Have you taught your pre reception child to read ?

[HelloDolly]

Our school asked us not to do anything with the children, ie letter work or reading, so the children all start from the same point.

I personally think this is awful, my daughter knows 21 letters without the pictures and I had fully intended to get started with basic words this summer but don't know what to do know.

I intend to teach my 3 year old ds to read if he shows the slightest incination, and yes I will give him a little push.

I do not trust the school he will be going to to teach him to read. It's a crap school with a crap catchment area (of which I am a part, before I get accused of snobbishness!)

Also I was taught to read myself at 3, and I loved the independance it brought me. I could read fluently when I went to school, and I was very confidant of my abilities as a small child!

Yes, in general I don't agree with the 'It's the school's job to teach them' type approach. My boys go to a lovely community school, where most children do very well, but as their mother I don't feel I want to entrust their whole education to the school.

I teach them all sorts of things at home, as we all do from the moment our children are born, and I don't really see why there needs to be such a distinction between the more obvious academic skills, like reading, and the less obvious, like learning to love stories, appreciating music or learning about plants and animals.

Why is it OK to hatch butterflies with a pre-schooler, teaching them about life-cycles etc, but somehow not OK to teach them to read? I'm not saying people have to do either if they don't want to, but I don't understand the distinction.

With one dyslexic child (not picked up until I insisted on an assessment in year 5) and a 7 year old who is struggling to read I am making damn sure that DD is reading before she goes to school. I totally understand where the school is coming from but I just can't handle many more years of the torture that is reading in our house! DD (3) is already extremely interested in letters, sounds, "writing" her name etc. - very different to either of the boys - so I am going to make the most of it.

Lots of varied posts here which is understandable. A parent's job is to nurture a child's enthusiasm for learning; this means sharing books etc and, yes for some children a more structured intro the alphabet etc.
However, many parents unwittingly make things harder not easier for their children because they teach them things that are unhelpful at the start of the learning journey, ie letter names not sounds, incorrect letter formation , vertical addition before the child has a sense of numer size etc etc
Schools and teachers are professionals to whom you are going to be entrusting your most precious things for quite some years to come. By all means support their efforts but perhaps take the time to ensure that you are not undermining them or confusing your child.

Waiting for the flak now...

I am a highly literate (yes, honestly, despite the evidence in my posts!) English garduate. I have teaching experience in drama...and it it is precisely because reading is such an important skill that I have decided to entrust it's teaching to a trained professional rather than an enthusiastic but bungling amateur (me!).

For the same reason, I will be entrusting other important jobs involving DS to the professionals including his operations, his haircuts and piloting the plane he goes on holiday in.

But I will do my best to make him pleased with the world and all it's (literary) opportunities, and give him the confidence to enjoy his reading, and to support the technical, structured classroom work as requested by my partner in his education - his teacher.

Well said Blu, and robinpud.

No - couldn't find the time, even if I did agree with it (which I don't)

I too left it to the professionals. My ds loves stories and books, and that's what I concentrated on at home - reading TO him, looking at the pictures, talking about the stories. He would still prefer that to reading himself. Biff and Chip are not as exciting as Fantastic Mr Fox! Although we naturally do our homework, I still read to ds more than he reads to me at home, and I can't see that changing just yet.

You see, I'm actually quite proud of my interpretation of the task we have been asked to do in support of the reading - DS and i made 'playing cards' out of the word / letter sheet I was given, and we practice in lots of different ways. But that's different from me steering the whole approach.

I taught all mine to read in pre reception year but two were old for the year ( october) so i felt they needed more at that point.
School told me to slow down with my dd as her writing was not on a level with reading and (!) the ORT books she was on had topics running through them that were too old for her to comprehend (???)
Anyway i reckon its done them good certainly gave them loads of confidence!

This is something that I really struggle with. I am a primary teacher and on the one hand I really want to encourage ds1 (4 in August and starting school in September) with his reading but I simultaneously am totally against it.

He recognises most letters (taught via nursery mainly and not through me) and can tell you words which start with each letter. Can write his own name, ds2's name, 'mam' and a few other bits and bobs. Can read some CVC words when he is in the rigth frame of mind.

It is an issue which genuinely pulls me boths ways having seen both the benefits AND problems which arise with early reading.

but if 'a lot of teachers simply are unable to teach 30 kids to read anyway' as mentioned further down the thread, I would be worried about where my child was going to school

what are drawbacks popsy ( sorry if repeating)

Fio, I totally agree with your last post.

I never actively sat down and taught dd to read or write but encouraged her when she showed interest.

IMO (and I can only speak for my experience, and my own as a child who could read before school)....

Teasing from other children, being deliberately 'held back' by teachers (my own experience in the 1970s at school), reading whizzing ahead of writing (which is not bad per se but can lead to increasing frustration for a very bright child).

My gut reaction is the let the child lead and if they show interest then do lots of fun things. And if you have a really good reader, liaise closely withthe teacher so that you are both singing from the same hymn sheet as it were.

dd started to teach herself to read at about 3.5. I did not 'push' her in any way. We read to her and as a family and that was all. FWIW we did the same with ds and he finds reading far more difficult.

If they are ready and want to, help them, but otherwise I would say to leave them be.

agree with MB

Popsycal that's really interesting re the reading versus writing thing.

dd has excellent reading skills (according to her teacher - I wouldn't have a clue) but poor pencil control. I had been aware of this for a while (her friends could 'write' really well, in birhtday cards etc) whilst dd could barely copy a single letter with any degree of accuracy until about 6 months ago.

So does this mean children are not advantaged in any way if they learn to read or even write at an early age? It doesn't indicate any 'superiority' in language/communication skills?

dd is now 9 and is still an excellent reader but her writing is very untidy and her spelling is fairly awful.

I completely disagree about leaving it to professionals. Unless you have serious difficulties with literacy yourself, you are the ideal person to help your child learn to read, as you are to help them learn everything else. We have an incredibly poor literacy rate in this country - really shockingly bad. Whatever the schools are doing is not on the whole working IMO.

Who taught your child to speak? Speech is an incredibly complex skill, and most children pick it up just beautifully by the time they are 2 or 3, simply from being around other people who have mastered this skill and. God help us if they ever decide that the UK is falling behind in speaking skills and that it should be left to trained professionals to teach children to speak. I can imagine parents ordered not to try speaking with their children in case they confuse them or teach them the 'wrong' way.

I still don't agree that parents should be necessarily teaching children to read at this age, but not because it is better left to schools.

Message withdrawn

Haven't read much of the thread, so hope I don't repeat too much...

Dd taught herself to read in the term before she started reception. I honestly didn't do anything deliberately to push it, although of course I answered questions.

How would a school go about stopping her from teaching her little brother his letters?! He is currently being hothoused by a 5 yr old!

(History repeating itself, because apparently I taught my youngest sister to read so she would be ready for school, and she's only 2 years younger than me. )