non readers

[sageygirl]

Are there any out there? Can it be that unusual? My DD can read "the" and nothing else. She has just got good at "the" and will spot the word on cereal boxes, newspapers and anything she sees. She has no interest in learning any other words though - she seems to think she can read now so why bother any more! School is sending home 3 words a week to read - but she won't even glance at them. She is in yr R and is a summer baby. Is this unusual? I wasn't much worried, but there are so many threads about children being held back by schools, I feel in contrast that the school is pushing her to do far more than she can or wants to. Is this fairly common?

My DD was a summer baby and could not read when she started reception. By the spring of reception she was able to recognise some of the high frequency words and it slowly took off from there, but now in Year 3 she is a super reader.

I found it was a bit of a struggle with the reading until she could read well enough to really read and understand the simple stories, rather than having to focus on each individual word. At her school they encouraged doing things like making a game of matching pairs to help recognise high frequency words, and that might be more fun then just straight 'read the words'. Also, if you read to her, that might help spark the interest too.

Hasn't she been learning letter sound correspondences? Did you get those home for her to work on? Does she have decodable words sent home to practise?

Whatever you do, don't try and make her learn high frequency words as 'wholes'. It is far more important that she learns letter sound correspondences and how to decode and blend to read unfamiliar words. This will probably make far more sense to her as it has a logic to it and is much easier than learning how to distinguish between words by the 'look' of the whole word.

She will not be the only child unable to read at this stage. I wouldn't worry about that, but I would worry if she isn't getting a good grounding in phonics.

Thanks for your comments. She is doing letter sound correspondences at school and from what her teacher says they do play games around this and make it fun. But she isn't interested in it and so isn't picking it up. She just doesn't want to try at the moment, hopefully this will change soon. She likes me to read to her which we do regularly but will not join in - won't talk about the story, won't try to sound out a word, just walks off when asked. I don't ask often by the way as I don't want it to become a battle.

Her older brother taught her "the" as he likes to help order her about and show her how clever he is. She listens to him and is eager to please. Perhaps he should take over! He has had much more success than the teacher or me.

DS was the same. Took him ages to click, but he's in year 2 now and zooming along. Just make sure she likes books, read to her lots and try not to push her before she's ready. Worked for us.

In Germany they learn to read at 6 and are certainly not behind English children by the age of 10. Reading at 4 might suit a few children, can be drilled into some children and is irrelevant to some children. In the long run, not important at all when she does it.

I've got a summer born reception child as well.Not a non reader but a recent beginning to read/blend sounds.

She wasn't interested in reading words as she got her first ones home in Oct/Nov but enjoys it more as it begins to make sense to her.

I've been conscious to do a bit with her at home as her older sibling (also a summer born) seemed to struggle in year 1 as she was behind alot of the other children.However, to add to this the older sibling did fine and has bypassed most of the children who read before her/were on much higher reading levels.

The only thing I've been doing in the last couple of months is practising the sounds as she has learnt them at school (sounds are done at her school with the jolly phonics actions) and blending words with them in ( about 5/10 minutes a day).

What phase of letters and sounds are you on?
I had a bit of a panic at the start of this term in January as dd's school is on phase 3 and I realised she wasn't at all confident at phase 2 with blending the sounds.I used the letters and sounds website and we did a few words each day to check which she could do and couldn't out of phase 2 and are now moving onto phase 3 words.

The phonics and the realisation alot of words can be sounded out without knowing them has sparked the interest in the words from school which she loves if she can get them right easily.

I know she has a daily lesson in phonics at school but I felt as her concentration is still behind most of her class so some 1 to 1 with me helped.

I don't think it has helped in dd's school that words are given to learn that they can't sound out before they have grasped the basics of blending regular (none tricky) words.What other words has your dd had?

It's very young and no time to worry. But if you can afford £3.85 do look at one of the new Jolly Phonics Activity Books (no commercial connection!). This is exactly what I would have liked with by more-interested-in-lego DS years ago

Summer birthdays can be tough - and it's very, very early days.

Mine doesn't understand the concept of reading yet. She knows about half her letters, but I don't think she grasps the idea of associating letters with sounds. She knows which letter her name starts with but can't recognise her name. She can't write anything either. I'm not bothered though; she isn't even five yet!!

