Guest Posted September 28, 2004 Posted September 28, 2004 Im an NQT in a school using Ruth Miskin Phonics which is working really well with my children. Thing is they are also on the Oxford Reading Tree scheme and i dont really know how to use it, my TA has explained it to me but for own piece of mind i want to check im on the right track. Does anyone know of any good websites with help? Or anybody else with any advice? Thanks Buttonmoon712
Steve Posted September 28, 2004 Posted September 28, 2004 Hi Buttonmoon (why have you added a number to your name - are you a clone of the original Buttonmoon we all knew?) There is this site - you might well have seen it already, but if not it has a good set of introductory material and some resources. Hope it helps!
Susan Posted September 28, 2004 Posted September 28, 2004 Buttonmoon, your school should have a manual accompanying and explaining the reading scheme they have chosen and how to use it. It may be that there is only one and if you have a literacy resource area you might find it there, otherwise a word with your literacy coordinator might locate it! Not sure how useful the Oxford Tree site that Steve has directed you to is, but there is some very useful info about teaching reading on the myprimary.co.uk website, look at the Rigby Star and Rigby Rockets section. Good luck.
Rea Posted September 29, 2004 Posted September 29, 2004 Gosh thats old. My friends daughter started with that about 10 years ago. I dont know much about it, except that my friend was put off by the fact there were no words in the books and so her child wasnt really learning to read, just tell a story from the pictures. How time flies
Guest Posted September 29, 2004 Posted September 29, 2004 Hi Buttonmoon, I am in the same situation really - an NQT with a pile of oxford reading tree books ready to go home! I'm not too sure if I am in real agreement with Oxford Reading Tree as I think that the stories are a tad boring and slightly middle class (100% of my children are from ethnic minorities) so I have reservations. My main concern is that I am not sure that they will enspire the children and allow reading at home to be as exciting as possible - in the same sense of say the very hungry catapillar or the owl babies. Whilst I believe that it is vital that reading skills are taught I feel that children need to want to read in the first place because they are going to have to do it for at least the next 11 years of their lives! ladybug xxx
Guest Posted September 30, 2004 Posted September 30, 2004 Rea, I agree with your comments on ORT, but somehow the children I've taught (& we've used ORT in the 3 schools I've worked in with ages 4 to 9) always seem to enjoy them a great deal! I know that I certainly get really bored hearing a book for the hundredth time or so, pretending to laugh in the right places!!! Buttonmoon, I do hope that your school recommends the use of 'real' books alongside the scheme, as we all know there is so much more to reading than the use of 1 scheme, especially as ORT depends more on sight vocab than on phonic strategies! We have got a big 'Flopover' book that we use at the beginning of the year to tell stories about the characters and the ORT teachers book, a thick spiral bound book. It has some good stories but I never seem to get very far with using it as I just get rather bored!!! Dianne xxx
hali Posted October 1, 2004 Posted October 1, 2004 all i can add is my two children loved learning to read with ORT and enjoying the stories is very important....
Billabong Posted October 1, 2004 Posted October 1, 2004 Hello there Buttonmoon, I've been using ORT for the last 5 years in Reception, Year One and now for the first time Reception. The children that I have taught have generally loved the stories. There are quite a lot of resources out there to enhance its use. Firstly check out if you have any extended story books/resource book. These are black and white books that accompany each stage. They are designed for parents to use and have questions that parents can ask the children as there read. I know that more anxious parents find these helpful. Additionally there are some computer programmes that are handy. One is a 'clicker' programme. It has key words and sentence building activities. There is also a CD ROM which has talking stories on it, and another CD with clip art. As far as the early stages go the books with no words are designed to encourage children to talk about the pictures and to predict what might happen next - all speaking and listening stuff! I have not yet given out books to the children as I have been introduing the characters in class using the 'flopover book'. I also photocopied and laminated little pictures of Biff, Chip and Kipper to hide around our outside area, the children really enjoyed hunting for them and it did help them to learn the charcters names. We also made a 'beetle' style game using a picture of Kipper.
Lorna Posted October 2, 2004 Posted October 2, 2004 We use a great set of book by Nelson Thorne.... Sure start They only have cvc words and tricky words and build up the vocabulary slowly.... they really encourage the children to use their phonic skills to sound out and blend words together and although to start with there is only one or two words the illustrations are fantastic and encourage lots of discussion. There are also teachers manuals and a new set of software to complement the set. We also use story world books which are really repetative and again suitable for the children to use their phonic skills. We do use some ORT books but they are a much more language based scheme and make reading quite challenging and frustrating... as many of the children don't have the necessary skills to decode them. L
Guest Posted October 2, 2004 Posted October 2, 2004 Have any of you seen the new Phonic ORT books? They are much better than the context based normal ones, but still include the good old Chip, Biff, Kipper et all that many of the children associate well with. The words include easy to decode words as well as the odd key word. If you've not seen them I suggest people have a look at them, they are much better than the old ones and my class who are currently on them (we've added them in with the old ones) are really enjoying the stories.
Guest Posted October 3, 2004 Posted October 3, 2004 I agree that there are new ORT books that are much better than the old ones. I had a set of the originals, and my co-op children found them and liked them just as books on the bookshelf. I then looked it up on the website and discovered that there were lots of new ones out. I really like the new titles, and all the children think they are hysterical. I get asked to read them over and over - and with these ones, I don't mind as they are far more like 'real books' than the originals. And having the new ones rekindled the children's interest in the originals. It's often surprising what children like, but I'm not surprised that they all like the new books. A favourite of ours is one where Kipper trips with his ice cream on the beach and it lands on a man's head. It's stupid, but they never tire of reading it.
Recommended Posts