KS1 literacy - please help!!
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Re: KS1 literacy - please help!!
Um, I couldn't agree more - so much depends on a school's cohort and location and I'm sure ours is not alone in under delivering yet being happy to take credit for great SATs etc thanks to the external efforts of their pupils' families.
Many thanks for your suggestions for alternatives to the ORT. As an aside, when I asked DS's teacher why they were not being sent home with graded home readers such as these she said the reason they send home a "free choice" reader instead is because most of the children seem to have the ORT and Jolly Phonics series at home already. Go figure!!
For the benefit of anyone else reading this thread, I have also just come across http://www.firstschoolyears.com" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; which has loads of fun worksheets for KS1 and KS2 maths, science and literacy.
Now, I wonder if DH will sanction the purchase of an IPad for the benefit of DS2's Mr Thorne does Phonics activities? Here's hoping!!
Many thanks for your suggestions for alternatives to the ORT. As an aside, when I asked DS's teacher why they were not being sent home with graded home readers such as these she said the reason they send home a "free choice" reader instead is because most of the children seem to have the ORT and Jolly Phonics series at home already. Go figure!!
For the benefit of anyone else reading this thread, I have also just come across http://www.firstschoolyears.com" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; which has loads of fun worksheets for KS1 and KS2 maths, science and literacy.
Now, I wonder if DH will sanction the purchase of an IPad for the benefit of DS2's Mr Thorne does Phonics activities? Here's hoping!!
Re: KS1 literacy - please help!!
Madhatter, sorry have not read all of the thread. However, many many schools do not teach children to read and their parents do.
I've taught both mine as the school was not really getting on with it. One I used OUP Oxford Reading Tree books and the other I used a phonics route, and then used the later stages of ORT etc once the child could sound out and blend new words using a wide range of what are called grapheme-phoneme correspondences (GPCs).
I would recommend the second route - it was a good deal faster. Also it fits with what schools should be going these days, and the phonics test at the end of year 1.
So this is what I would do:
buy Read Write Inc phonics handbook and give your child the placement test to see which GPCs he does and doesn't know,
buy the black and white storybooks which go with the scheme (very cheap relative to other full-colour reading schemes)
buy the home version of the sound cards
And off you go. He should progress very fast as you should be able to teach him the GPCs in a drip drip way, practice them with the storybooks, and quite quickly move on to the books later in the
Try not to go down the learning sight words route before he can actually work out new words for himself. It leads to very bad habits - which might develop anyhow, but no point in teaching them from the start.
What can he actually do currently? Can he work out some unknown words? Which GPCs has he been taught at school?
Quite often what happens is that at school they keep some children on what they call the early phases of Letters and Sounds until they are "secure" and these children never get exposed to the learning needed to be able to read a lot of words other than ones where single letters represent sounds. Then they send home books which depend on children needing more info than that to be able to decode, or having a large "sight" vocab. It becomes a frustrating guessing game at home or one of reading pathetic books for years which the child has no hope of ever being interested in.
I've taught both mine as the school was not really getting on with it. One I used OUP Oxford Reading Tree books and the other I used a phonics route, and then used the later stages of ORT etc once the child could sound out and blend new words using a wide range of what are called grapheme-phoneme correspondences (GPCs).
I would recommend the second route - it was a good deal faster. Also it fits with what schools should be going these days, and the phonics test at the end of year 1.
So this is what I would do:
buy Read Write Inc phonics handbook and give your child the placement test to see which GPCs he does and doesn't know,
buy the black and white storybooks which go with the scheme (very cheap relative to other full-colour reading schemes)
buy the home version of the sound cards
And off you go. He should progress very fast as you should be able to teach him the GPCs in a drip drip way, practice them with the storybooks, and quite quickly move on to the books later in the
Try not to go down the learning sight words route before he can actually work out new words for himself. It leads to very bad habits - which might develop anyhow, but no point in teaching them from the start.
What can he actually do currently? Can he work out some unknown words? Which GPCs has he been taught at school?
Quite often what happens is that at school they keep some children on what they call the early phases of Letters and Sounds until they are "secure" and these children never get exposed to the learning needed to be able to read a lot of words other than ones where single letters represent sounds. Then they send home books which depend on children needing more info than that to be able to decode, or having a large "sight" vocab. It becomes a frustrating guessing game at home or one of reading pathetic books for years which the child has no hope of ever being interested in.
