Why is MN so obsessed with reception reading?

[skiphopskidaddle]

It's a marathon, not a sprint. It doesn't matter if Johnny is on red and Amy is on lilac as (a) different schools go at different paces and (b) children develop different skills in different order.

I can't quite believe the number of reception reading threads I've seen this week along the lines of "what colour book is yours on?". I'm going over to the behaviour/development board now to check for obsessive posting about when children learn to walk. Cos it doesn't matter either, in general.

Good schools combine learning with play - and children will do best when they learn in that way, and children at 3 and 4 should cetainly not feel that their intelligence is in someway measured by what they can read at that age. They will not do well when they see their parents competing with each other to see whose child has what reading book - which is what the thread was originally about.

One too many 'ands' there!

It is interesting that the education system is set up that way evolucy.
Interesting too that at dds school, which is one of the top academic schools in the country, pre prep spends very very little time on reading and lots and lots of time on learning skills.
Ds1s prep school was the same and he is off to do English at uni with a predicted a* at A level.

Perhaps just because that is how everyone does it it may not actually be the ideal way to go.

I remember all of the parents at the pre pre-prep meeting listening as the head requested that we please do not try and teach the children to read. If we wanted to be helpful could we ensure that they can go to the loo independently....

steppemum Northern Ireland has the youngest school starting age in Europe

Four

Northern Ireland

Five

England, Malta, Netherlands, Scotland, Wales

Six

Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Republic of Ireland, Italy, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Turkey ,

Seven

Bulgaria, Estonia,Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Sweden

Thought Wales was earlier mrz?

Like England Wales has a compulsory school age of 5 although children start just after their fourth birthdays in both countries.

My yr 2 daughter can barely read recption books. My yr 4 daughters on yr6 books. Some kids in Yr4 books are still on infants books. My 3 didnt walk till 18.5 months.

I dont agree with the tables system they use. Brightest kids on top table and one who struggle on bottom table (usually the younger ones). They should all be mixed.

Sorry for the typing errors (i think i must have been on the bottom table)

Pagwatch.... I completely understand what you are saying and I am sure that there are other top schools who fully advocate early reading skills, certainly at pre-prep. Personally I would not be keen on being told by a school not to teach my own children to read, although I understand the reasoning behind this. Of course generally if a child can read at 4 but not go to the loo independently something has probably gone wrong!

It may well not be the ideal way to go for all children but will be for many others.

I don't know of any, for what it's worth.

An emphasis on early reading before a child is ready to absorb, understand, comprehend and interact is self defeating.
Some children have a natural interest in and understanding of reading. That should be supported and encouraged. But that is nothing do with trying to teach a three year old to read which will often cause more issues than it is worth.

I was quite worried by that early school starting age here, especially with a young boy (spring born). However, our reception class was very play orientated, they did the phonics and we got one reading book a month only (which DS refused to read). Now in Y1 there is only one book per week. DS is not a keen reader at 5 and I am glad we are not in a school that pushes reading as I have read of a lot on MN, e.g. a reading book every day. That would turn him off completely!

Pagwatch you said at pre-prep so age 4-7 I am certain that there are a great number of pre-prep schools that believe that teaching children age 4-7 to read is very important

Hello sorry not read all the thread but just wanted to add my tuppance worth! My dd started reception last sept and I was really taken by surprise that reading would even be on the cards My dd loves stories and looking at books but I feel it is too young to worry about reading yet. At this age it should be play play play imo. They need to sort out social and emotional development first and once they are sorted worry about reading, I think there is too much pressure on the teachers and the children and the parents.

Pagwatch

Surely absorbing, understanding, comprehending and interacting iw what children do almost from the moment they are born?

allchildren - yes, age appropriate stuff, but if you attempted to teach a baby to read you would surly get a very baffled and frustrated infant refusing to comply!

Steppemum thinks that reading ?averages out by 10, regardless of when you start?.

This is true of most of Europe, but not the UK. In other European languages learning to read is much easier and takes very little time, because in none of them do identical letters or letter strings keep having different pronunciations, like ?on ? only, once, other?. The occasional recently imported word from another language may not be completely decodable, but 99.9% are.

In English 69 spellings have more than one sound, as I have shown in one post on englishspellingproblems.blogspot.com Those phonics inconsistencies result in over 2000 tricky-to-read words which I have listed on the Sight Words page of www.EnglishSpellingProblems.co.uk Because of those words, roughly 1 in 6 English-speaking children never learn to read properly.

Those 2000 sight words take some learning, so children who are able and willing to start learning to read English early have a huge advantage. But the worst thing anyone can do is push their children into reading before they are ready.

Children vary greatly in their reading-readiness. Helping them to become so is the most important thing parents can do, apart from helping with decoding the tricky words like ?could, should, would, oh, people, come, do...? once they become keen to learn.

The best way to learn to read English is still to read to an adult and be helped to decode the tricky words, until they become automatic. This can be trying and stressful for both children and parents, and with some children requires enormous amounts of patience (as I know from having to go over and over again, with my son, the tricky words which kept tripping him up and his teacher used to write on little cards for practice at home).

The main point I want to make (having studied Lithuanian, Russian, English, German, French, Spanish and Italian) is that learning to read English is exceptionally difficult because of the way it is spelt. So it's not surprising that it pre-occupies teachers and parents for ever and ever.

There's a FREE, one day overview training event for the Sound Reading System in central London on Tuesday March 1st.

soundreadingsystem.co.uk/events-2/

Agree absolutely with Mashabell.

At DD's French-English bilingual school, learning to read in French and English occupies a lot of the primary school years. There are lots of Italian children in this school - their parents are never worried about their children's ability to read in Italian as children who have learned to read in French and English and speak MT Italian just pick it up.

Masha is talking rubbish I'm afraid Bonsoir
Italy has worse literacy/reading levels than the UK according to the 2009 ODEC data and France has marginally higher levels - France overall 496 - UK 494 - Italy 486

mrz - Masha is not talking rubbish! Your point has nothing to do with hers or mine.

Bonsoir how many children have you taught to read English?

and for that matter how many children has Masha taught to read English? (as an ex secondary teacher)

mrz - how many languages do you speak fluently, and how many children have you seen learn to read other languages?

I have only taught children to read in English (hundreds of children) Bonsoir and most of them learn to read very easily and very quickly if they are taught correctly from the start. Certainly my reception children were reading well by the age of 6 with very few exceptions.

Fine, but that doesn't mean you can claim that Masha or I are wrong to say that it is much, much easier to learn to read in, say, Italian or Spanish, than in English?