We must, must have at the heart of learning to read the pleasure that is reading. Otherwise, why bother? I think the non-readers at the start of 'Can't read, can't write' might well supply reasons to bother. One that stuck with me was the satisfaction the lady felt on being able to read packets in ...

11. In my experience, children are encouraged by their teachers to use their phonic skills and sound out and blend words but are given ORT or other non-decodable books. How can a child know which words are easily decodable? 12. Teachers complain that children sound out all words eg d a r k n e s s. ...

Thanks Maizie. It's quite a lengthy thing to explain and I posted in a bit of a hurry. What I'm hoping for is that these children can see any CVC word, familiar or not, and read it straight off, as most of their peers can. Is this just too much to hope for? As far as I'm aware, these children do not...

I could really do with some advice on this. I work with several Y2 children who are still laboriously sounding out most CVC words before blending them. I don't think it's because they think I only want them to do this as, if it's a word they already know or have seen a few times that session, they w...

The speech and language support that our children receive works on phonemes in speech, not in isolation. As marylennox says, the order is that of the typical development of phonemes in spoken language.

Rod, that's the slough I had in mind.

Elizabeth, a good reason indeed.

Ken thanks for clarifying 'cough'. I was puzzled, forgetting 'the corf that carried him orf'! slough pronounced 'sloo' rings a bell from somewhere in a US accent. (Don't jump yet, I know there's no one US accent - see below.) I'm thinking of perhaps 'Slough of Despond' rather than 'slew the giant'. ...

Aarg!? Bob, I think your long a is not the same as mine!

In general we're not bad at teaching children to read; but we're markedly less successful at teaching them to like it. Ruth Miskin and others who insist on synthetic phonics as the one route of entry into reading have little to offer to address this real problem. "Real problem?" We really should ma...

Hi Bob, it's the same as c l o th / c l aw th, many of us say f o l s. This is given as an alternative in my pronunciation dictionary.

Methinks accent, regional and national, rears its head again.

False and cloth are just two that would be controversial in British English alone, not to mention Yorkshire folk toasting the toes in front of the fire to keep warm!

Off we go again... Rhyme and analogy for should, would could? That's three words taken care of then. I've been working hard with children still getting to grips with easy blending of CVC words. I haven't even begun to count the number of words open to them with just the simple code of the basic alph...

I'm not sure about others but these, to me (UK), are the same as 'reality'.

I'm really grateful that our open studies music course will be able to continue next year. Our tutor manages to keep the form filling to a minimum but she still has to do 'reports' at the end of each module. We participate in 'assessed rehearsals' and learn a little about the composers and period. T...

hfraser wrote:

My skill at comprehension told me you couldn't possibly be paying to learn a large fish.

I'm sure your comprehension skills are equal to the task of understanding what the fish really means.

None whatsoever!!!