How to teach a 4 year old to read?

[MessyMummy15]

Can anyone help me with some tips or tricks on how to introduce my 4 year old to reading.
Is there a particular scheme that people follow?

He's four and a half and can currently identify numbers individually perfect but often mixes up his letter ie: d & b
He can recognise his name as a group of letters but Only that word.

What are my next steps to get him to be able to assign sounds to letters and start sounding out words. Can anyone suggest games to help him progress?

Honestly- wait. Studies show that by 8 there is no difference between children who can read at 5 and those who can’t. What you want it’s children who love reading which may not happen if they’re not ready and it feels like a chore

In the UK people use phonics. So just knowing the letter names is not enough. You can teach him the alphabet phonetically (Jolly Phonics is good) and then teach him to blend. Once he can blend simple words, the Oxford Reading Tree and Songbirds is good. That’s how DS1 learned to read. BUT he was super duper keen and even then the learning curve was steep. If your son is not interested then let it be. Maybe just teach him the phonetical sounds and the basics of blending. The rest will come when it comes.

Wait until he starts school. They will probably have a whole other way of doing it (like Jolly phonics for example). He will have to relearn everything and might find it confusing. Just let the professionals do their job - thats my philosophy.
In the long run, you can't pick out the kids who learnt letters at nursery from the ones who began school not knowing the alphabet (like mine).

Interestingly, the swimming coach said the same thing about baby swimming lessons!

Just keep reading with him - lots!
Have him sat next to you so he can see hte words and pictures. Follow hte words with your finger if you want to show that they are linked to the words that you are saying.

Read aloud to him lots and lots, let him choose the books. Loving books first and then wanting to know how to read them is the best (and easiest) way to learn, when he's ready. Then what Partylikeits2019 and Aquilla say. My son had no interest/understanding of how to read and then suddenly around age 6 and a half he just clicked and seemed to learn virtually overnight.

We let the school take the lead and just did the homework they told us to.

It's amazing how much better he learns in school rather than what I try.

I could try for weeks to do one thing. School will do it in a day.

He's now reading through his books. Completing new words at the first try.

It's taught me he will do everything in his own time and I just need to make sure he's happy at school and they'll do the rest.

At this stage, I would focus on teaching a love of reading rather than teaching him to read as it can be confusing using different methods when they start at school. Read to him, make your own story books where he draws the pictures and then tells you what to write, act out/ role play your favourite stories etc etc

He already loves reading!! We read all the time as I have always been an avid reader too.

He will sit with books and run his fingers along the words and sort of make up a story to go with the pictures on the page but recently he has started to sit with his 18 month old brother with really basic picture books ( like the A is for Apple ones) and sometimes if he doesn't know what the picture is he gets frustrated. That's why I thought I'd look into next steps as he's deffo got the interest there!

But I understand that schools may teach a differnt way. The last thing I wanna do is put him off!!

It's great that he's interested. As mentioned - Jolly Phonics is good. They have lots on YouTube. Also play games like a for Apple, what else can we find that starts with the a sound?

But keep it fun and stop as soon as he's bored.

Just read books that are interesting to them with your finger under each word as you say it.
They will learn passively and gain a love of reading. Then the school can formally teach with you doing it in a more fun way.

I really wouldn't worry, just enjoy his interest, and keep up the reading, but if you really want to -

Don't teach the letter name, teach the sound, so not bee but buh for b - but swallow the uh - do not voice it, it is the pure sound of the grapheme he needs to know. I would do lots of listening games, as this can help the ability to hear how the different sounds blend together to make a word. Maybe say what sound does whatever item begin with? Then what other words can we think of that begin with the sound. Extensions - match the sound to the written letter, do the sound at the end of the word.

@Partylikeits2019 that’s research misquoted. Some children still can’t read at 8 or 11. I know I’ve taught some.
DS was reading at three and is still streets ahead of his friends who are 8.
We used a mixture of whole words and phonics. Some words need to be taught as sight words even though they are technically not. For me the is one of those words. The phonics required to spell it out phonetically is complex but it is a word they need to know from the get go.
Teach them the phonetic alphabet as a start. Then see where you go.

Are you in the UK, OP?

If he’s four and a half (so five in July), isn’t he already in school?

I would focus on his self-care skills (getting himself dressed and undressed, going to the toilet, feeding himself) and social skills (sharing, being kind to others, knowing who to talk to if he has a problem). If he’s got those under his belt when he starts school, learning to read will be a doddle.

So he's almost four and a half.. he will be five start of October so will start this september. He will be one of the oldest in his class.
He's already feeding himself, toilet, getting dressed etc so happy in that respect
Will deffo take all this advice on board and up the reading time together. Thanks everyone!!

In the U.K. there is a strong assumption that you have to use phonics. This is not true. There are some advantages and some disadvantages to phonics. The disadvantages tend to be glossed over by the vested interests: ie schools and 'educational' publishing companies.

At the bottom of everything is the first principle: phonics sells product, and product makes money for the publishers.

Schools like phonics because it comes with heaps of product (which is marketed as "classroom support"): workbooks, flash cards, puzzles, games, posters, borders, the list goes on.

Phonics also helps make reading look like a difficult skill to acquire and teach, with lots of steps that have to be achieved in order. There are lots of steps and stages, each of which can be rewarded and, critically for schooling, children can be measured and graded according to how far they’ve got. With any luck, the class can be dragged along as a whole, without having to trouble yourself with the particular interests, skills or personalities of children as individuals.

