*Another* question about boys' reading abilities

[Wordsmith]

Sorry if this is flogging a dead horse but DH I I had quite a heated debate, as Mrs Merton would have said, about this last night.

DS1 is 5.6 and is in yr 1 at school. He started school in Jan 05 so only did about 7 months in reception as opposed to a full academic year (they have a staged intake system around here - the younger ones start after Christmas).

He couldn't read at all before starting school and showed no interest in it at all, although he loves being read to and has a story book every night at bedtime.

During his time in reception he did quite well at learning his letters, can write his name (although his handwriting's appalling - but that's another matter), recognise a few words etc, but I wouldn't say he learned to read as such.

Now in Year 1, it almost seems as though he has regressed. We tried to keep up his reading during the holidays but the school didn't send home any books from the reading scheme and I couldn't find anything similar at the library, so we stuck mainly to learning the 45 words he was supposed to know by the end of reception year. But I'm not sure he's actually learning them - his home reader last night had 'Dad and Tom' on page one, which he struggled with but eventually got, and then 'Dad and Tom' was over the page again and it was as though he'd never seen the words before, although he'd only read them 30 secs previously!

Now I know boys learn differently to girls and I have been told by teacher friends not to worry too much before age 7, but my DH is getting annoyed that DS1 seems not to be progressing, and his anxiety is affecting me (and worse, DS1, I think).

What are other parents' experiences of teaching boys to read? Does it just suddenly 'click' with them one day? What can I/we do to make it easier?

He's learning to read using Jolly Phonics by the way, which seems fine for learning his letters but not for recognising words, IMO.

I had a similar experience with my DS last year in his reception year. I bought him a set of magnetic words and we picked out his keywords from it.

Then we would sit by the radiator (or any other magnetic stuf) and make up our own silly sentences with the key words.

I think boys need more fun ways rather than looking at books.

Hope it may help a bit

That's a great idea MOTB. I've got some magnetic poetry but don't think it's got suitable words in it! However I did notice in Waterstone's last week they do some for kids, so will have a look.

he's got magnetic letters on the fridge but DS2 keeps sweeping them off!

Early Learning Centre do a tub of about 50 words. I intend to use it well in to yr2!

motb

We did something simular with son... I cut out all the high frequency words and put them in a pot and he chose about 4 at a time (easy words that could make a sentence) and we sounded them out (as opposed to just recognising the shape of the word) and made silly sentences with them.. when he got those words he chose some more.. we kept it short and brief.. maybe twice a day for about a couple of minute, longer if he was interested... He found it fun to make the words read...
mum is a dog... (charming)
dad is a cat ... etc..
above all it was fun and I never let him fail, I mean if he got stuck sounding it out I told him the word...

just a thought... have you any concerns about his eye sight?

HTH

Hi Wordsmith. I think this is very common and 9/10 times things will click a bit later on. For one of my boys the first half of Y1 was a very difficult time as, just as you describe with your son, he didn't seem to catch on to literacy at all, despite trying very hard. Six or seven months later something "clicked" and now at the start of Y2 there is really not much difference between his reading and that of his twin brother, who started reception able to read. We did worry a bit, mostly about his self esteem suffering, and, as your dh says, it can feel frustrating when your child just doesn't seem to get it. Strong advice to your dh- back off! Your boy will lose confidence if he's reading to someone who can't hide their anxiety/frustration. That's a certainty, imo. Better to do very little practice with lots and lots of positive praise than the reverse imo. Not blaming your dh- both I and my partner felt like that sometimes too and had to agree that we would take the first sign of that frustration as our cue to bring the session to an end.

There's another good thread on this here btw. Your boy is absolutely not the only one going through this, if it's any comfort.

Scummymummy

I too have twins and am in that situation, one is reading quite fluently, the other not so good.

you have reassured me. Thankyou

Oh good, mttb.

I must say that watching one struggle where the other is thriving is far and away the hardest part of having twins, I've found. Sends me doolally with a guilty sense that neither is getting a good deal from their inadequate Ma!

Sorry- initials went wrong! motb, I meant.

Wordsmith - I used "Teach your child to read in 100 easy lessons" by Siegfried Engelmann. It's an excellent book (£13 at Amazon) if you can get over the wacky title. DS (6 next month) has been a fluent reader for over a year now, he's now reading sutitles on TV and DVDs (his hearing is poor and his reading makes up for it a lot).

