Reception phonics

[vera16]

My 4.5yr old DS is starting reception next week. He knows all letter sounds and can read any words made up of simple letter sounds. He seems keen to move on but needs to know the two letter sounds and tricky sounds (? not sure if terminology as all new to me). Wondering if I should show him or just wait for school to do it? Looking at the syllabus it seems like he might have to wait quite a while for this to be covered.

Maybe leave the phonics to the teacher who is trained to deliver this. Focus on reading him stories etc.

@cansu What if your child does want to read though? They need more than slow phonics.

This.

The Wyse and Bradbury report from UCL highlights that we need a broader reading diet for children and phonics, and how it’s taught, isn’t great for some DC..

I also think children who want to read early, as opposed to children who are forced to read early with tutors etc, are bright. I’ve seen several who could read early and they all went on to Oxbridge! There’s a difference between naturally working out how to read and force feeding a child that’s not ready and thinking that’s a benefit. Nursery is very important and provides the platform for reading for most children but there will always be some who are ready to read the minute they get to school. They can cope with a broader reading curriculum to keep their interest alive.

Yup. 30mn of reading every day. It's a lot to do already. The love of reading (hearing) will push him naturally.

My DD is a couple of years older. She got bored in lockdown and wanted work when her brother did his so I did do some phonics with her. When she started school they did phase 2 together then split them after half term, she had so much other stuff going on she didn't mind that the first half term of phonics was basically revision (and she skipped a level or two when they started bringing books home).
She's now in year 2 and in the top phonics group but certainly not so far ahead she's bored.

But other dc can read books in y2. Not phonics books. So maybe their needs are different?

DD learned to read with phonics, very fast, aged 3. It's not phonics that is slow it is schools' pace, because they want everyone to be able to keep up. Was reading normal picture books fluently, "with expression" by the time she started preschool. (Won't bloody do it now though, reading aloud is Far Too Embarrassing at age 10.)

In reception she was happy playing phonics games even if not learning anything new. At some point in year 1 she started dreading it so then we had a chat with the teacher who let her sit it out and do some comprehension work instead. I don't think they did phonics in y2 except for the kids who hadn't clicked with reading yet.

@TizerorFizz I don't know about all schools but in my school children on phonics are sent home with two phonics books per week which is aligned to their current reading ability. They are additionally sent home with sharing books to read with an adult/sibling/teddy.
Again, dependant on their ability, they could try to decode this book themselves or have an adult read it to them/with them. I'm not a huge advocate for phonics as a cure all for early reading, however I must acknowledge the value of a book that children can decode independently with success. There are so many children who are not read to/with. There needs to be a pathway for independent success too.

Personally I feel ability streaming is better than whole class teaching. It allows for targeted support where needed and enables the more able (often better supported at home) to continue to make progress. Sadly not every school had the budget for this and not every school would be in agreement with my judgement

*which are

It's been a long day

The Wyse and Bradbury report was absolutely appallingly written and has been widely derided. The writers’ subject knowledge was atrocious.

www.iferi.org/iferi_forum/viewtopic.php?t=1431

A taste of why it’s not respected within the field. There is lots more though.

Well some people don’t like reports for all sorts of reasons. Mostly the government snd devotees of what a report isn’t keen on!

When schools send home books to read, they are phonics books. Not examples of great childrens’ literature. No poetry.

Where I first became a school governor many years ago, the school sent home reading books snd DC lost them. Parents didn’t read to DC. Some couldn’t read themselves. I totally get all of that. However that doesn’t mean the brighter child should be decided good books because they fall outside the system.

Jolly Phonics is a means of teaching letter sounds. It doesn’t tell teachers how to organise their groupings!

When schools send home books to read, they are phonics books. Not examples of great childrens’ literature. No poetry.

For a couple of years, until they have the toolkit for reading any book. Alongside library books that could be anything the child picked, for parents to read to the child. Though as children seemed more likely to pick beast quest and rainbow fairies, not sure that actually increased the literary standard. The phonics books on the other hand included non fiction, poetry, play scripts, classic tales, all sorts.

Classic children's literature is the sort of thing the teacher read to the kids in class. Obviously not going to be accessible to most 4 yr olds as a reading book. And if they are accessible, that child will be recognised as a reader and won't be sent home with phonics books.

I didn’t say classic literature. I said great literature. There’s a difference. Books written pre phonics are not phonics books. I just think sticking to phonics limits enjoyment of literature. In a wider sense. Early readers might not choose limiting library books either. My DD didn’t and these books were not in the library. The school didn’t have the money!

