teaching to read - living overseas

[justwondering72]

Hello

I hope you don't mind me asking my question here. We are not home educating, but as we are living overseas and my children go to local schools, I am keen to teach them to read and write in English and as a sahm I have the time to teach them I think.

I am struggling with it tbh. My oldest odds 5 years old. He is bright and clever but he tends to give up easily when things get tricky, and he is a real perfectionist. As far as materials go I have lots of traditional phonics colouring and work sheets, and a reading scheme supplied by mum who was a primary teacher for forty years.

The problem I am having is that Ds dies not want to do it and I get very irritated when he won't do it 'right's. When he consents to do something like colouring in a phonics sheet, he very quickly gets bored and starts (to my eyes) mucking about - scrubbing on the page, skipping tasks etc. I feel at a loss as to how to keep him on task. So I get tight lipped and he gets stressed. And we give up.

He has a fair amount of screen time and enjoys lots of educational type programmes, like Reading Eggs. But again, he gets very easily frustrated once the tasks get slightly more challenging. I don't in any way force out posh him to continue when he gets to this stage, I can see it is counter productive and no fun for him.

So I am kind of at a loss. I would really welcome any advice. I appreciate that I am probably totally in the conventional 'school' mode of doing things and I don't think that I'd going to work for him. I am his mum not his teacher, he is at school for days a week anyway (we are in France, theyhave Wednesday off) and I want him to want to learn, not be giving it on him.

Ps sorry for all the typos, am on my phone.

I think it is an awful lot to ask of a 5 year old to attend school full time and then do extra school type work at home. My son is 5 and is sounds similar to your son in his response to formal learning activities - difference being he is not at school - even so, he is not interested in sitting down and learning phonics, ever. I presume you are speaking English to them and they are bilingual? If it were me I would focus on making English fun and relevant at home, read books, watch DVDs, listen to CDs, play on apps, write stories, play video games, make little videos of shows in English, whatever they like doing. You can put the subtitles on the DVDs if you want more written language exposure. I would not push reading in English as you risk making English boring and aversive and I would guess he will be able to catch up with English reading quickly later on if he has a good grasp of the language and is motivated. If he is being taught to read French at school using phonics I think it would be very confusing to have to memorise a different set of phonics at home for English. Reading English may also be much easier later on when he already reads French - I read French well for example but was never taught the phonics, but didn't learn French until I could read English well.

I like Mimio!

Good research base.

I agree with chocolatecrispies. Your son is very young and possibly not ready to read yet even if he were willing. Give him good access to things which will make him want to read in English in due course, then wait for him to be ready. He'll do it in his own time.

My older daughter found a lot of motivation from using computer programmes, and I know other HE children whose first reading words included "Play", "Exit" and "Login"!

Reading aloud to your son will also help interest him in English-language stories, which he will one day want to read for himself. What's more, reading aloud will expose him to more advanced grammar and vocabulary than he might otherwise encounter in his daily life. That in turn will make reading easier when he does tackle it, as well as increasing his English fluency. See Jim Trelease's "Read-Aloud Handbook" for the evidence that this is so and suggestions for books he might like.

I'm in a similar position, although not in france. My five year old does really like reading eggs, particularly the playroom bit, and she has worked through a lot of the lessons. I do have to sit with her though because some pf the tasks are v. Difficult, like the missing words in the stories. If you cant remember the book you really cant work out which word is missing, which is poor. She also likes the read write inc story books, mainly because i got the black and white set and once she has read a book then she gets to colour in the illustrations and shes buildibg up a collection, which appleals to her.

I think the key thing is she wants to do it. Shes not at school yet, but i overheard her telling her best friend who just started first grade " for my birthday i want reading books in norwegian because ive only got reading books n english and i need norwegian ones too"

Thanks all, I agree with s lot of the points raised. He is young and he had a lot to cope with just being in school in French, as we are all English at home. I am going to chill out on the whole formal teaching thing and leave that to granny when she is around - she's far better at it. We'll stick with more informal ways to encourage him to read English - stories, comics and cbeebies, all of which he enjoys.