English

M0nica I agree that it is wrong for children to have to complete a word list before moving on to the next book. All those hard and fast rules about " learning" fail to reflect how learning actually happens! Imagine if we had that applied to all reading matter! You can't read this medical research article until you can read all the names of the phamaceuticals out of context!

Have you done the KS2 SPAG test?

That doggerel is very tedious. I think nobody should be allowed to leave primary school without knowing how to use apostrophes.

Fennel that is just bad teaching, not the fault of the system being read.

Like refusing to let children being taught by Look and Say to have a book until they know the first 20 words, even if all their friends have books and it is getting to the end of of their first term at school and they still do not have one. (it was discovered later that the child concerned was dyslexic.

Phonics on its own is so boring. I was a remedial reading teacher for a few years and in one school I visited the HT insisted on the Janet and John phonic scheme.
The poor children weren't allowed to progress to the next book until they could read the pages of lists of phonically spelt words at the back of the book.

My just 5 year-old grandson, who has been at school since he was 4, comes home every day with his reading book. I am surprised at the pressure that is put on such young children. And it is not only the reading. I was brought up in Sweden and we did not start school until seven years old. I don't remember tests and 'targets'; if there were any they were not communicated to us or our parents. I think the UK have more tests/exams than many other nations. Now we hear that our teenagers are stressed out because of exam pressure and the need to 'perform' at a certain level. Should we be surprised?

My DD learned ITA. Topsy and Sam etc. She still can't spell

ITA was an odd idea..my brother was subjected to it in the 60s when he started school.

Phonics have a key place in supporting writing far more than reading. My 30+years teaching, and training teachers to teach reading and writing, at infant stage has made me appreciate the need for a multi-faceted approach as all children are different and need slightly different approaches with different emphasis.
So for example John may find phonics easy to grasp but look and say tricky whereas Mike is a whizz at look and say but phonics is only secondary in his repertoire of reading skills. By only testing phonics at aged 5/6 yrs it gives it a greater emphasis than other, equally useful, reading and writing skills. That is regrettable and unhelpful , especially for children who do not find phonics as useful as some. Central government directives on how to teach are inappropriate.

I have no great knowledge PECS, just what I have read.
www.theguardian.com/education/2014/jun/16/phonics-children-education-research.

DMiL was a reception class teacher when ita came in and a new head insisted that they use it. She said it meant teaching children to read twice, once in ita and again when thye made the change to standard orthography. She said bright children adapted quite quickly but it set the poorer readers back and undermined any confidence they may have gained using ita. She was glad when that head lleft and the incoming head ditched it.

With you there fennel! That was my experience too.
(Off the subject but I'd like to add here that learning to read has virtually nothing to do with the ability to recite the alphabet.
Just saying. One of my hobby horses!)

There was a movement in the ?70s to use the ITA method
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Initial_Teaching_Alphabet
As far as I remember most children got off to a great start but stalled when they had to transfer later to TA.
In my days the safest method was a combination of phonics and Look and Say.
A long list of short commonly used words are taught as whole words as well the techniques of phonics for more unusual and complex words.
Most children manage to learn to read from that combination. But when it comes to spelling - that's when the real problems start.

I bow to your greater knowledge in these matters M0nica

I think practice has found that this is the method that has proved most successful in getting children to read. Learn the rules - and then the exceptions.

As Churchill said in a different context democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time

The same applies to phonics.

In Wales, ear, hear and year are all pronounced 'year' . Makes life interesting as to answers sometimes !

That made me smile mcem some 50 years ago my Scottish husband was given a book called “Fraffly Fraffly” by Aferbeck Lauder. The giver hoped it would assist to survival in a new job in the south! I’m not sure how much it helped but it did made us laugh a lot!

A GP asked his patient in deepest Herefordshire: "How is your urine?"

"Oh I can hear (ierrrr) just fine thanks doc."

"Law and order" should be pronounced as it is spelt, not as "loranohdah" as it often is by speakers of the so-called received pronounciation.

Most Scottish accents don't work that way.
I Ron is the normal pronunciation.
I find The Archers quite intriguing from this point of view!
Daa haaas? No - Dow err how ss!
Braaan? No - Bri ann!
Also the intrusive r doesn't appear as in Mariar Adams.
Doesn't get round the cough/bough problem but makes teaching, using the phonic method, easier!
(Autocorrect prefers the phobic method!!)

I used to teach a version of this to my foreign students.
The one they found surprisingly difficult was something like

"please say iron
so that it can rhyme with lion"

They were mystified having been taught to say iRon.
It happened yeat after year from a variety of different nationalities.
It always amazed me how they managed to pick up not only the pronunciation but also the stress on the words just by listening which I think is the most important skills in the learning of English.

We had a Polish maths teacher who used to cause hilarity by saying such things as "the bird is on the "boff" and "if the angles are not right, the ceiling will be slopping" - she was most entertaining!

???