Learning to Read - doing 'research', please help

[JaneS]

Hi everyone,

I'm a PhD student studying literacy (including psychology of reading), though not in a modern context. I am dyslexic myself and learnt to read quite oddly because of that and some vision disturbances, so it's difficult for me to use my own experiences as a blueprint.

I would really like to know when you (if you know) and your DCs learned to read, age-wise. And did they have any problems? What did they make of phonics - did they struggle to understand that letters represent sounds, or did this seem to come naturally? Any memories of things they did/said about books and reading that seem strange/quirky to you as an adult?

Would love to hear from you if you have a moment.

Thanks,

LRD.

(By the way, 'research' is in inverted commas because what I'm really doing is collecting anecdotes/thoughts, rather than a formal survey - in case you wondered!)

Me: Aged 5. Refused point blank to even contemplate it until school, apparently. And have a really, really strong memory of hating phonics - there were just too many exceptions, and I think I was a PITA child pointing things out, etc. Ended up with a PhD about literacy myself, so it can't have scarred me!

Found many early reading books really dull - you'd do all that work for such a boring story...

dcs too little, btw - 3 and 6mo. Am in no hurry for them - dd adores books just fine as it is.

Ah, ok, that's interesting. So did you learn to read by 'look and say'? What do you do nowadays about words you've not heard spoken (eg. foreign-language words)?

Totally agree about dull books - I was being read things like C.S. Lewis by mum and then told to read bloody Roger Red Hat - yuck!

Btw, I should say I am nowhere near PhD-level on modern literacy theory, I am just trying to buff up my knowledge there.

Thanks so much for replying btw!

Me...I was a child of the late 60's and was presented with a flash card for every word I learnt ... somewhere there is a notebook with a list of words I could 'read' at 15 months old! I could always 'read' (as in recognise words) but started reading properly (as in reading stories) around the time I started school at 4.10 years (not sure exactly when). Had real problems with spelling though until I was 10 or 11. I still read (and sometimes spell) by the shape of the word. My sister point blank refused to do flash cards and learnt to read in a conventional fashion at school aged around 5.6 .

dd (now 10) was never exposed to a flash card - I didn't deliberately try to teach her to read - but we did play word games. I read with her a lot and she loved magnetic letters that we called by their sounds not their names. She started reading books almost spontaneously aged about 3.6. She is a scarily good speller - only needs to see a word once to know how to spell it.

I find the difference in the way we see words as fascinating - but wonder whether this was caused by the games we played as tiny children, or whether we each responded to those particular games because that was already how our brains worked.

I grew up in Sweden where I was considered abnormally early and bright because I taught myself to read aged 5. The norm was for children to learn when they started school at 7. None of my brothers learnt to read before 6 and we were a very academic and book-centered family.
(on the other hand, we did know how to bake cakes without supervision and how to use basic tools, like hammers and screwdrivers, so we were certainly not understimulated or bored in any way)

These days, most Swedish children start school at 6, and that's when a lot of them learn to read. These days, 7 would probably be considered a bit late even there.

My general impression of Swedish education is that children learn to read very quickly after starting school and that they then go on to cope with oddly spelled languages like English (normally from age 10) without too many difficulties. Swedish is mainly taught phonetically, though there are some rather more tricky combinations.

Don't remember any graded books at school: teacher went through the alphabet and then we had the school library, which was very similar to a town library, with real children's books. I had the added advantage of unsupervised access to my parents' library which was large - and partly completely inappropriate

My own children grew up in the UK, where they started Reception at 4. Dd was slow at first, but "got it" around the age of 6 and as a teen is a very proficient reader. Ds was slightly later, but at 9 is coming on nicely. They are bilingual, but I never had to teach them to read Swedish (even though the sounds are different); it is the general concept of reading that seems difficult; once they could do that, they seemed able to transfer it without too much struggle.

I started school at exactly 5, and learnt very quickly. I think it was phonics style 48 years ago. Anyway, the fun part is that I came home with the books, and promptly taught my little sister (aged exactly 3) to read as well. (Apparently I used to smack her if she got it wrong which my teachers never did.)

