haggisaggis; you say:
"MaizieD - even the EP at Syslexia ACtion stated she would need to build up a bank of tricky words as she couldn't sound out everything "
I'm afraid that the EP was giving you very old fashioned advice which probably reflects how she was trained to teach reading (because, until quite recently, only trained teachers were accepted for training as Ed Psychs)quite a number of years ago. It is not reflected in the latest guidance on the initial teaching of reading, which quite closely follows the teaching principles of synthetic/linguistic phonics programmes (such as Jolly Phonics, ReadWrite Inc, Sound-Discovery, Sounds~Write etc. etc.) These programmes do not follow quite the same principles as the 'old fashioned'Orton Gillingham based dyslexia intervention programmes which are, yes, based on phonics, but integrate a degree of Whole Language/Look and Say thinking, most notably the thinking about High Frequency Words.
You have to understand that in the days when WL/look & say teaching was the 'norm', and phonics was a dirty word, the 'experts' became quite desperate at the inability of many children to learn to read easily with their methods. In an effort to achieve what appeared to be normal reading the Dolch list of High Frequency Words (HFWs) was brought into play. The theory was that if children were taught, say, the first 300 words on this list (by 'look & say' methods, of course) they would be able to read a great deal of text easily. So, 'learning' the HFWs was made a priority. If you look at the HFWs you will find that they are mostly all the 'function' words which appear with great regularity in text; unfortunately, in any text, apart from reading schemes deliberately written to incoporate these HFWs and to reinforce a simple, limited reading vocabulary, the words which give the text its meaning tend to be the non HFWs. Try taking a piece of text and eliminating from it all words apart from the HFWs (you'll find lists of them if you google).
Up until a couple of years ago teachers had lists of HFWs which children were supposed to learn from Reception onwards. In the interim, a certain amount of phonics was introduced to the guidance on the initial teaching of reading with the introduction of the NAtional Literacy Strategy in 1998. But the guidance (which was very 'mixed') still retained the HFWs which were to be learned as 'whole words' not by sounding out and blending. From this arose the perception that HFWs were somehow 'phonically irregular' and couldn't be sounded out. Which is almost completely erroneous!
In the meantime, Sue Lloyd, a trained SEN teacher with a very good understanding of the principles of phonics teaching, starts to develop what came to be known as Jolly Phonics. Because the HFWs were required knowledge (and, some are actually quite useful to make decodable text sound less stilted) she developed the idea of 'tricky words' to teach those useful HFWs which contain unusual or very rare letter/sound correspondences; words like 'the', 'was', 'one' etc. These words have a part which is easy to decode and a 'tricky bit'. They are decoded and blended all through the word in exactly the same way that more straightforward words are decoded and blended. I think that Sue is probably a little irritated by the way her 'invention' of tricky words', designed to be faithful to the decoding & blending principle, is being misused and misunderstood.
The other thing the EP says which I would take very strong issue with is 'she couldn't sound out everything'. That is precisely what your child must do with unfamiliar words or words she is not 'secure' with. It is the repetition of sounding out and blending which eventually puts the word into 'sight memory'. Some children only need to do it once; children with poor memories may need to do it many times...
I might sound a bit like a demented fanatic, but I can't begin to tell you how important decoding and blending is. It not only leads to reading fluency but it also teaches attention to detail, accuracy, proper L to R eyetracking, problem solving and 'flexible thinking'(e.g. in deciding which sound is correct when confronted with letters which spell more than one sound). I'll probably think of a few others later!