children need an explicit systematic progression of difficulty when learning. Just as you wouldn’t teach two digit number multiplication until you have taught single digit number correspondences, you teach reading and spelling from simple to complex but that doesn’t mean there can’t be some incidental learning along the way. Some children will be able to work it out for themselves but many won’t so it’s the teachers (and that includes parents) role to provide the missing information which might be telling a child that ti is the sound /sh/ in station or it might be explaining the meaning of nocturnal.

I’ll add can imagine how demotivating it is for a young child if someone has to help you read every other word (or most words) on the page?

Anotheroneishere, what I leaned over the years reading MN is that some children learn differently to yours. Your child maybe lucky enough to show decoding was easy. Others may not.
I find drspouse's approach correct, since she doesn't know that her child is one of 4/5 children who will be ok with mixed methods, or 1/5 who fails.
But I do agree, that OP doesn't need to wait, she can teach him herself.
Actually, nocturnal was one of the word my ds was given as spelling list along with diurnal from lessons. It was concept they learned in yr1.

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The problem isn't needing to be helped for the occasional word (and thereby gain familiarity with a bit of code they will be taught later). The problem is needing to be helped every other word. Which slows them right down so impacts massively on comprehension. It takes away the confidence boost of being able to read mostly on their own. And non decodable scheme books are dreadfully repetitive and dull, so there isn't even the reward of getting a fun story out of it.