Her big sister started learning to read at 6 1/2 and is a great reader now at eleven.

I think the main thing is to let them come to it in their own time. Much better to start late and pick it up fairly quickly than start too young and bang their heads against a brick wall and maybe give up on themselves.

The policy of trying to get all Reception children reading is daft.

sageygirl
Not all children, and not all adults are able to use phonics, which is only half of the learning to equation, the Sublexical half.
The Lexical half of the equation is visual word recognition, and research states that we use both lexical and sublexical processes when we perform the task of reading. So children need to develop both a be able to match the whole sound of a word to the whole image of a word, and if the are cognitively able to learn the so called sounds which can make up a word, the graphic symbols our culture uses to represent the various speech sounds.

The age of maturation is usually between the ages of 7 - 8 years old which is when research says formal education should begin. This is the at which most children have developed their cognitive abilities and stop growing out of cognitive problems. All children develop different cognitive skills at different ages and at different rates until the age of maturation.
Those who may have some form of cognitive deficit or disorder will also have some time to develop alternative cognitive skills to compensate for any deficits they may have.
Our education system starts formal education years to early and creates unneccessary self esteem problems for children, and can prevent stifle natural development. And creates a UK Summer Baby Syndrome because our children are not given the time they need to develop at their own natural rate.

Let your DD develop in her own time, as all children should be allowed to.

I have a xmas baby in reception and he is not reading either. Am trying not to be worried - pushing is definitely counter productive. He has learnt how to sound out and blend though. I think for your own reassurance it would be reasonable to talk to your child's teacher to see what they are expecting for her at this point but at the same time there is a long time bfore Y1 to catch up.

my ds is in Primary 1 (scotland) and will be 6 next week- he was the oldest in his class when he started as in scotland they start between 4.5 and 5.5. Last year he wouldn't have been interested in learning to read but this year he has picked it up unbelievable quickly and finds it quite easy.

DD who is a summer birthday is now 4.5 and if we were in England she would be in reception. She can't write her own name, she can recognise a few letters (mainly from her name) and she certainly can't read any words. She can spell phonetically but only because she has heard her brother doing his homework. She can't draw either- only a person/face but nothing else.

I do think 4 is too young for most children to learn to read and write.

We are moving to Australia in 2 months and they start when they are 5/6 there. So dd won't start till February 2011 when she will be 5.5 instead of this August in Scotland. There is no way she was ready last summer when she had just turned 4 so if we had lived in England I would have been panicking!

Many thanks all - this is reassuring. I think with DD it's mostly a case of wanting to do other things and I think I'll just let her do them and try to relax. She loves drawing and spends loads of time creating brightly coloured blobs and Mr Men-like people. I don't think we have an artistic streak in the family. I will look at the letters and sounds website as she loves having a go on the computer and, you never know, it might spark an interest. I find it difficult to relax about the kids and their reading. It all seems so formal with talk about levels and attainment and gaps in knowledge which seems plain wrong to me in respect of 4 year olds. And I loathe the "working towards" euphemism which seems to translate into "fail".

read to her. let her enjoy books. let her read the word "the" when she sees it. Make casual comments about the occasionl other word, eg "in" which uses the letters taught early on. If you push too much you risk putting her off reading.

Dolfrog, can you point to some of this research? We are seriously thinking of not starting dd in school until 6 or 7, and any research to back us up would be good.

My ds is an August baby and he is pretty much the same. He can sometimes spell out simple words like 'dog' with a lot of help, but usually misses off the last letter, or guesses it wrong. He looks at me for clues and I struggle to get him to look at the letters on the page and try to de-code!

He has a book with three high frequency words on each page - he has memorised the first three, but can't recognise them anywhere else, and he hasn't a clue about the other 15 or so! I'm intrigued as to why he gets 3 new ones every week, when he clearly hasn't learned the others.

It's strange and frustrating because my daughter picked up reading no problem - there was no effort involved on my part at all!- whereas this seems to be such hard work. But then she was desperate to learn, whereas ds does not seem at all interested. Lego and Star Wars are far more interesting!