Learning to read with phonics - Any teacher around?

[Pitchounette]

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Is it really, Maverick???? I never realised, even though I've read it several times!

I thought it might help the OP understand the rationale behind the whole words approach.

Moondog- glad I found this thread again, my dd is hooked on Headsprout, rattled through the trial lessons (and when I told her it was a reading website she was very meh, until she saw the units) and have bought the whole shebang...am having to drag her away from it!

Ta very muchly! x

Excellent.
It is superb (and believe me, I have put a vast amount of research into this in conjunction with many fellow academics).

My dd loved it too and it really moved her reading on in an incredible way.

how much does headsprout cost please?

It works out at about £1 70 an episode soooooo 80 episodes is about £160 or therabouts (according to currency fluctuations).

Have you spoken to the teacher or the head to find out what the school's approach is to teachign reading and the rationale behind it?

I would want to know if I was so unhappy.

By Pitchounette on Thu 24-Sep-09 09:44:08
mrz what do you think of both of them, on a educational basis?

I wouldn't choose to use either

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Pitchounette is there any phonics teaching happening in school at all?

I still find Jolly Phonics effective for introducing my reception class to phonics ( I also use some of the Phonics International resources) and games from lots of sources
Phonics Play is free and the children really enjoy the games. I also use Big Phonics (games) from Andrell which provide lots of practise.

A mixture is good but as the school does not seem to be doing this this year, I'd ask again.

My reception class (3 weeks in) have been taught 14 sounds so far and some are just beginning to blend two and three sounds to read words. I will also begin to introduce "Tricky Words" in a couple of weeks but I don't use "mixed methods" unfortunately if the school uses ORT (Biff & co) it's difficult to use these books. I'm not sure why a school isn't teaching phonics when the government has said this should be done.

I would look at www.phonicsinternational.com/ unit 1 is free and would be a starting point.

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Phonics shouldn't stop after reception there is a great deal more to learn than the sounds represented by the 26 letters of the alphabet and a few double letters.

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Learning it as you encounter it "works" but isn't the most effective method.

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Pitchounette, I've had another think about your son's difficulties, which you said in your OP were mostly about blending.

Have a look at the following books. They are designed for the youngest readers OR those with severe reading difficulties. The Alphabet Code is taught in context of the words and is done through an extremely slow progression, hence the huge number of books.
The reading needs to be done at first with a 'slider card' so that only one grapheme is revealed at a time -to avoid whole word memorisation, which is a danger with this style of phonic programme. Your son would get a huge amount of blending practice with this programme.

www.marriottmd.com/sam/index.html

If you're interested in learning more then you can get all the book sets / info. on making a slider card and research etc. here:

www.piperbooks.co.uk/index.htm

There's also a Yahoo support group for the programme, though you'll need to register to join: [email protected]

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