Last Chance Kids channel4

[RoyKinnear]

sniff sniff!

Tears here too.
What do we think about Ruth Miskin's Synthetic Phonics? Is she right to put older kids with younger kids? I felt there was some stigma from being in a group of much younger children that may have prevented the worst boys from moving ahead.

oh god. Am also behind in literacy.

My sister's children.

For goodness sake.

Ooh, where did the hat come from??

whachootalkinabout gingerbear? I see no hat.

gingerbear

miskin did (imo) state quite rightly that although the children may suffer a bit from being set with younger children - you have to weigh this up against the stigma of not reading later in life

the children did not learn in their peer group but many learned with this method

liam was a case in point - he behaved so much better when removed from peers and seemed fine with the young ones

he quickly progressed upthe groups

the aim is to teach them to read - this was hard on all concerned but it worked

but as they noted int he programme there's already a stigma attached to being so far behind their chronological peers. it seems from what we were shown that being in a similar ability group enabled the older boys to take a kind of leading role, helping the younger kids, something they could never do with their classmates of the same age. it seemed to work well to me.

i'm curious what method of teaching the synthetic phonics was replacing - how else is reading taught? (no exp here - my eldest just in reception)

maggotand try f5 (apple-r on mac)

(trouble is once you can see them you can never get rid of them...)

a mixyure have been used for my oldest 3 children

sight reading ie 'the' that cannot be sounded out
and phonetics (letterland) laerning to sound out

I am now with dc4 detesting jolly phonics

ooooh! F5!!!!

You are clever, puppydavies

so sight reading you have to learn every single word individually?

Ah, very true RoyKinnear, I missed that bit. And PuppyDavies, you are right it did seem to work in the end.

I think phonics is becoming more accepted as a method generally now. My mum was a primary teacher in the 1960's and 70's - and this was always how she taught reading. Phonics seemed to fall out of favour - but has been proved t be the best method, especially for those who struggle.

I thought Ruth was right about stopping teaching to read at 6 or 7 - it should be taught all the way through primary school IMO.

yes puppy but have done a bit with ds this week and its ridiculously quick
its like magic - he just seems to photocoy them in his memory after 2 or 3 showings
i dont understand it but it works
i mix the two mehtods and seems ok so far

Although English being the cruel language that it is, there are always certain words that have to be taught by sight.

Ah, too slow, you lot have already discussed this!

what hats?????????? i did apple and r and nothing happened

halloween hats on the emoticons - Tech has been at it again

i wonder whether it's more the effort that went into it than the method itself? might the mixed age groups and dedicated one-on-one tuition have yielded similar results whichever method was used?

that should be "were used" shouldn't it

yes puppy dp and i suggested that
thee sheer time spent on ltercy en masse yeilds results regardless of methods

i do think the ability streaming helped

This year in our Infants school we are starting whole school phonics across age groups. They are in year groups at the moment while we are assessing how well it is working.
Every day there is a 20 min phonics session. The 44 sounds are gradually learnt and consolidated along with letter names and 'tricky' words that need to be learnt on sight. Some spelling, writing and reading. It is very pacy.

Last year there was a pilot run in Reception in the summer term and the children currently in year 1 are miles ahead of the previous year's year 1.

Now we just need the reading scheme books to complement it .......

I think phonics are why I can't spell!!!

Cough, though, bough ect......

Good, too..........

I was in the gp today with ds and he saw a poster with the word 'Heart' he said to me that 'ea' in Heat sound like 'ee' so in h'ea'rt it should sound like 'ee'.....

Phonics has it's limitations

In an ideal world children who were 10 years old and couldn't read would have one to one tutition. It must be horrible for a 10 year old to be put with a bunch of five year olds. The problem at Monteagle is that there are so many non readers.

Prehaps they could have grouped all the older non readers together, but it would have created a sink set and discipline would have been a nightmare. Prehaps by mixing the older children with the younger children they were hoping to get an easier to manage class.

I think that mixing children across years is a good idea, provided that the age group is not too extreme. An august born child might be at a similar level to a September born child. I thought it would good that the little girl who had learnt to read before starting school was able to be in a group at the right level for her.

www.childliteracy.com/ you may find this interesting.