Showing posts with label Early reading. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Early reading. Show all posts
Monday, 3 February 2014
The story of Robin Hood - or how Fiction vs Non Fiction should be part of a child's reading development.
Labels:
Claire Llewellyn,
Development,
Early reading,
Oxford Learning Tree,
phonics,
The Story of Robin Hood
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| "All About Robin Hood" by Claire Llewellyn. An engaging and brilliant book to stimulate young minds. |
Like most parents, we are caught in the middle of a huge debate surrounding the way children learn to read. On one hand, you have huge arguments raging about "artificial phonics" making some good points about phonics and decoding only being effective if they can be directly linked to more natural ways of learning to read (for instance, books that encourage decoding, breaking down etc but do so in the course of a story - or are further backed up by parents and teachers taking the time to apply the lessons learned in school / with phonics books to other books a child might read).
On the other hand, you have testing and measurement that falls flat on its face when children who are happily quite fluent readers being sent back to square one to be tested on their phonics skills - skills they've already moved on from.
One thing we have noticed is that non-fiction books are now more regularly in demand by Charlotte than stories, and when the above book was sent home with her from school, it raised some interesting points of observation.
1) Charlotte was much more inclined to engage with the book as it raised questions of its own (Did Robin Hood really exist? Facts vs fiction).
2) A recognisable 'fictional' character could have some basis in the real world and in history (History is something else that's like nectar to a bee to Charlotte at the moment).
3) This is the real crux - the book did not 'baby' her - that is, it did not feature a completely throwaway story designed purely to test and repeat certain words at the current reading level.
The book's layout was also fantastic, eschewing the usual paragraph / illustration pattern for something that allows children to follow a more interesting path through each page (It's a bit like a higgledy piggledy comic-layout approach).
Claire Llewellyn has been regularly contributing to the fantastic Springboard Stories magazine and book accompaniments. The Oxford Learning Tree range is fabulous, but this one really stood out and showed that there is a huge gap in the early readers / children's book market for books of this ilk. As much as we adore fiction and stories, the effect of this book on Charlotte was amazing. More like this please!
Wednesday, 18 December 2013
Ending the year as we began by looking at phonics...
Labels:
Early reading,
early years,
phonics
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| To an average child, it can often feel like this in your head when you are learning to read |
At times, it felt like we couldn't dare broach the subject of reading books supplied by school for fear of turning Charlotte off reading books for pleasure altogether. We wrote several times about the 'unnatural' process of decoding and breaking down words, about the way we felt phonics didn't aid a child's recognition of key words, and undecodable 'difficult' words would always be a spoke in the wheel of any programme designed to introduce reading in a bizarre formulaic fashion.
As the year draws to a close I'm compelled to write about phonics again. Only a few short months ago when the sun was shining we described how difficult it was to maintain momentum over the long summer holiday, and that Charlotte's reading fell behind despite our best efforts to mix school books and books read for pleasure together with no distance between the two.
What's happened since then has transformed my thinking on the subject of phonics, and it perhaps offers hope to others who are in similar situations where they feel that literary luminaries such as Michael Rosen and others are right, and that phonics are not the right way to get children reading early.
I agree in part. It is not the right way if it's the only method you use. No programme designed to teach children to read from an early age can ever be as successful as parents engaging with their children and shoring up the 'learning' stuff with the 'fun' stuff (or ensuring that the learning stuff is made fun!)
It's absolutely vital to stress that we soldiered on with our approach of ensuring we read books for pleasure to Charlotte, that she saw us reading for pleasure (and of course being enthusiastic about books and stories), that we mixed in the supposedly 'subversive' stuff like comics, and that we devoted enough time to backing up the stilted phonics and school learning with fun stuff that she could later use in class, stuff that purely came from us.
In just a few short months since she started year 1 in September, her confidence has grown. Stage 6 books are - to put it bluntly - not challenging at all to her, and she breezes through them. My initial doubts about the decoding method, which caused Charlotte to individually spell out words every time she read, have disappeared now her rate of recognition / repetition has gained momentum, and she reads quite naturally.
Some words still catch her out but with a little help here and there, she usually only falls down on those words once or twice before she stores them up and will recognise and read them correctly next time.
Best of all, something that was fairly rare before - Charlotte disappearing off and reading books on her own, and not just the usual phonics or clear print books - but anything she can lay her hands on, in all manner of flowery and complex typefaces and layouts as you'd expect from children's books - are now devoured with gusto and enthusiasm.
The cherry on the cake - and if by now I'm beginning to sound a bit smug, I do apologise but there's a fine line between proud and smug - is that she is constructing and writing her own stories. The foundation of learning built on by a child letting their imagination loose on a page, beginning those first faltering steps towards building their OWN worlds, inhabited by their OWN characters, that's something that schools and the government are sadly missing out on and I guess that is the real crux of what annoys authors (and illustrators) who put so much effort into producing truly wonderful books, if we are treating reading purely as a measure of academic ability, rather than something to build little independent imaginative thinkers with, then I'd have to agree that I'd gladly cast phonics and other unnatural learning methods into the deepest darkest pit. Without creative kids emerging from schools with heads full of wonderful ideas, the world's going to be a horrible, ugly and sterile place to live in.
Tuesday, 29 January 2013
#readitmummiesanddaddies2013 - Spotlight on Jelly and Bean, a brilliant range of children's phonics books.
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| A range of Jelly and Bean Reception Stage Phonics Books |
We've looked at several valuable phonics resources already, some from large publishers and some from independent authors, illustrators and publishers introducing their own ranges of characters and books to help children with early stage reading.
We were delighted to have the opportunity to look at the Jelly and Bean range of Decodable Phonic Reading Books, attractively priced with key stage structural learning developed to introduce children to reading through characters and situations they can easily identify with.
The most interesting aspect of the Jelly and Bean range was Charlotte's reaction to them. Rather than instantly (and instinctively) knowing that they were 'learning' books, she was more willing to spend time with them on their own merits, perhaps because the characters (particularly Bella, a little girl very like Charlotte herself) were more readily accessible than some other phonics book ranges we've seen before.
Developed by Marlene and James Greenwood at Jelly and Bean, the books fit in with all key stages of the early reading programme from the very first introductory and easily decodable letters and words, through to the more complex decoding, digraphs and high frequency words, and the troublesome (but sometimes magical) magic 'e'.
As dizzying as the subject of children's phonics can be, and always with the firm advice that phonic progression is just part (albeit a very important part) of a child's learning and reading journey, it's great to see a high quality range such as the Jelly and Bean books making such an attractive and authoritative impact on UK phonics. Reading the testimonials on the J & B site from teachers and parents will give you an indication of how valuable this range can be to give kids exactly the sort of boost they need when early reading.
Please visit the Jelly and Bean Website for the full range of books, prices and details on school ordering.
Daddy's favourite bit: Simple but fantastic book designs to keep kids focussed on the important bit - the reading, rather than proving too distracting with overly busy page layouts and illustrations.
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