reading in reception

[mongymenthi]

My ds was identified as one of the weakest in a very able reception class early in the year. The teacher said they were going to read with him on a daily basis. He has remained on level 2b of the oxford reading tree since then and when i asked if there were any other books he could read (because he was bored with the same books) they couldn't think of any . I went on to ask if it was usual to remain on this level for this length of time to which the teacher became defensive. So, is this usual and does anyone know of ant alternative reading material? Many thanks.

I think I agree with the posters who have said not to bother too much with your little fellow acquiring reading skills. Reading to him and encouraging him to think of writing as a code is always a good way of sparking curiosity.

In the system my DCs are in (not UK) the teaching of reading is lighthearted and fun in reception and later years with the main reading taught once the child has reached 7.

What reception children are taught is to be curious, and to think about stories, how they are constructed - characters, scene, tension, resolution. To appreciate rhymes and melody in the languages they learn (bi / tri-lingual).

And they do a lot of mathematics in the early years; not just arithmetic, but 3D shapes, sorting, volume, symmetry, pictorial representations, fractions etc. all for fun, and part of games at 5 and 6 years old.

Who wants a 4 year old reading/ writing anyway?! So often the books they end up reading have age-inappropriate content.
At this early age it's far far better to get them to use their imaginations, shove paint around a page, experience the pleasure of making music, have tactile experiences, do a lot of running around, learning to swim / cycle / play in a team. Plenty of time for them to be bookworms later

Have a great summer with your little fellow OP.

Many 4 year olds want to be reading and writing Dorje (especially if they have older siblings or parents who read for enjoyment). Much younger children will role play reading and ascribe meaning to the marks they make.
I disagree with your comment about turning them into bookworms ... a love of books can't come too early IMHO.
mathanxiety I've never heard a 4 year old or their parent complain that they feel thick for not being able to do something. Older children who continue to struggle ... sadly yes.

I think Dorje is right to point out that there are better things for 4 year olds to be doing. I have seen MN parents' descriptions of their despondent Reception age children enough to know there are children who are aware they are failing in some way to master something they are expected to. Whether they use the word thick or not I don't know.

You do not inculcate a love of books by exposing children too young to an expectation to learn to decode that may or may not be appropriate, especially in a classroom setting where they can compare themselves with other children.

Teaching decoding at age 4 is not the same thing as encouraging a love of books, and does not necessarily going to lead to a love of books either. A love of books is more likely to come from the home ime, although there are homes where bookish parents have no impression on their children. Or they may end up with a couple of 'black sheep' among the owls.

4 year olds play at baking and being mummy and daddy and driving the car too, but that doesn't mean they should be taught to bake on their own, allowed to get married and set up house or given the keys to the family jalopy. The function of their play is to further the development of self regulation, development of consciousness of social rules both spoken and unspoken, and enhance the development of higher level cognition in general. Pretend reading and writing is not necessarily a sign that they want to read or write or that they are ready to be taught. For a child, an episode where they pretend to read may be part of a narrative where something else altogether is the focus. The value of pretending depends not on whether they are pretending to read Shakespeare or Boo and Baa books, but on whether other children are involved in the game, the richness of the narrative they have constructed and other factors not really related to the immediate subject matter of the play.

Are they better for all 4 year olds? I have never learnt to ride a bike I hate team sport I'm tone deaf with no sense of rhythm so music is out being dyspraxic but I could read and write without formal teaching long before school.

Gracious my granny taught me to bake long before the age of 4 and my son could make bread and scones before he started nursery (please don't tell me I'm guilty of more child abuse!)

4 year olds have always been taught to read it's nothing new. I think most children in our school enjoy their 20 minutes of phonics. We have fun making noises, playing bingo, thinking up nonsense words etc. Once a year parents are invited to wander round the school during phonics time observing all the different phases. If they thought this was hamfisted poking in the dark it certainly wasn't mentioned in the excellent feedback we received!

Your experience (since you had dyspraxia) is somewhat unusual mrz, therefore not really applicable to the majority of children, which is what school is geared towards. Most children do not learn to read or write long before school. Some of my own DCs did, but I do not see that as a sign that all children should or could.

And I think your experience of being let loose in the kitchen before age 4 is again unusual, as is your DS's. Nor does the anecdote address the point about reading or writing (or baking, ironing, driving a JCB, etc.,) as part of pretend play.

