Picture books in reception: a waste of time?

[HarryPottersBroomstick]

I am genuinely curious, not trying to be rude.

DS has just started at a lovely infants school and, as expected, is bringing home picture books to talk to us about. The Biff and Chip ones.

I get what we are supposed to be doing with him, we ask questions and he talks about the pictures and thereby tells us the story (at least I hope that's correct!) but I just wondered why? Does research show this makes reading easier? I am not in a particular rush to get him onto word books BTW, I have faith he will read when he is ready.

He/ we are fortunate that we can afford lots of children's books at home, we go to the library, he gets a bedtime story. Is it for those children who don't get this? To start them gently with holding the book/ turning the pages correctly?

Do other countries that start children later do this?

Thanks

So for children who are right at the start of phonics teaching, which books should be going home from school? Picture books for parents to read to their children?

Wordless books I'm sure have some pedagogical purpose, but I generally hate them. We've had several good quality wordless books, and the kids were also unimpressed. Maybe I'm not a good storyteller!

Children at the beginning of phonics instruction shouldn't get books sent home to read; they should get books sent home for the parents to read to them. Reading to your child is the only form of home learning proven to improve your child's academic performance at school.

www.education.vic.gov.au/documents/about/research/readtoyoungchild.pdf

• Reading to children at age 4-5 every day has a significant positive effect on their reading skills and cognitive skills (i.e., language and literacy, numeracy and cognition) later in life.
• Reading to children 3-5 days per week (compared to 2 or less) has the same effect on the child’s reading skills at age 4-5 as being six months older.
• Reading to them 6-7 days per week has the same effect as being almost 12 months older.

Children read to more frequently at age 4-5 achieve higher scores on the National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) tests for both Reading and Numeracy in Year 3 (age 8 to 9).

These differences in reading and cognitive skills are not related to the child’s family background or home environment but are the direct result of how frequently they have been read to prior to starting school.

Silly.

How can a wordless book develop vocabulary, for goodness' sake? You need inputs in order to develop additional vocab. Like a proper text/picture book with a rich range of words.

As others have said, this is a marketing gimmick. The new ORT books are fine but I would not waste money on these.

Children's vocab tends to correlate with the breadth and depth of the kind of vocabulary their parents use when talking with them, and this in turn tends to correlate with class and education level of parents (and that's before you consider the additional fact that some parents will not speak English as a native language).

If you send a wordless picture book, the switched-on highly educated parent with eloquent English will be saying things like "Biff rushed around the meadow until she was out of breath and exhausted," and the less educated parent may well look at the same page and say "Biff ran around the field." How is this helping to even out the odds for kids from homes with less educated parents? Similarly, if kids tell the stories themselves, it means they are limited to the words they already know---there's no input provided.

Proper picture books with words, please!

“So for children who are right at the start of phonics teaching, which books should be going home from school? “.** Books that match their current phonic knowledge and skills. So if your child can blend words containing the first set of sounds they need a book containing those words. If they aren’t blending they aren’t ready for a school reading book and the school may send nothing or they may send a library book