Expectations of 6 year old in UK re Literacy?

[nothomeless]

DD, born Sep 2004, started school and learning to read in September. She is educated abroad and the majority of her peers have English as a second language. English is probably DD´s dominant language.

What should she be able to read/achieve at this stage? I have absolutely no idea what is normal and I can´t easily compare her to other children.

I agree that SE13's child is unusually precocious. DD gets glowing comments from teachers for her literacy skills and could not have read that well in December of Yr1.

For December of Yr1, my 3 children would have been at about this standard:
DC1 (autumn birthday): reading short sentence on-each-page books smoothly.
DC2 (autumn birthday): reading short chapter books with several sentences on each page books well.
DC3 (summer birthday): reading very short words in very short sentences on-each-page books to a so-so standard.

By start of Y3, two of DC had reading ages several years above chronological age, so I think their development has been fine.

hth, OP.

Well, that all made interesting reading, thanks for your input!

i wouldnt worry she has only just started school and as she is older is likely to progress alot faster than the UK educated children and expect that with in a year or 2 will be at the same level even though your dd started a year later.

My dd is in year1 and will be 6 in jan and is pretty similar to se13's dd. she can read chapter books fluently with very good comprehention ect writes confidently with good spelling and punctuation and using joined writing for all her work, is competant with adding subtracting and muliplying although litracy is really her thing. She has a good general knowlage and vocab and is normaly the leader of the pack when it comes to games ect.
I would say that she is quite bright but not unusualy so.
this time last year she was reading books with 1 or 2 sentances per page and write phoneticaly which you could decode.

as your dd has started later she will make much faster progress and take less time to reach the stage my dd is at now.

My DD was born March 2004 and started Primary in Belgium in September. She can read the starter ORT books in English easily enough, but compared to my friend's dd, who is a year younger and in yr1 in the UK, she seemed really "behind".

However, seeing how much progress she has made in the last 3 months, I think that they might start late here, but they go much, much quicker. Her hand writing - joined up - is beautiful. The reading has suddenly "clicked". Dh was astounded when he went to read a Horrid Henry book to her in bed, that she could suddenly read a lot of it herself!

So, as someone else said earlier, don't compare with the UK, see how she is getting along in comparison to her peers.

Plus I thought she would get the vowel sounds confused between French and English, but they do a lot of word recognition as opposed to phonics here, and this doesn't seem to be happening.

It really has brought it home to me how HARD it should be to read in English with the lack of "rules" in pronunciation.

brought
hour
you
out

etc etc

Pantofino

I'm afraid you are confusing your grapheme/phoneme which follow the rules

br ough t

h our

ou t

you is a tricky word and easily taught

What about b ough and r ough then?

ough can be pronounced the following ways:

/o?/ as in "though" (cf. toe).
/u?/ as in "through" (cf. true).
/?f/ as in "rough" (cf. ruffian).
/?f/ as in "cough" (cf. coffin).
/??/ as in "thought" (cf. taut).
/a?/ as in "bough" (cf. to bow). 

There is no way to know what way ough will be pronounced in a certain word by looking at it. There is no 'rule' to follow.

If taught correctly children handle the spelling patterns quite easily. We have 26 letters of the alphabet to represent 150+ English sounds sSo unless we invent a whole new alphabet where one letter represents one sound ...) We simply experiment with alternative prounciations to see which makes sense

My DD is in year 1 and most of them are on the Biff, Chip and Kipper Stage. A handful are free readers.

My DD is at the momemt reading Heinemann Animal World Story pack (stage 7) and is currently on Stage 6 of the Oxford Reading Tree, reading more Biff, Chip and Kipper stories, which she likes a lot.

I am informed stage 4-6 of the Oxford Reading Tree is 'average' in year 1.

Here's a link which explains a little www.oup.com/oxed/primary/oxfordreadingtree/chart_2010/

HTH

Surely, 'ough' words just have to be learned. They can be put into small groups for ease of remembering, but they still have to be learned. Trying different pronunciations would often still come up with an actual word, not the necessarily right word, but a a word nonetheless. Try it with 'cough'.

You mean cough could actually be pronounced as:

Coo
Cuff
Cough
Caught
Cow

No CecilyP once the word is part of the vocabulary most children don't have any problem working out for themselves what the word is. Few words need to be learnt and it would actually be impossible for the brain to remember every word.