Re: KS1 literacy - please help!!
Mystery, thanks so much for your advice. The hardest part in all this is knowing where to start and which tools will work best together, but this approach seems to make complete sense and gives us what we need just to pick up and get going. Handbook and sound cards duly ordered and you're right, the story books are certainly cheaper than the ORT.
He is able to decode very basic words of the cat, sat, mat type but few blended sounds beyond ea, ee, oo - consequently he goes into blind panic mode at the sight of even the most basic ORT stage 1 text, let alone the ridiculous weekly tome he is being sent home with to "read". Hopefully some decent home materials and time invested by mum will do the trick!
He is able to decode very basic words of the cat, sat, mat type but few blended sounds beyond ea, ee, oo - consequently he goes into blind panic mode at the sight of even the most basic ORT stage 1 text, let alone the ridiculous weekly tome he is being sent home with to "read". Hopefully some decent home materials and time invested by mum will do the trick!
Re: KS1 literacy - please help!!
Great. What you have said to me would indicate that he has not been taught many of the GPCs yet. If you are feeling like spending more you could also buy the Speed Sound lesson plans.
You will see the whole scheme is very logical. There are a lot of phonics schemes that are good these days and if you dig around you will find others.
Do you know what they use at school? They should be able to tell you.
Letters and Sounds has now been archived but this is what many schools use. It is a guidance document. Many school take the phases in it very literally. This means that some children for a variety of reasons are not taught the digraphs and trigraphs ( e.g. digraphs use two letters to make sound sound eg. ch, th, ng, nk, ss, ff, ll, ou, or, ar, ee, ue, ph, and trigraphs use three letters to make a sound eg. igh) for a long time.
For some children this does not matter- they just pick it up by reading and eventually can work it all out for themselves, but other kids prefer the logical approach so the reading books which are sent home that do not fit with the phonics they have learned at school may as well be written in another language.
Use pure sounds when you are teaching your son - listen to the sounds free of charge on a website like Phonics International or Mr Thorne does Phonics.
Mr Thorne does phonics is organised by letters and sounds phases so you can see on there what he has / has not been taught probably.
For the phonics decoding test in June the expectation is that schools have taught all children up to and including Letters and Sound phase 5 phonics apart from a very small percentage who truly have special needs of some sort.
When you are using the RWI storybooks you will find a very useful page in the phonics handbook which tells you for each storybook which GPCs the child needs to know to be able to read them. Make sure that he does use them correctly when working out new words - so if he was practising "th" make sure that he does not separate it into /t/ and /h/ when he is sounding out the word. So if he was reading thud for the first time he would sound out /th/ /u/ /d/ and then blend it into the word thud. If he can't blend there are some useful strategies I could suggest which should not normally take very long at all and which you can play in the car without actually reading at the same time.
At first my daughter like a photocopy of the story books. She could then tick off each word that she worked out for herself, put a sticker on at the end of each page, highlight GPCs with a highlighting pen etc etc --- you can kind of make a bit of a science of it for the child as really the stories in the early stages are suited to a much younger child so you've got to create some satisfaction in the learning process for the child as the books themselves are not thrilling. For my children reading did not become a thrill by themselves until they could read what they wanted to read for themselves. Otherwise they preferred to listen to me reading to them.
So keep up reading interesting books to him, discuss the kind of thing he would like to be able to read for himself. You might be able to help him read books for which he does not have the phonic knowledge by doing some incidental phonics teaching along the way. Neither of mine would tolerate that approach.
Good luck and enjoy it. You should find that progress is fast. Your problem may then be getting school to realise that something has improved!
My advice is to try and quietly bin the home books that come back from school until they are of some use to you. I used to be very honest and just record all the RWI work I had done in the school reading record. It didn't get any "recognition" from school but it meant that my daughter did not get badgered at school for not having read the ORT book which came home at the time.
I would say that my daughter started to enjoy and read very successfully for themselves stage 5 ort upwards once we had covered speed sounds sets 2 and 3 at home and were round about blue / grey on RWI. A lot of the earlier colours on the RWI go over the same material again and again. You might find you can skip some of the books, or you might find it invaluable practice.
Some children can enjoy reading stuff where they are having to sound out and blend most words, others prefer reading stuff where they find it less of a mental load. You can only try and see, or maybe read a mix at home e.g. an early book to build up speed and fluency and a later book to practise the more complex code.
