Reception DC encouraged to guess words from pictures. Afraid I've got off on the wrong foot with teacher.

[Satina]

DC2 has just started reception and we were excited for all the new experiences the next year would bring. I'm worried however that I've got off on the wrong foot with the new teacher.

Sorry, this is long:

When DC1 was in the same class she flew through reading books and was known to be a very strong reader. However she eventually hit a barrier and her progression stalled. School weren't bothered as she was still ahead of expected for her age but I, who listened to her read daily noticed problems. Specifically that she was guessing unfamiliar words which sometimes meant she completely misunderstood the meaning of the passage she'd just read.

I'd never helped a child learn to read before, so I did extensive research into how to help her and went back to basics of focusing on decoding unfamiliar words and eventually she flew.

Since DC1 was in reception the school has replaced their book scheme to one that's supposed to be more decodable.

I was eager to avoid the same problems occurring for DC2 and was optimistic that the new book scheme would mean decoding would be encouraged rather than guessing.

I was therefore surprised when the very first comment in DC's reading diary was 'DC has been encouraged to use the pictures to help guess unfamiliar words'.

All of the reading I did around the subject, when DC1 was learning suggests this is bad practice.

E.g. The Rose Report says:

"However, if beginner readers, for
example, are encouraged to infer from
pictures the word they have to decode
this may lead to their not realising that
they need to focus on the printed
word.They may, therefore, not use their
developing phonic knowledge. It may
also lead to diluting the focused
phonics teaching that is necessary for
securing accurate word reading.Thus,
where beginner readers are taught
habitually to infer the word they need
from pictures they are far less likely to
apply their developing phonic
knowledge and skills to print. During
the course of the review, several
examples were seen of beginners
being encouraged to infer from
pictures the word they did not
immediately recognise from the text."

I asked for a quick chat with the teacher who rang me at home. I explained that I was very happy with everything in reception so far but that I'd really prefer DC to be encouraged to decode unfamiliar words and not guess. She thought I was trying to push for DC to have more complex books and spent some time telling me why she thought this would be detrimental. I clarified that I definitely was not pushing for harder material and in fact would have preferred an easier, decodable book.

I said I wasn't expecting any changes to the way the class is taught as a whole, but wanted DD to have books she could decode with her current knowledge (which I'm happy to provide if they don't have enough) and to be encouraged not to use alternative methods until she was secure in her decoding.

Teacher then spent some time telling me the importance of using other methods as some children struggle with phonics and it helps them and that it's important for children to learn through repetition and using other cues aswell as decoding.

This is where I'm worried I overstepped the mark as I said that I appreciate what you're saying but all my research suggests otherwise, which I know must be really annoying to be told as a professional by someone who is not a professional in that area.

I said I'm happy to provide all my references which the teacher said she didn't need.

Ultimately, all I wanted was for my DC to become secure in her decoding before other methods are used, so as not to confuse her.

Teacher has now agreed to this with DD, but I'm feeling so guilty and anxious about having said anything in the first place.

I should have kept my mouth shut and just focussed on decoding at home and let them do their own thing at school.

Do you think there's anything I can do to improve matters and reassure the teacher that I'm not going to be a PITA parent all year?

A guess is never an uneducated guess for a native speaker, it will be a combination of some letter or pattern recognition, memory and context (from pictures or the rest of the sentence). That is a valid strategy.

It isn't. Weaker readers who are taught to guess over-rely on those methods and have to be untaught this later on.

The 2014 NC states that children must not be taught other methods to decode. Ofsted is finally all over this in their new inspections from September. Many schools are now running around panicking. It would be quite funny if it weren't for the swathes of children who were let down in the meantime.

DocFartin
I've got friends in healthcare and in early years who seem to get a regular queue of armchair experts armed with Google.

It gets even better at secondary school when you get the occasional student well trained in trying to correct you (and I'm not talking genuine mistakes or they've found something interesting out, but telling me they know the specification better than me, questioning my grading because they are smarter than Alex so why has Alex scored higher? They want their book remarking).

Here is a different perspective. DS1 first school relied heavily on repetitive non decodable books and encouraged children to look at the pictures and guess. My good friend, who had a son in the class too, also taught reception in a different school and was shocked at how they were teaching reading and booked an appointment with the head, ending up doing a training session on proper phonics teaching and persauded the PTA to buy decodable books.

So, as you are a not professional I imagine it was badly recieved and they might be irritated. But encoraging guessing and not having decent books isnt good practice.
You could apologise for any offence in terms of keeping good relations. Then donate decodable books.

