Reception reading - loosing the will to live...

[CHOCOLATEPEANUT]

DD is in reception.She was 5 last Nov and is what you would call a mature child.
She did a year in nursery and in the summer before reception started we were all invited into the school to discuss reading

Up until then i was doing the oxford learning tree with dd using the look and learn method (as i was taught in 70's)

At the meeting in the summer the school said do not use this method as they use phonics and it will confuse child so i took a step back and thought i would let school take lead.

So far we have had sheets and sheets of phonics to teach at home (we are now on phase 3 words) My dd is on the pink rigby rocket books and shes bored to death.She flys through them.Shes getting the phonics but its been a bit slow and yet she loves books and we read every night and have done since she was a baby (she has about 200 books)

I fill in the reading diary with the usual "read with ease" "understood story" "excellent reading" and at most all we can hope for is a book change per week (tues) today she came home and said they were too busy today to do reading...

Should I be expecting more of the school with the reading?

My dd brought another book home this week (pink rigby)
The teacher always puts first comment in diary on book change day and wrote -
Excellent reading and excellent answers

We read at home and she flew through it. I did exercises at back of book (around understanding and key word check so on) She did it all with ease so i wrote in diary -
Excellent reading,understanding and key word check excellent.Key words expressed and focus check excellent
Lucy pointed out that little horse is in fact a pony.
I feel that Lucy is not getting books that match her ability.We read everynight at home, school and own books.Is she not ready for next level yet? Lucy is bright and needs to be challenged!
long and know but hopefully might progress things

tbh I STILL don't get phonics - I can certainly read, although I can't pronounce some words (esp unusual names).

Lots of library visits CP, and fact books, and comics (NG Kids v v good), just read for fun - let school do it's thing anfd you introduce her to a love of books.

she has that

whenever i say you have been really good you can have a special treat

she always asks for a new book !

aww, don't stress about the school stuff - she has a massive advantage at this stage over lots and lots of other reception children, use this advantage to encourage her love of reading. You really don't need school scheme books to do that.
(not sure I quite appreciated that fact when ds was in reception )

It sounds like she has moved naturally onto the next stage of reading which comes after phonics (the orthographic stage.) Not all children need to be explicitly taught phonics in order to learn to read, as we all have different learning styles. The ability to read relies heavily on the reader knowing the sounds of the phonemes within a word and being able to blend them smoothly together, but some children begin to pick this up from their experience of listening to speech in their early years and are able to make the transition between the stages very quickly. My ds2, did this whilst my dyslexic ds1 is still floundering as he wasn't taught phonics!

Chocolatepeanut, in general, I would say that if possible, it's much better to go and talk to the teacher rather than leave a note in the diary.

I know it's going to sound petty, but early on in my teaching career it really used to get my hackles up when parents used to send notes like yours, particularly the "I feel that Lucy is not getting books that match her ability.We read everynight at home, school and own books.Is she not ready for next level yet? Lucy is bright and needs to be challenged!" bit of your message.

Surely things like this are better discussed face to face where there is an explicit concern or complaint about a teacher's performance.

I would agree with what Littlefish said actually, although I am not a teacher.

It is very hard to conduct a conversation via the reading log and you don't get an instant response. The whole thing can drag out for weeks with you getting more and more irritated and the teacher getting more and more defensive or worse still, not reading the log at all (time is short after all).

You have to bite the bullet and go and discuss this with the teacher. She might have a valid point of view and more than that, you might even be able to actually try out the next level of books with your DD there and you can all see if she is ready for it.

I do agree that it is odd that your DD is only getting a book a week. D1 is in reception and gets a new book whenever he has shown he has understood and can read his current one. It's been a slog, he had phases of the same book for a few days,something has "clicked" recently and he suddenly seems to be getting a book a day.
It is hard to hold their interest in one book for a whole week!

Second the idea of going to the library and letting your DD choose her own books, ones that interest her.
She must be very bored.

IME DS's teacher never read the reading log - it was more a way of tracking what book they had and had we brought back one so they could swap it. As TAs or parents did the guided reading the teacher hardly ever heard DS read. So I'd speak to the teacher.

At this age library is not that useful, but when they are starting to read real, but very short and simple books I found the library invaluable for its selection of early readers (since you only read them once).

Agree re reading record. they are often maintained by a TA anyway, so the response will depend on how with-it the TA is. In any case, they are unlikely to take a long message like that on board, they have 30 kids' books to change!

If I think a book was too easy I generally write something like: 'Dd2 whizzed through this' or 'dd2 read this easily'. Dd2's current TA is quite on the ball, and has always taken the hint, so she's been speeded up through the levels. If they don't take the hint, then you have to decide whether to just let it go and support her reading at home, or make an appointment to see the teacher and have a face-to-face discussion.

Using the reading record to tell the teacher/TA how to do their job is unlikely to be productive, tbh.

Oh, and we only get books changed once a week. And they are doing v. simple letter work in class, while dd2 is quite capable of reading ORT 9 pretty fluently. BUT she has never complained of being bored because all the literacy work is embedded in v. high-quality topic work, so they are learning lots about the topic of the month as well, and doing other activities around that.

If she is happy and having fun at school, I'd let the reading books thing go, tbh and do things with her outside school. If she's actually complaining about finding school boring, then the level of the reading books is the least of your problems.

I think frogs has a good point. I know I sometimes worry because DS doesn't seem to do much other than play, but actually he is doing masses it's just that it's taught so differently to when I was at school. For example my son hasn't a clue what maths is, so if I ask him has he done any he'll say no. But he can count easily to 100 + and do basic addition, subtraction and this all seems to come through role play (shops, etc) or songs, rhymes, games, etc. Everything where he is, seems to be laced into activities and topics, rather than them being sat down to be taught iyswim. All great for them I think and from seeing him progress is obviously working, but it's hard as a parent to know what exactly is going on. I wish they had an idiot script for parents to let them in on all this, which we got before they started.

I have been writing for weeks
"read with ease" "breezed through" and so on

I would have loved to have had chance to speak to her but shes supply so have not had parents eve yet

school reading all represents part of dd reading.we are in book club, buy one, two books a week and we read all the time (in the car, shops so on)

i suppose i expected more of school but got newsletter email tonight and good news -

Miss R

Miss R will be leaving us at Easter. We wish her all the very best for the future and we would like to take this opportunity to thank her for all of her hard work.

After Easter Mrs L will be teaching the Reception class. Mrs L has the experience of teaching Reception and the children are familiar with her and enjoy her teaching.

Foundation Stage Leader

As from September 2009, the Foundation Stage will have a new leader. We are delighted to announce that we have appointed Miss S to lead this vital stage in our children?s development.

Miss S has been a lead teacher in Wigan and Bolton and recently was deemed to be ?outstanding? in an Ofsted inspection at her present school, both as a teacher and leader of this age group. Over the next few weeks she will be coming into the school to meet the children and parents and to put into place areas for development

hopefully things will pick up eh?

Hopefully things will improve with the new teacher after Easter.

Even though the current teacher is a supply teacher, you can still arrange to speak to her. You don't need to wait until a parents evening. Just send a message to school asking to see her one day, later in the week.