Old style Biff Kipper and Chip

[CharisInAlexandria]

I have just been sent home the first reading book for my reception age child.

It’s old school Biff, Kipper and Chip and has sentences in it like

Chip wanted some sugar

My kid is just starting to blend cvc words.

Not sure how to deal with it really. Should I just ignore these books and dig out the phonics ones I used to teach my older children?

Or should I say something? I did try a few years ago the last time this happened with one of my older children but was brushed off.

Are there any articles that show that schools should be only using phonics based reading schemes? Or are they free to do as they wish?

Redcaryellowcar - perfect answer. Nearly 30 years experience here. Give them the basics, share the books, enjoy the stories, encourage and support. Parents can unintentionally put children under too much pressure which just stops them wanting to try. Later on they will need to use inference and comprehension skills to show good understanding of various texts. Learning to read is not a race - I very often wish that parents would reflect on their own approach to their child's reading. In the supportive environment of my classroom, when reading with some children, it is clear that they are fearful of getting words wrong. That fear has not come from me but from home. Encourage, engage, let them see you reading, point out print in the world around them etc.

The thing is, every child should be exposed to a huge variety of books and stories and words every day - the road signs they pass on the way to work, the picture book read to the class in English, the story read to the whole school in assembly, the longer book read in small snippets at the end of every day, the instructions and labels and bookshelves around them all day, every day, in school, the books they share with an adult at bedtime, the books they see and hear read on TV or on the computer etc etc.

Of all these texts, only 1 needs to be exactly at the right level for the child to read independently and practise their reading skills to an adult - and that is the child's individual reading book, sent home with them from school.

Nobody is saying that every text every child is exposed to every day should be at exactly the right level (or that their diet of reading and stories should be solely their home reading book) - just that 1 should be.

“Using pictures to ‘guess’ words alongside knowing the word begins with ‘s’ so is ‘shoe’ not ‘boot’ or similar is ok.” It’s a pretty limiting strategy for reading. At what point do you want your child to be able to read rather than play I spy?

Cantkeepawayforever I agree with you

Op you do not have to read everything sent home from school. Read something else instead if you prefer!

I am going to. It’s just I would rather work in partnership with the school.

And I have made a note on the reading diary. Otherwise they will just think I am not reading with him and don’t care and they will probably get a parent helper to take him through the book guessing the words from the pictures.

They may well do this in any case.

The issue is that the reading book sent home is the only real 'window' a parent has into the school's teaching of reading.

If a school sends home carefully-matched Phonics books that clearly echo what is taught in class, it is reassuring, because it does seem much more likely that the school is following the statutory curriculum for learning to read. Equally, if a school sends home non-decodeable books with a clear indication 'read this TO your child', then it is clear that they have thought about it - in schools where many children will completely lack books in their home, sending home books that a child has chosen for an adult to read to them can be useful.

However, if a school sends home 'individual reading books' for a child in the early stages of learning to read that are not phonically decodeable but with the implicit assumption that the child will read it to the adult, then that tiny daily glimpse of the school's approach to reading suggests that they aren't using the statutory method for teaching children to read - which is obviously worrying to parents.

You're totally over thinking it. Write the name if the book that you do read in the reading diary whatever book that is. Schools really don't have the resources to scrutinise every book that goes home or every entry in a reading diary. They won't be getting someone else to read it with him if you don't.
Read what you like! They won't be bothered! Don't overthink it!

2014,

No school - and I work in one - should be sending home books that are not decodeable by the child at that point. They simply shouldn't be available to be sent home EXCEPT if the school has a policy to also send home books to be read TO the child BY an adult.

So the 'Yellow' box of home readers, for example, should ONLY contain books that are phonically decodeable, and if there are subdivisions within it, they should reflect the teaching sequence of phonemes.

The thing is, once a child can read using phonics, the world is their oyster, and from that point on, the reading boxes can contain absolutely anything - including the book that the OP had sent home. However, by that point, having such boring repetitive texts should be completely unnecessary, as there will be so many much more interesting things to read....