My DD enjoyed going back over the earlier books once she was far on in the scheme and it amazed her how quick and easy she found the books compared to first time round.
What you are aiming at is a child who decodes very fast on sight. This takes practice. Some children will sound out and blend the same word hundreds of times, others will read it fluently the second time they see it. It doesn't matter, so long as the verbal comprehension is good there is going to be no ultimate difference in their skill as a reader. It's just that the method needed to teach those two different children will have to be slightly different - more practice and repetition for one than the other.
You will see the whole scheme is very logical. There are a lot of phonics schemes that are good these days and if you dig around you will find others.
Do you know what they use at school? They should be able to tell you.
Letters and Sounds has now been archived but this is what many schools use. It is a guidance document. Many school take the phases in it very literally. This means that some children for a variety of reasons are not taught the digraphs and trigraphs ( e.g. digraphs use two letters to make sound sound eg. ch, th, ng, nk, ss, ff, ll, ou, or, ar, ee, ue, ph, and trigraphs use three letters to make a sound eg. igh) for a long time.
For some children this does not matter- they just pick it up by reading and eventually can work it all out for themselves, but other kids prefer the logical approach so the reading books which are sent home that do not fit with the phonics they have learned at school may as well be written in another language.
Use pure sounds when you are teaching your son - listen to the sounds free of charge on a website like Phonics International or Mr Thorne does Phonics.
Mr Thorne does phonics is organised by letters and sounds phases so you can see on there what he has / has not been taught probably.
For the phonics decoding test in June the expectation is that schools have taught all children up to and including Letters and Sound phase 5 phonics apart from a very small percentage who truly have special needs of some sort.
When you are using the RWI storybooks you will find a very useful page in the phonics handbook which tells you for each storybook which GPCs the child needs to know to be able to read them. Make sure that he does use them correctly when working out new words - so if he was practising "th" make sure that he does not separate it into /t/ and /h/ when he is sounding out the word. So if he was reading thud for the first time he would sound out /th/ /u/ /d/ and then blend it into the word thud. If he can't blend there are some useful strategies I could suggest which should not normally take very long at all and which you can play in the car without actually reading at the same time.
At first my daughter like a photocopy of the story books. She could then tick off each word that she worked out for herself, put a sticker on at the end of each page, highlight GPCs with a highlighting pen etc etc --- you can kind of make a bit of a science of it for the child as really the stories in the early stages are suited to a much younger child so you've got to create some satisfaction in the learning process for the child as the books themselves are not thrilling. For my children reading did not become a thrill by themselves until they could read what they wanted to read for themselves. Otherwise they preferred to listen to me reading to them.
So keep up reading interesting books to him, discuss the kind of thing he would like to be able to read for himself. You might be able to help him read books for which he does not have the phonic knowledge by doing some incidental phonics teaching along the way. Neither of mine would tolerate that approach.
Good luck and enjoy it. You should find that progress is fast. Your problem may then be getting school to realise that something has improved!
My advice is to try and quietly bin the home books that come back from school until they are of some use to you. I used to be very honest and just record all the RWI work I had done in the school reading record. It didn't get any "recognition" from school but it meant that my daughter did not get badgered at school for not having read the ORT book which came home at the time.
I would say that my daughter started to enjoy and read very successfully for themselves stage 5 ort upwards once we had covered speed sounds sets 2 and 3 at home and were round about blue / grey on RWI. A lot of the earlier colours on the RWI go over the same material again and again. You might find you can skip some of the books, or you might find it invaluable practice.
Some children can enjoy reading stuff where they are having to sound out and blend most words, others prefer reading stuff where they find it less of a mental load. You can only try and see, or maybe read a mix at home e.g. an early book to build up speed and fluency and a later book to practise the more complex code.
My DD enjoyed going back over the earlier books once she was far on in the scheme and it amazed her how quick and easy she found the books compared to first time round.
What you are aiming at is a child who decodes very fast on sight. This takes practice. Some children will sound out and blend the same word hundreds of times, others will read it fluently the second time they see it. It doesn't matter, so long as the verbal comprehension is good there is going to be no ultimate difference in their skill as a reader. It's just that the method needed to teach those two different children will have to be slightly different - more practice and repetition for one than the other.
Last edited by mystery on Mon Oct 01, 2012 9:36 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: KS1 literacy - please help!!
