Teaching your children to read - your job or the teachers?

[clarlce]

Apparently, according to Ms Frost, 33% of parents NEVER read to their children.

What lengths should parents go in supporting their children in learning to read?

I volunteer as a reading assistant in my local primary school and the variation in the level of ability, in one year group, is significant and would certainly make it extremely difficult for a teacher to accommodate all those differing abilities.

From my point of view i cannot understand why any parent would want to hold their child back, especially as the benefit of a one-to-one session with mum or dad can have about the same impact as weeks of school.

I am not just talking about reading to your children before bed etc. but actively, imaginatively teaching them how to read as a teacher might.
Is it a parents responsibility to make the teachers and, of course, the child's life easier?

My parents didn't teach me to read but they read to me a lot and I picked it up by myself when I was 3/4. My eldest couldn't read before she started school but I read to her a lot and she was ready to learn how. She could read and write her name (and other words if I spelled them out) and knew how to sound and write the alphabet at just over four (when she started school). I knew the alphabet but had done almost no writing before starting school at 5.

DEFINITELY the parents. Just the attention alone that would give to the child is so valuable.

CDM
The attention is hugely valuable.
Moreover, the Literacy Trust's report to which I referred yesterday
www.literacytrust.org.uk/assets/0001/0336/Omnibus_reading_2010.pdf
kept emphasising the difference love of reading makes and how having lots of books in the home helps to foster it.

Build a lifelong interest in reading. "Getting kids actively involved in the process of reading, and having them interact with adults, is key to a lifelong interest in reading," said BeAnn Younker, principal at Battle Ground Middle School in Indiana.

Children whose parents read to them tend to become better readers and perform better in school, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

Reading to kids helps them with language and speech development.

It expands kids' vocabulary and teaches children how to pronounce new words.

Reading to toddlers prepares them for school, during which they will need to listen to what is being said to them (similar to what they do while being read to).

Reading to older kids helps them understand grammar and correct sentence structure.

Kids and parents can use reading time as bonding time. It's an excellent opportunity for one-on-one communication, and it gives kids the attention they crave.

Being read to builds children's attention spans and helps them hone their listening skills.

Curiosity, creativity and imagination are all developed while being read to.

Being read to helps kids learn how to express themselves clearly and confidently.

Kids learn appropriate behaviour when they're read to, and are exposed to new situations, making them more prepared when they encounter these situations in real life.

When read to, children are able to experience the rhythm and melody of language even before they can understand the spoken or printed word.

"Sorry iggly but phonics has been around since writing began"

mrz - what makes you believe this? Regular spelling was not a feature of English until quite recently (most 18th manuscripts of reputable novelists with a high degree of literary skill by anyone's measure will have instances of a single word having multiple spellings).

Regular spelling was not a feature of English until quite recently
Exactly! people would spell words how they sounded (phonics) which is why there were many regional variations (even from village to village)

Phonics was the main method of instruction from the Reformation until the late 19thC

There is a book called something like the Roots of Phonics sorry can't recall the author

But surely the vast majority of people associate the term "phonics" (or "synthetic phonics") with an explicit method of learning to decode and encode regular English, as opposed to "best guessing", which is what happened in the past and led to variations in spelling.

For the next 200 years or so, the phonics system of learning remained basically unchanged. There were many attempts to improve it, but the core ideas remained essentially the same?constant repetition of alphabetic code training, syllable memorization, and finally decoding words by ?sounding them out?.

The first step was memorization of the Alphabetic Code. Every letter is assigned a sound, and some (such as ?c? or vowel letters) have soft and hard versions. Children were taught to memorize these sounds, or phonemes through drilling. Often, these drills were said aloud, in a chorus, or as kids games as the children went through all of the letters.

Next, they were taught the 44 distinct sounds of the English language. Of course, some of these overlap with the single letter sounds of the alphabetic code training. Generally, these were single syllable nonsense sounds that could be strung together to form small three and four letter words.

When the children had progressed to the point where they could identify single words, they were given the task of simple sentences. Naturally, this progressed to the point where they were reading regular text from books and playing card & family board games.

sound familiar?

The only thing that is new about "phonics" (synthetic phonics) is the use of the label ...
Phonics were effectively banned in the USA in the 40s and it went out of favour in the UK some time later as we followed the US example of Whole Language instruction

Regular spelling was not a feature of English until quite recently
It still isn't, e.g. 'blue shoe flew through to you'. - U can see all of them at
englishspellingproblems.blogspot.com/2010/11/english-spelling-rules.html

I think u are confounding 'regular' in the sense of having one spelling per word with 'predictable' like the 'b' in 'big bad bear'. Before the arrival of printing in 1476 and the 15th century bible wars, English spelling was more predictable, as far as we know from the few surviving manuscripts, from the few people who could write.