There are certain difficulties. The most visible is that children learn to spell incorrectly by using "phonically logical" (should that be "fonicklee lojickull "?) techniques, which they then have to backtrack and correct later. Bigger problems are that it mystifies reading, as if parents can’t teach it; it devalues the child as an independent learner, capable of following her own interests and checking her own skills; it demands a group rate of learning; and a host of other faults, not least of which is the crushing dull 'reading scheme' books the child is subjected to.

As an alternative, you could try 'whole word learning' or 'language experience ' methods. These techniques are logical and accessible without huge cash investment and, crucially, start from the point that children are amazing learning who can understand that words are the basic building blocks of language since they carry meaning.

I’d recommend Glenn Doman's book Teach your baby to read, first published 1965, but available in updated editions. Doman developed simple techniques from working with severely brain-injured toddlers, who were capable of reading well before school age.

I learned by 'whole word' and was a regular at the library before starting school. To put that in context, in those pre-Bookstart days a child wasn’t issued with a library ticket until s/he could prove to the librarian that they could read.

I’ve assisted several children to read around 30-40 months, each 'session' taking mere seconds to a few minutes. The only requirement has been that they are interested enough to ant to take part.

The biggest disadvantage is that IME their reception class teachers have been utterly terrified at having a competent reader on their hands, as they haven’t the first idea what to do with the individual while the class is dragged along through the succession of colouring sheets and painfully monotonous chants of "a-a-ants on my arms" etc

Interesting Itsabajum. My DD learned through a combination of phonics and reading with me and her spelling was shocking for years - all phonetic.

Find out which system his school will be using. You can then purchase materials online. We had some issues because we mindlessly started teaching ours when he started talking and our nonmethod clashed with the system they us d at school.

The disadvantages tend to be glossed over by the vested interests: ie schools and 'educational' publishing companies.

What “vested interest” do you think a school would have in using one system over another, @itsaboojum?

We teach how and what the DfE tells us to teach. We don’t gain financially or in any other way from doing this.

Naturally schools teach what the DfE tells them. Government has always used schooling as a basic means of replicating society and maintaining status quo.

Publishing companies have massive interests through lobbying and in getting product into U.K. schools, which gives them huge leverage to expand further into world markets. Education is big business: one of our top four exports by value.

Yes @itsaboojum, but you said “schools” have a vested interest. They don’t.

A vested interest doesn’t have to involve financial reward.

If you want to start, you can and don’t need to wait for school.

Look at Jolly Phonics resources on Amazon - wall frieze, cards, books and even a guide to doing it if you want. You can start with the sounds and actions which go with each. Then you can move onto blending if you want. Good way to start.

I also used Peter and Jane which isn’t phonics but look and say - word recognition. Not a prob to use both although schools prob won’t.

Started at 3.5 and September born Ds was reading pretty well by school. He wanted to, didn’t find it hard or a chore and it was fine. I told the school and they were fine and he quickly accelerated through the lower level reading scheme books. Was a good reader through primary and beyond and still reads all the time.

Of course other kids were or became equally good who never read before school. He was ready and keen, could do it and it was always nice for him to feel he had a strength.

If you want to try, do and you’ll quickly see if DC is up for it or not - little and often is key as is low pressure. Some make out it’s a crime to try before school but some children are just ready and most sensible parents can manage to make a start.

Just keep reading at night.
I read a book with DS and DD every single night. I also use the whole word method to teach reading skills. I ask them some questions to evaluate their overall understanding of the book. Nothing wrong with beginning early.
We spend ten minutes working on reading. Reading is a important life skill worth learning. Talk with the teacher. Find out what exactly they are doing for reading. They should be able to offer you some more suggestions.
Also pay attention to his self care skills. Once he has decent social skills he can start working on his reading skills.
Definitely try the library.
I also found this website helpful for advice www.teachreadingearly.com/teaching-baby-to-read-age-1-2.php

The most important skill for reading is to develop your child's phonological awareness. You can do this easily by engaging in languages play through rhymes and stories. (Playing with sounds and manipulating sounds in words)
Your child needs to understand that spoken words are made up of sounds which are represented by a letter or groups of letters called graphemes. Play games like I spy to help your child develop auditory awareness so he or she can begin to discriminate between sounds in words. (No letter names please)This comes before reading which involves blending the sounds to make a word.
Once a child is able to discriminate the sounds in words, you then introduce the symbols that represent the sounds. This is sound to letter correspondence or grapheme/phoneme correspondence. Segmenting the sounds in words should come before blending the sounds.
If phonics is taught the right way, the child develops very good skills to spell. Children should be made aware very early on that a sound has many ways it can be represented, so when spelling he or she should be asking or checking if he or she has used the correct alternative.
They also pick this up themselves through reading once they have a good understanding of the nature of the English language.
The main problem is the poor subject knowledge of the teachers when it comes to teaching phonics.

I know it's a slightly old thread but I was really keen to get my son reading before he started preschool. I got lots of phonics books (ORT and some other schemes) and while he did make some progress it felt like an uphill struggle.

He did know all his letter shapes and sounds and he loves being read to and looking at books, and that was about it. But it seems that these were the basic building blocks he needed from us. Once he got to preschool his teachers did a brilliant job of putting these building blocks together, and he's now making his way happily through their reading scheme.

Now he is reading we are able to support him at home with all the phonics books I'd bought last year - but for us at least it took school to help everything slot into place.

It might be an age thing (he was 3 and a bit when I started and I suspect he was too young - there is a lot of progress between 3 and 4). But I am starting to think that as long as you instil a love of books and familiarity with letters, there is no reason to worry about whether a child is reading when they start school.

Apparently I refused to let my parents teach me to read before I started school because I said it was my teachers' job. So perhaps DS is just stubborn like me.