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?

Calling it decoding to the teacher
Why? Aren't parents supposed to know technical terms? Are we all supposed to be flighty and empty headed?

Isn't this method totally acceptable at very early level, parent of helping them learn:understand the realisation between letters and whole words before they are quite ready to fully decode?

The big problem I have with this method - assuming we’re talking about encouraging kids to guess from the pictures - is the bad habits it can teach kids.

Unfortunately when DC1 was in Reception, this wasn’t a problem I anticipated, as I assumed the school knew what they were doing regards teaching reading.

But, basically, DC1 is in Year 4 now. And he still has a bad habit of reverting to guessing when he comes across an unfamiliar word.
What happens far too often is, I’ll listen to him reading, and he’ll mumble through an unfamiliar word. I’ll stop him, ask him what the word is, and he’ll say some random word that shares the first few letters of the actual word.
Most of the time he can decode the word, if he actually tries to, but I feel that he’s far too over reliant on guessing at unfamiliar words.

So I’m firmly of the opinion that his first teachers encouraging him to guess using pictures, however well meant, has encouraged him to develop bad reading habits. And now that he’s on books where you can’t easily guess at words from the pictures, this guessing habit is holding his reading back, because it’s a habit he keeps going back to.

And before anyone says it, yes, I know some kids manage fine despite schools encouraging them to guess words from pictures. DC2 has just started Year 1, and he will sit there and sound out unfamiliar words without any prompting. But I suspect he’s one of the lucky ones who’d figure it out eventually with any method.

There are lots and lots of things I don’t know. Some are my fault and some down to my teaching. I was fortunate enough to be educated in a particular time and place where expression was valued but knowledge wasn’t.

If you want anyone to be a tree I am your woman. If you want someone to tell you the noun in a sentence then not so much.

I would have to look up the meaning of many words. I have to think about they’re, their and there. Does the girls’ gin belong to one of them or all of them?

I do know how to decode the written word and I know how to teach that to others.

I know that my child didn’t learn to read/decode at school because I know it wasn’t taught. I got in early, about this time in the reception year. My aim was to plough through the simple and extended code speedily so that in ‘reading lessons” in school my DC had the correct tools to use. Many thanks to MaizieD, Feenie, Debbie, John, Mrz and others.

At my DC school reading lessons consisted of a group reading the text and talking about it. If your child could decode as mine could then they read and talked. If a child couldn’t decode they were helped to lift the words from the page using the Searchlight strategies of guessing, using pictures, looking at the shape of the word, looking at the first letter of the word.

My child was not taught to lift the words off the page by her school. She’s been taught lots of other fantastic things there and had a wonderful, full and enriching education.

I know which children have a dyslexia diagnosis as their parents have told me. Children talk. These are the parents that can afford to pay for diagnosis. It’s about 33% of the class.

I know which children don’t have the diagnosis but are struggling. Their parents have told me. Children talk. Roughly another 33%. These parents haven’t paid for a diagnosis.

I know the phonics check results for the year group. I’d say under 50% passing was bad? How about under 40%. If it was lower than that?

Oh, and if I didn’t question authority and try and educate myself I’d be dead now. No that lump isn’t normal. No really. No really.

I’d rather be rude than dead. I’d rather be rude but have a child that can’t read.

*can read.

Blood was up thete

DC1 is in Year 4 now. And he still has a bad habit of reverting to guessing when he comes across an unfamiliar word.

This was our experience with the eldest - we were slower to step in than with younger children.

The year 5 class I went in to help hear read at that school also had a small group that did it as well.

I thought we'd got past in by end or primary with her but on holiday there was vertical railway systems and I remember my heart sinking where there was a word on the sign she’d obviously made a plausible guess with starting same letters and not completely unlikely but it read correctly clearly not that word – I can’t think what the words were now.

Next child made no progress over a year with school reading despite loving books and knowing phonic sounds before – we stepped in when they started calling themselves stupid and they hated books. He was the problem as far as the school was concerned.

He did well with the phonics test end of year1 and according to another parent whose child hadn’t he was used as an example of a poor reader passing the test – thus test being flawed. 6 months later they were put in the school reading recovery program and all the success was put down to that – I don’t think it hurt but he was already caught up to the right reading age level by then.

I can't say for sure that they would never had had problems if phonics had been better taught - but I certainly feel it's added to them having problems and added to the amount of support they've needed ouside school.

I also owe a huge thanks to people like MaizieD, Feenie and Mrz and others.

MoverofPaper, with hindsight, is there anything you would have done differently in terms of how you approached the school? IIRC you didn’t have a great deal of success in getting the school to support what you were doing.

I'd chat to the teacher when you're feeling less anxious and just apologise for the way you came across. Maybe a jokey, "it was the end of a very busy day..." or similar might help. I find teachers prefer PITA parents to ones that don't care about their kids at all. Have a few friendly interactions over next few months and thank them for paying extra attention to your child's reading. Get them a decent box of chocolates at Christmas and all will be fine.
Try to relax about your DC and their progress. It sounds like they're doing well.

