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?

A friend said that to me this week, that she didn't know 'how' to teach her daughter to read, so she didn't try to before school.
That gave me food for thought, it didn't even cross my mind, you need to 'teach' a certain way!
I can see the point that when they are at school it's important to follow on with the way a school does it for continuity, but really I see any type of learning as a good thing.

I agree with those that say it's up to the child, supported by their parents and teachers when / what they learn. It boggles me to think that you wouldn't teach your child/ren at home!

My motivation to teach my son to read {he's 5 in September and starting reception then} was that he started reading himself. {simple words like 'off' on the light switch for example} so it seems odd to me that some think I should have waited until the teacher / children in his class level, were ready to start that with him, when he was clearly interested / ready 6 months ago.

I'm not doing it because worried at all about the 'school readiness', or 'getting ahead' side of things, I'm not worried at all about being 'behind' academically at school either. I recognise that there has to be curriculum etc at school of course, but I don't think for a minute that it's important for my children to be ahead or on schedule with it.

Them being interested in learning and being encouraged / supported in that is my main concern. As long as they have that, they will learn when they are ready.

Anyway back to the OP; yes I think it's important {in an ideal world, I can think of plenty of reasons why either the home OR school environment for learning might not be as good as it could be for a child} that we teach at home as well as in the school. {In all things, not just for reading specifically}.

Think parents should get the kids ready for reading - ie by reading to them, listening to them etc. Neither of mine could read before they went to school, but my they could in less than a term of school. I religiiously made them do their reading every night and read to them every night for years - sometimes we shared harder books - ie they read a bit, then I read a bit.

I know one child who was taught to read age 3 and could read simple books. Now, at the end of Y1 she is not far ahead of everyone else, enjoys reading age appropriate books. Another boy who had been read to lots and lots, who loves books but has not been taught to read before school. That boy was a free reader by the end of reception and now (end of Y1) writes good stories and has an amazing vocabulary.

I just can't see the benefit and obsession with some parents teaching 3 year olds to read?? To me it seems a wast of time, unless they ask.

I agree gabid keep the love of books going.Ds was not taught but read fluently by school.

Both. I've always read to the dc's. DS is 4.8 and we have been reading Peter & Jane and some phonics books for the last few weeks.

I'm trying not to push it though as he starts school in Sept and I don't want to teach him anything that might confuse him. Once I know what the teachers do I'll do what I can to complement it at home.

DS1 has always been difficult for me to teach reading, he cries, he runs away and hides and I worry I am doing him more harm than good. We have a lot of books in the house and the boys always see me reading, we read to them whenever they want us to, and at bedtime. I try to share the reading of books with DS1, taking it in turns, but if he shows any signs of upset or stress then I take over because I want him to love books as I do and he gets enough pressure at school. We do suspect he may have issues though.

DS1 has always been difficult for me to teach reading, he cries, he runs away and hides and I worry I am doing him more harm than good. We have a lot of books in the house and the boys always see me reading, we read to them whenever they want us to, and at bedtime. I try to share the reading of books with DS1, taking it in turns, but if he shows any signs of upset or stress then I take over because I want him to love books as I do and he gets enough pressure at school. We do suspect he may have issues though.

Whose job is it to tecah the parents how to teach children to read?

or tacah the tecahers how to proofread, for that matter (apologies).

I think it is most definitely school's job to teach children sound basic technical skills, like penmanship, synthetic phonics, counting, addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, times tables. Which doesn't mean that I don't support that learning - I am very happy to do homework that directly supports acquisition of those skills. But I much prefer to put technical learning into practice in RL with my children than actually do the technical teaching.

I honestly don't see how you would spend 4 or 5 years parenting a child and not read to them. I'm honestly not being wanky here, but surely every now and again you do a bedtime story, or read a shop sign, or something? To not do it, you would have to make an effort not to.

My DS is 9 and I have already posted on another thread that I was more or less told off in DS's report for not reading to him enough. We used to read every night but i hated it and so did he, he made excuses and would give up after a paragraph. We have hundreds of books at home. He is not interested. I do feel guilty and quite crap especially when I read threads like this.

i think it is shared by school and home - i do not understand parents who do not read at home to their children from a very young age - from when a child is old enought to pick up a book (be it paper, card or fabric) it is easy to look through it together commenting on shapes, colour etc - children do like to pick up books and 'read' them even when they cannot read

to those of you who never read with your children - why ???

