To think kids learn to read at home

[homhumherewego]

A friend with kids was saying in her daughters class there are quite a few kids learning to read.

WTH?

Isnt teaching reading a parent's job?

Wow.

DS1 is 4 and has taught himself to read. We read a lot at home, mainly because DS1 loves stories.

I’ve never forced him to do anything he just really likes reading!

Tfoot, reading posts from some familiar posters who has children who has learned to read early, those children who did it by their own will don't get bored easily at school. They can always find the way to entertain themselves/enjoy what they are learning no matter what the level of learning they are doing.

Is that for me?

I learned to read before I started school. I have no memory of ever not being able to read, or how I learned, but I know my Mum taught me. So I know that for some children it's normal - I was not hothoused at all.

But my DS1 has an August 31st birthday, and so started school ridiculously young. He knew a few of his letters and could count to 10, but despite my best efforts he couldn't hold a pencil properly, and couldn't read a single word (other than recognising his name). He has been read to daily since birth, loves books and stories, and I had tried to teach him more but he really just wasn't ready.

He's now in Year One, still the youngest in his year, but is now reading at an above average level and progressing rapidly. More importantly to me, he's happy, settled at his school, interested in learning and discovering (he spent this evening with a pencil and paper, drawing plans of how he is going to build a working lift out of cardboard boxes and string!) and his teacher says he "generally makes good choices, and is kind to others". This, to me, is so much more important than whether he started to read at 3,4 or 5.

tfoot75 it's hardly a "completely different social experience". Phonics is only a small part of what children practise in reception. As well as all the maths and topics studied, a lot of their time is spent learning through play which the early reader will be able to engage in equally with their peers. At our school, children were grouped for phonics fairly early on, so the early readers would just be in a different group to the more typical children who were learning to read. No difference at all in social experience.

Not all children learn at the same pace and some struggle with reading. They are not all the same at 4 or 5 and they won't be the same at 8 or 9 or 17. It is quite plain that some children are high achievers and others are not, even in YR. We know some children start school already 18 months behind their peers so how can they all have the same daily learning diet? A teacher should make sure the readers understand what they are reading, will be able to pass the phonics test and make sure their needs are met. No-one gets a worse experience than anyone else.

As a year 1 teacher I'm not planning on teaching my summer born child to read before he starts reception next year - I'm too busy teaching other people's children!!!
He has shown an interest in letters and knows some names / sounds. He loves his daddy reading him bedtime stories. To me, as a teacher, that is plenty for starting school. If he can do more by then (e.g. blending) great but I won't be pushing it.

So going back to the OP, if parents choose to teach their children to read before school it's up to them, but generally speaking most teachers/schools/parents believe that it's the school's 'job' to teach children to read. Teachers are the experts, trained on how to teach phonics, how to blend the sounds, how to spot issues. But parents play a key role in introducing their children to books, have an interest in reading, support what is happening at school.

I think I must have a very interpretation of ‘can read’ than others do.

To me, a child who can read can pick up a new book, (one on their reading ability level, not for example, Dostoyevsky ), and identify new words they’ve never seen before and read the whole thing easily from start to finish. Rather than seeing the odd word they’ve learnt at school and can recognise the shape of. Or reciting words from a book that mummy has read to then 400 times at bedtime.

Sorry but the English language is not innate, children do not ‘teach themselves to read’.

Cherry the occasional rare child does teach themselves to read. It must be something like 1 in 1000 where that genuinely happens under the age of 5 though. It's an indication of genius level intelligence (though not foolproof, other types of genius are often marked by not even speaking til after the age of 5!)

There most certainly are children living in opportunity rich environments who teach themselves to read - it's rare but possible for it to happen very young, but by 6 or 7 it happens with gradually increasing frequency. Not everyone would teach themselves, but in an opportunity rich environment most read to daily children would eventually. Not all - a significant minority would remain illiterate unless explicitly taught.

Children don't need to be taught, they just need to be provided with a learning rich environment and interested caregivers.

I'll get my coat.

Sorry indication of genius level intelligence is teaching yourself to read under the age of 3 not 5

My 5.6 year old son can't read well yet, even though I read to him every night. He did however draw me a diagram explaining how the barycenter works in terms of gravitational orbits of planets yesterday.

He and his father are also building a rather complex robot, he can add & subtract, and knows his letters in Arabic (and his schooling me in Arabic). He doesn't give a toss about reading kids books and makes me read encyclopedias. I think I've done enough to encourage a learning environment at home, it's up to his teachers to deal with his tantrums about having to read "Go, spot go". I figure he'll "catch up" eventually.

to the OP.

i don't remember learning to read, but I was always read to. My mother was a teacher, and I suspect if I was showing interest, she would have encouraged me in the correct way. I was always ahead of my classmates at reading. We had fabulous reading schemes in which you did a class part and then work cards that were colour coded to your ability, so no one was pushed too hard. I read voraciously and often books that were aimed for older kids.

Both my DDs could recognise their names when they started school. DD2 is dyslexic and struggled (and still struggles) with blending. She knew the individual sounds, but blending them together was beyond her. She wasn't reading for pleasure until her teens. I hasn't done her any harm, as she has just graduated from university with a difficult joint degree and is doing a Master's.

My kids always had books and they preferred me to read to them, as I did the voices, whereas XH found the whole thing utterly boring (I never saw him open a book in the 24 years we were together) and read in a monotone. When moving house after the marriage break-up, I passed the kids' books (Some of which we had intended to keep because they were so lovely, but we didn't have room) to my niece and nephew. They had not a single book in that house, but they each had a TV... By the time they moved a few years later, the books were all gone.

Each child will read when ready, but I do think its better to let them learn by play and if they are ready to pick up reading, then they will.

My son is (7) and still struggles with reading. He has additional needs, so maybe it's that. But you go ahead and blame it on lazy parenting.

I taught all my children to read. I didn't want to leave it to a stressed out teacher who also has to teach another 20 or so kids in her class. I see it as my job as much as hers to teach them, but as I'm a bit of a tiger mum who wants my kids to progress, I just got on with it. And I enjoyed it. I did notice though that if you teach your kids to read they get less class time reading than other kids, because other kids needed it more. Mine were lucky to get once a week reading in school, whereas others were getting it every day. Also the other kids got more praise and stickers than my kids because they needed it to encourage them to progress and mine didn't as they were already progressed or achieving. As they went through school it continued...my kids had to sit next to kids who weren't doing so well and help them. Teachers actually told me this. Overall I'm glad I put in the additional time at home teaching them as it meant they didn't struggle, but I do think it helped release the teacher to spend more time on those kids whose parents didn't bother.