How does learning to read really work ? When does the c - a - t sounding out stop ?

[fonic]

Hello very smart ladies of Mumsnet. I’m curious about the learning to read process. My DD is in reception.

She has gone from learning single letter sounds M A etc, to blending the sounds C - A - T. Etc. all fine.

now she’s moving through the RWI programme with the different books. She recognises some words really well- especially the red words of course- like AND and THE. Here she sees it and doesn’t need to sound it out, she just knows it by sight reading.

but lots of other words, she still needs to sound out. I see her fluency getting better, but it’s quite a slow process.

how does this work ? Does it just go on like this for ages ?

she seems to be moving through the book bands and the sentences are getting longer, but I do wonder how she’s actually processing as I can’t always tell that it’s much better. She’s on the pink books now, if that helps. Which should mean she’s doing alright, but I just can’t always see it when she reads.

it’s probably not helped by the fact that she often doesn’t want to do her reading practice and isn’t in the mood for it, so she doesn’t really try.

Thanks for that breakdown. Very interesting.

how can I encourage Fred in your head, without breaking her flow / confidence ? They’ve been saying Fred in your head since the end of autumn term/ beginning of spring term when she went to green books. But anytime I sit down and remind her, she’ll just lose interest.

I really want to introduce daily consistency over the summer holidays as I understand that she’ll lose a lot of what she’s learnt.

I do use reward charts etc but it only works so much on her.

Op she's doing fine and teachers are telling you that

She's also pickling up books and showing an interest which is brilliant

She's looking bored when your trying stragety with her.

You have to be extremely careful with schools and reading not to the ow the baby out with the bath water.

Don't force her.
I say that as a parent who ended up having to lie about the "school" reading books dd had read in her reader because she was on novels and forcing her to read boring book levels was killing her flow

She had and has an extremely advanced reading age and at 18 has read most of the classics across World literature

No 2 had a different journey but is getting extremely high marks in English.

With both I had to make sure our awful reading system didn't kill the golden goose : a love of stories and reading

Teachers don't refer to 'sounding out' any more but instead they call it 'blending' which allows the transition that you're talking about.

The traditional sounding out method of saying 'cuh - a - tuh' for cat doesn't help the children to blend. Instead, children are now taught to say the sounds without the 'uh' sound at the end of them. When you make a 'c' sound, there should be no vocal sound to it at all, only the clicking sound that the back of your tongue makes when it leaves the roof of your mouth. And the same is the case with 't' - it is not 'tuh', just the clicking sound the front of your tongue makes when it leaves your teeth.

When children say the sounds correctly like this, they can blend the sounds together and, if they say the sounds quickly enough they are basically saying the word itself.

I found at this point dd could only learn a certain amount and then she stopped. But, at some point, her brain would grow another connection and she would fly again. Then stop. Brains grow in bunny hops, I found. Also, while one skill plateaued, another skill was flying. DD’s handwriting and swimming freestyle came together the same week; it was blatantly obvious her brain had made a connection. (I still remember sitting poolside and four swimming teachers seeing and pointing at her and looking to me with grins on their faces).

So, continue what she has learnt but don’t get cross, don’t push reward charts, don’t ever give her reason to think she can’t please you. Just take time each day to keep up. And then read out loud with her and then read out loud to her from a “big” book.

Then I'd back off and be supportive and cheerful. Don't put her off reading because you think she isn't where she should be. That's a you problem.

Does your local.library have a section of 'learning to read' books? Ours does and they are graded by the coloured levels which helps pick the right ones. I let dd pick a chunk of these from roughly her level but don't make her stick to it 100%. Then, she can choose a story to read to me but doesn't have to. Her teachers also said to encourage her to blend all the words and then re-read the sentence once she knows the words as this supports fluency and comprehension.

I do insist on nightly reading even if it's not the whole book and she is reading 75% without blending now (reception). I do think that daily is key because dd only gets to read to an adult on e a week at school.

They definitely use that word in our school. But you’re right that they don’t teach the c like ‘ cuh ‘ or D like ‘ duh’. That way it’s easier to blend the word correctly.

