Early proficiency in reading--a cautionary note

[abride]

I read a lot of posts about reading levels and there does seem to be some anxiety about them. I hope what I'm going to post might be of interest. And might reassure some people who are anxious about children taking longer to get to various levels in reading schemes.

Both my children learned to read with ease. We barely needed the phonics system, they just read the books. Both of them went through the levels speedily. Both scored very highly for literacy throughout primary school.

My son is 13 now. He struggles with English literature, despite being academically bright in most areas and despite the fact that we are a bookish family and there is a lot of reading talk going on here: I am an author and also studied English literature at a highly-regarded university. I always assumed that my children would find writing about texts came naturally, especially as they'd found reading so easy.

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

So don't worry too much if your children don't seem to be keeping up with the bright sparks. Time will tell. Your slower reader aged six could well outpace the fast and bright reader who's shooting through the levels. When he's 13 he might be the pupil his English teacher loves because he writes such insightful and mature essays. Being a good reader is about far, far more than how quickly you progressed through the ORT aged six.

Interesting, abride. I must admit I'd wondered if the precocious kids that worried me by reading Harry Potter in Yr1 when DD was struggling with ORT were really comprehending the books properly - taking it in and understanding as opposed to skimming over the words fast and saying 'done'. Maybe your DS is something like this - fast but 'shallow'?

That's a rather lovely post abride. Thank you!

I think that may be true of my son and to a lesser degree my daughter it's something I need to try and help them with (easier said than done)!

i totally agree, Abride: i was always fantastic at reading, and although i understood most of it (and was very wordy), i have always found it hard to put my thoughts into words, much less essays.
most of my english literature work looks like i hadn't got a clue what the text meant, and i certainly couldn't dig any deeper for subtext.

i can still enjoy the books though, so it's not all bad!

interesting abride - sounds like me as a child actually. Read easily, read all the time as a young child, but once in secondary school was caught up and very much overtaken by my friends ~shrug~

Grimma - that may be true, but it also infuriates me that people very often assume that very fast readers are skimming and "can't possibly be taking it all in" - an accusation that was often levelled to my mother about me and then to me about DD1. We were, and are, and do. Even recently, a close friend accused me of "skimreading" and DD1, at 12, also gets looked at askance about the amount she reads.
Some of us readers are just like that - fast doesn't necessarily mean shallow. And it really riles us when people glibly assume we aren't 'comprehending' what we are reading.
I do agree with the OP though - DD2, who is almost 10, didn't really begin to build up speed and fluency until she was almost 9 - it had nothing to do with her intelligence, it was clearly a processing thing.

I think there's a lot we don't know about the processing side of children's brains. With my son I can almost see that there are wires that don't quite connect yet. There's not much you can do about it, really, other than be gently encouraging.

I was fast reader, too. So fast that my mother used to test me on the books I read. But I have to be honest and say that I didn't always get everything out of them first time round. That was OK: I reread almost everything. Hey, perhaps that's what my son needs to do.

abride - i think parents' concern about reading levels reflects much more closely their concern about how good the school is at teaching reading, than how good the child is at actually reading. A head of a private school told me her reception pupils were proficient readers by y1. I suspect that is probably true, because the class sizes are small and because children are given a new book to read a night. Sadly at my dc's school, class sizes are large and we get a book a week that my dc have chosen from the library and rarely do the books have any relation to their actual reading level (ie - it's normally far too difficult).

I forgot the essential words 'some of'...

Actually I was a fast reader/re-reader too, so I know what you mean TFL - I was thinking about the OP's DS and one particular girl in DDs class

That's so frustrating, wheelsonthebus. My kids used to choose the most bizarre books from the library when they were in reception and year 1. I used to be volunteer librarian and we frequently had children who could barely read independently taking out Harry Potter books. We always gently questioned them and made alternative suggestions at the level we thought the child was but as we weren't parent readers in that particular class we didn't really know all the reading levels and couldn't really stick our noses out. Frankly, as parent volunteers, it wasn't for us to veto choices, either.

I knew those HP books would just stay in the book bag for the whole week or so.

Reading and reading comprehension are two quite different skills.

Obviously you need to be able to read to have good comprehension, but being able to read does not mean you will have good comprehension.

Comprehesnion, particuarly at a higher level once you get to english literature, is more about how well you can use and analyse language, how well you can use language as a tool for though,t how well you can understand nuance, expression, see the implied, and critically assess the way the languafe is being used.

These skills are nothing to do with the nuts and bolts decoding exercise that learning to read is at first.

Obviously many scientists, engineers, designers etc etc will be able to read fluently but their real high level skill may more in non verbal reasoning, visual, measurable factual and rational actiivites, and their interest in, and ability to analyse text would not necessarily be very high.

I know there are many scientists/engineers etc that could also analyse text before someone shoots me I'm just trying to demonstrate that high level comprehension is about a particular way of thinking rather than being a 'good reader.'

OP maybe your son just excells in another way, and comprehension just doesn't fit with the way he thinks?

I meet so mnay pupils who hate all those 'discussion' subjects that have no 'answers', they can't see the point, it holds no interst and they excell in other areas.

That's very interesting abride. In Belgium children aren't even taught to read or write until aged six.

