Willow, it sounds like my sons' school. They insist they teach synthetic phonics, when they patently don't. They use Jolly Phonics to teach the alphabet sounds (ie the first 26) but then they don't go on to teach the digraphs. I've even become a governor to see if I can make any difference - though ...

Yes, I agree with you, Frances5 - I don't for a moment think that my 5 year old son really can read or understand like an average 12 year old, but he can decode brilliantly. Kelly, I used Jolly Phonics to teach the basic correspondences and then used some of the later stages of Ruth Miskin to reinfo...

That is brilliant news and you must be so proud of your daughter, and yourself, for taking the action you have.

As with Willow, I'm not a teacher so can only give my own son's progress after slightly under 2 years. At 5y3m (last month) he got a reading age of 12.8 on the Burt reading test; I haven't carried out the Schonell spelling test. However, he is an excellent speller and can confidently spell many comm...

Congratulations to you and your daughter on the reading, and happy birthday. I hope she had a wonderful day.

I've just laminated and chopped up sets of 20 of the HFW for this year's reception classes at my sons' school. I've posted on Debbie's site about the responses I got to my questioning re the teaching of reading.

Well, intrigued by this thread (though somewhat confused as to what a word-reading test would demonstrate), I gave the Burt test to my synthetically-taught 5y3m old. It gave him a reading age of 12. This is because his phonic knowledge allows him to read words like 'phlegmatic', 'domineer', 'microsc...

Well, I know that "letters don't make sounds". But I find it extremely convoluted to say to small children "What do we say when we this?". And in a sense sounds do have names. We name lots of sounds (baa, moo etc) so I don't see why it is unreasonable to name the sounds of spoken language. I am an a...

And it is still 'mum' knowledge in the UK, at least amongst the (admittedly well-educated and socially advantaged) people I know. All the nurseries I know teach 'letter sounds' when they introduce letters, even if they don't teach synthetic phonics or blending. In fact I know of some people who have...

Have you looked in W H Smith? I think I have seen practice papers for KS1 and KS2 SATS in there - English, Maths and Science. I've never looked inside them, but they might have reading comprehension examples. I think they're published by either W H Smith or Letts.

My younger son can decode many, many, many words he can't understand (he is 4y 10 months now). That's fine by me - his comprehension will increase as he gets older. At least he has a good start by being able to read the words and ask what they mean. I deliberately don' t ask him questions about stor...

Thanks, G. I'll have a look at the link. I was chatting about it to the optician the other week, but wasn't convinced that he really understood what I was on about.

My older son, nearly 8, is not at all 'dyslexic' in the popularly understood sense of the word, as he has a reading age over 5 years above his chronological age and is also a strong speller. However, he still, when reading aloud, loses his place frequently and often substitutes a word from the line ...

To my London ears (!), 'dough' has the same relationship with 'soul' as 'fee' does with 'feel'. The terminal 'l' changes the vowel slightly, but it's close enough to call it the same sound in my dialect (pretty much what used to be called RP). :D

Thank you all! I knew there were some but I couldn't think of them. I wasn't sure about 'dough' and 'though' because of the four letters. I will use 'shoulder' and 'boulder', both of which he reads with no problems, if he misreads 'soul' again.