They will do. They have a rota of parents helping and they provide extra help for children who aren’t listened to at home. Once I have taught my child phonics it will be brilliant as they will be doing loads of extra reading at school. I know some of their books are phonically decodable. Hopefully I may now get those as I have asked for them.

[My experience is, though I am not an expert as mrz is, that if initial phonics teaching is very good, then the "rigid scheme books" period is really quite limited. 'Look and Say' / mixed methods need restricted scheme books for much longer, because they are based on the assumption that a child has to be exposed to each word lots of times, first with pictures and then without, to be able to read them. Phonics seems more restrictive at the beginning but is liberating much earlier.]

The small, very deprived school I used to work in invested massively in phonics books years ago, so that they could send home exclusively phonics books. The key breakthrough was realising that the money needed to be targeted so tightly onto the earliest stages ... and we could then have a fine time organising every other book the school already had into a rich series of reading matter once each child could read. The phonics test and KS1 reading results were extraordinary, especially given the cohort.

The reality is that in our newly academised school we are stuck our old, outdated Biff books. If I removed all of them from our resources, I would literally not have enough books to give one to each child. Our budget has been decimated, we don't even have enough pencils let alone reading books. At one point last week I wrote my own decodeable book for one reading group and photocopied it. I suspect we are not alone. Something to read is better than nothing.

Please protest the budget cuts and ask about your schools budget for reading books.

Some years ago there was excellent matched funding for reading books - did your school take full advantage at the time? It must be 5 or so years ago that the school i was working in at the time was able to completely refresh the reading scheme and either get rid of non-phonic books or bump them up to the 'can read' levels [where nobody chose them, because they were far more boring than the alternatives]

I would literally not have enough books to give one to each child. Presumably the school had many years (and matched funding) to purchase appropriate books prior to academisation ?

They should be encouraging the phonics

No idea. Wasn't there then. I do know that we are currently suffering cuts on top of the government ones though. We are meant to be going over to a new scheme and apparently we will be sharing resources with other schools in the MAT.

Honestly, the biggest difference to reading in my class would be made by paying for a TA so we can hear them all once a week. At the moment it's just me and 32 children. Last year I had two TA and we heard every child every week.

I don't think many people on this board have much idea of the reality since the cuts. Not a criticism, just that I'm really sad at the moment about the state of things. Been a teacher since 1999 and this is absolutely the worst I can remember it.

Most schools are facing cuts on top of the government cuts but many have built up stocks of decodable books over the decade since the Rose report so while I’ve got sympathy for individual teachers I can’t help think children are being let down by shortsighted schools

My kid’s school has bought all sorts of things they don’t really need with money from the pta like interactive white boards. I did suggest a few years ago that they used pta money to get more phonics books but didn’t follow it up. I think it’s about prioritisation.

www.thebookpeople.co.uk/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/qs_product_tbp?storeId=10001&catalogId=10051&langId=100&productId=218821&cm_mmc=Google%20Adwords--PLA--Songbirds+Phonics+Collection+-+36+Books-_--SONB&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIh-zN2r6M1wIVQZ4bCh196AAxEAQYASABEgLSg_D_BwE

Could you get your PTA on this? £108 could get you 216 books, if my Maths after 2 is correct.

Phlebas,

I know about the cuts - work in a county that was one of the poorest funded even before the cuts. However, by using the Book People + matched funding + PTA money etc, the school I worked in prioritised learning to read using the best method (we read the research), supported by appropriate resources.

It seems very basic to me - and it's very sad that schools which probably had MORE cash to spend, and much better-supported children (we had children arriving without spoken language because they hadn't been spoken to as babies / toddlers) are now saying they don't have the money to do what they should have done years ago.

It is possible that having relatively easy / able cohorts 'masked' the issue of mixed methods teaching for many years, and it is perhaps now that it is statutory and the evidence is really stacking up that they are suddenly turning round and going 'oh, but we have no money for the resources, we'll have to carry on as we are'....