I know this as well DS2 was an early reader, could read on entry to reception. Free reader in year1. But now in year5 is no better than anyone else.And somewhat more reluctant than some of the others. So agree. Dont worry too much about what ORT level they are on in reception and year1. In fact just because a school is taking thing slowly doesnt mean they are a bad school.We didnt put our kids on an intensive walking program if they werent walking at 12months so why panic with reading

On a similar topic, my DD2 wasn't interested in writing until she was 7. Now (age 16) her favourite hobby is wrting fantasy fiction on the internet, and some of the creative writing she did for GCSE got her A*.

Her handwriting is still atrocious, though.

What a lovely post!!!!

I have just pulled my ds1 (6) out of school to home ed him due to him being lablled in year 1 as a "struggling reader" and his being made fun of since then (being called "slow", being made fun of because of the ORT stage he was on etc)

Result is he now hates reading and thinks he has got a "stupid brain"

Nothing could be further from the truth...he has a better vocabulary than some teenagers I know!

He is making good progress now we are reading books he is actually interested in rather than those damn reading schemes.

I agree with mebaasmum;

"We didnt put our kids on an intensive walking program if they werent walking at 12months so why panic with reading"

but sadly the school my ds1 went to felt he was not doing well enough i.e. he would bring their SATS figures down!!!

Nice to hear such common sense

Common sense indeed - well put.

Learning the mechanics of reading is only apart of reading as a whole.

My DS was a slow reader and has SLD but he did catch up and pass the early readers that were fluent in reception ( I used to listen to them read)

However is supposed to be gifted in his ability to see the overall picture and perspective in history/ humanities but he really can't emulate it in his writing.

So so true. I had a child in my Y2 class last year who read Harry Potter in Y1. I had a girl who came into Y2 reading ORT stage 7. Who got every question right on the Y2 SATs? Who enjoyed reading more? Who was encouraged most by her own progress?

I'll leave you to guess.

That is a heartening story!

My dd was a struggling reader and only got 1a in her y2 sats. Now at 16 with lots of As and A*s at GCSE she is expected to apply to Oxbridge.

DS2 is 5.5yo and I think his reading is coming on very well, in terms of decoding...
but his comprehension is so appallingly bad.

Take something like

Chip had a magic key. Biff wanted it, so she shouted "Throw it to me!"

DS will read that and then sincerely ask: Who shouted? Who did they shout at? What did they throw?

I have no idea how to get him to follow the plot, poor little chap!

abride my experience is the same as yours. DS1 was a very early reader. He couldn't read before he started school but completed the whole reading scheme in reception. He was the one reading HP at the age of 6.

DS2 on the other hand found it much more difficult. Where DS1 just seemed to absorb the words (I swear he was born knowing how to spell), DS2 needed every technique in the book to decifer words. He hated it and it was a worry to me because of my experience with his older brother. He was in year 2 before he really got to grips with reading and much older before he was a confident independent reader.

Now they are 14 and 11.
DS1 hasn't read fiction by choice since he was about 10. I don't know how he will cope with Eng Lit.
DS2 on the other hand has inherited my love of reading and has his nose permanently in a book. This is reflected by his ability to write creatively and imaginatively. He can't spell for toffee though .

I find this to be an incredibly annoying thread.

My DS good mechanically read very well, very early; he was held back and not allowed to progress in the reading scheme because he couldn't interpret 'the feelings of the characters' according to the teacher.

He is now in secondary school, doing very well and probably still neither knows nor cares what Biff and Chip felt about anything.

Reading well is not about being good at English. The only way I can see of changing teacher's attitudes to this is by making half of all the books that primary schools give out to children non-fiction books. If half of the books on a reading scheme were about plant growth, or smelting, or carding wool, or how farm machinery works, then we could get away from this damaging idea that we teach children to read so that they can comment on works of fiction.

Much of the national curriculum for literacy and English is not about fiction, so I find the idea that being a good reader is related to someone's understanding of English literature to be an incredibly damaging one for children, usually boys.

The reading scheme at our primary school was 50% non-fiction. Oddly enough non-fiction was the key, ultimately ,to DS2 learning to enjoy reading although he now prefers fiction.
My older son does read non- fiction but never enjoys fiction. My point was simply that his very early reading ability did not extend past primary school. His Maths and Science grades are far above his English.
He doesn't "do" empathy and so interpretation was always an issue in reading. In secondary school this extends beyond English.He is now expected to use imagination and empathy in Geography and History. Ask him about China and he can tell you quite a lot, he would know where it was, the population, all it?s neighbours, he could pinpoint major cities and rivers. Ask him to write an essay on how a Chinese child felt who was caught up in an earthquake and he can?t do it. To me that?s creative writing.

I agree with Milly R and some others to an extent. You can read a book, understand the plot and enjoy it - that is reading. Some people enjoy analysing books and get pleasure out of it. That's fine but it's got bog all to do with reading. It's a completely different skill. Asking them to write about it, is also writing, which again is a completely different skill.

DS1 and DS2 were both early readers - reading HP at 6 or 7. DD has taken longer to get into reading. Neither of the boys is into analysing books but then neither am I. I read for pleasure - I don't need to analyse it to enjoy myself.

"Being a good reader is about far, far more than how quickly you progressed through the ORT aged six. "

Abride, so how would you define a good reader? Only someone who can analyse and write about a book? Or someone who just picks a book up, reads it, takes out of it what they want and enjoys it?