Oxford Reading Tree books for 5yo - which ones actually have words?

[Shitemum]

I am helping DD1 5.7yo prepare for starting P2 next August in Scotland. She is skipping P1 as she is at a Spanish infant school and they don't start primary till they are 6 yo here in Spain. So, anyway I have been recommended the ORT books but on Amazon the level one books with Kipper, Chip etc seem to start off with books that have no words, only pictures for discussion.
Questions:
Which are the first titles to have words in them? Is there a reading order?
Does it matter which books I start with - Kipper/ Chip etc. Are they the same level, just different characters or should I start with one character's stories and then do the others?
The ORT site doesn't seem to answer these questions.
Thanks!
If anyone has used copies of these first reading books I might like to buy them...

Stage 2 onwards have words.

The first book ds bought home with words was 'who is it'. They are in sets of 6, and they all involve the same characters, mum, dad, biff, chip and kipper [and floppy the dog]

ds is now on the floppy's phonics. riviting stuff. if you want I can list all the ones he's had so far (he is in reception, 4-5yolds)

HTH

Can you contact the school and ask what scheme they use? The school might be willing to send you the first set of books for practise. Does she know her initial sounds as this will help? As for ORT it doesn't matter which order you do level 1 as each book concentrates on a different word or set of words. Storyworlds also good.

Thanks all!

Ready4 - a list would be very helpful!

haggis - The school said they use Jolly Phonics across Scotland but I don't really know where to start, there is so much stuff on the JP website and not sure if you are supposed to use the material in a specific order or different elements concurrently...so I haven't ordered anything...

I don't know which school she'll be attending yet as they can only offer a place 3 months before we arrive, and we are arriving in July. I don't want to bother them too much till I know which school she'll be at. The current P1 teacher of my prefered school has already sent an email with a rough outline of what they are covering now and I have gleaned a list of about 60 first words.
We haven't done any proper phonics we are just muddling through, made more difficult by the fact she is learning to read and write in Spanish at the same time and muddles up the Spanish and English vowel letter sounds...

bless her!

ok, flicking through ds's reading log:

who is it
floppy floppy
six in a bed
a good trick
fun at the beach
the pancake
is it
get dad
up you go
the headache
at the park
fancy dress
push
good old mum
the pet shop
I can
the dog tag
cat in a bag
it
the red hen
what a mess

I'm sure there's a few that didn't get written down for one reason or another, but that's most of them

fwiw, ds really enjoyed get dad

Shitemum - were the ORT books recommended by the school she's possibly going to?

If not, then I would steer clear of them for the time being. ORT are generally "look and say" books which means that your child will be relying on sight vocabulary to read them.

Your dd needs to focus on phonic based books to start with. I know that the "jelly and beans" series are phonic based, as are "super phonics" and "big cat phonics". I think that ORT now do a range of phonic based books, but I don't know what they're called.

ORT do two series that really got my ds interested in reading- Floppy Phonics and Songbirds. Songbirds actually have nice stories too. Both are decodable phonics unlike some of the ORT stuff. Amazon do both.

Floppy phonics - that's what Ready4anotherminiegg was describing, Littlefish.

Thanks Feenie - I didn't know the name of the series as my current school use Big Cat Phonics instead.

Floppyphonics are excellent! Not used Big Cat, what are they like?

Let her also play on www.starfall.com
There are lots of word and letter games and some basic books on there to read too. It is free.

Jelly & Bean are great.

I would start off with getting a few Jolly Phonics resources to teach the lettter sounds, the actions make it a fun game for children. Then get some of the early Jelly & Bean books which can be decoded.

Feenie - Big Cat are good - but the entry level is quite high. Nice mix of non fiction and fiction, plus good photos and more interesting stories.

Great, thanks everyone, loads of helpful info - I think the school recommended Jolly Phonics but I'm not sure as I made a list of general recommendations from school, MN etc and now can't remember who said what
What is decoding?

IIRC in the ORT books my dd got from school, stage 1 just has pictures, then stage 1a has basic words and it progresses through stage 2, 3, 4 etc. There is also an ORT 'Read at Home' range, which seems to be slightly harder than the books they get in school. Stage 1 of the Read at Home range has basic sentences.

My dd (now in Year 1) has 2 sets of the Read at Home books and loves them. They are a bit more substantial than the school ORT books and have extra puzzles and questions for discussion at the end.

Decoding means working out what a word says.

Basically, you need to teach your dd the 42 letter sounds, which is what the school would have done in Reception. As a previous poster said, Jolly Phonics uses fun songs for this, and if your school recommended using it then it's probably the best idea.

Then you need to give your dd some phonic based books to practise decoding with these sounds. Any phonic based scheme would be ok - the Jolly Phonics books are nice, Floppy Phonics (ORT) is excellent, as is Jelly and Bean.

There's a couple of links here and here to some Jolly Phonics resources.

Hth.

Hello! To be honest, I wouldn't bother with ORT, Jolly phonics, or any of the other schemes at this point. They all have loads of extra stuff - workbooks, sheets, phonics etc that the kids do in school time and parents only see at parent's night. Your dc will be going into P2, where there is less emphasis on phonics teaching. Also (and I am prepared to be flamed for this) do not believe the government who say that phonics is the only, or best, way to learn to read.

