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.

I think it depends on how the skills are received by the 'sudience' once learned, and whether an individual child is encouraged to take their skills to the next level.

A child learns how to read and can finish X number of books a week. If she thinks that's a marvellous accomplishment, and nobody pushes her to develop analytical skills related to what she has read, or skills related to writing her thoughts about the books, or how to answer questions that require analytical skills in an exam setting, then she will probably rest on her laurels and think finishing books is the be all and end all of reading in the school setting.

A lot of what children produce in the way of academic accomplishment is related to expectations, and being required to keep progressing through a wide range of skills. Nobody would stop developing a child's skills in maths after they had mastered division up to the 12X tables, but reading-related skills sometimes fall through the cracks.