@Tagyoureitwell, you’re literally saying what I already do. So I don’t understand why any of this is a ‘ me ‘ problem. There isn’t a problem and I don’t think she should be anywhere. I’m just trying to understand the process better.

I have two older children (twenties) and a child at school. My elder two learnt basic phonic sounds of the alphabet and the regular alphabet. My younger child did RWI, he learnt to read significantly more quickly than my older two did and once he had mastered the sounds by year 2 he could read practically anything. So he could read sentences from an adult book easily. Whereas with my daughters it was like they had to learn each word.

RWI Is dull though to install a love of reading you need to do fun reading at home with the focus on the story.

I think you need to relax. Just keep reading with her and to her. That’s it.

Well, you say that, OP, but then you also say she ‘doesn’t try’, label the process as ‘slow’ and ‘so frustrating. All of that is very much creating a problem – and yes, it is a you problem.

@Didimumit’s not a me problem at all. I give her the space to do it as she wants. I’m just describing how she is. I’m not judging. Other parents would be way more pushy than me, literally forcing kids to sit down to do their work. I go with the flow of how she is. Sorry for describing how my child is. You are obviously just wanting to stick the knife into me.

Now you're just being defensive and it's quite childish.

Just encourage your child, praise her and let her develop at her own pace, she's got plenty of time to progress on to Shakespeare and yes, whilst teaching a child to read can be as dull as dishwater, she sounds like she's doing ok so just keep going and drown out other parents who say their darling little tarquin is already on his 3rd Chaucer!

Maybe get a few more books to help as re reading the same book all the time is dull. Make a trip to the library a thing you do together, read a book there, bring a more wordy book home together, look at the pictures, get her to describe what she thinks is going on, but she sounds like she's doing fine.

This will be very unpopular, but as a very experienced teacher and a parent of two adult children I strongly believe that parents should read with their children every day. Reading is the key to all other learning. As a reception teacher, reading is the only homework I set my class and I find it really sad that parents don’t value it. It should be a non-negotiable. Set the expectation with your children now and you won’t have to have as many battles about homework in the teen years. Spend 5 minutes with them reading to you then you read a story of their choice (an actual book, not an audio or iPad story). Children need to be taught that when things are hard we keep practising and it will get easier. If you read the book every day, by the third read she’ll be finding it easier and her pace will improve. What puts children off reading is not being able to do it, and this will only get better if you help her to practise.

If she doesn't want the read the words at the beginning of the book then i wouldn't make her - why not just get her to look at them and read them to her yourself.

These beginning books are so dull and it's so slow when they're just learning. Try to just be patient, and try different ways of doing things, take it in turns to read a page, read the book to her while running your finger under the words and her following along, talk about the pictures, use silly voices, pretend you're the dog/cat character, have a cuddly toy and get her to read to them. Anything to make it a bit different/more fun and engaging.

Personally this whole idea of not saying 'cuh' or 'muh' is just a latest trend IMO (and there have been many in how kids should learn to read) and I really don't think it's that great. IME kids find it much harder to make these sounds correctly and they really don't always blend well. 'Mum' is a good example IMO, 'muh - uh - muh' to my ear sounds exactly like mum. 'mmm - u - mmm' sounds absolutely nothing like mum. The kids find the 'mmm' sound difficult and it ends up in all sorts of variations 'oom' 'umm' etc that don't work at all and have to be constantly corrected. 'Nnn' ends up as 'unn' and is another one I was constantly correcting when listening to readers.

I taught ds 'muh' and 'cuh' etc and he was the first kid in his class to move on to chapter books in Yr2. This was many years ago now when I didn't realise things had changed. Blending is one of those things that just clicks one day IME though. They suddenly just get it. Be patient OP!

I’ve tried, but she doesn’t want to unfortunately and I just didn’t want to create a negative experience for her already. So I only do it, when she seems willing. Which isn’t every day.

I wish I could find a way to have her do it every day but she just doesn’t want to and her teacher told me not to force it.

