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?

I'll add that I think part of the problem is that parents only expect their children to read decodable scheme books, when there are many, many significantly more interesting, non-decodable books accessible to children who have learned the basic set of phonics (generally Year 1). Reading real books should be pushed much more quickly, and that means that parents and newly reading children need to be able accept that not every word is immediately accessible via known phonics.

I never presupposed that children learned like mine, and I've seen a wide spectrum of abilities helping out with reading and writing at school.

My reasoning for responding is that parents have been frightened into believing that tackling an unknown word with any approach other than phonics will lead their children to poor reading outcomes, and that's a shame. It keeps people from indeed discussing words that aren't immediately decodable and from introducing real books that might have common words like "come."

anotherone Again, this morning, we tried a non-decodable (BORING as anything because repetitive) and a decodable book.

I don't see what he's getting out of the non-decodable book except "I can't read these words so I won't bother trying".

It depends what you mean by the "basic set of phonics". If you mean all the PGCs up to the end of the graded reading books - he's nowhere year that - he's only on level 3. After that, sure, real books would be great (but not boring ones) - because they WILL NOW BE DECODABLE.
But what's the point in introducing them before they are decodable? I really don't get your point here.

Reading this thread makes me both amazed and baffled that DS learned to read at all roughly 10 years ago - if his school used phonics, it passed me by, and I certainly don’t have a clue what digraphs and phonemes are. And how did I learn to read using Peter and Jane in the 70s?!

TheOnlyLiving you were lucky - you are one of the 80% for whom non-phonics teaching works - because you taught yourself the code.

You don’t need to know what digraphs or phonemes are to learn to read with phonics Theonlyliving just how our written language reflects our spoken.

In the 70's I learnt by being told to "sound things out", the suggestion that everyone learnt in the 70's by a different method is nonsense!

I think it was more the 80s that was the mixed methods phase. There was a little bit of sounding out but mostly sight words. I remember the class having to be taught alternative vowel sounds for spelling - in year 6!! Of course as with all these things some teachers will lag behind and carry on doing it the way they always did.

I think around level 6 they know enough phonics that filling in the remaining gaps as you go along is not too onerous. When school sent home non scheme books masquerading as "harder stage 3 books" it was a bit much for DS. Whizzed him through songbirds to level 6 at home and then he was fine with the Happy Families, Elmer, Mr Men etc they were sending. By the time school moved him "up" to decodable stage 4 books they were a bit pointless.

I learned English as a second language. I studied English literature, and I remember thinking why I choose this. It was not fun. I was an avid reader in my native language and thinking why I couldn't enjoy reading in English. I know why now. I totally relied on sight words and memory. I didn't know how to decode.
Now I know all the phonic code, and reading English has become so much easier.

I think children learn to read through a mixture of methods. Some is through phonics, a bit of whole word recognition thrown in, a little bit of guessing through context and illustration.

Teachers don't like to acknowledge this though as it minimises their teaching ability if we don't all believe it should be through phonics alone.

What load of twonk!

Sorry that’s rubbish because thats how reading was taught for about thirty years until most people realised that it simply didn’t work as well as what we’d been doing for centuries.

And goady twonk as well!

So there's a whole section of the population spanning thirty years who can't read very well? How old are they now?

No, there's about 20%

And I'm sorry but it's not twonk. If children are only learning to read via phonics, how does that account for all the children who are free readers or on higher bands before the end of year one, ie before the end of the phonics courses? They're successfully using other methods alongside phonics and these children aren't rare.

No, there's about 20% who learned very slowly/poorly/painfully. As PPs have said, the actual ages vary by where you lived/your school but most of the older non-decodable books that are still in circulation came out in the 80s.
I learned at home with sounding out in the early 70s. But at school we had Peter and Jane which is look and say.
So 80% of my classmates will have got it by themselves. And the others (happily not a "whole generation") will have struggled.

Grotto like the children who taught themselves phonics in a look and say school they've taught themselves.
Or they have raced through the levels.

“They're successfully using other methods alongside phonics and these children aren't rare.” Or they’ve successfully worked out the phonics they need to read? Unfortunately many of those free readers do struggle later when there aren’t any pictures to use as clues and when they encounter unfamiliar technical language and haven’t got an effective strategy for reading.
Evidence is poor readers rely on other strategies while good readers employ knowledge of our written language.

So I’m afraid it is twonk and uninformed twonk at that.

Exactly. So if a lot of children are capable of "teaching themselves" then it goes to show that phonics instruction isn't the be all and end all.

Unless you’ve got a way of identifying those fortunate children who will eventually work it out for themselves and those who won’t do you suggest we wait until children fail before being to teach phonics or should we teach all using a method that hurts none and helps many? Even those who are capable of working it out for themselves benefit from good instruction as it ensures there are no gaps in their knowledge and they progress more quickly.

Unfortunately many of those free readers do struggle later when there aren’t any pictures to use as clues and when they encounter unfamiliar technical language and haven’t got an effective strategy for reading.

There's an assumption there that good early readers won't also pick up phonics which isn't what I'm saying or what my experience is. I don't think that initially learning with mixed methods and mastering phonics are mutually exclusive.

Nowadays we tend not to believe in teaching by osmosis and hoping for the best.

do you suggest we wait until children fail before being to teach phonics or should we teach all using a method that hurts none and helps many?

Of course not. I just think it's short sighted to believe that the only way to learn to read is with phonics because it obviously isn't.

Of course it isn't the only way. It is the most effective, though, and the most successful.