to only want people on this thread who agree that school setting research topics for a 6 year old

[activate]

is lazy teaching

as a teacher you do not set homework for children that they cannot acheive without parents doing it for them - you set homework for them that they can acheive with parental support

it is two different things

and this time I am going to say something

Awww! Loved Tuscany this year!

that is very good to hear stoats

Can I ask why your six-year-old cannot read?

I was reading at four, as was my DD.

Perhaps if you'd put some effort in to 'doing the teachers job' and encouraging your DC to read before they started school, then this task would not be so totally beyond them, and you wouldn't have to moan about helping them with it now?

I could read and understand a book at four. My dad brought all those bloody 'roger red hat' books home from school, and we read them in one weekend because I was so bored of them. I was reading enid blyton type books, and fully understanding them and enjoying them at six.

DD adores Roald Dahl and has a huge stack of books on myths and legends - from ancient egyptian to greecian, roman to gaelic and (the slightly stranger) non-european.

You could ask her "what do you know about Hercules or Icarus or Hansel and Gretel?" and she would not shut up for ten minutes.

What's the problem? Point child at book, drink tea, receive vast array of useless information about whatever you asked.

ScotlandR what a ridiculous thing to say. Surely you are not really that ignorant and arrogant? There are plenty of 6 year olds who cannot read. I would suggest you do some research in all your spare "teaching" time and look into how different children develop different skills at different rates. Perhaps your dd has missed learning some social or academic skills while spending all her young years being taught how to read.
My ds has been identified as a genius, but had an extremely difficult time learning to read and certainly was not doing so fluently at 6. He is now 10 and is a phenomenal reader who easily comprehends teenage and adult level books.

ROFL at the spectacular point-missing

does it matter?

If it helps you feel smugger - none of my children got fluent reading much before year 2

and none of my children became readers for pleasure until they hit DS3's age (around 9 -10)

luckily I already know how bright the non-reading 6 year olds can be at 16 cos of DS1's GCSE grades so allow me to now pop your bubble ]

Not all children can read at four, but what have they been DOING all day for two years of primary school if they get to six and still haven't learnt to read?

I don't have any spare bloody teaching time, that is why DD can read - because I didn't want her to miss out just because I work and cannot give her X hours a day to be read to or taught. Et voila, she can teach herself while I do the washing up.

I think it's bloody unusual for a kid at six not to be able to read AT ALL and if there's no visible cause - maybe dyslexia, or short attention span or whatever - it suggests that they have a lousy teacher or lousy parents.

You can say "my son's a genius who couldn't read at six" but you're NOT saying it is USUAL to be completely illiterate at that age. Just because your son couldn't doesn't mean it's normal.

who's talking about illiterate?

odd!

No bubble to pop - I just think it's STRANGE, that's all. I don't feel smug - I didn't realise it was unusual. The other kids we know DDs age are all at least ATTEMPTING to read, iyswim? they could all tell you the main characters name, and with a bit of prompting, what colour hair he had or whatever. I wouldn't say DD was much ahead of her peers, and she was bloody slow to talk so it's swings and roundabouts.

But it seems highly suspicious that the OP feels like the teachers not pulling her weight, but the DC can't read. Has anyone actually thought to equip the DC with this useful life skill? Because if not, someone is failing.

of course DD has the ability to read - most words - some difficult words with support and can use phonics to work out more difficult ones

she is not a free reader though - which is to me the definition of being a reader - nor does she have the comprehension skills required

she will get there happily in her own time

the point of this thread is RESEARCH BASED HOMEWORK IN KS1 and HOMEWOrK FOR CHILDREN NOT PARENTS

I have never much gotten along with the type of mum that obsesses over teaching her child to read (or whatever) before school starts. In my experience, (though perhaps ScotlandR is an exception to this) she is using the child to compensate for her (the mum's) own inadequacies. Poor child, is all I can say.

I think some children do just start to read earlier without much direction

just like some children run fast

I feel it matters not a jot in the long-term though

and other parents always seem to be bothered that their kid can't do what other child did yet - seriously by the end of primary they are all similar in basic skills (which is really all reading is) and their true academic abilities are more apparent - more so in secondary of course

it just doesn't matter really

I'm obviously out of the cultural loop here.

4 year olds are playing in pre school here. Learning not to lump each other on the head with play dough. None of the staff were teaching the kids to read and as far as I remember none of the other mothers made any mention of teaching reading at home.

Learning to read begins at 6 when they start elementary school.

I'd be surprised if developmental readiness was reliably uniform at such a young age, because recently with the introduction of the option to fast track 5 year olds into first year ele there have been constant reports of ever higher numbers of children needing additional one on one support. There appears to be an issue because they are tending to lag and risk being left behind as the older children leap ahead with more complicated work.

Come to think of it, that first year, the learning to read was completely painless compared to all the other subjects. Certainly my average child was reading fluently by the end of the year. I did have kittens at the mid way point because there weren't any graded readers available either via the school, the library or the bookshops, but I suppose that was because there is no "sight word" issue in Italian. They just read books generally aimed at their age group.

I chose to delay teaching my son to read English until the Italian was "in", to avoid creating confusion. Happily it turned out to be a transferable skill and he taught himself by dint of reading my old ladybird books by torchlight under the duvet when he was supposed to be sleeping.

I nearly fell over when he brought a book down, asked "is this true mummy ?" and read the bit he wanted clarifying. Swiftly followed by removing jolly phonics from my amazon wish list. He was about 7 at the time.

The thought of leaving the acquisition of reading to an entirely organic process where solely the child dictates the timeline makes me feel a little faint, but at the same time I'm not sure I understand the need for a huge rush to get preschoolers reading.

