Primary school teachers and ORT ( Biff, Chip & Kipper) vs compatability with phonics

[fedupwasherwoman]

It seems to be a common theme that despite being forced to embrace phonics nationally as the optimum method of teaching reading, schools are still using their old ORT (Biff, Chip & Kipper) books which are not strictly compatable.

O.K., I can see the point of it benefitting all children to have the experience of being able to handle books and learning about there being a beginning/middle and end to a story but the wordless books also teach them to look at the picture and guess what is going on. From experience with ds I know that they can then carry this through to the books with 3 words per page instead of using their phonics knowledge to decode the words.

Also the old ORT books use words not easily decodable in very early books with words and so that introduces a bit of look and say or indeed guessing again.

But my main question is that there are now many books (including a new ORT series)out there which do seem more compatable with phonics and the storytelling looking at the picture thing can be done by encouraging the use of a bed-time story type book in addition to a simple "reading" book, so why are so many many schools persisting with the old ORT books ?

Is it just the huge amount of money involved to replace the book scheme currently in use ?

It is mainly down to cost, and an acknowledgement by most teachers that whilst phonics methods are very effective you can't avoid words such as the, here, said, come etc for too long.

Ds will read around 180 scheme reading books this year in recpetion. Admittedly these wil be shared amongst the class but givent hat you need a numer of copies at teh same level that is still quite an investmet. Most schools will replace on a needs-driven basis.

Also they do need the 'sight' words - phonics seems to help most with spelling, but when you're reading, you don't tend to read phonically, it tends to be using sight words. I think a mixture of the two is optimal.

My dd2 is at a different school to the one ds and dd1 went to. They both used ORT, but dd2 is using a completely phonics based system, and Biff and Chip have been abandoned (Yay!). She has brought home a list of sight words to learn, but otherwise just uses normal reading books. I must admit I don't really understand why biff and chip can't be used, as I remember sounding out words with ds and dd1, but I am assured this system works better, and dd2 seems to be enjoying it.

DD3 is learnig to read using the Ruth Miskin books (Read Write Inc) which are almost totally phonic, with the few sight words highlighted in red (he, said, I, my, etc at the level she's at) whcih I think are much better that the ORT early books which DD1 and DD2 used at school. Surprisingly the stories are quite good! But schools in the main don't have the finances to replace exisitng reading schemes, as well as providing extra training for staff, whcih is why a lot are bumbling along "kind of" doing synthetic phonics. MOst children though will "get it" by most methods, and hopefully teachers and parents can identify and help those who don't.

they just can't afford to replace them, and also the teachers like to have the children deal with 'real' books, let them learn it's ok not to know what the word is, and to have a guess and see if it makes sense.