free reading in reception age child

[racmac]

DS is 5 and has just finished the reading bands in school. Teachers have suggested he brings in his own books to read.

He has just started horrid henry - any other suggestions that dont have too much in the way of older topics?

Agree with mrz (as always ), I too find it very odd that school cannot cater for him, and as migratingcoconuts said can't he choose from higher years stock?

Well Masha by your definition my son was a "free reader" long before he started nursery school somewhere around the age of 2 years

Eggspectantmum - dirty Bertie! that' the book he loved. :) Was given for hs birthday. Must get some more.

My 5 year old DS is thoroughly enjoying some Roald Dahl books at the moment. He still chooses and brings home a ridiculously easy book each week from the school library, but at home I know he's reading much harder stuff so I just let it go. He has so many social problems (ASD) that I don't want to get into a battle about insisting school give him more challenging reading books just yet.

allchildrenreading my long post was simply what schools are expected to have taught a child and suggesting to a parent that can be taught by bringing in a book from home is a con pure and simple. You may not like it I may not like but that is the expectations on children under the current system.

Thanks mrz. In a way, though, that sort of bureaucratic dead-weight probably confirms the worst nightmares of mathanxiety who argued long and hard for a later start, on another thread.

I think it is a rare teacher, a rare school who could implement government demands + balance this with EYs goals - it must take extraordinary skill.

Now if we are talking expectations at the end of EYFS allchildrenreading then reading ELGs are
4 Knows that, in English, print is read from left to right and top to bottom

5 Shows an understanding of the elements of stories, such as main character, sequence of events and openings

6 Reads a range of familiar and common words and simple sentences independently (With encouragement, the child gains meaning from simple story texts, making some use of a range of cues, including knowledge of the story or context, what makes sense grammatically and word/letter recognition. The child reads at least 20 common words in a range of contexts.)

7 Retells narratives in the correct sequence, drawing on language patterns of stories

8 Shows an understanding of how information can be found in nonfiction texts to answer questions about where, who, why and how

so hardly "free reader material"

Thank you - it has been interesting reading - I dont think the teacher is going to stop listening to him read or do nothing else with him.
She has said that she will be checking his comprehension and talking about the books with him.
The school have books but they are thin on the ground - it is a small school - we are in a rural community and a lot of the older children select from these books as well

I am keeping a close eye on the situation but they are very good - he is ahead of where he would be expected as a reception child but they encourage him and allow him to do year 1 work (its a reception/year 1 mixed class) and have made it quite clear that they know where he is and that they will allow him to "work up" at every stage.

I've been thinking further about this thread:
a) I believe that every school should have sufficient books (not sufficient scheme / banded books, but sufficient books) to enable every child to have access to suitable reading material. Not every able child comes from a home with lots of books, so a school should be able to provide for every child's needs from its own stock.

b) However, I do not believe that it is necessary to teach reading objectives that all the books read must be from the school stock. If a child's next learning objective for reading is about inference, or understanding a character's motives, for example, then that can be done from a very wide variety of books, and so the choice of a child's books while working on that objective does not need to be prescribed and limited by the teacher.

c) a school's approach to individual reading books will vary depending on their policy on how reading objectives are taught. In schools where reading objectives are directly taught and assessed / monitored in planned 'guided / group reading sessions' with a group book, then individual reading books (whether read at home, in school, with teachers, parents or adult helpers) are for reinforcement, practice and enjoyment and so the choice of these can be wider. In schools where reading objectives are taught through individual 1 to 1 reading then obviously the individual reading books may need to be more prescribed. My children attend, and I have taught in, only schools which use carefully-planned guided reading sessions as the main vehicle for teaching reading objectives, which has influenced my answers on this thread. If Mrz teaches in a school where individual readers are used to teach to specific learning objectives, then she will have a very different perspective.

teacherwith2kids that is not at all what I am saying ...
"free choice" when reading for pleasure and practise "structured" for learning and teaching and yes there needs to be plenty of choice for both purposes.

teacherwith2kids - only skimmed this thread but your comments re sneaky Match magazine made me smile - DS (now Year 1) is a competent reader but would rather be doing other things (play football) -I bribed him into reading by offering an annual subscription to Match if he showed me he could read it (funnily enough he could straight away once incentivised). And now I have to buy the Times every Monday for the football pages.....