Childish ? ??

So what do you do when she doesn’t want to brush her teeth or go to bed? What will you do when she doesn’t want to do her homework at secondary school? Sorry if this seems like I’m having a go at you but I’m really speaking to every parent on this thread who thinks it’s ok to not make their children do anything they don’t want to do. Increasingly I’m seeing children coming to school with no resilience and no willingness to try because they are treated like babies at home and parents are too scared to upset them. You asked how to improve her reading but you don’t want to actually do the thing that would help!

I knew you’d say that ! But brushing your teeth is different to reading, you know? I know I’ll have to get tougher about it, but I didn’t want to force her when she’s only just started her school journey. I know it’s. It ideal the way it is right now but I’m hoping as she matures a bit, I will try in the summer to put this in place more consistently and then in year 1 hopefully she’ll be a bit more mature and enjoy it more that we can be more consistent.

when I was 5, I wasn’t even in school yet. Let alone being forced to do anything like reading every day if I didn’t want to do it. That’s how I see it a bit. Of course it will be different when she’s a little older.

Haven't rtft but when I had a reluctant reader I found Five Minute Mum had some great ideas. One involved writing the words of letters of the week or whatever it was you wanted to focus on on scraps of paper and playing games like snap or pairs with them. Or playing push plate penny and you have to read the word on the line before you get the point. Was simple but oh so effective. Made it fun. I'd say if she's picking up books and leafing through them that's a good sign too. My eldest was like that but disliked the 'now we have to read your school book', but switching to games worked. I didn't want to make reading a chore. Would far rather go about it gently and hopefully instil a love of reading and learning rather than it being something you have to do. He's a proper bookworm now.

For what it’s worth, full credit to you for taking my harsh, lecturing comment so well!!!

We've also had success with

Reading the book backwards
Skipping every other word
Having a toy point at the words as the child reads them but every now and again the toy points to a random word so the sentence makes no sense.
Reading in silly voices
Trying to read with a mouthful of something (I'm usually really against talking with your mouthful, but introducing 'chubby bunnies' to reading make it silly)
Each reading a word and putting on silly voices
Playing hide and seek reading - DS hid somewhere and read his book aloud and I'd be saying 'where is that voice coming from?!', 'is there a ghost in here?'
Reading in silly places, like on the slide or under my duvet.
When I was reading stories aloud at bedtime if there was a word I knew he knew I'd pretend to get stuck on it, sound it out incorrectly that sort of thing. He'd often jump in and help.
Same when out and about, if there was word somewhere which worked phonetically I'd read it wrong and say 'what a funny word!' and often a little voice would correct me.

We took the 5 minute mum ideas and tried to build in connection/play to the task.

It’s because I do get your point ! we can’t just let them do whatever they want and some things really do just need to be done and exactly - what’s going to happen when she’s older etc. I don’t know yet how to handle it. All I know is that I don’t already want to completely ruin it for her now. You could argue that she needs to learn to sit down and do it now and that will help her in the future.

I have really tried to sit with her and do it, to let the teddies read with her- to get her to read in the car, to use rewards, to say - you only get to do something you like if you finish your reading etc. but I just don’t think it’s right for her, at this time. What comes after, I don’t know.

one thing she does respond to well is if I tell her that I will tell her teacher she doesn’t want to read ( so, a threat ). But it’s also just not cool is it ? To constantly threaten her with that.

I just try to go with her flow and focus on reading to her often and let her take the lead as to whether she wants to read her book bag books.

also, maybe my attitude is skewed by the fact that I do still think she’s quite young, because I’m used to more formal school and proper homework from age 6/7 and not age 4/5. So I see the reception year as building slowly and trying to not ruin it by getting into a huge power struggle already.

Thanks ! I’ve tried a lot of these actually.

it helps a little ! Sometimes I also pretend I can’t read and she has to correct me.

I just tried setting a timer for 5 minutes, but she didn’t like that at all and just told me, absolutely not.

then she read two words later and closed the book again.