Instead, I would read lots of books in English to your child and read lots of picture books with her so that she understands how stories work, the way that the same sentence can mean lots of different things depending on the tone of voice etc, or in a book how the pictures can totally change the meaning of the words. That way you don't give your dc a second lot of schoolwork to do as well as what she is already doing. There is a point of view that says bi-lingual children may be slower to learn written language because they are coping with two languages ever day. Your dc should pick up reading in English fairly quickly since she is already managing in Spanish.

Please be aware that neither phonics nor look and say will teach every child to read - I learned this from bitter experience and so did my dd. Sorry if I am wittering about things you already know/do at home - ignore any bits of this post you want to. And I hope your move goes well - even if the weather isn't as good here!

Brilliant advice - she has skipped the first year, knows none of the letter sounds, so ignore them altogether because they might not work

I am sure the op shares books and stories with her dd already, SnowWoman. And whilst I agree with you that learning the basic letter sounds won't give the full picture of reading for every child, advising someone to completely miss out these basic steps is ridiculous advice, imo, and will put the op's dd at a grave disadvantage against the other children who will have had a solid grounding in phonics already.

Thanks for the flame - as expected - it's just offering a different point of view which is rarely heard in the media which claims phonics to be the holy grail of teaching reading.

I had 4 dcs who went through ORT, it's just not my choice of reading with any of my dcs. It worked for 3 who can decode the words with the best of them, but one of my dds it didn't, and the more the school tried phonics, the less it worked. She is now 12 and reads things like Jamaica Inn for pleasure. My eldest could read beautifully and with expression, but precious little understanding. In the longer run, are we not looking to create thinking, critical readers, who read for all the reasons they want and need to, not just people who can decode?

With regard to the OP, if her DD is mixing up the letter sounds of the two languages at the moment, it may be that waiting to do the purely English sounds till you are settled in Scotland where she will be hearing the language all around all the time might be a way to proceed.

I completely understand that phonics isn't the total answer for some children. But it is for the majority, and to advise someone else to miss them out altogether, when other children would have had this basic grounding, would not be helpful or fair.

I'm sorry to hear about your dd's problems - however, your response is confusing. ORT is a whole word reading scheme, and didn't even have a phonic strand until very recently. This strand Floppy Phonics) was written to complement the recent synthetic phonics drive, which has seen all children taught phonics very systematically - this may not have been the case 7 years ago for your dd, and if they were trying to teach phonics using a whole word reading scheme, then I can see why!

Btw, good teachers know that phonics aren't the be all and end all (even if they provide an excellent begining for most children), just as good teachers never ditched those methods altogether in the 80s and 90s. Don't believe everything you read in the media! {bwink]

beginning

I've always read to my ds and he knew for a long time how stories worked, what sentences and paragraphs were and question and exclamation marks but he couldn't read until he started learning phonics. He started at nursery with Letterland and then Jolly Phonics, word boxes etc and then moved on to books. He had been 'reading' quite a while before he started bringing books home.

I agree that some of the ORT stuff is less than useful - I find the Kipper series completely unfathomable as I can't work out what is decodable and what isn't unless I actually spell out the words. That is why I like the Songbird series as it is very clear. The stories are written by Julia Donaldson who wrote the Gruffalo, Room on the Broom etc and they are nicely illustrated.

SnowWoman and Feenie - thanks! - you are both making interesting points even tho' you don't agree with each other!
Melpomene - thanks for your link too!
Everyone else - thanks for your comments too!

I would like to do some phonics work with DD1 but am just confused about where to start and don't want to waste money on the wrong material.

I am also worried about doing phonics as in the past when I taught EFL I have had to skip some pronunciation exercises because with my accent they simply didn't 'work'. I have a very watered down Scottish, Edinburgh accent.

For example I have the Thrass chart with the 44 sounds and they are grouped so that
'fork, ball, sauce, saw and door' supposedly sound the same.
Well, sorry but 'door' doesn't sound the same as the other words when I say it!

DD1 is very 'literate', has loved books since she could hold one, spends all day listening to story tapes in English and asking me to read to her, which I do, a lot!
She has an excellent understanding of how stories work and a good memory for stories she has heard - I had to ask her to stop finishing my sentences for me when reading 'The lion, the witch and the wardrobe' to her recently as she knew it word for word after listening to the tapes so often!
So, I am not too worried about her English or her capacity or desire to learn to read.
She is able to sound out just about any simple one or two syllable word, or even short sentences, she just gets muddled with the Spanish vowel sounds sometimes, for example she might read 'lion' as 'lee-on' rather than 'lie-on'.

I will browse all your links again carefully and maybe start with Floppy phonics or Jolly phonics and take it from there. The 'Read at home' range also looks good and the same ebay seller has a series of reading books from Usborne too.
Am just worried that I might do something 'wrong' which will make things harder for her or need to be 'undone' at some point.
It's hard when Spanish is so easy to spell and pronounce and English is so seemingly random!
Thanks again.