Help for 4 year old at a look and say school

[helsbet]

Hi,

I hope you don't mind me posting here, but I am looking for some help for my daughter who is just finishing reception (only done one term). I am mildly dylexic (diagnosed aged 23 can read well but not spell - so is my mum)

DD started school at easter and now knows her 24 alphabet sounds (I don't think school have taught her all of them yet). She is now bringing home books with words and does not even need the words as can just guess from the pictures and will be on ORT soon. Big brother is 6 and so she can remeber him 'reading' these books last year. Any books we look at she just guesses the words - which the teachers think is good.

I bought some Read Write Inc books for her and I am amazed. With the red books she can sound out the words, blend them and read . More importantly she is really happy and wants to read.. She has just picked up a book and sounded out 'Dragon'
The set I've got is from the book people and has 3 red, 3 pink, 3 green, 3 purple.

I don't want to push her too hard but as we have now read the red books what should I do next? School will not finish teaching all the sounds until the end of year one.
I want to focus on reading over the summer holidays as she is desperate to learn. Which books do I need to use - I can't work out which parts of Readwrite inc we can buy to use at home.

Thanks

[JAC]

I can't help you much with Read Write Inc as all my copies are a few years old and were bought from the old publisher, and the colours may be different.
I hope someone will help with your query.
I generally use the excellent BRI readers from www.piperbooks.co.uk which are designed for teaching 4-6 year olds to read. You are quite right to not use the books she is bringing home as they ar not helpful for teaching decoding.

[helsbet]

Thanks,

I'm just surprised about school. It is a really good school, but last year when my son was in reception I brought this up and got a lecture on using the pictures to read, and understanding that words have meanings.

He has only just finished all his phonics at the end of year one.

Is there a good set of the extra phonics/digraphs etc that I should teach her?

Hels

[maizie]

If you look on the home page of the RRF website you will find a link to a chart which sets out the 44 'sounds' of English along with the most common ways they are represented by a letter or group of letters. This will give you an idea of what a child needs to be taught in order to read competently (not all at once, of course, but incrementally and systematically)


If I were you, I would have a look at the Phonics International resources. There is a huge amount of very useful information on the site and lots of good resources at a very reasonable price.

http://www.phonicsinternational.com/

Also look at the BRI books, as JAC suggests; they are a complete instructional programme in themselves and also very reasonably priced.

You will find information about the Read Write Inc books on the Oxford University Press website. Just search on ReadWrite Inc. I wouldn't buy them from there, though, they are very expensive. You could well find them cheaper on amazon

I am astounded that your son has only just learned all the 'sounds' at the end of Y1 (though it would be useful to know exactly what you mean by the school 'teaching all the sounds' by the end of Y1). In a good school the children will learn all the 'basic code' (which is rather more than just the 'alphabet sounds') by the end of the first term in Reception and should be well on the way with the alternative spellings of sounds (advanced code) by the end of Reception. By the end of Y1 the 'average' child (as opposed to one who is slower to learn) should be near to independent reading.

[chew8]

I am astounded that your son has only just learned all the 'sounds' at the end of Y1 (though it would be useful to know exactly what you mean by the school 'teaching all the sounds' by the end of Y1). In a good school the children will learn all the 'basic code' (which is rather more than just the 'alphabet sounds') by the end of the first term in Reception and should be well on the way with the alternative spellings of sounds (advanced code) by the end of Reception. By the end of Y1 the 'average' child (as opposed to one who is slower to learn) should be near to independent reading.

I agree that it would be useful to know what is meant by the school 'teaching the sounds'. In using this kind of phraseology, people often mean 'teaching the spellings for the sounds', and the number of spellings is a lot larger than the number of sounds.

As far as I know, the official requirement is that only one spelling for each sound needs to be taught in Reception and that the teaching of alternatives doesn't need to start until Year 1.

Jenny C.

[maizie]

As far as I know, the official requirement is that only one spelling for each sound needs to be taught in Reception and that the teaching of alternatives doesn't need to start until Year 1.

I must admit that I am going by what EY teachers say on other forums, Jenny. But, I wouldn't think that a setting which has taught all the basic code by Christmas is going to spend the remaining two terms of YR 'consolidating'.

[chew8]

I've just read through this thread again. What helsbet actually wrote about her son was 'He has only just finished all his phonics at the end of year one', while her daughter, having started school only after Easter, now knows '24 alphabet sounds'. It sounds, therefore, as if children who have had a full year in Reception at this school would have gone well beyond 24 sounds.

I'm sure, helsbet, that your daughter will come on in leaps and bounds if you use decodable books with her over the holidays. You may even find that she starts to deduce untaught letter-sound correspondences by herself. This happened with my own children and grandchildren - they quite quickly reached a point where they knew far more than I had taught them, and some research by Prof. Morag Stuart has also shown this phenomenon.

When I was helping with the writing of the government programme Letters and Sounds it was clear from the start that we had to follow ground-rules laid down in advance which said that only one spelling for each phoneme needed to be taught in Reception. I chatted privately about this to the authors of leading synthetic phonics programmes, and all said that although they themselves would go beyond this, they thought that the government target was not a bad one. So I don't think we should throw up our hands too much in horror if Reception teachers are teaching just one spelling for each of 40-odd sounds, especially if children are becoming aware of some other spellings by being taught a few 'tricky' words.

Jenny C.

[helsbet]

Thanks

To clarify, both my children only had one term in reception. DS had about 16 letters in his phonic book, and I think DD had the whole alphabet in hers and is now at the end of her time in reception. The letters are in the 'phonic' order SATIPN etc. But she has not done CH, SH yet.
The school officially use THRASS, but I'm not sure how it links to the reading books. DS learnt about the silent E just before easter of Y1 - however it might just be that he didn't learn it the first time round.

I think I'll get the BRI books and we can read them together. DS is on ORT level 5/6 and I've got some Read write inc green and turquoise books he is reading, and he can 'help' teach DD the basic sounds as a check.

I just wish we had started on this earlier, I have struggled with DS this year - constantly saying ' look at the words', and while he is doing OK reading has been more of a chore than fun, and is only now that he is starting to enjoy it.
School is encouraging him reading a range of books - which he will now pick (he used to only read ORT books).

Now only writting and spelling to tackle

[chew8]

It's interesting that the school officially uses THRASS, helsbet, but that it also follows the 's, a, t, i, p, n' order, which sounds like Jolly Phonics rather than THRASS - it sounds as if some mixing and matching is going on.

THRASS would probably fit in with the use of non-decodable books as it uses more of an analytic than a synthetic phonics approach - i.e. children do a lot of analysing of letter-sound correspondences in words already identified in some way other than by sounding out and blending. An early version of the THRASS manual also suggested that guessing from pictures and context was quite in order: 'When children cannot read a word using picture or context cues, if it is appropriate for them to decode the word, encourage them to break the words up into graphs, digraphs and tgrigraphs...' (p. 31).

You have a great opportunity over the summer holidays, however, to work on sounding out and blending with your children.

Jenny C.