How has reading changed over the years in schools?

[PoppetUK]

Hi ya,

I was just wondering how has reading changed in schools over the years? If you look at the ORT charts and ages it now appears that many children are reading above their years. It seems that a lot of children that are say 6 or 7 are reading levels that relate to say year 4/5/6. I was wondering then has this always been the case or has something changed? I understand that phonics plays a part but do children now read at higher levels earlier???

Any thoughts?
Thanks

Poppet

[mrz]

I don't think ORT is a particularly good method of gauging things as it is a very old scheme but as squidgy says there have always been extremes of reading ability with some children reading far above their age and others far below. The scheme guides are just that "guidance" of where an "average" (if only there was such a thing) child would be.

[HouseTooSmall]

I'm in my 40s and I don't think there was the intensity of interest in book levels and don't think books came home. I'm from the 'Peter and Jane', 'Janet and John' era! Do remember reading lists of increasingly difficult words with teachers on occasion. Think my parents had a lot to do with instilling a love of reading and I was an early reader. Don't think [though memory may fail me!] there was such an obsession with reading age. Do think there was probably less intervention for from the school for those with less supportive parents who were struggling to read.

[HouseTooSmall]

Just to add to my post - I do think that it is good that there are extra support schemes for children who are struggling with reading [and maths] these days. Kids just got left behind in my day [me in maths].
Thinking about reading age - I used to be a bit aware if I am honest! Anyone remember paper backs with [I think] different colour dragons on the back indicating reading age? Oh I enjoyed having a colour above my age group!! [25pence from WHS. Mainly Enid Blyton?]. I think kids of my era were pushed to chapter books earlier. Do think bit of a sink or swim attitude then and more teacher support now.

[Love2Ski]

I remember Topsy and Tim the first time round! Think parents are more involved re reading levels than when I was a child.

[mrz]

I remember when my son started school his teacher being horrified at the idea of parents hearing their child read and that wasn't that long ago.

[Saracen]

When I was at school parents weren't expected to be involved with their children's reading or to be hyper-aware of exactly what level they were. Parents would be told if their child was really struggling, otherwise no information about reading went home. And as we learned to read a bit later then, a child woudn't be considered "really struggling" unless she was almost totally unable to read at eight. Younger children who couldn't yet read were considered likely to be late bloomers.

[meditrina]

One thing that has changed full circle is the return to phonics. I learned in 1960s on the Gay Way books. My DCs have used the same series (now called New Way).

Anecdotally, I remember that most of us were free reading by what is now called year3.

[Mashabell]

It depends very much what school the area is in and how educated the parents are.

The first time I was made aware of reading ages was when my dd was 5 (in 1974) and the head took me aside on sports day, after the infants had just had their reading tested, and asked if I was aware that she had a reading age of 11. Having grown up in Lithuania where learning phonics is learning to read, reading ages made no sense to me. U could read or u couldn?t.

My dd had shown an interest in learning to read at about age 3 ½ , so we bought a couple of Ladybird books, which she soon found very boring and so we just worked through a few children?s books that she liked instead, until she could read them.

She did ask quite early on, ?Why is there an H in John??. To which I replied, ?It?s just one of the many stupid English spellings that u have to get used to? and she just took them in her stride. She really just taught herself to read, with very little help from me, and has always been an excellent speller too.

Our ds is 2 years younger and learnt to read mainly at school, but they had a system where he used to bring home words which he had trouble with when the teacher listened to him read (said, thought, through...) written out separately on little pieces of card, for us to practise at home. Some of those took a heck of a lot of practice before he could really read them. He took much longer to get into his stride, found spelling much harder too, and I never had any idea what level he was at, but the summer he turned 10 he read the Lord of the Rings.

