to believe that kid's should read to their teacher/TA everyday?

[sparklyjewlz]

given today's news that 1 in 10 boys leave primary school with the reading age of a 7 yo.
When DS1 was in primary this happened. He's now 18, so that was a while ago. By the time DD (now 13) was in primary this had dropped to once or twice a week. Not sure why. Squeezed out by other government initiatives probably. DS's reading came on in leaps and bounds.
This seems a simple, basic, achievable target.

This issue is one of the main reasons some people choose private school - the class sizes are so much smaller so this can be done.

Moulesfrites yes they have. Has anyone mentioned the irony of not reading the thread about reading?

pointy/tethers - "You can be against both the child centred approach and the NC".

Oh I think we can definitely agree on that point.

I'm another person with a secondary perspective. We have had a lot of success using the Ruth Miskin phonics programme with our non-readers as well as sixth formers to read with students etc but it would be so much more powerful to be able to engage the parents.

Where students are underachieving (as opposed to having difficulty because of an SEN) 99 times out of 100 the parents will not cone into school and engage. Occasionally that's cultural and we've had some success recently working with some of those groups but often I really do think they can't be arsed :(

the idea that we need to move away from child centred learning seems to be an odd one in this context - surely a child who is behind needs an experience which is personalised to them rather than spending their time perfecting the art of pretending that they can read as so many of our students have?

what misplaced apostrophe?

Why can't you read to your child? If you have time to create posts on Mumsnet about it you have time to listen to your child read.

It's not because some children are not as bright/speak English as a second language/have shit parents then? it's all the teachers' fault?

First rule of being a teacher - it's ALL your fault. Everything

My DD is in Y1 with 18 children in her class and they are all heard at school every single day.Teacher/TA/receptionist/grandparent/head teacher/cook whoever they can rope in!!

sparklyjewlz - if you are a teacher I would LOVE to hear how you organise daily reading in your class?

Caz I totally agree. A friend of mine had this conversation with a parent once:

parent 'he's been nicking my fags as well!'

friend 'really?'

parent 'yeah. Out of my bag'

friend 'right'

parent 'well aren't you going to do something about it? Put him in detention!'

Yes, Moulesfrites [hangs head in shame and retreats to corner with dunce cap]

Annie - I'm not a primary teacher so am lucky not to have to organise it!
However I can tell you a bit about my DS's class where he was listened to every day. I realise now from reading these posts how lucky we were with the situation in this school. It was a state school and the teacher had the full-time support of a TA as well as volunteer Mums etc.
As a teacher (sec) myself I am fully supportive of hard-working primary teachers. I really wasn't intending to add to their burden. I was just suggesting raising the priority of listening to kids (carefully checks for rogue apostrophe) read more frequently than happened with my younger DD.

I remember a fellow student having to read with all her class every day. they did it by having several children standing around the desk a t a time. Does that eremind you of anything? Oh yes, Guided reading!

I want my child to have his reading heard every day. So I do it. YANBU though

At my school, we run parent workshops for all parents to support reading at home, we also run more specialised parent volunteer workshops so that our children who need it can read with an adult every day.

We ensure that every parent volunteer has really good phonic knowledge so that they can do more than just 'hear' children read, but can support and move children on with their reading, using the same strategies as the class teacher.

That sounds brilliant AngryPixie.

my mum used to listen to two children reading at the same time whilst doing marking , mind you this was back in the olden days . Can anyone explain how reading isnt the single most important thing a child can learn in primary school ,if you cant read ,then you cant do anything else school related very well either , pe ,art etc not included . If im struggling for time ,i get dd to follow me round reading while i put washing in ,tidy up etc .

I've not got much experience with school age kids yet but was amazed recently when I sat down with a friends DC (2 -3 yo age group) and they didn't seem to know what to do.

Ie. sit down, snuggle up, go through book, listen to story and adult/ or child turns the pages. Look at pictures. Comment.

On chatting to the parents they don't read stories at home. Even at bedtime as they are "too busy"

It wasn't too hard to envisage that their kid will struggle initially at school as almost every other child I know in that age group (there are about 10 in total) gets read to on a daily basis at home.

to be fair ,teachers struggle as it is with the mountains of crap they are supposed to fit into a school day now .I personally think it would be better to drop all the targets /curriculum /objectives etc ,let teachers decide what the children need to learn ,how they go about teaching it ,but then im a bit radical like that

Bollocks to the OP!!

As others said it is impossible along with everything else we have to do inc

homelearning
photocopying
first aid
reading books
spellings

IF parents heard their child read then it would push the levels up but some can simply not be arsed to do it.

Stop blaming schools. Yes it would be nice if parents came in to volunteer but they dont always.

'Thirty years ago we only had one teacher for a class of 30 but still the standards of reading etc were a lot higher.'

From what I've read, levels of illiteracy have remained fairly static over the past few decades.

I also wonder how the definition of 'functional illiteracy' has changed with time, as we now need to access text so much more.

I think people could get by if they were 2a in reading, as a 2a reader has decoding strategies in place and is fairly fluent. They wouldn't be reading War and Peace and would find secondary school English extremely difficult, but they would cope with signage, instructions, TV listings, etc - enough to carry on a normal life.

I remember doing a Fry's Readability Test on various newspapers as a student. The Sun came out with a RA of 7, the Mirror was an 8.
This was in the early 80s.

Re lack of volunteer parents, at our school the teachers directly approach parents who they think might have the time to help, they don't wait for them to volunteer. I guess this has a higher success rate than just putting out a general appeal in a newsletter or something.