But when they get to the stage they could read great literature they're way past the phonics stage anyway. It's not one or the other, it's one then the other. Most of the school library is nothing to do with phonics, phonics is just the tool for teaching them to read whatever is in the library.

That depends what you understand by great literature for children! It’s books for the very young I meant. So many are pre phonics. I’m not talking about classics. The books I mean were yr1 type books for confident readers. Not year 3 plus.

Think about your child's whole 'reading diet' - both reading themselves and being read to.

In school, there will be books / texts that are read to the whole class - perhaps a story book or poem they are using for English, or a book of bible stories in assembly, or some information about castles, or even the menu for the day...

Then at home I am sure you share books as part of your daily routine, as well as incidental reading of labels and boxes and packets.

None of this is limited by the fact that your child will ALSO have direct teaching of phonics (rather than having to intuit the phonic code for themselves, as early 'self taught' readers like my DS, or 'whole word' readers had to before it was realised that teaching the phonics code directly was more efficient for more children).

the parts of their 'reading diet' that ARE phonics linked are reading within the daily Phonics lesson, and your child's reading scheme book.

UNLESS your child has no reading diet other than their Phonics book and lessons, then there is no problem of 'feeding their knowledge of words, language and stories'.

It would be a VERY rare school where a child didn't have a wide exposure to books and stories daily in school. Just make sure that you as a parent are supplementing that with library books, own books, reading street signs or cereal packets etc etc at home.

My son started reception knowing all his single letter sounds, some digraphs (mainly ee, ay, sh and th) and could blend them to read cvc words.

I didn’t teach him any more and let school do the rest. He has just started year 1 and is reading pretty fluently now, knows all his phonics sounds and could pass the end of year phonics test already.

My 3.5 year old will start reception next year. I have no intentions of doing phonics with her before she starts. She isn’t interested or ready for it yet. She will start school malign way behind where my son was, but they all tend to catch up in their own time and I’m not worried.

So sharing the Gruffalo, or Elmer, or Little Red Train, or Dogger, or Hairy Maclary with children is not 'something that is never done because they are pre-phonics' - and if your child joins in with the remembered rhymes or even whole pages from memory, that's absolutely brilliant, or even better picks out the words that they know. It is a vital part of the reading diet, that children will be able to access with greater and greater independence as their knowledge of decoding grows.

A self-taught reader, like my own DS, has to match words they have heard with the letters as they are written, work out the phonic code used, and then apply that worked-out knowledge to new words - research has shown that there is no such thing as a fluent reader who ONLY recognises whole words, they have just worked out the code. Teaching phonics directly 'short cuts' the 'having to work out the code' phase, and is shown to be more efficient in terms of the % of children who learn to read that way.

(I didn't set out for DS to be self-taught. I set out to teach him phonics, only to find he could read fluently already.....)

If they're confident readers in year 1 they already know their phonics. Whether someone taught them or they just figured it out by themselves. There's no reason to keep feeding them phonics books when they're already confident readers.

Absolutely not - but what they do need is - as one part of their reading diet - books that are exactly pitched to their decoding and comprehension levels so that they are neither:

• Guessing a large number of words to get the general 'gist' of a text without properly decoding it or
• Decoding fluently without any comprehension of what they are reading

The higher levels of a good school reading scheme - or careful use of school and public libraries or services such as Reading Eggs - keep children moving so that they keep both sides of their reading 'balanced', and complement the wide range of texts that are still being shared with and read to them.

cantkeep, I'd say the former is covered by 'confident readers' - if they were guessing lots of words they were not confident readers and need more phonics books before they're ready to read more widely. The latter is covered by letting the child choose their books, they're hardly going to choose something they can't comprehend. If mine ever picked up something that was too hard comprehension wise or just pitched above their interest level, they'd grind to a halt after a page or two and choose something else.

I mean, I don't mean to disagree with you as such, scheme books as long as they need them, and wider reading being read to them and later by them once they're able.

As a teacher, i have read with any number of children who ‘are reading xyz series of books’ (often from home) but are guessing 50% of the words….and even more who decode fluently without comprehension when questioned ….

I have been lucky enough to work in a school with a very very wide reading scheme, including ‘real books’ as well as ‘reading scheme’ books from many publishers as children progress I think therefore we may be talking about slightly different things when we talk about ‘scheme books’!