Learning to read - phonics and reading schemes

[aintnomountainhighenough]

I would be interested to understand from other parents and teachers how their school is teaching phonics and how it is being supported i.e. what reading scheme/s is/are being used.

I have heard that ORT books don't work with/support jolly phonics. Does anyone know if this is correct? If so could anyone advise which schemes (apart from books that are produced by Jolly Phonics) do support it.

Of course the reason for this post is that my DD has just started reception and they are sending ORT (Kipper) books home.

Thanks

I'm coming to this conversation a bit late but I have a similar question.

Tonight we have received an ORT "Kipper's first day at playschool" book with no words in it. On the plus side we also received a nice story book chosen by ds which we will read right through this evening as our bedtime story. These are his first books sent home from school.

However he already knows about 30 of the 44? phonic sounds and can read basic c-v-c words and recognises some trickier words(go, mummy, daddy ,book ,like, here, look, the) etc which I had been reinforcing with some old Peter and Jane books which to be fair are about learning key words even if they are a bit old fashioned so I ensure that we use phonics to decipher new words wherever possible.

I am concerned that lip-service only is being paid to phonics as I haven't heard him mention re-learning the s,a,t,i,p, etc stuff since he started, even though he did all that in pre-school and at home with me. I kind of expected that they'd cover these basics and then the combined letter sounds and the blending etc before sending home some c-v-c word type reading books like the songbirds version of ORT early readers.

I had invested in a set of songbirds ORT books as they look fun for early readers but I have been saving them for when he is ready. Are we going to have to just whizz through the Biff/Chip/Kipper ones in order to dutifully write stuff in his reading together log or should I be honest and say what we are really up to ? I do understand that children who have not covered any phonics or "reading" before starting school may well benefit a lot more from these books with no words.

I don't want to come over as pushy but he is a boy who is not much into football etc and he adores "reading" plus it seems to give him confidence in himself so I don't really want to let him down by "running on the spot" waiting for others to catch up for too much of his reception class year.

God, re-reading this it sounds like I am a pushy parent considering the ORT books to be good enough for the other kids but not for my little treasure.

Any advice on the subject of honesty or "being economical with the truth" in the reading together log ?

Also, do you think the school is sticking with the ORT books because that's what they've always used prior to the synthetic phonics back to basics approach was rolled out to all schools and they can't afford to upgrade to anything more in harmony with it ?

fedupwasherwoman,
I don't think it is a bad thing to be a little bit of a pushy parent. Pushy parents look out for their children and make sure their children get the best in life.

20% of children leave primary school unable to read. Surely it is better to be a slightly over pushy parent at 5 years old than to have a 12 year old who is desperately unhappy and failing at school because he/ she cannot read.

fedupwasherwoman you can do both well if you are careful. Read your own books properly and then use the ones the school send home for other things - if there are no words you might be able to use it to develop vocabulary eg pick a topic such as description and each of you come up with as many different descriptive words for the picture, then do action words etc, will help him with grammar in the long run too

When he gets ORT books with words that he cannot decode either just tell it to him, or let him decode the regular bit and tell him the tricky bit. If you carry on his phonics tecahing to include long vowels and magic 'e' (both mine grasped that at age 4.5yrs) he will soon be able to read most of the ORT books anyway so it will not be a problem for long. The ORT books get to be quite interesting from Stage 5 thankfully!

HAve fun!

Thanks Carbonel, you sound very clued up, are you a teacher ?

I was hoping to hand over to school for the letter combinations, long vowels and magic e but it now seems like that will be months away and ds is champing at the bit to be able to read more words for himself so I'am going to have to research what "magic e" actually is and go a bit further with the phonics workbooks, if only to keep him happy in the meantime.

I asked him if they did any "letters" yet and he said no but I suppose I can't rely on the descriptions of a 4 year old to match my own in terms of what they are doing. I have a lunch menu and his description of what he has eaten bears no relation to what I have ordered and paid for

wheresthehamster - you are not wrong !

We have the Big Cat Phonics books at DS's school - I much prefer them to the ORT ones.
If you google Big Cat Phonics you will see lots on the Amazon site.

God, I'm so chuffed.

We looked at and talked about the pictures in the latest "word free" ORT book and then ds asked for a book with words in. (He isn't keen on these word free books at all)

I got out the songbirds phonics books and we've now done "Top Cat" and "Dig, dig, dig" with ds only needing a teeny bit of help and prompting. He gets it totally ! He sounds out the cvc words and blends the sounds and accepts help with any new "tricky" words and then remembers them.

Ds is chuffed to bits with himself and wanting "more reading books, mummy". (He knows they're stashed on top of the wardrobe unfortunately) and I can see us running through the level ones way too quickly so it'll be back to our old friends Peter and Jane for the next level soon.