I was a Reception teacher, now retired. Phonics is the thing of the moment and works for most children but not all

Phonics taught as the first and only method to decode works well for the vast majority (95 %+) but when used as part of mixed methods fails 20%. Of course, it's the mixed methods that fail those one in five, but the nonsensical like to blame it on phonics. They won't know that, of course, because they have a) never looked at evidence b)never visited a school who teaching phonics only properly and c)certainly have never ever taught phonics only themselves.

Of course, this means phonics as the only method to decode, and of course necessitates teaching comprehension, vocabulary and inference alongside, as with all decoding teaching.

It's also been around for hundreds of years - it's actually whole word learning that was introduced only relatively recently, based on no evidence whatsoever.

Google is a bit different to googling the statutory national curriculum!

I get what you mean but I think this guessing develops an important skill. As literate adults (especially when still studying), we come across words we don't know all the time but we make am educated guess on what they might mean by the context and by using our knowledge of root words. I have come across people who seem to lack this skill. I don't mean they can't read, they can, but they can't process a sentence if they don't understand a word and they can't use other information to work that word out.

I'm doing everything I can to ensure my children can read before school. It is going well so far. My anxiety is that all these techniques will be used which are meant to teach classes how to read effectively but not so much individuals.

I also found that the Year 7s I used to teach 10 years ago were better at understanding text than Year 7s today. The ones today can read lots of words correctly using their knowledge of phonetics but don't have the depth of understanding of the text in its entirety.

Guessing what a word means is not the same as guessing the decoding of the word. Phonics is only about decoding (and spelling) not about understanding the meaning of words.

Haven’t RTFT (primary teacher here, MNing while trying to get the ten month old to sleep so I can go and do some marking 😂) but just wanted to check that you know that the Rose Report is getting a bit outdated - though still pertinent in a lot of areas alongside other research.

We teach decoding as the main reading strategy, however we also teach sight reading of HFW and other, inference based strategies, such as having a ‘guess’ using pictures when faced with words that are not decodable, e.g. ghost.

So for example, in a reception level book, a sentence might be ‘It is a big ghost’; ‘a’ is a HFW and ‘it’, ‘is’ and ‘big’ are decodeable. Ghost is not, so we would suggest making an inference from the picture at this stage rather than going into silent letters and long vs short vowel sounds.

Tbh, I would think that a teacher who is encouraging her class to guess words SHOULD have the evidence pointed out to her.

I cannot, honestly, believe that there are STILL teachers who use mixed methods and don't use phonics as the only method to decode.

I cannot believe anyone here stating that children should be taught to decode other than by the method which is successful with 95%+ of learners IF IT IS DONE PROPERLY. Just lots of teachers don't do it properly and then blame the method, because it is more comfortable for them than blaming the delivery.

You were right. If it encourages the teacher to question her own practice, good.

Decoding is an essential first step to reading. Comprehension, expression, prediction, enjoyment are ALL enhanced when you can actually decode each word accurately...

Thunderthighs, why would a reception book for a child learning to decode have words beyond their phonic knowledge in them??

Ghost is phonically decodeable (gh is not the most common encoding of the sound [g] but it is perfectly possible to learn that it is an alternative grapheme for that phoneme)

If phonics is taught alongside fully decodeable texts, why would a reception child even need to guess??

Thank you all. This thread has actually been very helpful to enable me to work through something I found very stressful.

I got quite worked up after reading the first few responses and tears were shed, but it has been helpful to "let it out" and funnily enough, I now feel more calm about it.

Obviously there are differences of opinions, as evidenced on this thread, on the best approaches to early reading but that's besides the point really as the real problem is how I approached it with the teacher. I've learned from it. Haven't sent a note to the teacher yet, but think I might.

Two points I did want to challenge (I accept that I deserved the majority of the critisism):

1. I object to being called an armchair Googler. I have researched extensively and, although not a qualified teacher, I am qualified in both undertaking and analysing research.

1. I find this attitude lacks understanding about how some people are affected by anxiety *I don't think you can say 'but anxiety' and keep on doing the same things; you have the self-awareness to stop.* You can have insight and logically know you shouldn't do something, but a knot in your stomach seems to make you do things anyway. E.g. My friend gets anxiety and panic attacks about how she looks and it stops her wanting to leave the house some days. It's no good me saying "well you have insight, you know it's just anxiety talking and you look fine so snap out of it and we'll get going." I know it's irrational anxiety that makes me obsess over certain topics but I can't feel 'normal' until I've done it. I know that's strange to others. It's actually a very beneficial trait in my working life, but can be detrimental at home. I am working on stopping it at home and feel terribly ashamed at having potentially upset a hardworking teacher.

