Four-year-old can spell any 3 letter word but cannot blend any when reading

[Balalabab]

Not 100% sure where to post this.

Basically practicing 4 and a half year old phonics, words and blending to keep up over summer holidays.

He started at a school nursery last year so has already been taught this in school.

Please can someone tell me what they think about this…

• He can read every single letter phonic sounds individually

• When I put the cards down next to each other in simple CVC and he has to read and blend them he cannot do it. He can only do cat and that’s because I think he has sight learned it.

• If I reverse it and give him 3 cards of any 3 letter word and say make ‘dog’, make ‘hip’, make ‘fig’ he can instantly spell out all the sounds and place the, down in the correct order. Ie. ‘F…I…g… FIG’

Is this normal. It’s like he can do it backwards in all circumstances but not forwards for the simplest words. So he does know how words and sounds are working.

Does this mean he could be dyslexic? His dad is severely dyslexic and it something I have been worried about hence working on the reading so early for him.

If so what does that mean? Do we have to teach in a different way?

He starts reception next week and they are brilliant, but he’s in a state school and he’s quiet so I do want to support in anyway I can so he doesn’t slip between the cracks.

Thank you

Amidst all the noise of (probably very well-intentioned) advice, could I just add to relax about it all a bit. Kids learn at different rates and some are better at things at an earlier age but then fall behind later and vice versa. Early reading (or toilet training or riding a bike etc etc) doesn’t mean everyone else has a genius and your kid is a dunce. I say this as a parent of YP who has just finished first year at Oxbridge, but who didn’t read “properly” until well after age 7.

As a much older person this all sounds nuts to me - although obviously I realise there’s a lot of evidence for these teaching systems. But I wasn’t taught to read and write before reception class when I was five, I never went to nursery. I clearly remember the teacher putting up cards around the classroom walls with objects and their names, like a plane for example. We learnt that some letters make particular sounds in combination. We wrote the words in our exercise books. I remember really enjoying the lessons and we were all reading in no time at all. English went on to be my best subject along with spelling.

And yet a large % of kids are leaving school with a lower reading age than they should .
It's sad that phonics is promoted at the only way when these left behind DC would possibly learn to read by other methods.

But they are not leaving school unable to read, which is very different. The KS2 reading test is a strange measure where children have to answer a certain number of questions correctly about three tests in one hour. The pass mark is decided after the children have sat the test, so a certain percentage will always fail. It certainly does not mean that they cannot read fluently or have functional literacy.

Phonics is a method of teaching decoding only. 11 year olds are way, way past that.

Let the teacher know your concerns, also that his father is dyslexic
Don't make too much of a fuss with him about
it. He's very young and may well progress normally in a few terms.

Thanks everyone.

I think I have my answer -

• That decoding sounds and assembling (blending sounds) are different skills
• That they are developmental leap skills so not a matter of practice
• That this is not necessarily an indicator of dyslexia and that it’s going to be hard to know until age 7ish

Thanks to everyone who has shared their experiences

Jesus Christ he’s not even started Reception, stop being so pushy. You’ll put him off if you’re not careful.

Great point. If you asked him to make a made-up word, say HOD or REB or BIF or PUM would he be able to do it? This will show you if he’s really grasping the phonetic sounds and how they blend or if he’s memorised what letters in what order make known words.

In most of countries in the world kids only start learning to read when they are 6-7 years old. The anxiety level this unnatural English curriculum is creating in small kids and their parents is mind-blowing. I was told by my kid's school's Senco that he is SEN aged 5, because he cried when they told him to write a story. The level of absurdity of the English school is insane.
So chill. You kid is normal. In the continental Europe he would be playing Lego and dollies, doing art&craft, painting and colouring.

My ds at the age of two could do something very strange, even our GP had no idea how he did it. We could give him an ipod( we are in 2007) and ask him to go on google maps and tell us how to get from Southampton to Liverpool, for an example. He would tell us what motorways roads etc to use, then show us on the iPod. He was always right. When he was 6yrs of age, we where in the usa visiting family. We had hired a car , so we could do our own thing. One particular day, we had been somewhere and driving back, to my family home, when my ds says, dad you should have turned left, you've missed it. My dh says, no son, l know where we are going. Turns out we got lost, my son was right. How did he know this? At school on day trips, he loved to sit on the first seat of the coach, so he could see if they where going the right way. The teachers had to start sitting him at the back of the coach, because the coach drivers getting complained, as my ds would tell him a quicker way. Also he could tell you the postcodes for everywhere in the UK. Really, really, odd. In my house all of us are avid readers, but my ds hated books, ,& would read only when he had to a school. He wasn't an early reader or anything like that. As he got older, he stopped. We have asked him how he knew all that, he has no idea.