Might add that I did very little actual literacy training with mine at home (no flash cards and a sloppy attitude towards home work in the first years). What I did do that I feel was far more important was to talk lots to them in general (=expanding their vocabulary), talk lots about books, read them lots of good books aloud and generally show them that books are things that give people pleasure.

Probably wouldn't recognise a flashcard if I met one in the street: never needed them to learn to read in Swedish, and they were already oldfashioned by the time my dcs got to school.

My parents were the same: totally uninterested in the finer details of my school curriculum (my mum signed my attendance record without ever even looking at it), but always willing to answer my questions and talk passionately about books and art and music that had meant something to them. I think being teachers themselves they were a bit jaundiced re the capabilities and general knowledge of some of their colleagues.

btw, I was not suggesting flash cards were good - quite the opposite - I always blamed them for the fact I struggled to spell!

I had a bit of a checkered early reading experience thanks to moving to different schools. I started school in Australia at four and a half and learnt to read quite quickly using phonics. We moved back to England about a year later and lived with grandparents and the local school used ita (intial teaching alphabet) where words are spelt as they sound

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/1523708.stm

I found this a bit mad as a child because even though I was only 5 I was aware from real books that the correct spellings weren't being used. Then when my parents bought a house 6 months later I had to do a crash course in "real" reading with my teacher so that I wouldn't be at a disadvantage when I left the school. Unbelievably after all that I was a good reader but I know the ita system did lead to children having problems later with spelling.

My mum taught me to read by a combination of flashcards (which I hated and used to run away from) and the Ladybird reading scheme, which is Look and Say. However, I'm pretty sure she used a phonics based approach (I know she was for phonics as a primary teacher and specialist teacher for blind children when the general educational fashion was against them). I vividly remember a day when I must have been 3.5, realising that I could sound out words even if they were really really long and therefore read them. I read everything on a walk up the seafront and from then on could read. I didn't write at all before school.

I am now a very good reader and speller (though a slow reader - deliberately slowed my reading speed down in primary school because I was getting through books too fast, and I never got it back up to speed again).

Have never had any problems reading or spelling foreign languages, so long as they're in Latin script. Greek was okay (started at 14 but neglected the grammar) Russian I struggle really and am very slow to sound out words (started that at 18 and even more so neglected the grammar). I regard myself as virtually dyslexic at reading music. There is something about it I just do not get and I have no idea what it is. I was away the day they taught it in school, but it can't be that - have been plugging away at music in some form or other ever since then and haven't got much better.

DS1 is just starting to learn to read - he sounds out words very well, but has a strange relationship with the process. He makes progress on his own almost in spite of me, but will occasionally vehemently deny he's read something when he definitely has. I am terrified of mucking up his reading progress so we go at his pace in fits and starts and I guess what he's really capable of.

Hah! Make of that what you will - clear as mud I'll bet

Aye, well, that's the thing - I imagine I did learn to read using phonics. Don't think the teacher put on a special class just for this awkward cuss, and I clearly remember a frieze of letters round the class, and going through them, and talk of Magic E, etc. Also Chicken Licken books where you coloured in pictures over deadly dull text.

fwiw I'm not that hot on modern literacy theory any more - my PhD was on medieval literacy! But I loved the work of the New Literacy Studies people at Lancaster - David Barton et al - very elegant ideas.

Foreign language - I don't think I do sound things out letter by letter, as a rule. I guess I look for familiarity - affixes, similar patterns to words I've seen before, etc.

I learned to read age 5 at school, I can't remember anything about phonics when I learnt.

DC generally clicked with reading at about age 5.5-6yo. The one funny thing they did, which teacher said was fine (advanced, even), was intially reading in a sentence the words they could read easily and then afterwards sounding out the words they didn't know, for instance

"The fantastic dog went to the enormous park"

DD at 5yo would read that as

"The ...dog went to the ... The dog... The dog... The fan"(sound out fantastic) "dog went to the park... the park... the park... the " (sound out enormous)" park."

All I remember about learning to read was that I was taught ITA. I have no idea if it was better or worse than other methods - but it didn't last very long and I don't think it became the norm.

DD was 2 1/2 when she started reading reception key words. She is now 6 and can read anything. Loves reading, has several books on the go.