Actually mathanxiety being taught to bake by a grandmother or mother (or by a teacher in nursery) isn't at all unusual ... my granny also taught me to iron before I started school. I was allowed to do the handkerchiefs, then progressed to pillowcases
Perhaps your experiences are out of sync with what is usual

DD2 still 4 y old, has so much pleasure reading her own books . I'm quite tgrateful that the school has taught her how to read at such an early age. Whenever I visit the school they never seem to "learn" just "play play play" but seem to have taught it anyway

To be fair, there is absolutely no pressure (in most schools anyway), for children to master reading or writing in Reception.

I have had 2 children so far go through reception and have observed a huge variety of interest/ability etc and the encouragement to do more only really starts later on in Y1 - and even then I don't find it's pressurised.

I too have an eager 4 year old who is a really keen reader and I am glad the school has helped with that - equally he is not keen on writing and the school have not pressurised him at all.

I think doing phonics on the main is fun for the kids as it's done in a very fun way - I have never heard any parents or child complain that it's boring or drilling, whether they don't remember them after 10 minutes or whether they've known them for a while, it seems to be something the enjoy doing for those 10 minutes or so a day.

I think most pressure is self inflicted by the parents as they feel their children should be doing x y or z by a certain amount of time and I also understand that anxiety as I have been through it myself, so I am not judging.

Well I would conduct a poll, but the point was that just pretending to do something doesn't indicate a child is ready to do it, whereas the playing and pretending in and of itself is very valuable and possibly a much more worthwhile activity to be engaged in than the 'real thing'.

LovetheHarp: (I love the harp too!) You make a really good point about self-inflicted pressure on the parents and like you, I so empathise with parents at this stage as I?ve been there too.

I was recently chatting to a reading support specialist who works one on one with children in our local area. (She is using our Ruby and Max books, as well as a range of other books, depending on needs.) I respect her hugely - she?s a lovely person as well as highly skilled in her area. Anyway, I asked her the other day what one piece of advice she?d give to parents with children starting out as new readers.

She said the key thing is instilling confidence in your child so that they believe that reading is something they can do. She then said the way to instil confidence is certainly through sincere praise, but more important she said, is for the child to feel that the parent is really enjoying the reading experience with them. How interesting is that!

She cautioned against the situation where the child comes home with a book after a long day at school and the mum says, ?Right! Come on! Let?s get this book done, quickly! I need to get supper going!? Essentially, she was warning against inadvertently creating a tense atmosphere (and again I so empathise with mums because I?ve been guilty of this with my own DC at times, both when they were schooled and now they?re home educated)!

From the perspective of a home educator, I find this point fascinating because it comes back what Charlotte Mason (whom many of us HE mums view as our guru! ) says about education. She says the atmosphere of learning is absolutely critical. If anyone is interested, there?s a Charlotte Mason website that explains these ideas in more detail here

The point is, mathanxiety a child is hardly going to want to role play an activity that makes them feel insecure (thick in your words) are they?

Perhaps your experience of children learning to read is different to mine. But IME young children actually choose to join in phonics activities, because they find them fun, not because they are held captive and forced to participate.

Oh yes they do that plenty, mrz. My own DCs, neighbours' children, children my DDs babysit for all play games involving monsters, getting lost in the woods, etc., among others. They also play school, with one child assigned to be teacher sometimes quite strict though usually a softie. The games end happily with rescue of some vanquishing of the baddies. The contrast between the suspense while mired in their plight and the joyful ending is delicious.

Although whether they play something that makes them feel insecure is really not the point either. The point is that playing at reading does not indicate they are ready to read and that playing in itself is a very valuable and worthwhile activity that develops skills on many fronts.

Playing a game that makes them feel insecure is incredibly helpful as they attempt to understand or internalise or emotionally comprehend things that are happening in their lives or things they have heard about. They can work through conflicts and difficult concepts like death or illness or fear of the dark, etc. through play. Sometimes they seem to instinctively seek out some conflict (early sense of narrative perhaps?) to resolve in their scripts/co-operative imaginative play.

I think if you read my original post on this thread mathanxiety I said some children will be ready I didn't say all.
As we both know play takes place on many levels and the type of play therapy you are describing can be very helpful but not at all similar to what I observe in an early years setting

It's not play therapy, mrz. It's common or garden play.

