Reception homework

[sweetie66]

Hi I need some help regarding what is an acceptable level of homework. DD started reception on Tuesday. Wednesday she came home with a list of letters and words she has learn to read and write. They are I, A, We, Up, For, And. Now we have just been given the list nothing else. I am not sure exactly how I am supposed to help her learn these and don't want to teach her to form the letters the wrong way. Also going straight into words seems a bit advanced to me as she doesn't know her alphabet yet. She was in the school nursery but the teacher there told us they only really begin to recognise letters and they don't do it properly until reception. I have a book which I am using to help me BUT do you think it is a bit much for a 4yr old? Also should I approach the teacher and discuss this with her? I don't want to seem PFB on DD first week!

[muppetgirl]

sweetie - it's so annoying isn't it! Have you used the Jollyy Phonics books? Not trying to advertise them but ds really took to them and loved them. He is now able to read level 1 Songbirds series, (as mentioned in the Rose report as being a good example of a comercial decodable series - 'decodeable books written by well known authors' Julia Donaldson of the Gruffalo wrote them) Floppy's phonics and some of level 2. He goes to bed with books and is desperate to read. We did move on from those wordless books but only after I did actually tell him he wouldn't get words until he told the teacher what was going on he did then...

[muppetgirl]

btw bluseshoes the link you quoted early on -that is the lady I worked for...
She was very passionate but a little ahead for the time she was a Headteacher. (Plus the school we both worked in was an amazingly difficult school with many, many problems)

[blueshoes]

muppetgirl, Songbirds and Floppy Phonics series look like Oxford Reading Tree. I thought Oxford Reading Tree was a word recognition system rather than phonics one. My dd's school uses Ginn, which again I assumed was a word recognition system.

I am terribly ignorant here - just finding my way.

[blueshoes]

muppetgirl, omg - what a coincidence!

[frogs]

I think from the little I've seen the Floppy's Phonics books are an attempt to make the ORT compatible with a synthetic phonics approach.

Ginn is not only a word recognition system, it is a very very dull word rec system. Ginn makes me want to eat my own arms in boredom and frustration, even worse than ORT.

have received your CAT blueshoes, and will email you back.

[muppetgirl]

They are published by ORT but are a decodable reading series. Songbirds are real stories not based around the ORT characters and are stand alone stories. Ds loves them. Floppy's Phonics is supposed to be decodable but is kind of a halway between the traditional ORT and fully decodable books. We use them as they had more decodable words than his school books.

We also use the Usborne Phonics readers series that have a mixture of high frequency words and decodable words. I read the 'tricky' words and ds read the decodable ones. I like this as he is then seeing the tricky words but is under no pressure to 'memorise' them.

[frogs]

ORT becomes useful at about Level 4 and above once the magic key stories kick in. For some reason kids do really get into them, and because they've acquired a modicum of fluency by that level the look-and-sayness of it all matters less.

[muppetgirl]

blueshoes - she was fab but a lady fighting a huge battle in a school that didn't want it. It was annoying as she could see how to help the children but the 'authorities' wouldn't trust her. I had 17 children in my class with a mixture of behavioural problems, SEN, and social and economic problems. Some couldn't read at 10, some couldn't write and all had lost any confidence they may have had before they came to school. The powers that be kept setting ridiculous targets for these children as these were in line with national targets. These children were hiding under tables, in the middle of custody court cases with drug addicted parents yet no aloowences were made.

Sorry, off soap box now.

[muppetgirl]

Unfortunately ds goes to a private school (you can imagine the conversations that go on in our house I think the school isn't great but dh loves it and we didn't get into either of the local schools and were allocated a sink school up the road)

Our school doesn't go anywhere near the new schemes but I do know friends children's who all do it in about 5 local schools.

Van I ask a quick question cornsilk? I was always told that cursive script from the start is excellent for dyslexic children and also boys due to the starting in the same place and patterns of writing that help physical memory. I have always been told 'research shows this' is this true? Do you know of this research?
Ds hates it as he says his teacher doesn't write like this and the print in books isn't like this and actually said he was going to tell his teacher she was doing it wrong

[blueshoes]

Thanks, frogs. Will go home later and pick up your email.

I feel like a child in a candyshop - wanting to buy up Jelly & Bean, Songbirds and Floppy phonics etc. Is there any place that is particularly good for picking up reading books? I have been to WHSmith (shop and site - not great) and Amazon. I suppose eBay too.

I do like the pictures for the Songbirds and Floppy books. Though I have to rap my fingers in the sense that pictures are secondary to the words, the words.

[muppetgirl]

I got the jolly phonics set and a set of songbirds off ebay. I have ds 2 to go through them with and dc 3 (not yet born!) could you get together with some friends and buy a set each then swap?

[cornsilk]

I have been told that this is true also. It is good for dyslexics as it helps them with reversals. It's easier for them if all letters start on the line, as in cursive script. This is what was drummed into us during training anyway! Research does indeed show that patterns of writing help physical memory as dyslexics have difficulty making skills automatic.
Nicolson and Fawcett did research on automaticity of skills in dyslexic children, but I don't know of any particular research on handwriting.

