Reading

[happyteacher]

Hi

 

I am moving to Reception and wanted to quiz you all on the use of word pots!

 

The previous teacher taught jolly phonics and sent home word pots with high frequency words in! She then tested them weekly, giving out new words if they know the previous words!

 

I am going to follow Letters and Sounds but trying to decide if I should use the word pot for tricky words and how to manage weekly reading?

 

What do you do?

[Guest]

Hi there!

 

I would say that testing them weekly is too often - and would take up a lot of valuable time! I think Letters and Sounds suggests assessing the children at the end of each phase - I too am starting L&S in September.

 

With regards to word pots, I've never used them. However, I do send the HFW home to be stuck on their 'word wall', which is an A3 sized blank wall. I send them home as I teach them.

 

We start Guided Reading once we have introduced all the HFW.

 

Carrots x

[HoneyPancakes]

Three years ago my Firstborn brought home a Word Tin from YR. This last year Mr Secondborn had a notebook with short lists words added with proficiency.

 

Personally, I found the Word Tin more enticing to use as a parent. The tin was a reminding lump in the book bag while the book was inoccuous and was sometimes overlooked. Also mixing a few new words amongst lots of easier ones made doing the tin more encouraging.

 

Probably goes against all your curriculum advice, but that's my uneducated opinion.

 

Honey

[suebear]

I used to send home finger puppets with 6 words chosen to the child's level for the child to sound out to the puppet - the child was teaching the puppet to read! Parents loved it and said children were really keen to do it, some parents would turn this from reading to writing them.

[Rufus]

Does anyone else find that teaching phonemes is quite often enough for most children? Apart from my really bright children, whenever I introduce tricky words, they find it hard to learn new phonemes and tricky word too. Last year I didn't introduce tricky words until I was on set 6 or 7 of L&S.

[hwatts]

Hi,

I send home word boxes (which sound very much like your word tine. Simple words to start with such as Biff, Chip, Mum and Dad). They soon progress to HFW and words related to the ORT scheme. Each child is heard reading the word cards in the box twice a week and new ones are added if they know them. This carries on until they reach stage 4. Also, I have a 'sound snail' that I send home containing phase 3 L+S digraphs. Again, a new sound is added when all the others are known. The feedback from the parents and TA's is positive and each child is progressing at their own rate. I hope this helps.

[narnia]

The reception children at our local school have thier 'key words' cut out to look like keys, which are then held together on a large key ring, so new words can be added easily as the child learns them.

[Guest LornaW]

I don't have a class or work in a school anymore but I have been delivering L&S training. In Letters and Sounds training it emphasises that it is tricky phonemes in the words and not the words themselves.

 

If you are using phonics to teach reading I think you need to be careful about giving the homework emphasis on look and say which is what words in a tin etc are. Again in the training we have been recommending sending phonemes home to learn and share with the family and make a word wall of tricky phoneme words. Some practitioners have made phoneme fans adding new phonemes as they are taught and these go back and forward from home to school.

 

Rufus your experience has been the same as many of the practitioners on the Letters and Sounds training.

 

Lorna

[suebear]

The words I sent home contained the phonemes they'd already been taught and I think they came from the sets in letters and sounds and had sound buttons underneath. Some children would have sit, hit, kit etc whilst others have bright, right, sight etc. I would slip in an alien word too (made up word from the taught phonemes, as a way of checking they can read the phonemes). I never used to view it as homework. It was reinforcement and made the parents feel involved.

[Guest]

I use letters and sounds to plan our phonics teaching, but we do use the actions from jolly phonics to help them remember them. We send home the phonemes on like cards as we learn them, pupils keep them in a tin in their bok bags. We teach the tricky and HFW as laided out in the L and S guidance. We send the words home depending on the phase the child is working on- red for tricky words and green for words that can be sounded out (although we encourage them to learn them by sight). They aren't really 'tested' as such, but we do give them new ones regularly based on their reading in a group/ones that come up in phonics/books etc etc. As a school we have found that pupils are much further on with their reading development by follwoing letters and sounds and specifically teaching the HFW and tricky words. Our guided reading books are linked into the phonic phases and have the HFW/tricky words in them. To begin with pupils take home the book to reread with their parents. As they progress they move onto book banded books which they chose for themsleves. Hope that make sense!

[nickynooblue]

I am not at all technical so I hope this works, but this is what I send home to the parents - I start with single phonemes then HFW and then tricky words. The children also have a 'phoneme book' at the end of the week we write the grapheme's into the book and the children practice them at home, everytime they say the sound correctly their parents draw a tick next to it. We then run through the books when we hear them read individually, however I do often ask my volunteering parents to do this job - we also tick if they get the sound correct. Hope this uploads.........

 

 

and have just noticed 'sheet' is spelled incorrectly - maybe I need to practise my own phonics

High_Frequency_Words_activity_shhet.docx

[Cait]

Here as a pdf for those of you who can't open docx files.

 

Thankyou - it's interesting to see like that

High_Frequency_Words_activity_sheet.pdf

[nickynooblue]

thank you for that Cait - told you I was not at all technical!!!!!

[HappyMaz]

I am not at all technical so I hope this works, but this is what I send home to the parents

I'd have liked a document like this when mine were at that stage - very clear instructions that even a delinquent parent like me could understand!

 

Maz

[Cait]

thank you for that Cait - told you I was not at all technical!!!!!

 

 

easy peasy - you know when you are in word? Click save as, and then when the drop down box comes, just choose pdf

[Guest LornaW]

easy peasy - you know when you are in word? Click save as, and then when the drop down box comes, just choose pdf

 

 

Wow! thanks Cait I had thought you needed Adobe or someother thing to do that!! Just shows you are never too old to learn something!!

 

Lorna

[HappyMaz]

easy peasy - you know when you are in word? Click save as, and then when the drop down box comes, just choose pdf

and if you want people to be able to edit the document, choose the .doc format!

[Marion]

I don't use the HFW at all. I teach the "tricky" words in class using Action Words and concentrate on teaching the children how to blend words that can be made as each new set of phonemes are taught.

 

The JP word lists follow the same sort of system and children are expected to use phonic skills to read them not "learn" them.

 

When we first started using JP we followed the programme and used to send home numbered boxes containing each set which were returned - child reads words using phonics and the child given the next box The child didn't get a reading book until they had completed all the boxes...