ScummyMummy - thanks so much for those words of reassurance. I read your posts on the other thread too and agree totally. My DH knows he shouldn't show frustration and beats himself up about it afterwards but I do worry that DS1 will pick up on negativity and it will uspet him.

I agree with the comment on the other thread about boys starting formal schooling later - don't think it's practical but from their point of view would save a lot of heartache I think. I spke to the head of a boys school near to where I live, a very high-achieving school, one of the top 20 state schools in the country (not where DS1 goes though), and even he said he didn't think boys should start school till 7!

Rummum, don't think he has eyesight problems, think it's just concentration. However it's something to keep an eye on (scuse the pun) as I have terrible eyesight (-10 in both eyes!) and DH wears specs too.

MOTB - I will have a look in ELC - I got the Jolly Phonics workbooks from there.

I think and hope it's something that will pass - we're all going through a bad time at the moment (my Dad has just died) and I think DS1 is picking up on the atmosphere and it's affecting his work. But these words of wisdom have been a great help. Thank you.

Cristina, thanks I will have a look on Amazon.

DS1 could barely read anything when he started Y1 and about 6 months in it clicked completely and he was reading the Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe by the end of the year.

I'm going to buy the book too - recommended by lots of Home Ed people too. Letterbox have the NC words for Reception and the KS1 ones (magnetic).

It's a book that is based on phonics, but very gradual. I know this is not to everyone's taste, and don't really want to get into a discussion on methodology of phonics vs whole-word approach, but it worked for my DS (he can hear all sounds with his hearing aids).

That would be a good idea GF. Most of the reading scheme books are very boring - not that I'm expecting a joke a minute but if something's got some thought behind it it odes seem to make a difference.

What age was your son when they got in the nonfiction books?

we have the same system at our school (the staged intake system) and I do think that these children (like my dd) who only do 2 terms in reception (and only one of those was full time for us) are given extra allowances in yr1. I know that most of the boys who are of a similar age to dd have not clicked yet with their reading and I don't think it's unusual at all.

By the way, you can get home workbooks for Jolly Phonics - although it may seem that it doesn't help with words, once you get onto the blending of the sounds (i.e. c-a-t then say the sounds quickly and you get cat!), it's really good.

should have said you can get them at elc and other book stores

Wordsmith you son and mine could be twins by the sound of it. He is also very poor at harwriting, but is good at sums and telling the time. His sister, at 8 still can't tell time that well and is poor at maths but is an amazing reader and always has been.

Kids! A life time of worries and niggles with everyone!

Wordsmith,

I have posted loads of stuff about Jolly Phonics tonight and some of what I'm posting here is copied from another post, but please bear with me:

My ds1 was in Reception last year. His school held a reading evening for the parents and we were given information on how to help our children with reading, e.g. encourage them to guess a word from context/picture/initial letter clues.

My son had problems with his speech and later in the year I learned that children with speech problems often go on to have reading problems. I didn't want this to happen so I decided I would teach him to read myself. However, I also realised that I didn't know how to do this (despite the reading evening and accompanying booklet). At about the same time I came across some posts by Catflap on this site and I have to say that I cannot recommend her advice highly enough. Do a search on her username and you will find brilliant advice on teaching children to read, much better advice than you have received from school. She is a teacher and she really knows what she is talking about. Basically, despite what the school tells you, I would say that one thing is of utmost importance: teaching your child the letter sounds and to read by sounding out the letters in words. Blending, in other words: c-a-t "cat". There are about 42 sounds in the English Language. You can find them on the Jolly Phonics website (www.jollylearning.co.uk - along with the JP Steps which are posted on the messageboard back in May 2003). I have taught my son to read using these steps and he is now one of the best readers in his Yr 1 class, despite being one of the youngest children and having ongoing speech problems.

Personally, I would discourage my child from guessing at words from context/picture/initial letter clues. Schools teach children to read by using a mix of methods. This approach works for about 75% of children - the other 25% will fall behind with their reading because they haven't had enough "phonics" input.

I have posted similar information on a few other threads tonight in the hope that you will see at least one of my messages.

By the way, I used the Ruth Miskin Literacy books for reading practice. You can get them from the Ruth Miskin Literacy website. I bought the black and white versions because they were cheaper and my son doesn't seem to mind at all!