[muppetgirl]

cornsilk - I worked in a school where the Head went on a course and came back with 1 sheet of A4 with the cursive letters shown. She changed the whole schools handwriting policy based on this 1 sheet of A4. The results from the younger children were amazing in that the writing was extremly neat, well formed, quite consistent in size and there was very little difference between the girls and boys which was very interesting. My ds hates it and has recognised that this isn't how most writing is and how print appears in books and refuses to start on the line. His teacher said she was happy if he just wrote but then I'm a firm beliver in once you've established a physical memory - learning how to form the letters - it is amazingly difficult to 'unlearn' this in order to write cursively. Is the teacher right or wrong in letting him write how he wants when he will be asked to write cursively in line with the school policy of handwriting?

[cornsilk]

Yes it is very difficult to unlearn if you have already been taught a certain way of writing. You'll know yourself from children you've taught how hard it is to 'unlearn' something, pen grips for instance. Do you want him to learn cursive handwriting?

[blueshoes]

muppetgirl, just remembered you asked me a question about spelling. My dd is not given spelling in Reception, but I believe she will get it in Year 1.

I totally agree that it aids learning to spell, by writing out the word. A bit shocked that your ds is asked to spell things off the top of his head, without writing it down. It is counterintuitive. So much of my ability to spell is by visualising the way in which a word is written. Spelling is reinforced by reading, seeing the same word over and over again, that it is seared into memory.

Hence why advanced readers move on from phonics and rely on word recognition. Frogs, your point about interest kicking in at ORT level 4, makes complete sense to me. Once the basics of phonics are mastered, then only can children comfortably add on context, pictures, word recognition to aid comprehension and speed up reading. But only when the basics of phonics have been mastered do they become useful, rather than distracting and IMO harmful.

[muppetgirl]

I am torn, he is a boy and I've heard about the research. He has an excellent pencil grip but quite weak hand muscles. His fine motor skills aren't great as he never wanted to draw, colour, build etc and his hand gets easliy tired. He's now into lego but I have noticed he pulls off the difficult bits with his teeth not his fingers. I am thinking of getting him a stress ball to strenghten his muscles and becasue of all this I do really want him to write how the scholl will expect him to later in the year. He is a very determined boy who knows his own mind -'I'm not arguing mummy, I just think you're wrong', 'I've listened to you, I heard what you've said, I don't agree with you' (to me) etc etc etc.

[blueshoes]

muppetgirl, your ds sounds incredibly mature and self-aware for his tender years.

Respect to your ex-boss. If only she was given the freedom to implement her programme to those troubled children. Success begets confidence. It breaks my heart that simple and effective strategies that can make so much of a difference to something as basic as learning to read, should be obstructed. I get the feeling the the Rose report has been sidelined somehow and its recommendations have not been implemented.

The plethora of mixed teaching methods out there is just mindboggling. As this thread already suggests. Honestly, for the basics, just start with Jolly Phonics. It is not rocket science.

[cornsilk]

The 'Write from the start' programme that is often recommended on here is good. It practises the key movements necessary for handwriting in fun exercises. It's about £25 from Amazon.

[muppetgirl]

Thanks Cornsilk, if it's cursive I'll give it a go. I've tried dotted lines and tracing in the past but he just does it badly and says 'That's not very good is it?' with a little smirk on his face. He thinks if he does it badly then we won't ask him to do it again...

The school have said he was behind in writing at half term this is due to him not wanting too. I feel if I do stuff at home then what are they doing with him in school but if I don't do stuff with him at home he gets further behind in their eyes.

Blueshoes -yep he's verbally amazing (even his teacher says so, she asked me does he spend a lot of time in the company of adults? Which I know is 'teacher speak' for, your son can be a precocious little twerp at times....) mathematically he great but he refuses really to do anything with a pencil. He mucks about in group situations (yesterday in assembly for example but apparently he was in the middle so 'we couldn't get to him' personally I would have hauled him out in front of everyone and maybe he wouldn't do it again)

[frogs]

I'm shocked at the formality of the handwriting teaching at your dc's schools tbh. Dd2 writes in a somewhat random combination of forwards and backwards, with some letters reversed and some not (lefthander!). Nobody has suggested that this might be in any way a problem, nor have we had any work home that focusses in any formal way on letters.

They do a lot of project work in dd2's class, lots of outings and slightly wacky topics, which I prefer tbh.

[muppetgirl]

...hence dh and I have lots of 'interesting' chats about ds 1's school. I disagree with a lot of what they do but we would need to move areas to get into a better state school. This school has just been inspected and, ironically enough, been graded as outstanding!

[sweetie66]

Muppetgirl your DS sounds like just like my DD. Her verbal skills are very advanced and like you we get asked if she is in the company of adults a lot. Lol at your interupatation of that comment! Will definitely try and get the jolly books which everyone seems to recommend. Blimey who knew that starting school would be so difficult for me and that I would have to improve my reading and writing skills!