Children & reading

[Nquartz]

I volunteer to read with children in DD's class once a week & usually read with the bottom set.

It is very frustrating when I can tell from the children's reading record that they never read at home so once a week with me & possibly once a month with the teacher is all the reading they do.

Why don't parents read with their children at home?? I get that people are busy & have busy lives but reading 2 pages of a Biff, Chip & sodding Kipper book only takes 5 minutes.

And breathe!

Cause it's easier to sit them in front of the telly innit?

My School child reads daily but we never put it in the diary. We gave up a year ago when it was signed for three terms

You don't know that. I never signed the thing to say I'd read two pages of Biff and bloody Chip with them, because they were already reading Harry Potter or Tom Gates etc on their own, so it was entirely unnecessary.

Haha of course dear.

For those getting defensive, I think the OP meant “for kids that are willing and capable of reading to an adult, it’s a shame that some, by their levels of reading capability, do not get much practice at home”.
She’s not saying that parents of SEN kids are lazy!
P.s. OP - primary or secondary?

When I was in year 3 I was reading books for year 7, I guess my son takes after me. My daughter is taking a little longer, I was a bit concerned as my OH is dyslexic. My son did however sztruggle with writing. His writing has only just come up to par of that of his age group. He’s really good at spellings always getting 8/9 out of 10. Like many boys if he’s not interested in a subject he totally tunes out. Luckily he likes reading. He’s currently struggling with maths which I was also top of my class for so for me is fraustrating he doesn’t understand very well. He hasn’t complained about it for a while so they must be doing a segment he understands. Problem is whenever I ask him about school it’s like ‘I dunno’ or ‘nothing’ so I say ‘ so you were just at school for 6 hours and don’t know what you did’

Because sometimes I forget to fill in the reading record.

Because sometimes, after getting in from work/after school club, there isn’t time before dashing off to the (once weekly) evening activity.

Because she is an extremely reluctant reader, and sometimes asking her read for 5 minutes turns into an hour long battle.

Because, despite managing to read on average 4 times a week since she came home (also, like a PP, she’s adopted) almost 4 years ago, she is still years behind her peers. This is even on a good day (and on a bad day, she struggles with basic 4 letter words). It’s soul destroying.

For those getting defensive, I think the OP meant “for kids that are willing and capable of reading to an adult, it’s a shame that some, by their levels of reading capability, do not get much practice at home”

she's not. She's saying why isn't everyone else as good as I think I am.

She’s not saying that parents of SEN kids are lazy!

DD doesn’t have any diagnosed SEN. I’m quite sure a lot of people think I’m lazy.

Same story (pardon the pun) here. Very into books in our house. But DS has SEN, and struggles despite having been read to daily since he was a baby. Nursery rhymes onwards.

I wish school could do more to help him. As one poster upthread said, some don't click with phonics at 4 or 5 or 6. By the time they are older, its hard to play catch up.

The reading scheme books schools send home are mostly very, very dull too. Bloody Biff. We wade through them, but its a chore. Like others have said, I want DS to enjoy reading and books. Because if you do, you have a friend for life. And long train journeys become a thing of joy.

Anyway, we have a goodly collection from charity shops of kids books to read aloud/or simple enough for DS to try.

Any suggestions to help a slow reader improve?
Ideas for school or home.

I do get that some folk can't be arsed, or their lives are time bound or maybe chaotic, or can't read themselves. I'd like to think most people would give it a whirl if circumstance allowed. Maybe I'm an optimist!

I think schools could do more to open up their libraries to kids, parents and carers too. With branch libraries being shut down all over, it would seem sensible to promote this. Both our schools, the books don't seem to get much action, even though there's plenty of great stuff in the school libraries.

I rarely wrote in the reading book, and I rarely read the Home Readers with my dc, either. Unless they wanted me to. But that was because my dc are voracious readers anyway.

At school you can really tell which children have parents who invest time and energy in them, and not necessarily by what is or is not written in the reading book, or whether the child can read, or whether their reading is improving.

TAs generally do know about adoptees and SN. Who do you think gives the extra support and interventions? They may not know about home life issues unless the family have shared this with the school.

I am a parent reader, sometimes my kids read a lot at home and sometimes it hardly happens at all.

Some of the kids who read to me tell me they haven't read all week. I concentrate on making the book fun so that at least they might be excited about sharing their 'boring' book with their parent/carer and not kicking off that they don't want to.

Some of the kids who read to me tell me they haven't read all week.

DD (almost 9) has practically no concept of time.

If you asked her when she’d last read, it’s likely she’d say something like this.

Fact is, she’ll have picked up a book at home within the last 48 hrs

shasta I'm trying to deal with her behaviour. The school and GP won't support me though. She's top of the class so they couldn't care less what she does at home.

If they start on the same page we left off at last week, then it's pretty easy to tall that they haven't read at all. They may have read other books, I don't know.

I'm not judging them, or their carers. Which is why I did not follow that with a judgey statement, just that I think it's important to make reading for kids who may not often do it at home.

Urgh, I meant make it fun for kids who don't often read at home...

Kisstheteapot it’s a shame if there’s a good library that it isn’t being used. A librarian would help to promote the collection, and could probably open the library after school, but school librarians are pretty much unheard of in primary schools in this country.

Because the parents are lazy. Pure and simple. If they don't know how to read/English then they can learn a tiny bit for the sake of their child.

Any suggestions to help a slow reader improve?
Ideas for school or home.

Don't know if it works for all but one of my GC was a late starter with reading, just pounding away at books was soul destroying so we played games. I got two sets of word cards, I think they were Ladybird. First I would spread about 20 cards on a table and I'd ask him to find a word, next time we would try to beat his speed and we worked up to 100 words. We would also play snap and see if he could recognise the words faster than me. It made him speed up and reading was less tortuous so reading the books became less of an issue.

We also played word games in the car, sometimes we would do the alphabet game, pick a subject say cars or cities and take turn so I would say Athens then he would say Bristol and I would say Calcutta. I don't think it exactly made his reading better but made him more confident with letters and sounds.

In a year, think it was year 4, he went from special one to one with a TA to help him catch up to being at expected level for his age. Maybe he was just ready to take off or maybe the games helped but I'm sure it didn't hurt.

I would be asking why the teacher (ie the most experienced person in the room) hears the bottom group (ie those struggling the most) just once a month.

I didn't find the children at school kicked off about reading, I think that is probably saved for parents. They would try to distract me though, start telling me a story about how they baby sister had done something naughty or granny was coming to stay. I think they genuinely liked a one to one chat with an adult but I also think sometimes it was a strategy.

I shared books, read with, to, and listen to DS2 reading every day (and did with the others when younger). Rarely reading scheme stuff because I don't want to kill the joy or put them off

I never fill in the sodding reading record though.

I am guessing because the teacher has 30 kids in his class, and can only hear them individually once a month, even the bottom group, which is why volunteers are so important

any ideas to help a slow reader improve
Get them involved in what they want to read. Maybe kick-start it with some funny poems, tongue twisters, limericks to get them going.
Biff, Chip and Kipper is soul destroying.

Thanks grannytomine! We do word cards here too. Just builds up their memory banks so they don't have to struggle with each and e v e r y word. We have a book we stick the ones he gets right in - so we can see that he is learning new words. Its kind of nice to celebrate something that's a bit intangible. He gets rewards for effort too. I just wish it came a bit easier for him, its a big hill to climb - but that's life sometimes.