I think, by the way, that there is a fundamental misunderstanding / laziness about what 'teaching to decode using phonics' and 'phonically decodeable' mean.

A school will claim that they 'teach phonics' when they have taught the very basic, most common, grapheme / phoneme correspondances, and then will say that other words are 'not phonically decodeable' or 'have to be learned as whole / guessed because they're not decodeable'.

What teaching phonics REALLY means is a very careful, sequential teaching of alternative grapheme -phoneme correspondances ... and that will enable almost all words to be phonically decodeable, or at the very worse, decodeable with a tricky bit (even in the infamous word 'yacht', y and t are phonically regular). So for example, if schools stop at the f/ff graphemes for the sound , then 'enough' isn't cureently decodeable. But if children are taught the alternative graphemes of ph and gh for , then it becomes decodeable using that knowledge.

In what other profession could the professionals ignore the research, then ignore the professional guidance, then ignore the professional mandate?

Mover, honestly, as a teacher I'm gobsmacked. i thought that mixed methods and guessing from pictures went out with the Ark - it was considered bad practice when I trained, and that was almost 10 years ago now.

Sorry Satina, I hadn’t seen your last post when I posted mine.

I think you make a really interesting point about the anxiety in needing to get something done. I would never have thought about it as anxiety but I most certainly will now. Thank you. You’ve given me good for thought.

Maybe a quick chat to say thank you to the teacher for talking to you and that you appreciate it and all they’re doing?

Out of interest. Those of you who have read the research and agree with me that good quality, systematic synthetic phonics instruction along with lots of opportunities to speak and listen, improving vocabulary and so comprehension has been proven to be the most likely method for the majority of children. Would you approach it with the teacher of your own DC or would you just leave them to it and do your own thing at home? If you would approach it, how is it possible to do so without being an arse? Or is it never possible to question a professional in their area of expertise?

In my own job I'm very happy to explain to 'customers' why in their individual case we are not following national guidelines or am happy to look at new developments in the field that the customer may have become aware of before me (as I can't research everything all the time.) Evidence based practice is important to me.

Thank you moverofpaper. I'm debating between a little note to apologise or a quick apology in person.

Latina there's more to the Rose Review than you seem to understand.
You have a made a fool of yourself.

absopugging - so do you think that the NC and Ofsted - both of which mandate phonics as the first and only method for teaching children to decode - are wrong?

Don't get me wrong - 'reading' for children should be a rich diet of books read to them, pictures shared with them and explored, books of all types discussed and responded to in pictures, writing, art and imaginative play. Learning to decode the words of fully decodeable books should be embedded within this rich environment of reading and loving books. But that doesn't change the fact that decoding should, first and foremost, be taught through phonics which continues long beyond the initial phoneme grapheme correspondences.

OP has not made a fool of herself. she has identified an area where the school's practice is not what it should be according to the NC and according to research into best practice by e.g. the EEF here

absopugginglutely The Rose Report is a very small part of the reading I have done around the topic, however I agree with you (and have admitted on the thread) that I made a fool of myself in how I approached things and am debating between a simple spoken apology or a little card.

I would certainly apologise and do it in person.

I like phonics but would never have raised what you did with the school. Surely as parents we do our bets for children but appreciate teachers have far more knowledge when it comes to education than an internet search given the training they go through to qualify.

You’ll be well know in the staffroom by now I would imagine for the wrong reasons.

I trained as a teacher 5 or 6 years ago.

Evidence overwhelmingly supports teaching "pure" phonics. The Searchlights method, mentioned my a poster earlier, has been proven to be less effective at teaching whole classes to read. There are occasional children who benefit from one to one support utilising a different approach, but there has been no suggestion here that OPs child is one of those few.

Not only that, I believe in England the Govt mandates use of phonics only classroom teaching. (I trained and teach in Wales, so I'm not certain on that pint for England).

The thing is, the questions 'Look at the picture - what do you think is happening? How do you think X is feeling? Can you spot the glasses? Tell me about Y character's trousers' are COMPLETELY reasonable and a huge part of sharing and enjoying a book with a child.

Saying 'Oh, you are stuck on that word starting with t. Let's look at the picture to guess what the word might be' is not a good decoding strategy....

IceCream
appreciate teachers have far more knowledge when it comes to education than an internet search given the training they go through to qualify

The training that the teacher SHOULD have had SHOULD have taught pure phonics as the best way of teaching decoding. It obviously didn't.... so in fact the OP's research has identified an area where the teacher's training is out of date or deficient...