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.

But there is thread after thread started by parents who think their precious and probably bright child is behind, who think their child has something wrong with him or her, who want to know how they can push their little square peg into the round hole...

I am not using 'precious' in any sort of pejorative way here. It is very upsetting for a parent to see their own child, precious to them, apparently experiencing a problem right at the start of school just because that school happens to be situated in England, whereas if the child was in school pretty much anywhere else in the English speaking world his or her intellectual performance would not be an issue at age 4.

There are many teachers out there who don't know their ass from their elbow where gently supportive teaching goes. And there are frustrated parents and children who think they are failures. There is pressure, competition and frustration. They start a lot of threads here. (I am seriously considering a spreadsheet on the matter.)

I don't think I used the word 'heartbroken' btw. I think it was used to make a different point too. Words I have used are frustration, competition, despondent, anxiety...

Well, maybe the problem is in what parents perceive as being important. Basically you want to postpone the obvious difference between children in their reading performe till they are 7 y old (I don't quite believe in that all children eventually catch up, the little I have seen from dc experience there remains a big range of what children are able to read when they are 7 y or even 10 y old). But if it's eg "sporty" things (running, caqtching balls)than it doesn't matter that a 4 old may not be very good at it even though they may be "late bloomers".
I did go to school in Scandinavia and I know that dc1 would have preferred the English way to the Scandinavian way of playing outside instead of learning to read.

The big range in reading ability in England comes even though children get started on phonics in England at 4 and it has always been there, all through the history of measuring children's reading performance, with or without systematic phonics instruction, so there is really no point in doing something that is probably not going to result in any general improvement in the long term, but which can take time in the classroom better spent focusing other things.

There are a lot of factors besides teaching or not teaching phonics at age 4 that go into creating good or poor readers at 7 or 10 or beyond. Even children in the same family can have a wide range of reading ability or motivation. My DD1 and DD2 read from an early age, before school, having basically picked it up themselves. DS learned himself while in kindergarten in the US (age 5ish), and the other 2 DDs learned somewhere between them. Trying to get DS to read books (apart from Captain Underpants) was like pulling teeth, but he read every technical description of his favourite subjects that he could get his hands on (planes and flight), then moved on to weapons, tanks, artillery, military history, etc. DDs 1 and 2 read their way through their entire lives to this point and always have a book going. DDs 3 and 4 never opened a book after getting through the basic decoding skills stage, but suddenly at age 9 or 10 started in on the deep end, having skipped the basic chapter books and Look I Can Read sort of titles. I kept on reading to them (entire Narnia series and others) through the drought.

I would like to postpone the perception of obvious differences between children in the area of reading until the children themselves are better able to deal with the fact that that difference exists, until they have a firmer grasp of who they are as people and will not be put off trying to improve by an internal self definition formed by their early experience of failure in this area..

I have encountered parents who get all tied up in knots about reading, mainly in places where early reading is taught and therefore early learning is expected and therefore seen as the norm -- I think there's a vicious circle there that does the affected children no good at all. OTOH, I have seen some parents in the US get very worried if a child does not appear to have good hand eye co-ordination or seems not to be cut out for contact sports, which is where it's at for many parents there.

Mathanxiety

I also don't really see why, unless there is immense pressure at home, phonics teaching in Reception should produce any more anxiety than any other form of teaching in Reception. If the school plonks little ones down for 30 minutes and lectures them on sounds, then gives out stars, you may have a point, but few (if any) schools do this.

Not only do I think you've got the teaching wrong, but I think you drastically underestimate the extent to which children who have encountered books do wish to read and incorporate it into their play. DS2 is just 2, for instance, but will sit his monkey next to him and 'read' him a story, or squiggle lines on a page and say he's written about going on the bus. DS1 has poor language skills, but understood at 1 that logos on shops carried meaning, and had worked out that was because of letters (which he showed at 2 by arranging fridge magnets at a friend's house so they could play going to Tesco).

And that is, to my mind, part of the argument for systematic reading teaching, because children's play is not an anarchic chaos but involves them in rule creation. And if the rules they are creating are that pictures tell the story regardless of text, or that 'red' is always written in red ink, or that words need to be memorised whole, then they are hindering their later ability to read. You can't isolate them from reading, but you can guide their play to allow them to advance appropriately.

My DCs used to do all that too (incorporating reading and writing into playing), and they used to have little tea parties, 'bake' cakes, make sandwiches, take orders from restaurant customers -- no way would I let them go off to work as waitresses, bakers, or use the hot oven or the mixer though.

The rule creation that is involved is children's play is tremendously important in the process of socialisation and the development of self regulation; it is the polar opposite of anarchic chaos. But it has nothing at all to do with reading or writing per se, or with indicating whether children are ready to learn to read or write, any more than it indicates that a child is ready to don a wig and judge cases in the court of chancery.

Whatever 'rules' about reading or writing children may have in their heads your examples seem very far fetched and highly improbable are usually a part of some game where reading or writing is not the main focus. For instance a group may play a game involving writing on walls and the consequences thereof, or may have pretend spelling tests, where little scribbles represent the words and everyone gets a star or whatever other result the 'teacher' decides to give.

You absolutely cannot isolate children from symbols or prevent them from coming to conclusions of their own about symbols and what they represent. You can answer questions and point things out if you wish. There is no point in slowing down the progress of a child who is raring to go, and ready to learn. By the same token, there is no point in trying to teach someone in a classroom who is not ready, who despite being surrounded by the same letters, signs, symbols, etc., that the raring to go child is, has not formed the same conclusions or arrived at the same point of readiness.