Question for teachers especially infant about teaching of reading. I'm confused!

[ropeyoldbag]

Hi,
DS1 is in Reception. He is currently learning letter sounds. This despite the fact that he knew them all well before he joined the school in September. They do 2 letters a week apparently with a view to reaching 'sh' 'ch' and 'th' by the end of the year according to his teacher.

Now we have been in and asked about then on 3 separate occasions and last week she reluctantly sent home a list of high frequency words. It says high frequency at the top and it's words that range from 'a' to words like 'down'. She says if we want to be "soldiering ahead" (her words) then we can teach him those at home.

But..I don't want there to be some abstract branch of stuff that I'm doing at home IYSWIM. I bought the JP stuff when he was 3 and I've read the stuff about teaching them to read rather than teaching to recognise random words.
So my question is why isn't he doing all those vowel sounds? Why isn't he learning blends and 'magic e' and stuff. Am I expecting too much? Don't children who know letter sounds on entry (he also knew 'sh' and 'ch' and 'th' then) move on to this stuff? Can't believe I'm finding it so stressful.

Any advice greatly appreciated. And yes I know he should be playing and I believe in this wholeheartedly but in that 10 or 15min of literacy input, why is it teaching him how to read?

Wildones, it's not that Im trying to undermine school. Or to confuse him by teaching something different.

What I basically want to know is that if a child starts school knowing the single letter sounds + a few two letter sounds and can read a dozen or so words- should they still be doing single letters at this stage in the year? Surely that child is ready for the vowel thingies that mrz mentioned, 'ai' and 'ay' and blends like 'st'?

Ok, I basically want to know why, in terms of literacy, he has learned nothing so far this year and is no further forward than he was this time last year when he was at playgroup 3 days a week.

I've taught reception for 15ish years and have always taught a sound a day (5 sounds a week) without any problems. I start the first week of term in September and all are taught before Christmas. Our catchment area is an area of social and economic deprivation. Children arrive with no previous phonics (letter/sound correspondence) knowledge and make excellent progress. The key is to keep the pace and to reinforce previous teaching each lesson.

That's intersting, mrz.
Our catchment is relatively affluent and I wonder how much of it is laziness. On entry the kids are quite far on and the school knows full well that there's a lot of parental support and awareness and that lots of educational stuff goes on at home.

I think only the school/teacher can tell you why they work at such as slow pace which isn't in line with either Letters & Sounds, Jolly Phonics or Read Write Inc who all recognise the importance of pace in early phonics teaching.

I would introduce more than 2 a week. In my DDs class they have done all the 44 phonemes, and are now consolidating them. They are being taught to blend to spell and read words. There are now 44 high frequency words which can all be decoded by "sounding out' plus an additional list of tricky words which need to be read on sight eg. said,was etc

Is he reading books from school?

Just wondering as all the teacheres I have worked with do between 1 and 3 sounds a week. Just trying to visulise how it is done? Do your children go to nursery 1st?

onebadbaby there are now 300 High Frequency Words in Letters & Sounds but only 33 Tricky reception words

Yes our children go to nursery but we do not teach phonics in nursery.

Hi OBM, no, no reading books. She told DH she doesn't believe in them at their age.

Mrz, the list she gave me is pretty useless in isolation, isn't it? It reminds me of when I was taught through look and say or what ever it was called. I had a tobacco tin of words that I just had to learn. Very arbitary! I want him to know the other phonemes (is that right?) so he can tackle unfamiliar words and know how to read.

Teaching 1 phoneme a week is a very old fashioned and drawn out method of teaching. When I first started working at my present school the reception teacher taught a sound a week so it took over a year to teach all 44. I had previously used JP and we introduced it with good results.

I would also add many of our children arrive in nursery unable to "talk" so nursery concentrates on speech and language skills rather than literacy.

Is that for Reception or the whole of KS1 as well??? DDs teacher has sent a list of 44 words for the whole year and is sending them home as flashcards in smaller batches getting more difficult with each set.

I am a teacher but have been a sahm for a few years and there seems to be so much more emphasis on phonics recently. I am just wondering what happened to all the other skills involved in reading?? My DD is being expected to read Oxford Reading Tree stage 2 books, but she hasn't been taught the key words from the scheme and I have seen no evidence of any other reading skills being used and her teacher has only read once with her in class since September. They don't seem to use the "big books" anymore either? How do you teach reading mrz? Should I challenge the teacher or am I just out of touch??

About the nursery thing most of ours have poor speaking and listening skills too and the nursery children do lots of speeking and listening activities 1st we use a very useful book called phonics through music.

onebadbaby there were previously 45 reception high frequency words but when Letters & Sounds were introduced it included the first 100 words and a further 200 words which cover all 6 phases rather than year groups.

