DS4 struggling with word memory

[Moo313131]

DS4 is struggling to remember words that he has sounded out eg on a previous page. For example tonight's book was The Pancake. The word pancake was in the title. We broke it down and sounded it out. He got pancake. I then asked him so what is the title? He couldn't remember the word pancake and had to sound it out again. The word pancake was then on page 6 and again he had to sound it out. It was then on the next page ("the pancake race") - he had no recognition of the word from the previous 2 times.

In total there are 18 words including the title. 8 of the words are "the" - he was fine with these. 3 of the words are pancake.

We have been asked to read the book twice each night. DH just sat down with DS to do it again and he had to sound out pancake on the front page again!

Is this just something that will take time? Or is there anything we can do to make this easier and help him?

I remember my eldest reading the phrase ‘run, run, run’ in reception and insisting on sounding each word out. I think this is very common. She’s year 6 now and on track for greater depth so do not worry!

@BoleynMemories13 Your advice was excellent until you started talking about tricky words being taught as sight words. This is incorrect. Going back as far as 2005, the advice has never been to teach these words as sight words and is a common misconception from teachers based on poor training.

Here is the original advice, cemented by the NC 2014 a bit later on:

Tricky words should not be taught as sight words.
Instead, children should be taught to:
Decode the word from left to right, sounding and blending what is decodable, and identifying the “tricky” bit that does not follow the usual grapheme–phoneme correspondence.
Key principles from Letters and Sounds

• Tricky words are only tricky because part of the word is not yet phonically regular for the child.
• Children should:
• Say the sounds they know
• Blend from left to right
• Notice and remember the unusual (tricky) part
• Teachers should draw attention to the tricky bit, often by:
• Underlining it
• Colouring it
• Explicitly discussing what makes it tricky
• As children learn more GPCs, many tricky words stop being tricky.

Teaching those words as sight words means returning to mixed methods - something the current curriculum is very much against.

He is 4. The expectations are bonkers!

Totally normal at this stage and probably good sounding out practise, rather than just guessing.

I remember when DD was about 6. She could read quite fluently and wouldn't need to sound out the majority of the words by then. She would have real trouble with names, as they were often unfamiliar and didn't seem to stick once she had decoded them. She would read it wrong EVERY time, maybe 30+ times in the book. It used to drive me mad!

As other posters have pointed out, this book is not at this chid’s decoding level and should not have been given for practice. It’s from the old strand of ORT, not the phonics strand.

As teachers, we do explain the tricky bits to children when introducing the words for the first time. "This is the word the. These letters represent th and this letter represents an uh sound, th-uh - the". After their initial introduction, many children do start memorising them by sight. For those that don't, we keep explaining why it says what it does by reiterating the sound each part represents.

I wouldn't expect parents to know that though, so we advise them to teach them by sight. "This is the, say the here". The children have been introduced to it in school, so they have had the phonic code explained to them, but they'll encounter the word hundreds of times at home with their parents if they are reading regularly. I want parents to be confident in supporting their child to read at home, so therefore this is the advice I give. Otherwise it's overcomplicates it.

At the end of the day, the children are unable to decode these words independently, so we as adults need to support them in doing so. Teachers can explain the tricky, as of yet untaught, code to the children all we like (and we do), but at the end of the day the children memorise the words by sight.

With all due respect, I don't think it's necessary to split hairs over the terminology in this case as the purpose of my advice was to advise a parent who assumingly has not received phonics training, rather than educate the next generation of primary school teachers. There's far too much technical jargon involved in the teaching of phonics. I don't see the need to bog parents down with more than is necessary. You are of course entitled to disagree, but that's why I answered as I did.

You are conflating learning words by sight with learning words to automaticity to build up a sight vocabulary. The former is very definitely contrary to the curriculum and very much what you described in your first post - learning words as wholes. That absolutely should not be happening - for most children it would be fine, but those kind of mixed methods confuse around 20%. That’s why they were stripped from the curriculum very definitely in 2014 and advised against since 2005. It isn’t nitpicking over terminology - it’s a dangerous slide into the very mixed methods that were falling children in the first place.

I am not confusing anything. Yes I am kind of combining the two, I agree with you on that, but only to help parents understand, as I said. That doesn't mean I myself don't understand the process.

Teaching children to blend, and ensuring they don't come across too many words they are unable to blend independently (ie 'pancake' in Reception) are important, as children are only capable of memorising so many words at this stage of their development. It's important they develop a strategy to decode most words they come across in their books (blending). However, all children memorise certain high-frequency words by sight after being exposed to them several times (a process which begins in school). They do not say to themselves 'th-uh, the' every time they encounter the word, even if their teacher has taught them that this is the code for this word. If anything, most children who attempt to sound it out will say t-h-e - the, which shows they don't actually understand the untaught code which has been explained to them at all, but they do recognise the word by sight as they managed to say the correct word despite saying completely the wrong sounds in order to get there. If a word doesn't contain the familiar sounds they are use to working with and blending, they begin to see it as a whole. It's a pattern of letters they have memorised - the. It has become part of their sight vocabulary, as you say. The easiest way to explain this process to parents is that they learn it by sight (even though we know there is a more to it than that). Children cannot learn all words in this way, which is why the teaching of reading has changed a lot in recent years, but they do learn the common exception words in this way.

You are nitpicking, because you're twisting my words (which were carefully chosen to take into consideration that I'm talking to parents, not educators) to make it look like I don't know what I'm talking about. Clearly you know a lot about teaching phonics but so do I, so you don't need to try to teach me. Thank you.

Your point is confused and I really think you are selling parents short here. Essentially, you appear to be saying:

a) that you habitually refer to a teaching method that is outdated and stripped from the curriculum both on this thread and at school because parents - bless them - won't understand you otherwise. That's ridiculous. I have been posting about phonics teaching for 15+ years here and of course parents understand. And if they don't, you talking about learning words as 'wholes' and 'by sight' won't help them. I run numerous workshops for parents and of course they understand the simple concept that some high frequency words contain code that hasn't yet been taught. Children and parents understand it perfectly.

b)that children learn high frequency words as wholes and your evidence for that is that they don't sound out 'the' every time. 🙄🙄 That's the same for any word that a child can read to automaticity and is the ultimate aim of any decoding teaching. It's not evidence that they have learned them as whole words at all.

c)that pointing out your obfuscation and dumbing down is nit-picking! Right you are.