Unless of course they are champing at the bit, in which case I think it is only right and proper that their inclinations be encouraged and supported.

That's exactly my point activate - it's a basic skill! It's necessary to everything else but not very important in its own right!

DD seemed to have bits of it worked out already - (symbols join together to mean things, this symbol means that, that symbol means this) - and I mostly taught her because she wouldn't stop pestering me and DP whenever there were words in her line of sight. Which is, I suspect, why I was also taught to read quite young.

At six, most children should be able to read a chapter of an age-appropriate non-fiction book without much interference from a parent OR teacher. If they can't do this at all, someone is doing something wrong.

I genuinely don't see why the OP feels that this request should be beyond the grasp of her DC.

I can only think of a handful of people who would disagree with you on that point. I think the question is, why is 4 the "right" age as a rule ?

Why not 2, or 3, or 6 ?

What makes 4 the "magic number" ?

What evidence suggests it is the optimum age to being teaching the skill ?

the point being it is a basic skill that is necessary, sorry forgot to cut and paste that bit in.

A friend of mine studied neurodevelopment in under sevens at masters level. I have no idea what her conclusions were (we were friends before I had DD and I thought it wasn't terribly interesting at the time!) but I know that there are physiological time periods which are... not critical, but ideal for learning specific skills.

like in baby ducks (they follow the first thing they see moving - whether it's a rubber glove or a light on a wall. they are 'supposed' to learn it at x-point, and if they don't it's a bit harder to learn, they get scared and struggle a bit, but they eventually grow up to be normal ducks).

basically, I think there is an 'ideal' time, but it's probably a few weeks long, and I would imagine varies according to a childs own development (maybe physical growth and metabolism too?)

But as I say, by six, I would be concerned that a child could not read at all, and not discern from a chapter something like "greek people have dark hair and used to believe in lots of funny myths and legends and they have lots of islands". Which is all that is really being asked.

Scotland - I applaud the fact that your dd can read at 4.

Unfortunately some children are not ready to read at 4 years old. Some children have linguistic delay. Some children find it difficult to blend words. Some children find the whole process of learning difficult. However, reading is addressed every day of the week at most schools, and by Y2 most children are reading competently. (I wouldn't expect many of these to be able to scan texts by themselves though!)

I feel that more 'basic needs' at 4 are learning how to get on with other people, being able to share, playing in order to develop fine and gross motor control... etc, etc.

Not all children are lucky enough to be blessed with the ability to read easily. I wonder if you're trying to wind us up?

ScotlandR

1. I AM the OP

2. when you say "At six, most children should be able to read a chapter of an age-appropriate non-fiction book without much interference from a parent OR teacher. If they can't do this at all, someone is doing something wrong."

I have to totally disagree because it's rubbish, there is absoluely no "should" about it and many many 6 year olds cannot read a chapter and if they can't nothing is wrong (apart from your opinion IMO)

I was thinking less in terms of a university student's thesis and more in terms of a large scale, peer reviewed study.

I have major qualms about the potential for "missing the boat" as it were by allowing children to delay the acquisition of the skill post 12 and beyond. Although anecdotally many claim their children went on to be as proficient as their peers, to the extent that some went on to gain PhDs despite not having learned to read until they were in their teens. However my gut tells me that avoiding earlier acquisition (which I'd define as pre 8\9, based on the very scientific thing called "my instinct") could lead to a loss of opportunity to develop as an autonomous learner, because having to rely on somebody in order to access the written word could create and enforce dependence. The thing is, I don't see dependence as a particularly important issue for a 4 year old, more of a natural state in many respects.

I can see a case for saying that pushing for very early acquisition as the the norm could place some children at risk of developing an antipathy for reading, or formal learning in general, by forcing the issue before they are ready.

Life is long, childhood is short, I don't have any qualms in having taken the path of pure play based learning pre 6. I've yet to be presented with anything that demonstrates that very early entry into timetabled learning leads to quantifiable gains at later stages, so I'm angst free in that regard. Although, like you, had my son shown any interest in reading during our constant story times, I would have gone ahead and taught him, as long as it was fun for him and didn't appear to be causing any frustration or tension between us.

Worth also mentioning that "learning to read" alone does not automatically provide a complete skill set. Skimming, scanning, reading for the purpose of extracting specific information, are all related skills that have a developmental time frame of their own and I think it would be very optimistic to assume that all children are equally capable of acquiring them to a point of proficiency by just six years old. Irrespective of when you first started teaching them to read.

Ds is an excllent reader and had we had an age appropriate book on the subject in the h9use then he would probably have got on very well. As it is we have lots of books on the natural word, science and geography but none on famous people.

He could talk for ages on the subject of trains going into all sorts of technical knowledge or about Star wars or other things that interest him.

But this project, given on a Friday and to be handed in on the MOnday was on a subject that many 6 year olds have no concept of and required access to resources that we did not have.

Unfortunately ds' homework has still not reached the teacher. We were unable to print from the laptop and she did not receive the email we tried to send.

I love sarahitaly even more than before, just for saying this without batting an eyelid:

"I was thinking less in terms of a university student's thesis and more in terms of a large scale, peer reviewed study."

In fact, I think we should start a campaign to make her the new Schools Minister.

but, activate you are somewhat missing the point - if it is considered normal for a six year old to be able to read a chapter of a book and find out a few key facts, why are you complaining about your DS being given this task?

Just because your DC is not yet capable of doing this, why should this not be an acceptable homework? Your thread title is not "MY SON should not have this task set" but "six year olds oughtn't".

And I say again, IMO six is a fine age to have to find a few things out, and YABU to complain.

and sarahitaly, I was not pointing at one thesis and saying "this holds the answers", merely to say "it has been done".