Can I suggest an alternative approach to reading books? It's a box containing individual letters and colour co-ordinated. For example, the vowels are in red, consonants in blue. It looks like this.
The idea is to use to get the child to pick out individual letters from picture cards or toys that you give them. Like this.
You could progress onto sentence strips but confine it to cvc words only with a few of the main 'look and sight' words and follow it up with 'cvc' books.
The alphabet box is really resourceful and you can adapt it to include the digraphs / trigraphs also.
Neither of my dc's primary schools have taught any of my 5dc to read.
Had to do it myself at home. And although they have different learning styles, the alphabet box really helped them to progress through the phonic based books and also the real books. 
The idea is to use to get the child to pick out individual letters from picture cards or toys that you give them. Like this.
You could progress onto sentence strips but confine it to cvc words only with a few of the main 'look and sight' words and follow it up with 'cvc' books.
The alphabet box is really resourceful and you can adapt it to include the digraphs / trigraphs also.
Neither of my dc's primary schools have taught any of my 5dc to read.
Had to do it myself at home. And although they have different learning styles, the alphabet box really helped them to progress through the phonic based books and also the real books. Re: KS1 literacy - please help!!
have a look at http://www.thebookpeople.co.uk" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; I have had to go cold turkey from the website!MadHatter wrote: but I was worried about it getting pricey if I had to buy them all the way through to him reading fluently!
Re: KS1 literacy - please help!!
Madhatter, re. cost considerations, I think you'll find it hard to find a coherent phonics book scheme on the Bookpeople. Think I tried hard which was when I found the RWI black and white story books. I know some other phonic schemes which are cheaper than ORT too. It might be possible to order some in from the library.
I found that RWI Black and White and some Floppy Phonics and some Songbirds (these are both OUP but phonics rather than sight-word schemes, I used them in the higher levels to give a bit of variety alongside the RWI) was enough to launch onto reading pretty much anything. RWI is designed to take a child to 2a/3c reading. You should be able to do the whole thing in year 1 quite easily and he will be well above average at the end of year 1 ( 2b is national average at end if year 2).
Good luck!
P.S. Don't get sidetracked by rubbish methods and schemes! It really can be a fast and easy process. I bought lots of Biff Chip and Kipper for my first child but it really was the slower (and hence costlier method). DD2 read them very fast for fun (unlike daughter 1 who had to plod through them because she had not been given the skills to work out the words for herself), but they didn't add anything to her "learning to read" experience.
I found that RWI Black and White and some Floppy Phonics and some Songbirds (these are both OUP but phonics rather than sight-word schemes, I used them in the higher levels to give a bit of variety alongside the RWI) was enough to launch onto reading pretty much anything. RWI is designed to take a child to 2a/3c reading. You should be able to do the whole thing in year 1 quite easily and he will be well above average at the end of year 1 ( 2b is national average at end if year 2).
Good luck!
P.S. Don't get sidetracked by rubbish methods and schemes! It really can be a fast and easy process. I bought lots of Biff Chip and Kipper for my first child but it really was the slower (and hence costlier method). DD2 read them very fast for fun (unlike daughter 1 who had to plod through them because she had not been given the skills to work out the words for herself), but they didn't add anything to her "learning to read" experience.
Re: KS1 literacy - please help!!
Sorry I wasn't suggesting it for a scheme as such, I found great sets of books on theremystery wrote: I think you'll find it hard to find a coherent phonics book scheme on the Bookpeople
eg Usborne Farmyard Tales, Red Nose readers, Usborne Phonics such as Frog on a Log (I don't know the correct name of that series) going on through lots of other sets and even having all three Hunger Games books for a fiver.
Re: KS1 literacy - please help!!
My DS learnt to read with the Superphonics collection, which I bought from Book people and I would recommend it, the books are quite varied, not the same characters all the way through and I enjoyed listening to them.
Re: KS1 literacy - please help!!
Ah right, OK then you might be lucky and find the whole of a phonics scheme on the Bookpeople - my experience has just been that odd parts of a scheme have been available. Superphonics is written by Ruth Miskin, same as Read Write Inc. I'm sure it's probably good too, but I think I'm right in saying it does not give as much practice and repetition as the RWI stories as there are far fewer books. Also I'm not sure if the teaching points of each storybook are made as clear as in RWI. I could be wrong though as I have not seen the full set of books. It sounds as though the OP needs a "complete course" rather than just something to supplement the school phonics.