You are worrying over nothing.
Teachers understand the building blocks to learn to read, you don't, so leave it to teachers.
Reception is where he will learn to read, anything before that is just fun and games

UK is one of only 3 countries on the developed world that start school so young at age 4 (Australia and Ireland being the other 2). Other countries including the Nordic countries who lead the tables in education results, start school at 6 or 7 and kids don't learn to read before then

My daughter is 4, I wouldn't dream of expecting her to read. She knows her letters and can write a variation of her name. She's still in nursery, I don't expect actual proper reading or writing lessons until primary school.
When she wants to practice her letters, we practice, but I don't make her.

Ds23 has never been able to sound out words. He is autistic and was non verbal until he was about 7. In the end I just went with learning by sight and by the age of 10 his reading age was 16. I was most proud of his grade 7s in English lit and lang. He graduated with a first in his MEng from a rg university last year.

Is this the norm in England at FOUR? Wow. This makes me sad.

Develop fine motor skills with play. And read to him. That's what I would expect at 4 here.

I need to know more! Is he using his innate sense of geography/ map reading now in any way? I have a really good sense of direction in terms of points of the compass, but I'm useless at left and right. When I arrive in another country I feel off until my internal compass has settled down.

An example of this would be asking my ds, how would we get from AtoB? He would say what Aroads, B roads, & motorways etc, then on his iPod he would then show us what he had told us & never once getting it wrong. When we asked how he knew these things he would say he has no idea, it was just something he knew. Our GP saying she had never heard of this before, & would we like him to be seen by psychologists etc, we declined, didn't want him being under anyone's microscope. He has grown to be a lovely young man, can still tells us how to get from AtoB, but unfortunately cannot tell us about any traffic jams we may stumble upon🤭 All he can tell is, he can see all the roads etc in his head, but cannot explain any further. I guess we will never know

Teachers have taught him.

We just do a few practice words each day as suggested by the school and have continued this over summer holidays.

I don’t understand all the resistance to this. Everyone in our area is learning to read at this age. All his peers too.

Its not taxing he enjoys it and it takes 5 mins a day.

I have no idea why people keep bringing up scandi countries. Scandi countries have a transparent language where every phonetic sound is equal to one letter and it’s very simple. It takes 1 year to learn as opposed 3 years in English and 50% of scandi kids are fluent before they even start ‘school’. That is because scandi have excellent early years education which most children start between 12 - 24 months. Just because they aren’t calling it ‘school’ doesn’t mean they don’t teach their kids anything.

I mean, that means 50% aren't fluent before they start school, which is a lot!! Half the population

You have to remember reading isn't linear. Both of mine were exactly where yours is at that age. So very much ahead in a lot of ways. With both, blending 'clicked' about halfway through Reception, and after that they were unstoppable. Reading goes in leaps - as l9ng as you are having fun with it at home reading bedtime stories and all that stuff, you're fine.

He’s four: why are you giving this headspace?

My eldest 2dd were born abroad and dd1 started school age 6. She could not read in either English or the native language (she could not really speak the local language despite being born there). Anyway she learned quite quickly. When she was 7 we moved to the UK (I am English) and started in year 2 unable to read English (different alphabet). She got level 2 in her SATs that year and is now a Cambridge graduate.
Dd2 did not start school abroad, could not read in either language and started school in UK in year 1 aged 5 and a half. By Christmas she was reading and by Easter she was reading Harry Potter (also a Cambridge graduate).

And yet it does because phonics and blending and creating nonsense words is incredibly confusing for many children
Myself and Micheal morpogo had the words just click one day with our mothers pointing at words as they read.
I was 4.
If you made me do phonics you have stymied my reading and massivley confused me

One of my DD got phonics the other was massively held back by phonics and it affected her.

Since then I've done much reseaarch and I.can only say phonics dogged pushing has evolved into something beyond a system of reading

One system of reading it's morphed into a dogged determination that no other system is possible phonics is the only way.

Dreadful really because the whole point is simply learning to read.

As a specialist, I agree with this.

Keep an eye on it but dont panic hes four. My 1st DS couldn't read until 9 he was dyslexic. His writing was terrible too. He had great support at school went to uni and got a 1st and has a fantastic career. Just mention dyslexia to his teachers.

My daughter ( probably undiagnosed autistic with hind sight) did not get on with phonics . She got very frustrated because she knew words looked ‘wrong’ when she wrote them phonetically. She has a strong visual memory and this completely confused her. Also, once she had seen a word represented phonetically, it was hard for her to update this in her brain to the ‘new’ spelling. I bought an old ‘sentence maker’, flash cards and good old Peter and Jane and she flew after that. People all over the world learn using whole words.