I teach reading/decoding using phonics using phonics reading schemes not ORT. I only teach the "tricky" words not the high frequency words which children can decode.

If they are not doing blending, then that is really not acceptable - and certainly not synthetic phonics teaching as advised by the government.

Sadly, the government guidance is guidance and not statutory. This means what reading instruction children receive still amounts to a lottery.

I've just made the move to call for synthetic phonics teaching to be made statutory but at the same time, I urge that the Early Years Foundation Stage which is currently statutory, be returned to being at guidance level.

Whilst I don't like teachers to be told what to do by government and local authority advisors, I am desperately concerned by the number of children who slip through the net because it's still woolly as to how teachers should teach.

None of your children's reading instruction (and spelling instruction) is guaranteed. I think this is not good enough when it comes to early literacy and intervention because teaching methods really do make a difference.

What do others think?

Ahh- Sorry, it is 45 that my daughter has been sent home- I wonder how she chose the 45 words then because they are not the original 45 from a couple of years ago, they must have taken them from the first 100. Maybe the school has split them themselves into year groups?

OP- maybe you could borrow or purchase some simple reading books for your son- Redhouse books sell some value sets of phonics type books.

I think it should be statutory for universities to provide trainee teachers with more than one session on phonics and that all primary teachers (whatever KS they aim to teach) should have the skills to deliver quality reading instruction.

onebadbaby it sounds as if they are using the old reception words.

debbie - yes! Wholeheartedly agree. For early literacy skills in particular, I believe that prescriptive is best based on a sound understanding of the evidence for what works best.

The fundamental issue here seems to be to be differentiation.

The OP's ds is at a slightly different level to what is presumably the average in the class.

As a second issue I'd say it does seem the teacher is going through things a little slowly compared to most.

Take the two together and the OP's child's reading isn't progressing much in school.

If there were more differentiation for him OR the pace of going through the phonics scheme was a little quicker he'd have learnt something new (beyond of course probably tons of valuable non-reading non-academic stuff about just being at school and topics and themes).

OP I have a similar situation with a lack of differentation for ds who was reading simple sentences in September before he started and remains at a very different stage to the rest of the class with reading. He has been progressing and learning with his reading but it's been at home with me and certainly not in school. I discussed things like magic e words with him not school. It bugs me a lot that I am doing this and not the teacher. Even if she has got 30 kids. They do guided reading but the groups are not ability based and ds says it's very easy. It seems all the other kids are on the same reading level so far so why should she differentiate just for my ds I suppose??

I would be bothered by your teacher's comment about soldiering ahead. Sounds a bit snide.

You have two choices ime:

• soldier on at home with the next stage if you think it's led by him rather than you i.e. he really is keen. I do find that five minutes a day of me sitting down with ds doing something fun tailored specifically to the next stage of reading for him anyway.

or

• push for some differentiation for him. In the first instance I would just ask again rather than making demands as the pushy parent label isn't nice to have with the teacher!

No- they are different- they can all be decoded and we have a separate list of tricky words? Do you listen to children read individually and how often? I used to hear most children every week, and ones who didn't read at home more often. Personally, I hate the phonics only reading books (floppys phonics)- they seem so contrived and my daughter seems to need to decode every word and cannot seem to get any kind of fluency in them or keep track of the meaning. I much preferred books which had predictive text and required a mixture of skills, eg context, word recognition and phonics. I may be proved wrong, lets just hope the phonics only approach stands her in good stead in later years, but right now it seems to be limiting reading.

The new list of 100 words

a had the
an back to
as and I
at get no
if big go
in him into
is his
it not
of go t
off up
on mum
can but
dad put (north)

will see you he
that for they she
this now all we
then down are me
them look my be
with too her was

went said were
it?s have there
from like little
children so one
just do when
help some out
come what

don?t day oh
old made their
I?m came people
by make Mr
ti me here Mrs
house saw looked
about very called
your put (south) asked
could

The old 45 reception words

a
all
am
and
are
at
away
big
can
cat
come
dad
day
dog
for
get
go
going
he
I
in
is
it
like
look
me
mum
my
no
of
on
play
said
see
she
the
they
this
to
up
was
we
went
yes
you

Remind me MRZ - what stage would those typically go up to e.g. end of reception/ end of year one?

Letters and Sounds say the 100 words by stage5 so it depends on the pace the school progresses I don't use Letters & Sounds

Would that be about half way through year 1 then in an average school (not that there is an average school of course).

What I don't get is how different schools go at such different paces in reception and not necessarily due to the starting points of the intakes. Do the slow schools catch up?!

Also I have another question - sorry to be a bore. In my neice's reception class apparently every single kid is on the same (low) reading level apart from about two - my sister said this based on something fairly reliable. Surely that just can't be the case!? It sounds like lazy teaching to me to ensure they are all at the same level so they don't need to differentiate or am I being cynical??!