I wasn't suggesting that children should learn every word as a whole. Even the ough words don't have be learned as wholes but I think they have to be taught rather than giving children every possible pronunciation and leaving them to work each word out for themselves. When teaching ough as in, say, cough, would you not give the children all the other ough words with that pronunciation? There can't be more than 2 or 3 of them.

thanksamillion it is a very different attitude to early years in other countries. I'm in the US and DD's class are only just learning phonics (1st Grade so Kids age 6.5 - 7yo). They are only doing UK reception level reading! (but 2 years older...)

The theory is they learn faster when older BUT it is hard not to compare with friends in the UK. Also we intend to go back to the UK and am worried it will knock DC's confidence to be behind peer group etc..

RedFlipFlops - I don't know much about the US system, but I think the UK system is excellent for not knocking childrens confidence.

I know that in the US you can be kept back a year if you don't 'pass' a grade. We have no concept of that. There is no concept of 'failing a grade' ( you can only be working below the govt's expected level - but the kid wouldn't ever be told that)

There is no competition in the class room. Teachers work very hard at not letting the kids compare themselves or making a big deal about who is working at this level or that level.

British teachers are expected to teach every child in their class - regardless of whether they are ahead or behind 'average'.

So, I wouldn't worry about your DCs confidence. If your child can read - great. If she can't the teacher will cater to her without her even realizing it.

Thanks for your reassurance IndigoBell.

redflipflops, they won't be behind for long though! My dd is fast catching up after only 3 months. The theory is that they are more ready to learn when they are that bit older, and that the " group ability" evens out a bit.

My dd's teacher assures me that everyone in her class will be able to read and write by the end of Yr 1.

British teachers are expected to teach every child in their class - regardless of whether they are ahead or behind 'average'.

I only wish they actually did deliver on that

mychatnickname I think you might get some stick for your comment.

I for one would say that my children's teachers do deliver - to every child in their class, from high-fliers to strugglers.

I wouldn't ask a question like this on MN really.You will get a whole load of parents
telling you what there DC can do, most of which will be -exaggerated-- well above average for their age.

I think the US system isn't good for teaching children at different abilities/levels. The whole class read the same book!

They also don't send reading books home etc... There just isn't the 'urgency' to get them reading like there is in the UK.

DD can read better than the rest of her class (as she did reception in the UK and I read at home with her) but this isn't catered for at school. Her writing is behind UK (Year 2) as she just doesn't get any practise (as most kids in her class can't read yet - at age 7!).

They have a very different attitude to early years!

Hi OP.

Just wanted to pick up on something to do with the comparison made between countries.

We recently moved back to UK from overseas. I have been very impressed with the education my children have received so far here in the UK. I really felt classroom practises were a bit lacking in the country (to be fair state) I was in. They certainly push them on earlier here and they are constantly engaged.

I don't think the late start is an issue if you are going to stay in the same system / country and the system has a good solid foundation. Each country has it's own system and to a point we have to go with this and let our kids develop within that.

Best of luck

Poppet

ps Merry Xmas

MyChatNickName - teachers in the UK are expected to teach every child. If your teacher isn't doing this then you are unlucky. Most teachers genuinely manage this.

However - in some other countries teachers aren't even expected to teach kids who are far behind or ahead. For example in France and in the US, the child can fail a year and been kept back! It is not deemed the teachers fault for not teaching well, it's deemed the child's fault for being stupid.

Here if the child isn't done well questions are asked of the teacher not the child!

Same goes if a child is ahead. In some other countries the teacher isn't expected to teach them past that year's syllabus....

We are very lucky to have a system which values each child and expects all teachers to teach all kids.

Naturally not all teachers are as competant as they should be. But at least the expectation as there. All countries will have some bad teachers / schools. But they don't all have the same expectations of kids....

Redflipflops. This is exactly what we found with the writing. The lack of opportunity to write drove me mad. She would do a weekend recount on the Monday and then that would be it. Her report said "it is now time for dd to start making correct sentences". The thing was she was never shown or given examples. All they did was cut out bloody sounds and colour in the picture. No interactive whiteboards. There were a few kids around her level that could have exchanged ideas but it didn't happen. My son was put on an iep for being so far ahead of every other student, he is probably slighty above average here I think. Luckily he got a very good kindy teacher that helped him no end. She was unique in that school :)

It can be very frustrating!!