Can anyone enlighten me as to how reading is taught in Reception these days?

[imaginaryfriend]

I feel we're a bit unlucky as we seem to have a Reception teacher with zero communication skills. I've tried, I really have tried to get her to explain how reading is being taught. So I thought I'd ask you guys.

So far I know that the teacher is being very cautious in handing out reading books. She spent the first 6 weeks running through the alphabet phonetically with the kids then they had level 1 reading books. Dd's in the 'top' group of 6 children and the teacher moved them to level 2 books about 5 weeks ago. Because I go in as a parent helper to listen to the kids read once a week I can tell that all the children in dd's group are really gaining nothing from that level of book, they're racing through them immediately first time with no challenge at all. I've mentioned it to the teacher but she doesn't want to move them on a level yet.

My questions are:

1. Is just 1 reading book a week, only listened to by the parent helper in class, enough / typical?
2. The only time the teacher hears the children read is when they do group guided reading once a week. Is this enough for her to assess where they are with their reading? What the hell is guided reading???
3. Is it ok for me to be reading ahead with her at home? - she's reading ORT level 3 with me with no problem at all with comprehension / vocabulary.
4. Is most of the reading now done through synthetic phonics or are there still some sight words? I'm worried I won't teach dd in the right way to read if I'm moving ahead of what they're doing at school.

And if you wouldn't mind telling me what your experience of Reception teaching of reading is I'd love to hear and compare. I do feel we're getting a rubbish deal but maybe it's the norm. We're in an inner city London school with 'Excellent' Ofsted reports every year. I've no idea how they get those reports from what I've seen so far.

dd has just started at state reception. She has been there 10 days and has had 3 books and has "read" to the teacher/TA 3 times. First 2 books were wordless.
Tonight's book has words, she has also been given 3 sounds to learn (s, a and t) and 3 words (as, at, and a) as well has numbers. To be done during the course of the week.

I do think the emphasis has gone away from hearing children read though hasn't it.
I used to listen to readers in my mum's reception class, and my mum used to listen to then for 5 mins as she did something else - they stood at the side of her desk and read to her, she called out the name of the child who was to come and read, and the child who was to read next - so that they could get their book ready.
She used to frequently have classes of 30+ and had an NNEB for 1/2 day a week. She used to hear every child read 3 times a week.
My ds's class has 21 children, a full time TA and he is listened to once a week.

Reading 1:1 with a teacher is not common practice now. The literacy strategy dictates to teachers how they should teach reading i.e. the mechanics of hearing all children read in the class. Often reception class teachers will hear children 1:1 or the TA will because they are just starting out and it takes a while to get them used to the routines of GR. Normally the books used in GR are a little more challenging that those sent home because this is where the actual teaching of reading is occurring. At home children are just gaining confidence with their skill, after all you wouldn't be expected to actually teach reading would you.

If you are trying to tell the teacher which level the children in her class should be reading I would imagine that this will make you very unpopular!

So,

1. I would imagine that the number of books per week will increase over the year. It is not typical to be listened to individually at all.
2. The teacher is a trained professional who of course is able to make assessments about children's reading during GR. There are very specific targets that she will look at each week.
3. By all means read ahead at home, but just use ordinary reading books, why do you desperately want her to be ahead on a particular scheme? Just so that your child is the most advanced reader in class?

4.Synthetic phonics is the most widely taught strategy for decoding unknown words. But of course, the English language does not work in a way that all words can be decoded this way. Some common sight words will need to be taught alongside.

Apologies if I sound a little prickly but parents who think they know more about the teaching of reading than teachers is a bit of a bug bear of mine!

Also, FYI, suggesting that TA's or teachers hear children read before school is insane. This is normal in a private school where children are usually dropped early so parents can get to work - it's a way of filling this time before the school day starts.

tinpot, you do sound prickly.

FYI the first I heard of children being heard to read at the start of the day was on this thread earlier. I never expected anything like that for dd.

To answer your answers to my questions:

1. The number of books has not changed at all over the year and as I said just before Christmas dd had the same book for 5 weeks in a row as nobody listened to her read it.

1. Teachers make mistakes. Why is it that dd's teacher is using quite a different method of assessing the children's reading ability to the teacher next door?

1. I have no desire for dd to be the most advanced reader in her class. Pre-Reception I hadn't done any reading with her at all. I'm following her lead. The school books aren't challenging or even interesting to her and she's very keen to read and learn more words. She tries by herself with books which are way beyond her, stories I would expect to read to her so I thought I'd use a reading scheme so that I wasn't giving her anything inappropriate to read.

1. I was under the impression that synthetic phonics actually could provide a way to decode all words. There was a series on tv recently in which a school used the scheme 100% to improve the children's reading. I asked the question because I wasn't sure if all schools were going to do this or if they would still use sight words alongside phonics.

And finally I wouldn't dream of telling the teacher what level the children in her class should be reading! I do, however, think I can mention to her that my dd isn't enjoying her school reading books. Particularly as she doesn't hear dd read so she wouldn't know unless I told her.

