Ruth Miskin

[BlameNormanPrice]

I have 6 year old b/g twins in P2 (Scotland). The focus of much of their lessons, and homework, appears to consist of watching endless Ruth Miskin phonics videos. My daughter engages with these, however, my son does not. We received a report for my son yesterday where his teacher made comments on the fact his writing is not all the same height, he still needs to spell out some words to read them and he needs to watch more of these videos at home. Am personally not too bothered by letter height or sounding out words (he's only just turned 6!) But can anyone recommend any alternative resources other than Ruth Miskin we could do at home? He is completely bored watching video after video (I dont blame him as I find them torturous myself.) My concern is that children's different learning styles are not being taken into consideration and those with more active/kinesthetic learning needs aren't engaged with sitting watching videos. Anyone else had experience of this?

Teach Your Monster to Read is a game / app that teaches synthetic phonics in a way that's fun. Its essentially a game so kids don't even feel like they are 'working'. I'd see if your son responds better to this.

I’d recommend getting some posters to help reinforce letter formation if your son is a visual learner.

Turtle, giraffe and monkey letters are the three categories and I’d just reinforce this when talking about letters and writing at home.

www.sparklebox.co.uk/previews/9051-9075/sb9070-giraffe-tortoise-monkey-letter-posters.html

Thanks for your responses, both are very helpful. I'll go and look into these now.

My daughter’s school does RWI but the teachers do the activities with them. During lockdown we were sent the link to the videos and my daughter hated them so I did them myself. I cant understand why the teachers are just putting on videos.

Another nice app is Reading Eggs - you have to pay a subscription but you could set both kids up on it for no extra cost.

The learning styles model (visual audio kinaesthetic) is very outdated and has been disproven

I wouldn’t necessarily want to use Sparklebox.

@FrenchToasty thank you for pointing that out. That might very well be the case - I'm not an educational professional, so happy to be corrected in this regard. However, whether learning style theory has been debunked or not - I can clearly see (as a parent) that watching videos isn't an effective learning strategy for my son. It works for my daughter though 🤷‍♀️

Please avoid Sparklebox.

Although pigeonholing via learning styles is very outdated, there’s nothing wrong with getting a pen in hand to practise letter formation and phonics as the video is playing. Although still videos, Mr Thorne and his giraffe puppet Geraldine is much more fun, and encourages scavenger hunts and other fun stuff (YouTube).
But yes, stay well away from Sparklebox.

@BlameNormanPrice

I have 6 year old b/g twins in P2 (Scotland). The focus of much of their lessons, and homework, appears to consist of watching endless Ruth Miskin phonics videos. My daughter engages with these, however, my son does not. We received a report for my son yesterday where his teacher made comments on the fact his writing is not all the same height, he still needs to spell out some words to read them and he needs to watch more of these videos at home. Am personally not too bothered by letter height or sounding out words (he's only just turned 6!) But can anyone recommend any alternative resources other than Ruth Miskin we could do at home? He is completely bored watching video after video (I dont blame him as I find them torturous myself.) My concern is that children's different learning styles are not being taken into consideration and those with more active/kinesthetic learning needs aren't engaged with sitting watching videos. Anyone else had experience of this?

Whilst I agree that sitting a child on front of a video isn’t exactly quality learning, your thoughts on catering to different learning styles is now considered to be pseudoscience in educational terms. There’s lots of research about this. www.britishcouncil.org/voices-magazine/four-reasons-avoid-learning-styles-one-alternative

I would encourage your boy to do a lot more kinaesthetic learning like playing with dough, drawing in sand etc. Just putting on videos is abdicating their responsibility. In my opinion RM has a lot to answer for for putting children off learning. RWI is dire

Play blending and segmenting games with him - if you Google there’s loads of suggestions.
Things like putting a selection of toys at one end of a room, say ‘Go and get me the…c-ar, sh-oo, s-p-oo-n etc.
Put some letters on the floor, say ‘Show me how to make ‘cat’’ Then he has to jump on the right letter.
Learn sounds by putting the letter pictures on the stairs and reading them as you go up and down.

There's lots more active play ideas on Phonics Family phonicsfamilycom.wordpress.com/ . There's a lot there but it's well categorised, some may seem really faffy but there are some that don't need much prep time at all, or lead into enough play afterwards a bit of prep time is worth it. My kids for example loved the one about matching clothes labels on hangers (with suitable phonics for phase they were in) to clothes from my wardrobe and then spent another hour playing dressing up happily afterwards.