Rafa, I’ve thought about this a lot. This thread is particularly interesting as Satina sounds like she went about things very much like I did. Then I felt awful, just as she seems to. I think we both felt deep anxiety that we had one chance to solve this problem and we had to do it or we were failures?

I don’t think any one thing would have made a difference with the school. Maybe a change of mindset on my part but it’s taken this thread for me to even begin to work on that. Man! On!

There have been slow changes in the school over the years. Some may have been me but I’m pretty sure it was more about poor phonics check results.

What really helped was getting an allie! I get anxious and don’t come across very well, put people’s backs up. My allie has a position of power and is bright and used to being listened to and asking the right questions. I think together we have made things better for children in the lower years.

So, maybe; you don’t have to do it all, you don’t have to do it all now, you don’t have to do it on your own.

This from a Facebook group of English leaders tonight:

I am utterly astounded by this..... are children no longer allowed to decode words using picture clues? Context? Initial sound + prediction? Structural clues?
What about tricky words?
Are children banned from learning words by sight?!?! (God forbid)
Why is there a disconnect between learning to read... and reading for pleasure?!?
I am dumbfounded!!!
I’ve been English lead for 8 years and we were an ecar school up until recently... Our chn make excellent progress in reading. We are so proud of their achievements considering their low starting points (being inner city + large number of pupil premium)
Our children learn to read a range of books, from a range of publishers, using a range of strategies. And we are confident in our provision!
(That’s what I’ll be arguing with any deep diving ofsted inspector should they visit in the near future).

So many worrying things - and from an English lead. Clearly, she has never seen the amazing results you get in a school that teaches phonics only, because her school has only ever taught mixed methods. Her children do not follow the NC and ‘do really well considering their starting points’. Wow. How about teaching the way you are supposed to and getting every child where they could be? Why does she equate phonics only with lack of enjoyment when she has never, ever taught phonics only? Staggering.

I really, really do not understand why some people are claiming that there’s a disconnection between reading for pleasure and teaching children phonics.

It completely baffles me. How does teaching children how to decode words themselves deprive them of gaining pleasure from reading????

I didn't want to hijack this thread, but have started a related one in case anyone wants to join a discussion.
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/primary/3709400-WHY-dont-some-teachers-teach-pure-phonics-And-what-impact-does-it-have-on-how-teachers-are-viewed

@Feenie how can anyone not know this YEARS after it has become NC?

It’s an odd one Emily. Especially since the 15%+ of struggling readers in a mixed methods class would stand a much greater chance of enjoying reading if they’d been taught phonics only. It’s a soundbite, but I think it comes from not having the experience of seeing what happens in schools where phonics is taught well.

I see ‘considering their starting points’ hasn’t died off then, Feenie.

She's saying now that she's a trained Reading Recovery teacher. And that studies are 'fudged' and the 'government' get commission on decodable books.

It's really quite scary!

I know, Rafa - it's like 'bless them, we can only expect them to do so much'.

Mad, isn't it, drspouse?

There are a lot of non professionals who seem very sure of themselves over this.

I am not a primary expert but most people learn through a variety of modalities.

I can see why not teaching phonics would be a big handicap and I am a strong believer in phonics. However using mixed methods will allow everyone to learn through all modalities. How can that be bad?

For those asserting that phonics only is the only way, can you link to some (proper) research of phonics vs mixed methods, as opposed to phonics vs word recognition only.

Of course she’s a RR teacher. My home LA managed to spunk over a 1/4million pounds on introducing RR into every primary school. It would have cost them considerably less to implement and resource a decent phonics scheme.

However using mixed methods will allow everyone to learn through all modalities. How can that be bad?

Because it isn't true, and over years and years consistently failed one in five children!

www.edweek.org/ew/section/multimedia/phonics-vs-balanced-literacy-a-classroom-comparison.html?fbclid=IwAR2y2dHH_C-d0m7By5IkDYRWTKb_O-94n3XPJcOiBiJq3XjD-gDcPiBbVGY#.XZbLEO-uGXA.twitter

Thirty years condensed into one page ^^

Yeah, I knew she would be an RR teacher

What annoys me about that phrase most, Feenie, is that it places the blame on parents. Parents who aren’t trained to teach reading, or who don’t necessarily have the resources (time, money, their own literacy skill). If you started to suggest that schools were to blame for children failing to learn to read at an age appropriate level then you’d have to put a hard hat on.

Me too - spot on, Rafa.

I can see how it happens. If you haven’t taught both systems or been in a school where every child is reading by the end of year 1 regardless of starting point/background then your frame of reference for a normal range of attainment is different.

Thank God some sensible people turned up on this thread.

The - ‘th’ + schwa/ unstressed vowel.

Not particularly difficult for most reception children to grasp.