I learnt to read aged 4 apparently. I remember my mum doing flash cards with me before then, and then the Through the Rainbow scheme at school. Mum certainly taught me phonetics, but weirdly my brother doesn't think phoenetically.

DH and I children of the 60's

I have no idea how i learnt to read, but read very quickly with no problems

DH would be classed dyslexic nowadays, he was taught "Look and Say" and didn't learn to read until he 10 when he was finally given remedial phonics classes. His HM told MIL that there was no way he was ever going to learn with this system but her hands were tied
This ruined his school life. He can read well now but can't spell.

DS 14 was taught jolly phonics along with sight words. He has similar dyslexic problems as DH but "got" reading at 7 when he improved very rapidly. He hated the sight words and refused to do them He still has problem with writing/spelling.

DD 12 I taught her some phonics using lady bird phonics books and she also did jolly phonics from nursery. Within weeks of starting school she was reading words like "architecture" and just seem to absorb reading.

This is fascinating! Thanks - I will almost certainly come back with more questions when I've mulled it over a bit (don't let that stop anyone post more though). Hope it's ok to keep picking your brains like this.

habbibu, hope it's not cheeky to ask, are you an academic then?

Two sons. One diagnosed dyslexic at 7. Learnt all sounds of upper and lower case letters on early Amstrad computer game (he's 21 now) but couldn't put two sounds together. Played bizaare I-Spy games with him when "M" sound turned out to be for "car" for example. Discovered that he could read upside down just as fast as the right way up when he was about 9 (I had never shown him that people even tried to do this). Reckon it was the way he looked at the word. He either "knew" a word or didn't. No good at "trying to say it.

Other son was reading at just less than 3. After first week of nursery he pointed at shop that said "Davidson's" and said "David's chair". Turned out the kids had a chair with their names on the back so as where to sit. I wrote out all the names of the kids in his class (had a list) and he pointed to each one's name even though he couldn't say it. ie. me: "Where's Kate?" and so on. He could tell the difference between Jordan and Joseph.

Hope it helps.

Forgot to say, dyslexic son learnt the letter sounds before he was 3 so difficult to guess that he would be dyslexic. He has v high IQ though. I imagine he learnt them as a "picture".

My 6 year old DS could identify bath letters and numbers at 14 months but didn't start reading fluently until a couple of months before his fourth birthday. As soon as he did start reading, he gained about a year's worth of reading age a month, so he went into reception with the decoding skills of a 12 year old.

Am inclined to think that the 2 and a half year interval between learning letter names/sounds and reading fluently was a period of rule assimilation. While I never did any formal teaching, we talked endlessly about letters and sounds, so he was decoding things like ae, oe, e acute etc fairly flawlessly from moment one.

DS's father and I were both reading at three (he taught himself and I was taught phonetically and absent mindedly by my mother). Obviously there's a lot of nurture in the mix, but I would speculate that it's less than I think - that most of it is nature. DS's brain has always seemed hardwired to assimilate all kids of symbolic orders, from alphabets and Thomas Trains, to car insignia and world flags.

Another early reader here. DD knew all her letters (upper and lower case, phonics and names) by 15months of age. She started sight reading words at 16 months- she just started poinr...so we did. By 22mnth she had over 300 words she could read by sight...then she took off. At 2y6ms a teacher friend used the Salford reading test with her and she scored 8yrs+. It was then she started decoding phonetically and could read anything, which was not good e.g "Mummy, why does it say F* off over there" (reading grafitti) or "what does Afghanistan mean?"....all at 2y6ms. She started those Rainbow Magic Fairy books just before she was 3.
Now, she is 5.1yrs, she still loves reading. She reads anything from her baby brothers cloth books to her encylopedia.
I know people will ask about her comprehension...her first nursery were fascinated and gave her a SATS comprehension paper at 3yr4ms- she scored a level 2. That is another matter, I was not happy about that.
Problems- finding books with appropriate content for her age.
Being able to read anything at a young age.

Devexity- do I know you from another board (BBC). If so, there should be a message for you on there from ages ago!

Liopleurodon - yes you do, and very lovely to 'see' you again. Will go check messages. I hated new BBC so much I haven't been back in, well, years, I suppose.