It is the job of BOTH school and parents.

I once read it likened to driving lessons.

You have the lessons (or school) to teach you the key information and show you want you need to do, plus a bit of practise thrown in.

You then go away and practise - a few minutes every day in the case of reading, only needs to be 5 minutes.

The more practise you do out of the lessons/school the more likely you will pick up the skills faster and be competent sooner.

Practise less away from the lessons/school, it will take you longer. Sometimes much longer.

I doubt there is that many people really who cannot fit in a mere 5 minutes of time most days to it with their child and read together.

I work as a TA in a Y1 class and it is very obvious which children read at home and which children don't, even without looking in their rading diaries. Some children haven't read once all year at home. Talking to some of them some children don't even have a parent read to them at all home, let alone them reading to the parent.

Fruit - please don't feel crap, I don't believe children benefit from being pressured into something at home that they receive enough pressure about at school. My DS1 is 8, he is quick thinking and clever enough to poke his Dad in the eye while DP and I were having a staring contest so that I'd win, they can't all be a reading genius!

Fruit - please don't feel crap, I don't believe children benefit from being pressured into something at home that they receive enough pressure about at school. My DS1 is 8, he is quick thinking and clever enough to poke his Dad in the eye while DP and I were having a staring contest so that I'd win, they can't all be a reading genius!

Both.

I read to my DC all the time. Still read to my eldest sometimes and he's 14. We have a house full of books and DH and I read a great deal so they get the message that reading is a normal thing to do. I never sat down with my DC are deliberately 'taught' them to read.

The teachers start the process and help him if he is struggling. We follow their lead and support what they are doing.

Any half decent teacher can deal with a child who can read going into reception. It is definitely not uncommon. i would imagine at least one child in every class starts school able to read. There is a not more to phonics than mere reading, so a child of 4 or 5 should not be bored at all, definitely not if phonics is done in a fun interactive way and ideally differentiated.

I have never met a real life teacher who has found it hard to have a child start their class able to read.

Infact imo it would be far harder to work with a child who has never picked up a book in his/her life than a fluently reading one.

@Butterypie

I don't think the OP was talking about reading stuff and responding to questions, I think she was talking about systematically teaching a child how to read.

For me, though, it's all those little things that have challenged me most not in teaching DS1 to read (which I had no wish to do), but in thinking about how what I do intersects with how he will be formally taught to read. If DS asks 'what that word' for a shop sign or in a book, do I just tell, blend and then tell, ask them to work from some letter knowledge (he has it through speech therapy or nursery)? If he has a jigsaw with alphabet on it do I talk about /t/, te or tee? If he clearly then stares memorising it, do I encourage or discourage that? Should I really be delighted that he has driven nursery into teaching him to put the alphabet in order? And it's hard, because for obvious reasons work produced on early literacy tends to be focussed on the school-based and the systemic.

Adela - why would a parent need to be taught? All a parent needs to be doing is reading regularly to and with their hild generally. If the child is finding phonics hard then maybe yes, some ohonics awareness would be good - but in every school I know of all that would involve is a 5 minute meeting with a teacher arranged after school to go over some basics.

Surely it is a partnership

But this isn't about teaching your child to read it is about spending a short time enjoying a story and hopefully encouraging an interest in literature ... isn't it?

@Hulababy

Because I don't think the OP is talking about 'reading to and with a child', she's talking about "imaginatively teaching them as a teacher might".

Teaching reading is incredibly hard and skillful, much harder than most tecaher training schemes suggest. If any adult with a bit of free time could be taught to do it with a brief five minute chat on phonics, then we could transform literacy standards overnight and give nearly all children fully professional one-to-one teaching.

So, yes, people need teaching. ffs, it's a lot harder than driving a car, yet nobody goes 'just have a little chat about the highway code and then any driver can be a driving instructor'.

mrz

No it isn't-OP is very clear I think.

AdelaofBois I think I was agreeing with the OP ... wasn't I?

Mrz

The OP says: "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."

You say: "But this isn't about teaching your child to read it is about spending a short time enjoying a story and hopefully encouraging an interest in literature?".

I can see why they're not exclsuive, but they don't fit comfortably, especially when most other people here say 'reading with children' is identical to 'teaching them to read'.

Call me a bluff old traditionalist, but aren't you supposed to sort out the terms of the question before you can answer it?