Just to clarify - There are 'tricky words' as defined by Jolly Phonics (synthetic phonics programme) which are word that are learnt by sight. These are words that cannot be read phonetically because it simply does not make sense. (Example: 'he' doesn't work if sounded out as 'huh' 'eh', which are the sounds for 'h' and 'e'). High Frequency Words (HFW's) are a specific list of words (different words for each year group) that occur most frequently in the English language. Some of them can be sounded out, such as 'bed', others, such as 'the', cannot.
I wouldn't necessarily agree that reading 1:1 with the teacher is not common practice. I certainly do with my students, and know many other teachers who do.
What we do with our GR books is we read them first with the child, and then send that book home for the child to re-read to their parent.

js, I understand that. But this new scheme which isn't Jolly Phonics or any of the others I'd heard of, did use phonics as a method of decoding every word. They broke every word into a series of sounds which appeared in a list so that the sound 'ee' could be made by e, ee, y, the sound 'ow' could be made by ow, ou, etc. I got the impression from the documentary that the government wanted all schools to take up this system although a lot of people are opposed to such a total decoding way of teaching to read, preferring to stick to some tricky words and high frequency words learnt by sight.

Dd's school seem to be doing a mixture of phonics, sight words and tricky words, which I guess is the norm at the moment?

I can understand that teachers don't like parents who think they know more about teaching reading than their child's teacher however as a parent what annoys me is a teacher/head/school that thinks I don't know or understand anything about learning to read.

When my DD started they insisted on giving her books without words which I know she didn't need, she was ready to start reading straight away, was already sounding words out and knew some words. When the books with the words did come home they didn't even support what she had been learning and contained areas that they hadn't even covered in class. They were old Biff books full of words that couldn't be decoded (they were teaching phonics using Jolly Phonics). When I challenged the school I was fobbed off and told that I needed to explain that a 'y' at the end of the word is pronounced 'e'. I did check in my mirror that day and saw that I didn't have 'stupid parent' tatooed on my forehead. Much to my amusement shortly afterwards new books started coming home.

Perhaps if schools were more open, communicated better, more consistent in their approach parents would be happier and wouldn't feel the need to keep asking questions etc.

I can also understand teachers not liking it if parents thin they know more about teaching reading than they do. But they ahve to know that we see our kids 1-1 all the time and if they never hear them read 1-1 they might not know what they can do.

To be honest I don't think dd's teacher is that great, especially now the next door Reception class is in. Things like dd's teacher has never put any of their work on the boards in the corridor whereas the class next door already have boards full of work after only 2 weeks of Reception. Dd's teacher has never given the parents a rough schedule of their week, i.e. when they do P.E. etc. whereas the class next door had this from the first morning. We've all had to ask the teacher and she's so unfriendly it's like trying to get blood out of a stone. We've fortunately got a nicer TA now who actually looks pleased to see the kids when they arrive in the morning.

Reception, for us, so far, has been thoroughly disappointing.

IF.

Home ed?

I'm a recent convert - so probably best not listened to.

Imaginaryfriend - my dh and I are in that place too - we are finding it pretty disappointing. Although our DDs teacher is lovely.

That said the most important thing is that our DD is absolutely loving it. I find it very sad when I see posts from people who's children are finding it difficult and really feel for them. We both told each other at the start of the year that the most important thing was her happiness.

I can see why Home Edding is becoming so popular however it isn't for me I'm afraid. We are lucky though as we have options to move her for next year.

I've never considered home ed. for a number of reasons. For one I'm not confident enough I could teach dd effectively, I work part-time and dp full-time and I don't think we'd be able to put in enough time and perhaps most of all dd's an only child, we have no family nearby at all and I worry she wouldn't develop her social skills fully. She's very shy and reserved as it is so being with me and dp all day wouldn't be a good idea.

Having said that I do admire people who successfully home ed.

I don't know how genuinely happy dd is with school. I think she's bored a lot of the time. It doesn't help that she's one of the oldest children in her class. The teacher isn't very warm or inspiring, she seems to find it very hard to say anything positive. I've given up comparing her to dd's nursery teachers who were so up-beat and interested in the kids. If I felt she was just 'efficient' that would be something. In my mind she seems to be failing the kids on every level at the moment.

OK, less prickly tonight and I do take on board comments about lack of communication from schools. Usually schools do a meeting at the beginning of the year to explain this kind of thing to parents. Obviously this hasn't been the case here.

It does sounds as though the teacher that your dd has is not as all singing and dancing as some reception teachers can be. I'm sorry that your first experience of school has been disappointing and I hope that this improves over the next school years.

I must emphasise that the teacher is hearing your child read during the guided reading session. All schools will have adapted this session to meet the needs of the children in their school (as previous poster who said she sends home the GR book). A basic outline of this session might look like this:
Teacher introduces book to group (no more than 6 children usually). They may read first few pages together or individually but most likely will pause after a few pages and discuss what has happened so far, predict what may happen next, answer comprehension questions. The children will then all read the remaining part of the book alone but the teacher will 'listen in' to each child, one at at time. At the end of the session there will be more questions to assess comprehension etc. This is a basic outline only - I'm sure you don't want full training on the literacy hour!!!

I think reading is a very delicate area at times in a 'teacher versus parent' kind of way. Apologies if I offended. I do hope that you experience of reading and school in general improves. If you are really concerned about communication and you are not getting any help from the teacher, go to the head. Chances are if the teacher is 'under performing' in the classroom she will know this already but you may prompt her to do something about it!

I agree that the same home reading book for 5 weeks is unacceptable.

I'm thinking I will go to see the Head if I don't feel satisfied when I meet the teacher for the Progress Assessment sessions next Monday.

I have never had any intentions to believe I know more than the teacher. I long, in fact, to feel like the teacher knows what she's doing and is capable of telling me, just briefly now and then, so that I can hand all responsibility for dd's education over to her.