In the 16th C English spelling consistency more or less disintegrated, with the introduction of more and more alternatives (frend - freind, friend, beleve - beleeve, believe, hee - he). This led to calls for standardisation, but the people who helped to bring this about (main teaching vicars) often chose the more difficult alternatives.

U can see a brief outline of the history of English spelling at
englishspellingproblems.blogspot.com/2010/04/how-english-spelling-became-so.html

I am not confusing anything, mashabell. Regular spelling means just that - spelling that obeys rules.

I wonder, masha, when you hate English spelling so much (you will perhaps have noticed that your obsession is very much a minority one), why you spend so much time writing in English on here? Why don't you go on an Italian or Spanish forum and write there?

I feel as parents we should support teachers in teaching our children to read.
As Bunnywunny says those children that don't get the opportunity to reinforce their reading at home will fall behind those that do. DS has enjoyed the cbeebies "Fun with Phonics" DVD and activities since he was 3 years old. He is now in year 1 and making steady progress with his reading. He enjoys books being read to him as well as chipping in with the parts of the story that he likes best. He loves going to the library to chose books and even asks me to get the librarian to reserve other books by the same authors. The least that we as parents can do is to encourage their learning through the things that interest them.

I think it has to make a really big difference to a child's performance at school if they are supported to enjoy books and reading at home. Whether or not they have a natural aptitude, and whatever developmental stage they are at, they will still do better with good support than without.

I help with reading at a primary, and, in general, the children whose parents don't ever write in their reading/homework books are the ones who struggle most with reading, and are behind the rest of their classmates.

I would agree with that Smudgy it certainly fits what I see as a teacher

I don't believe it should be a parents job to teach their child to read. As Smudgy and mrz have said, there are some children whose parents do not read to them at all. Whilst I think we should support our children in reading and in their learning generally, if the main teaching is not done at school then pupils with parents who can't or will not read will be very disadvantaged.

As the parent of a toddler and a qualified teacher, I do see teaching ds all sorts of things, including reading, as my job, alongside the teachers.

I'd never force him though, I go with what he wants to learn, although I do read to him every night. A few months ago he became quite fixated with letters and now knows all the single letter sounds. Now he's 2.4 and had gone off letters and has become quite fixated on numbers and counting, so letters are taking a back seat for now.

My only aim is to help him meet him potential.

Agree that teachers who want children to start school unable to read so they don't get 'bored' are not good teachers, what happened to differentiation?!

jaffacakes - I think schools (and many pre-schools) DO do the main teaching in terms of formal phonics etc, but the problem is that like many skills, reading needs regular practice and encouragement to really develop and 'click'.

A school teacher just doesn't have time to sit 30 kids down and do one to one reading with them every single day, that's the reality of it.

well, having sent two interested , keen children to school, both able to read and write their name, both read to every night, only to end up hiring a tutor in Y2, and currently considering it for the second one (also Year 2) I have agreed with my mother (ex primary) that she will teach the third to read before he starts.

Personally, I think the school has them for long enough and my job is not to teach them but to support them.

If they started school able to read and write what has gone wrong that you need a tutor?

well i'm a teacher (secondary) and mum of a 4yo. sure i taught him to recognise numbers from an early age and to count and later when he showed an interest i started to do the same with letters. i read to him loads, i encourage him to think about the sounds in words - what sound a word starts with - what other words start with that sound - ooh look those words rhyme etc etc. but i really don't know how to 'teach him to read'. i can encourage confidence and competency in language and sounds and patterns etc but what technique is one meant to use to teach to read?

the trouble partly is that i just don't think we're given enough information by schools. we're supposed to help and be part of the teaching process but in order to do so we could really do with a clue about what approaches teachers are taking, what the goals are etc. many of us don't have a clue about teaching by phonetics or it is alien to us because we learnt a different way and find it hard to identify with it.

i do find it hard to believe that you aren't handed a booklet at the beginning of primary school that introduces you to phonetics and gives practical advice and guidance as to how support your child's literacy learning.

and if i feel like that as an educator and someone with post graduate level education then i think it's clear that the vast majority of us need guidance on this.

i'm also a bit concerned that by week 4 of primary ds doesn't seem to have done any writing or reading. i know they've just started and ra ra ra social skills etc but i'm kind of sending him to school at this stage to learn to read and write.