Not being given reading books

[lalalonglegs]

My dd1 started reception in September. Despite already being able to read and write, her teacher refuses to give her reading books - she says that reception year is "too young". She tells me that they will be starting the Lighthouse scheme shortly and dd will have reading once a week but before that, there will be lots of emphasis on learning about books, how to turn pages, where a book starts etc. Am I being unreasonable to think that a child who has been looking at books since she was 8mo and has a collection of probably 200 is possibly a bit beyond that stage and that the teacher should be setting appropriate work for all the different attainment levels within the class?

frogs, not sure why you can't have both?

I expect you probably can, in an ideal world. Ours is a standard inner-city primary, with reasonably good academic results, so they must be getting something right. Clearly if they had more resources, each child could have an individually-tailored academic program, but in the real world this is often not possible because the whole business of hearing children read and changing books is so fantastically time-consuming that it doesn't sit well with an imaginative curriculum and interesting teaching.

Personally I'd choose the interesting curriculum over precision of reading book allocation every time. All I was saying is that the OP should be clear where her school is making compromises, and whether she's okay with that.

I can still remember being told to stop reading a book I'd half finished as it was too far ahead for me (I'm not bitter!)

Although it sounds like a frustrating situation I think that reading with her at home is exactly the right thing to do.

That makes sense although it is a shame that it so often is a question of compromise.

Probably a lot of children will have access to a lot of books and been read to since babies. I certainly started reading to mine before 8 months but neither could read when they started school - well DD doesn't start until January but she's going to have to be quick. I don't think you really need to worry in your DD's case - just stretch and stimulate her at home.

God, Mumsnet is wonderful. It has completely crystallised the problems I am having with the school but couldn't quite articulate. frogs you are spot on in your assessment - the reading is a red herring and an interesting curriculum would win over reading every day of the week. Our school is uninspiring and carries an air of neglect and apathy which is largely down to the headteacher who is just coasting the last few years to retirement (if she ever bothered to come out of her office and interact with her pupils and their parents I would be very tempted to ask when she does plan to go). Thank you so much for making it clear in my head why am I so riled about the reading.

lalalonglegs

we did the jolly phonics books and then progressed to flashcards. Ds loves making up silly sentences (the sillier the better!) I've given him a few words and asked him to make a sentence out of them which he also loves. We visited the natural history museum and he was desperately trying to read the text that accompanies the exhibits and was managing the high frequency words. He also loved seeing/hearing me sounding out the dinosaur names, it proves that's what grown up really do.

We use Floppy's phonics/songbirds and first phonics from the oxford reading tree series. The songbirds series was written by Julia McDonald (she of the Gruffallo) and doesn't use the ort characters so my ds thinks her reading 'real' books which he thinks is fab. I am also inverstigating a Dorling Kindersley set that has easy star wars books as ds has just got obsessed with the film and is wants to know everything he can about it. He is also fascinated with different types of books, he loves his dictionary and and likes the idea of lists of words you can use to find out meanings. He says a word and tells me what it starts with and then we look it up together.

His spelling is very good so we also give each other words to spell and although his writing isn't developing as fast as the school would like, he can spell the high frequency words that you can sound out so when he does start to write, it's all there for him iyswim.

I think it's great that schools are offerening so much enrichment in terms of African drumming, designing a care label for a teddy (our school) but we seem to have to draw the teddy or make the drum which really doesn't float ds's boat at all.

We have the first few ORT and also some other Oxford books ("Read Write Inc Phonics") that she hasn't really taken to. She is desperate to read "real" books - we got an Allan Ahlberg one from the library last week which she can do and she is thrilled. She is constantly trying to spell out road names when we go for a walk and so on. Hopefully she won't lose her enthusiasm just because the school is so lacklustre.