Children play 'hospital', 'mummies/daddies/babies', games involving princesses, firemen, winning olympic medals -- you name it, if it can take up ten minutes of time with another child and involves a little roleplay, some narrative or scenesetting, occasional props, some moving the plot along, it is 'play'. Not 'therapy' . Through it, children digest their lives and their environments. For instance, a child's frustration with school can be expressed in a game where the teacher figure is harsh/shouty/assigning unrealistic tasks. A child can explore the arrival of a baby in the family and get used to her new role in it by playing games involving a baby's arrival.

The problem with pitching the same phonics at all children in a class is that they are not all ready to learn the intended lesson from it. Those who are ready and who do learn will still be waiting around for the others to catch up in maybe two years. Those who do not learn will feel like failures at the tender age of 4. If other things were concentrated on, valuable lessons could still be learned by all. Both will also learn from the result of their success or failure that they are either smart or not. It is a bad thing for any child to introduce academic performance into the factors they use to form an idea of themselves, of who they are, at the age of 4, both for those who click fast and for those who do not. The belief that you are 'smart' can be shattered easily when work becomes more challenging later on and you hit a roadblock. The belief that you are not smart will hold you back and put you off trying. It is very hard to start again and try to rebuild confidence when these two trends become visible.

Since parents tend to get so worked up about where their children stand in comparison to the others in the class (this happens with most parents) children are going to feel pressure, competition, frustration of their parents. It is a really horrible thing to do to families of small children. Read the OP again and tell me if this mother is feeling a bit anxious about a perfectly normal 4 year old who will probably be ready to read in the next few years but who is not right now.

So you are saying every child who plays mummies and daddies is anxious? Doctors and nurses is anxiety?

No.

It is playing. Playing just for the heck of it. Choosing to play one particular little scenario because somewhere in the recesses of their minds there exists some fascination with the subject.

Mrz, what don't you understand about children playing?

But I do understand children's play mathanxiety I'm just not sure you do

Surely you have to try and teach them 'all' all you won't know which ones are ready??
In our school all the teachers have different work for about 6 levels in their classes. Whether that be a phonics group/ maths/ wrtiting etc.
They are doing phonics differently from last Septembers reception intake. I am attached to a Yr 1 class, my son is in reception. He is ahead of probably 70% of the Yr 1's.
They certainly don't move them on unless they are ready.

More of them are likely to be ready in a couple of years -- why not wait? Save a lot misdirected effort by teachers, heartbreak for children.

My daughter would be heartbroken if she was told she couldn't learn to read until she was 7.

To take it to the other extreme, my DD's Year 1 class is wonderful and very play based and the teacher hates worksheets and anything 'boring' and mundane. The children love her and are all doing really well, she is so enthusiastic and every mothers dream. But my DD seems to like sitting and writing reams and reams of stories so her teacher encourages this and even has a resource draw full of worksheets just for my DD to access whenever she likes!

So what i'm saying is not all children are the same, many schools (not all though sadly) are very much geared towards play and away from formality and i think it is a much nicer environment in which to learn than when i was at school.

I have friend's with children the same age in other schools who have to push their children into completing homework sheets that really is not necessary at this age.

dd, age 4 loves to read for herself, then she roleplays the stories she has read, mixing and matching from different books and gets immense enjoyment from it. reading has opened up many more worlds for her to imagine.

op, keep reading to him and finding books from the library to read with him. all the practice will make a difference. there are many tales on mn of children who suddenly get it and whizz ahead really quickly, especially in year one. it is very frustrating when you feel that dc are making no visible progress at all, despite all the imput... then all of a sudden it clicks and you begin to wonder what all the trouble was about. then you get to the next thing that they just don't get for ages and ages and ages....

I don't think you can keep a child from reading if they are ready to do it. And I don't think you can get them to do it until they are ready. I have never figured out how DD1 learned as she had never been exposed to any formal phonics work, just lots of being read to, etc. (She was also able to recognise different makes of cars when we saw them on the road, using their symbols.)

I agree with BlackEyedSusan's advice to read plenty (and keep it fun.) Year 1 is the stage where many children sudden;y 'click' -- very true. Try not to be frustrated or show frustration to your DS.

Debs, that sounds like a very nice learning environment to me.

The environment debs describes is found in many, many Y1 (and Y2) classes mathanxiety which is why I said earlier your idea of what is happening in schools doesn't match the reality. It's all very gentle and supportive no heartbroken children.