As for word recognition - I would not worry about it too much. There are not that many irregular words in the English Language. Follow the Jolly Phonics advice on what "tricky" words to teach. Don't teach a word as a sight word just because your child hasn't been taught how to decode it yet... teach him the decoding skills and he will be able to read almost anything. I wouldn't teach him to recognise "Dad" and "Tom" from memory/by sight, for example. Instead, I would teach him the sounds of the letters and how to blend the sounds, so that "d-a-d" becomes "dad". He will get the hang of this, even if he seems a little bit slow at first. I wondered if my boy was ever going to get it... but I think I just expected too much too soon... because all of a sudden he was blending speedily and silently and I just couldn't believe it!

Jolly Phonics is excellent. I would say concentrate on that, teach the letter sounds and blending skills, and don't worry about the sight words. Pretty soon he'll be able to read any word...

best of luc

And, backing up ChocolateGirl, the studies into schools where synthetic phonics is taught first and exclusively show no gender divide in reading attainment (ie boys and girls perform equally well) and no big gap between earlier and later born children (ie summer born children are achieving as well as older children). Obviously there will always be differences between individual children's attainment, but it seems that boys don't need to be slower to learn to read than girls if they're taught in the right way.

Chocolategirl have only just logged onto this and read your post - thanks a million it sounds great, don't have time to read it much now but will do so at the weekend and post then. But thanks, from what I can tell through speed reading you seem to be echoing my thoughts exactly!

I hope you don't mind me coming in on this conversatoin but I just wanted to explain a little about the high frequency words. Children cannot learn to read by memorising words. To show you why, imagine trying to memorise the following: j7c g9x p2w q8f p7s . If I gave you these as a list of words to learn, only there are another 250,000 of them and the others have more than three symbols, do you think you would remember all the combinations? Children need to learn how speech is represented by sounds. Once they have learned the corresponding letters to go with each sound, they can begin to read the written symbols.

If you think about the 45 high frequency words the children learn before the end of reception, most of these can be read by sounding out, e.g. look, this, like, can, is, in, see, it, dad, cat, and, went, play, mum, dog, am etc. None of these are tricky words.

I would recommend you buy the Jolly Phonics handbook. You can then recap the phonemes your son already knows and teach him the ones that he doesn?t. You also get in the handbook lists of words for him to read by sounding them out (not memorising). There are other activities too. The key is, sounding out from left to right (obviously!) all through the word.

I'm not going to go into loads of detail about the phonics code because Catflap has already covered it. I would do a search as Chocolategirl suggests because there are some excellent posts by Catflap. You could also have a look at the following website forums for further information: www.rrf.org.uk www.syntheticsphonics.com both of these sites have experts who will be more than willing to help.
Good Luck

Right. Have now managed to read most of Catflap's thread (crikey that got a bit heated didn't it?). I'm thrilled that there's so much info and support on Mumsnet about reception/Yr 1 reading issues.

I also looked at the Jolly Phonics website. DS1 has been learning through JP since Jan and I must admit I think the blending method is excellent. There are of course some tricky words he needs to memorise but a lot of those can be dealt with when's he's learbed sh and th and sounds like that.

In fact we've just done some homework and I have been pleasantly surprised by his reading skills - I think it depends on whether he's tired or not.

A couple of things I didn't quite manage to unravel from Catflap's thread:

a) What's the consensus on covering up the pics in storybooks so the child has to read the word rather than guess? I would say it would be consistent with phonics teaching to do so, but DS1's schoolteacher put a note in his reading record along the lines of 'use the pictures to help work out the words', which I'm not at all sure about - I would rather he concentrated on looking at the words initially. When he reads with me I see his eyes scanning all over the page and not concentrating on the words.

b) Now, what was my second point? Ah yes. DS1 has just started year1 and is beginning to have spelling tests ! As JP used sounds rather than letters as the basic building blocks of reading, how do you get round this one? The other Yr 1 clas last week had a spelling test and one of the words was 'should' - not a word they had learned before but which through phonics I woudl reckon would be spelled as 'sh-u-d'. I know loads of the kids (and parents!) had real trouble with this one and there were tears before bedtime and in the classroom apparently . Luckily My DS's spellings this week are words like 'is', 'it', and 'and'.

Finally, does anyone remember ITA? That's how I was taught to read in the late 60's - an almost completely different alphabet. I learned to read, obviously, but how does that compare to phonics and other methods today?

Must go now - have loads to do, but thanks to everyone who replied to my original post!