learning to read in minority language

[mousymouse]

dh and I are both from another european country and speak the same language at home.
the dc are biligual, we speak our language at home and they are in nursery where they hear and speak english.
both are fluent in both languages.
ds will start reception in september and will start to read at some point.
if you have a similar family set up, how did you go about teaching reading the minority language?
saturday school is not an option for us.

LO is only 16 months, but I'm already reading lots of Dutch books with her and I intend to keep that up when she goes to school. My family help out by giving her Dutch books for Christmases and birthdays so there's quite a library at home for her already.

I don't intend to do anything too official like sending her to seperate courses - I'd like Dutch to be a language she picks up naturally. This may be an issue when it comes to writing, possible I need to think of some creative pastimes like writing letters to family in Holland?

I must admit I've not given the writing a lot of thought yet, but I hope she will pick up the reading as a fun activity we can do together.

yes, both of them love books and we alrady have an extensive library at home. we only read books in our language at home.
maybe we can send ds to the grandparents in his holidays, he should be old enough now to stay there on his own?

Good question. My children are flemis/english speaking and dd1 started formal education in september aged six and is now reading fleuently in flemish, I'm amazed she has learnt to read so well so quickly.

I read to the children in english at home and I have some english reading books from Usbourne. It is difficult for me to teach her because english pronunciation is so variable and inconsistent but I try and get her to read a couple of lines most days.

What language do you speak mousymouse?

it's german, so it is more or less phonetic, as is the english in this part of london :o
yes I worried a bit about the confusion, especially if they start learning to read with jolly phonics.

I'm going the other way round, so we're english speaking at home and Romanian outside/at kindergarten etc. I've started teaching them to read (and used an online programme) in English before they start in Romanian (which is phonetic) and I'm just hoping that there won't be too much confusion when they start reading Romanian.

I think when they start reading at school I'll lay off the English for a while or at least not push it too much.

Sorry not really much help - more thinking aloud! Interesting question though.

thanksamillion - which online programme do you use? I have found Starfall.com but it's in American.

We did Headsprout but you have to pay and it's also American. It worked pretty well though and DD1 enjoyed it. I'm looking for something else now though and haven't yet found anything.

We are German/English speakers, living in French speaking Switzerland.

DD learnt to read and write in French. We have introduced English already, and she is doing well. (Aside from the fact that she just wrote "woll paper" when looking for a new wallpaper from my iPhone).

We have not done extra courses, but she seems to be managing fine.

We're an English German bilingual family with a Luxembourgish at school. DD was taught to read in German and now reads English having basically taught herself. Entertainingly enough when she reads an English word she doesn't know out loud she does so with a very German accent until she recognises the word and corrects the pronunciation IYSWIM.

The advise I had at the time she was learning to read (from DD's teacher who teaches many multilingual children) was to let one phonetic system get bedded in and then start on the next language.

HTH.

I speak German to DS and DP speaks English, he is bilingual and says he prefers German. At present he is in Y1. In the summer I started buying him the German version of the Oxford Reading Tree (Lesebaum) as he loved those books, and he seemed to find them easier than the English books. At the moment DS is not so keen on reading, so I don't bother him with anything more than he has to read.

But I think, you will just have to teach them the Umlauts etc. and the rest will come easily as its phonetic.

I'm teaching DD to read in English very gradually (she'll learn to read in Czech at school) and find the best time is over breakfast at the weekend. We always have a big pad of paper and felt tips around at the table and do different sounds, make up word and picture games, draw pictures and write under them... sometimes we play games with the cards I linked to below. Sat & Sun breakfasts just seem to lend themselves to it - it's relaxed, you're already sitting at the table etc.

She also likes playing postmen, where I write her a very short letter, using words she can sound out now, and deliver it to her bedroom, then she writes me one ("Dear Mummy" and some pictures) and delivers it to me.

I use phonics, and have (since this is English) both the Jolly Phonics and Read Write Inc. teachers' handbooks as reference. However, the actual teaching activities they describe are very classroom-oriented - at home you can do it quite differently in terms of activities, while still sticking to the same theory.

belgo/TAM - the two Jolly Phonics resources that I've found good are:

the alternative spelling poster - this is great because you can talk about the ai tree, the ee tree, the oa tree and the ue tree

and the tricky words wall flowers

dc1 is now 7.5yo and read fluently in english.

I initially though about teaching him to read in french before hand etc... A friend of mine with older children told me it was a waste of time. She was right.

dc1 has no problem reading in french. He thinks he has because of course he isn't as fluent. but then he reads at home with me every day and only a few words theere and then with me in french!
The only thing that really needed to be explained was the 'special sounds' in french but the mechanism wasn't a problem iyswim.

Writing will be another issue....

I agree the issue is with writing rather than reading.

I let my girls learn to read at school (in French) but I read to them in English and most of our books at home are in English. The esentially just picked up the English without too much work.

The older 2 girls still find it easier to read in French, but they will read in either language.

Their written English however leaves something to be desired. But I believe that reading lots will help with that.

I don't do extra lessons at home as I think they have enough school work to do as it is.

Jolly Phonics is perfect teaching german letters.an a is an a ,a b is a b.There a few differences as ä ö ie but you can teach the right sound because you speak German.
There are a few lettercombinations ea ou,not existent in German language so you can set them aside.I do it the other way around and was a bit worried( half a year before school)that I confuse him until I found out the sounds are the same.I thought its Ai bee cee etc but its not.I started with joll phon and had no problems in German school.I bought lots of reading and math workbooks for beginners.