5yo wanting to read books that are “too tricky”

[Morred]

I’m not sure how best to help/encourage my DS without potentially confusing him or causing issues with what he does at school.

He has recently “cracked” phonics enough to read a “whole book” - so far the ones he can read are either carefully selected by school to match his current phonics knowledge (they follow little wandle) or the usborne first readers/songbirds 1 that I check are 99% words he could decode.

He is very excited about being able to read a whole book and is now quite cross and stroppy at the idea I might read to him. He wants to read to me - but read the same books I read to him. Of course these are absolutely full of “tricky words” or phonemes he hasn’t learnt yet.

I’m sure some of this is a phase and he’ll be happy to be read to again soon. But what is the best approach for reading harder books for now? Do I tell him that “ou” can represent “oo” and “ow”, or do I “teach” him those as sight words for now.

I wasn’t taught phonics and don’t want to tell
him the wrong thing. Eg in “house” what is the e doing? And I think trying to explain split digraphs in “home” etc will be better coming from the school! I also don’t know how quickly he’ll get to the more complex aspects of phonics - he’s only in year R now.

But I also don’t want to put him off reading by saying “these are too tricky for now”.

Any advice?

I would just go with it and not over think it. Like you mentioned most of us wouldn't have been taught to read through phonics. It's OK for him to learn as sight words and there's no reason not to expose him to harder words he may not be able to decode. Literacy is literacy and if he's interested in books just run with it the more he reads/ shares a book with you, the better I would say!

Agree with PP. You're overthinking it.

Let him try.

He'll soon discover he can't read all the words yet.

He'll either ask you to read it instead, ask what the word says, guess based on his knowledge of the story or use the pictures to help him. All of those options are completely fine. He's not going to be illiterate because you let him have a go at The Gruffalo too early.

@Morred My DDs didn’t learn through phonics but learnt to read via a mix of methods. Phonics can hold some bright dc back. If they really enjoy books, why wouldn’t they want to read more widely? DD1 had several dc in her class who could read paragraphs at 4! Phonics would have bored them rigid!

In YR when DD was 4 (August born) they were allowed to choose books from the school library. As you can imagine, I was a bit floored when the Diary of Samuel Pepys came home! Ladybird version. Lots of paragraphs though and detail. We read together - she did words she could and we talked about the great fire of London etc which were illustrated. Her teacher said dc had free choice so we did get some oddities coming home. Helicopters the following week! We also chose reading books from the town library as she wanted more variety than school reading books. I just saw it as knowledge and not disappointing her!

My DD is similar and tonight she picked a book to read that is one I would normally read to her (a Winnie the Witch book).

She was much better than I thought she'd be - partly because it's a book she knows so there was an element of just remembering. I read the tricky words, and with the rest she either read them, or I helped her figure them out.

I didn't go into the detail of explaining split digraphs etc. so the trickier words she read were long but consistent in terms of sounds.

Thanks all! I am definitely overthinking it. I could read before I was taught at school. If he was doing that I’d be fine. He currently gets cross when he encounters words that don’t “follow the rules” so I don’t want to make things worse inadvertently. I’ll try to explain there are 100s of words that don’t follow the rules (the ones he knows right now!) and see if we can have other strategies for reading those.

My son was held back with reading with some of the world’s most boring phonics readers.

I bought him a load of Usborne Beginners, and because he was interested in the subject matter, his reading came on in leaps and bounds.

Let him read the tricky books. If he gets stuck on a word, just say it to him. Don’t make him sound it out. Phonics is useful, but it’s not the only skill needed for reading.

I’d explain that they do follow the rules but he hasn’t learnt all the rules yet because he’s still learning / his teacher is still teaching them.

That might get you back to reading to him without totally putting him off because he’s frustrated by not being able to read it.

Depends how many words in the book he doesn't know. If there's just a few, I would point out that he knows some of those sounds and tell him the rest (e.g. the word 'said' - he will know the sounds for the s and the d, but you'll need to tell him the ai bit.

If there's lots of words he doesn't know it's going to be too painful to break down each one, so I would just tell him 'that word is _'.

Avoid getting him to guess by looking at the picture or thinking what the word might be etc - these are not effective strategies and it's very hard to get kids out of the habit of guessing and instead reading through the word, as guessing is easier!

If you want some extra ideas, look at YouTube, Littles Love Learning. She explains the silent e. She is not from the UK though, but it is helpful.

Happened with my eldest. Held back by school and we struggled to read the school books in reception and just gave up in year 1 - it was putting DC off reading! DC was allowed to read whatever they wanted to us and we just said any words they didn't know, and they carried on reading (usually they asked what it meant but not always). End of year 1 there were still getting same level 5 books. At the beginning of year 2 they were assessed by new teacher as level 20 (year 6) Granted they are not mature enough to appreciate some of the subject matter aimed at that age group yet or understand what the words really mean, but they read the words beautifully!!!
Leave the phonics to the school to teach and just do reading for pleasure at home.

Just another thought. My DD1 had 120 breakthrough words to learn. I have no idea how they fit with phonics. Phonics was always used with other methods and breakthrough words were the high frequency ones.