[mrsbiscuits]

I think it depends on the school and the teacher. My son is a competent reader. At 51/2 he is on Gold books at school which are way ahead of his supposed age range but he reads much harder stuff at home. The teacher is very well aware of his capabilities but works on comprehension and reading with expression in the class and that is much easier for him to do with books he can read competently. I think there is a lot of fuss made about reading levels that just wasn't there when we were kids ( i'm 42) I learned to read before I went to school whereas my sister ( a Head Teacher) was 6/7 and I wouldn't say as adults there is much difference in our abilities. The important thing for me is that my children love books and have plenty around them. I never make my son read, if he doesn't want to then I leave it. Some weeks he won't read a sentence other times , like last night, he will read 3 books before he goes to bed.

[IndigoBell]

I think teaching reading has changed.

I think there is now an expectation that teachers should teach all kids to read, which wasn't there before.

I think if you go back a few years it was perfectly acceptable (from the schools point of view) for a child not to learn to read. It wasn't thought to be the teacher's or schools fault.

A non reading child was expected to sit at the back of the class and keep quiet till they were 15 and allowed to leave school.

Now we actually expect teachers to teach all kids to read.

[maizieD]

I think there is now an expectation that teachers should teach all kids to read, which wasn't there before.

My mother was a primary teacher in the 60's & 70's. Her first permanent job on returing to work after having children was as a remedial reading teacher, so I think schools did then expect all children to learn to read. She was later a primary HT and said that only 1 child left her school reading at below her age level. I don't think that her generation of teachers had low expectations of reading attainment.

I think that the Warnock report on SEN (1970s), which postualted that up to 20% of children had Special Educatonal Needs, together with the almost wholesale adoption of 'Look & Say' /Whole Word teaching created a mindset among many teachers which believed that up to 20% of children were incapable of learning to read because they had SEN.

It is only recently that we have begun to swing back to expecting all but the most cognitively challenged children to learn to read.

[notcitrus]

Indigo is right - when MrNC was at school (70s), people didn't know about dyslexia, so he couldn't read until he was 12 and an aunt devoted the whole summer to teaching him. He sat at the back of the classroom drawing. Luckily for him he was obviously gifted in maths and engineering, so the school didn't just write him off. And more luckily his area had comprehensive secondary schools, so he has a mix of stunning O-levels and good CSEs in practical subjects, and a couple crap CSEs in written subjects!

Some years later (1978) my parents talked to the local school about taking me, seeing I'd become deaf. Ooh, we can't be having with that. But she can read and everything, what's the problem? Oh! Reading as taught by parents! Well, we really can't be having with that. Sorry, your kid will have to go to special school.

Apart from a bit of having to read Village at 3 Corners and Peter and Jane and answer questions on them, I think we were just let loose on any books in the classrooms from the time I started private school. I was very confused by the Blue/Red/Green Dragon books claiming that Malory Towers etc (Red) were for 8-12yo when I was five.

[Mashabell]

The Literacy Strategy of 1998 and the league tables have certainly put primary schools under more pressure to teach reading (and to teach to the tests) and they have been doing so much more intensively since then. Several advertising campaigns have tried to get parents to play a bigger part too, and the number of classroom assistants went up from 60 K in 1997 to over 200 K by last year.

This has led to more children getting Level 4 in English at 11: up to 81% in 2010 (reading 84, writing 71) from 75% in 2000. I don?t have the separate scores for R and Wr for the earlier years. Labour used to claim that they improved primary English standards enormously, upping them from 63% in 1997 to 80% in 2009, but they changed the tests in 1998 and got huge improvements between 1997 and 2000 that way (63% - 75%). So the real improvements (since 2000) have not been spectacular, but phonics evangelists claim that if more schools used more phonics, things would improve more.

I suspect that with learning to read English still being as difficult as it has been for centuries, the percentage of children not learning to read properly will remain at around 20 %.

[maizieD]

I suggest, masha, that you read Martin Turner's 'Sponsored Reading Failure' (1990) in which he shows how reading standards fell over the 1980s & 1990's.

openlibrary.org/books/OL17481923M/Sponsored_reading_failure

20% is not an inevitable figure