Incidentally, is there an equivalent of the "books in homes" charity that we have in NZ, here in the UK? If so I will sign up to donate as it does a fantastic job down under.

Mrz
I wonder what this incredible son of yours (who had mastered basic English phonics by age 2 and could 'work out' words which are not entirely decodable from context and no longer got 'stuck' on any irregularly spelt words) is doing now.

What a rude, nasty way to ask, Masha.

Masha, I am wondering whether perhaps you have confused my son and Mrz as I have not seen Mrz mention a son in this thread (she may have done so elsewhere, I am a new poster here).

If you did mean my son, he was not doing those things at 2, and I did not claim he was. I could reply in detail but i feel perhaps your post is based on a misunderstanding?

Masha is being unnecessarily snide about mrz's post of Mon 11-Apr-11 16:57:43, teacherwith2kids.

Masha my incredible son has never grasped phonics and read the Financial Times at age 3. He has High Functioning Austism so wonder no longer.

ouch, masha! lets keep it to rigorous debate

MigratingCoconuts,
I am sorry if my question to Mrz seemed offensive to u or anyone else. But I found her comment on my comment offensive (and also still stand by my definition of 'free reading' for most children.)

Mashabell Mon 11-Apr-11 07:40:07
"A free reader is a child who can access even the 2000 English words which contain some tricky letters www.englishspellingproblems.co.uk/html/sight_words , such as 'once, only, people', without help. He or she has mastered basic English phonics and can 'work out' words which are not entirely decodable from context. They no longer need someone to sit next to them, listen to them read and help them out when 'stuck' on the irregularly spelt words.
Once a child has reached that stage, it's probably much better for parents to keeep an eye on, and influence, what they read at home than for the teacher. S/he will still get plenty of English teaching at school, but they no longer need learning-to-read 'homework'."

mrz Mon 11-Apr-11 16:57:43: Well Masha by your definition my son was a "free reader" long before he started nursery school somewhere around the age of 2 years.

It seemed to me that Mrz was

1. belittling my comment
2. describing her son as a wonderchild and so I asked, "I wonder what this incredible son of yours (who had mastered basic English phonics by age 2 and could 'work out' words which are not entirely decodable from context and no longer got 'stuck' on any irregularly spelt words) is doing now."

Mrz was stating fact. You were having a pop at her ds. Totally unacceptable - and you should apologise to her.

I was merely pointing out the enormous flaw in your definition Masha.

I would also point out that he wasn't taught to read but had an early ability to assimilate words after seeing them once unfortunately this didn't extend to writing and he refused to write at all until Y6. He was assessed by the EP and identified as having a reading age far in excess of his chronological age (almost X3 at that point).

Mrz
I am sorry if my question offended u.
Your son clearly learned to read in an exceptional way, but I am sorry it did not help with his spelling. My daughter was assessed as having a reading age of 11 when she was 5. She had also learned to read almost just by osmosis (unlike my son), but her early reading helped her enormously with spelling. The majority of really good spellers claim to have started to read very early.

But please point out what u see as faulty in my definition of 'free reading'. For most children, it surely means being able to access all words without help, including those with some tricky letters?

Masha, mrz said her child did not write, not that they could not spell.

Masha i am not in the slightest offended and thank you for your interest in my son.

My son was able to access all words without help (including those with tricky letters) but he still required a great deal of support to understand what the author intended. He was fine for example with non fiction ( especially anything that involved science or maths) but anything that involved humour left him confused. So the idea of being a "free reader" in school would have horrified me.
I was also an early reader and a poor speller well into my teens.