What to do with a bright child?

[Mumanddone]

I will be accused of bragging but I really am looking for genuine ideas here please.

4yo DD has started reception. She is in a private school. She can read fluently, writes and her maths skills are great. She is basically bilingual. She carries a conversation like a grown up - she’s hugely imaginative and great fun to talk to. She’s not some prodigy - she’s actually a bit of a silly little girl prone to not listening but she is objectively very very bright.

When I observe her peers, I don’t feel like they are on the same wavelength for the most part. Some of them are barely able to string a sentence together and they still seem to have very infantile form of expression. DD makes friends easily and is happy to play with anyone but at the same time - will this hold her back?

we decided for private school to boost her, but wondering if this is enough. I suppose there is a sliding scale to private education. Are there places better suited for her? Or is there something we should be doing to support her at home/ outside. She does the general run of clubs ie: drama, swimming etc.

Dd2 by year 3 was starting to become disruptive in class as she was so bored and though she was given extension work it was never marked so she didn't see the point. She began doing kumon maths and this helped her.
Even in year 13 she'd be reading a fiction book and doodling during her physics lesson!

So nice to hear from someone who had a parent that saw potential, nourished it and clearly didn’t leave the child traumatised as a result. Sounds like your mum gave you such a boost!

No I am not Asian and no, my daughter has never felt limited as to who she can and can’t be friends with. One of those children who often wails at the school gates is coming round for a play this weekend because my daughter and her are friendly.

@Theawkwardturtle thank you SO much for that wonderfully nostalgic mention of correspondence courses!

But I know my daughter is settling in well. That was never the point of my question.

Cream rises to the top. Children level out. Everyone finds their place given the right environment. Let her be a child, give her the opportunity that she wants. If she is the next Einstein the next few years wont make a blind bit of difference.

For some children it's not an extra effort. Maybe they see words almost as pictographs.

I see it more as pictures and learning to read by whole word was nothing more than a game. Phonics, was laborious and difficult.
I did not get phonics until I was reading middle grade plus books.
If I'd been taught to read using only phonics I'd have been a struggling reader rather than one who loved reading and was fluently reading before school.

Adn fro thsoe of us woh cna raed htsi esaliy, as I cna, htat thoery deons't add up.

Yes, I do think some children initially as whole word pictures but to read complex unfamiliar words, they match ‘bits’ of these known pictures in a jigsaw to decode the word - which is essentially what phonics is, with letters / graphemes as the ‘bits’.

The muddled puzzle works, imo, because fluent readers are so familiar with those words in context that they can reconstruct them even when muddled - like knowing ‘that jigsaw piece is part of a boat / the sea / a car / a flower’ even if we don’t have the picture to follow.

Most people in the first month of reception have conversations about settling in. That’s normal. It isn’t normal to worry that your daughter’s peers might hold her back when she’s only 4. They are settling in themselves.
It’s hyper competitive.

Lots of parents don’t focus on reading etc pre school. So it’s very difficult to know whether your Dd is ahead at this stage. I could read before I went to school and always did pretty well, by the time I left primary it was clear that I wasnt the brightest in the bunch. I have no idea whether those who were could read before school. I did very well in the end but a lot to that was due to me doing huge amounts of work in secondary school.

Yes, to read unfamiliar words you do need phonics, but when you're reading now, you are reading by whole word.

I read entirely by whole words for about three-four years, and not for want of people trying to teach me phonics.
If I came across a word I didn't know, I either missed it out and worked out meaning by context or asked someone to tell me - and then I would normally remember it for another time.

I agree and sometimes wonder if our huge population wide problem with reading has something to do with this "reading by whole words". It's nearly impossible unless one is autistic to read e.g. "synchrophasotron" as a whole picture-word, even though there are visibly familiar bits (-phas-), it's still too complex for picture-word reading. One has to decode phonics fluently for advanced reading in European languages. Chinese is exactly the opposite, that's why young European children who haven't lost eidetic memory yet often have no problem reading and writing Mandarin but cannot really speak it unless they are also musical.

Also, English words are relatively short so it's fairly easy to start reading "a cat sat on a mat", but if someone is bilingual like OP's daughter it may be a different story. German words for example are longer even on average, and in real life can actually be any length as compound words are a norm (happens in English too but not to that extent). Sentences that are a few lines long are not unheard of even in primary reading.

When was this brief whole word fad? I'm in my 70s and it's how I was taught to read and then how my children were taught to read 20 odd years later

And how my parents were taught to read in the 40s...

One of the issues I see with this "phonics fad" is that the people who are so totally wedding to it that they won't admit that whole word recognition has it's place and for some children is better, and mixed ways work too - or even that as adults you only sound out when you don't whole word recognise.

It's nearly impossible unless one is autistic to read e.g. "synchrophasotron" as a whole picture-word, even though there are visibly familiar bits (-phas-), it's still too complex for picture-word reading.
I would read it by picture word after the first time of sounding out, and no I'm not autistic. I asked round the office and everyone else said the same. Surely if you have to keep sounding out words like that then it spoils the fluency and the beauty of reading? I'd very rarely have to sound out a word nowadays, normally only specialist words I haven't seen written before.

My sister preferred phonics. She read "hyperbole" as "hyper-bowl" for years, even though she used the word in conversation, she didn't link the two whereas I linked the two straight off so pronounced it properly. Phonics doesn't work all the time.

Do people really keep sounding out words they have come across before?

Errrr... where did I say anything about sounding out?
You have just illustrated my point, sorry.

you can't sound it out without phonics

That wasn't a trauma dump. It was info, but how you choose to see it is up to you.

I'm at peace with myself, my history and my brain because I've put the work in. I've had therapy and I understand why my life has been the way it is and why I've been the way I am. Having my diagnosis opened up Pandora's Box and I did a lot of analysis (just like any other day really lol).
Sadly flippant jokes/comments were a bit above my child brain and left me with trauma for decades but I dealt with it all this year. It's been amazing!!

I've cut the generational cycles from my family and it's been liberating for me to be able to do it for my children.

I've read some more comments and replies by yourself.
I think you could benefit from some therapy, in the kindest regards ✌🏼
You're not 'just a teacher'.
You're A TEACHER!!!!

Don't sell yourself short.

Haven't read the whole thread - get your LO some starter piano lessons.
If she takes to it, will give her something really fun to do that will give her a life skill. and let her be a child!

Look at beast academy for maths

You're missing a huge element of the mechanism of reading - working memory.

This is how students move on from sounding out to fluency. They create a mental word bank containing previously sounded out words and words they have heard, and recall these as they read in irder to recognise and make sense of the text.

It is also part of how students navigate the very complex vowel sounds of English, and manage to distinguish words like thought, through, tough, front, font, right, rite, and hundreds more.

Have you read my post or have you "sight-read" it guessing most of the words? How could I be missing the matter of memory if the words "eidetic memory" is right there in my post? :)

Working memory btw is a short term memory, not what you describe as "word bank".

Sorry I'm not very interested in the debate on reading mechanisms. 20% of adults in the population are functionally illiterate and many many more just don't read much even if they can. The results of teaching methodologies speak for themselves (of course it's not just because of teaching but it starts there).