What are ‘camera’ words? Your child is learning to read and spell using a synthetic phonics approach. This approach teaches children to read and spell using their knowledge of phonemes. Not all words that children will need at this stage in their learning can be decoded easily. This means that some irregular, high frequency words (sometimes called ‘tricky’ words) need to be learned a little differently at first. We call these camera words. These camera words have been selected because they occur frequently in children’s vocabulary but are not easily decoded at this stage in your child’s reading development. The best way to learn these words is by lots of exposure along with some explicit teaching. The teachers at your child’s school will be explicitly teaching children to: 1. Look at the word. 2. Identify if there are any known phoneme-letter representations. 3. Look at the tricky (irregular) bit. 4. Take a mental photo to remember the word. You can help your child at home by being supportive of the school phonics programme and knowing some fun ways to support your child’s learning. Learning Camera Words 14 www.getreadingright.com © Get Reading Right 2011
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