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?

spanieleyes,

You will know, of course, that one thing that skews those progress numbers is that there is no level 6 (at least, not reported though there have been some trials). So a child who gets level 3 at the end of Year 2 cannot show accelerated progress at the end of KS2 because they cannot be reported as achieving level 6.

It is not a failure of the child or the school if a Level 3 child does not reach above level 5 through making accelerated progress - it is a failure of the reporting of levels which provides an artificial 'cut off' of the level an able child can achieve.

(DS was a high Level 3 in maths at the end of Year 2. He is a good Level 5 at the end of Year 5. The school will not, under current arrangements, be able to report that he has made accelerated progress to achieve level 6 in Year 6.)

Yes you can, I have several in my class who were reported as level 6.

I think there are pre-reading skills that children need to have before reading, for instance having the auditory maturity (don't know if that is the right way to express it) to break down a word into it's key sounds, which leads to being able to understand phonics. Music, nursery rhymes, listening games, etc. help with this, but some children really do have brains that aren't ready to cope with phonics till they are closer to 7 than 4.

Some children never really get to grips with phonics, and will always be more comfortable with whole world recognition. This becomes more easy as they grow older and their number of sight words increases.

Similarly, many children have a problem with letter reversals till they are 7 or 8, but grow out of this.

Anyway, I think both the parent and teacher are responsible for teaching a child to read, but the job of supporting the pre-reading skills and creating an environment where words and books are loved is about 75% of the task, and this is the work of the parent.

merrymouse

Any child who has learned to talk has demonstrated the ability to discriminate between phonemes. If they couldn't they would not be able to correct their mispronunciations or copy the correct sequence of sounds in the spoken word. Once they have learned to talk this skill becomes redundant (and it was never a 'conscious' skill in the first place). If it weren't for the fact that reading the writen word is a vital skill in our society they would not have to use the skill of phoneme discrimination again unless they are learning to speak another language.

When a normally developing child is taught to read they are 're-learning' this skill, but consciously this time. So, while all the listening games etc. may be fun, they are not making a particularly significant contribution to a child's reading skills. It is the modelling of discrete phonems and the association of each with a letter, or group of letters, which 'redevelops' their phoneme discrimination skills.

There is only a very tiny percentage of children who just cannot 'grasp' phonics. That is why it is such a successful method of teaching reading. Whole word reading is very much a second best strategy; for most people (apart from those with exceptional memories) there is a limit of about 2,000 whole words as 'pictures' which can be retained in memory. As a reading vocabulary can be 50,000 words or more (and there are some 250,000+ discrete words in the English lexicon) a limit of 2,000 is disabling.

I know that people honestly believe that there is little difference between 'whole word' learning and phonics, but all the reputable research evidence (and the 'on the ground' results') points to the fact that they are mistaken.

spanieleyes - for end of year 6 SATs? I am clearly confused - I thought that there was a trial of Level 6 papers but that they were not included in national reporting?

Level 6 is not included separately in the published National data (level 4 and above) but it is reported to parents

I haven?t looked at these discussions for a while and haven?t the time to read all the posts on this thread, but the 33% of parents who don?t read to their children are mostly ones who can?t read themselves and this leaves their children at huge disadvantage.

In other languages even children who don?t get any help with learning to read from their parents can get by perfectly well just with the teaching that schools provide, because in no other language with an alphabetic writing system is learning to read as difficult as in English.

English writing looks alphabetic because it uses letters, but it no longer adheres to the alphabetic principle of representing speech sounds in a regular manner the way it once did. All writing systems depart from the alphabetic principle over time, through shifts in pronunciation or by importing words from other languages, and need updating from time to time, to ensure that learning to read and write remains fairly easy.

English spelling has not been modernised for at least 350 years. That?s why it now has more words with irregular spellings (blue shoe flew through too...) than any other European language
englishspellingproblems.blogspot.com/2010/11/english-spelling-rules.html

It has the unique distinction of having around 2000 common words in which some letters keep changing their sounds, as in ?on only once? www.englishspellingproblems.co.uk/html/sight_words

In all 69 English spellings have more than one pronunciation englishspellingproblems.blogspot.com/2009/12/reading-problems.html

For this reason phonics in the normal sense of that word, of teaching children the sounds that spellings make, is far less effective in English than in other languages, because in many words the sounds they make depend on the word they are in. In other words, a lot of learning to read English involves learning to read words as wholes.

Fluent reading of any languages is the ability to read words as wholes, but in English whole-word reading plays a bigger part in learning to read. And no other language abuses the alphabetic principle as extremely as English does with the 103 spellings for 206 words like ?read now, read yesterday; first row, loud row?.

In English, parental help makes a huge difference to children?s progress in learning to read, because learning to read English is exceptionally difficult.

Actually masha I think you are making a huge leap there. UK illiteracy aren't 33% and even if one adult in a household was unable to read at this very basic level you are assuming there is no one in the home/family who can read.

I think rather than blaming our orthographical system you should look instead at the busy lifestyle many parents live and all levels of the economic scale. A young mum with two jobs trying to make ends meet ... a hardworking professional with long hours and meetings to attend ... life is fast and full and sometimes gets away from us.

Mrz, all the things u mention play a part too, but they would all have far less impact on children's progress in learning to read if learning to read English was not so exceptionally difficult.

Masha learning to read isn't difficult for the majority of learners

Mrz, but the minority who find it difficult is much bigger than in languages with better spelling systems, and all Anglophone children take much longer to learn to read than their counterparts in other languages. This alone proves that it is more difficult.

I am sure that everyone can see that if the 69 spellings which I have shown at englishspellingproblems.blogspot.com/2009/12/reading-problems.html
all had just one pronunciation, learning to read English would be much easier and quicker than it is.

It also goes without saying that when something is difficult to learn, help makes a big difference. That's why parental help with learning to read makes a huge difference, and children who have to do without it are enormously disadvantaged.

masha the children who really struggle have other difficulties (visual, spacial, audio processing ....) that no changes to the spelling system will rectify and require specialist help such as that often discussed here.

Interestingly UNESCO put UK adult literacy levels at 99%

christmasmum, then your friends needs a way to extend the bright children who can already read

I agree vividgingerchilli as a reception teacher a child who arrives able to read is a bonus not a problem.

I wonder if the same % of kids struggle to learn to read English as any other language, but in England we label these kids 'dyslexic' whereas in languages with more regular phonetic spelling kids are first referred to behaviour optometrists and paedeatric audiologists and other specialists before they're labelled?

If you don't expect to find dyslexia, but instead expect to find a diff underlying problem I bet that's what you find......

I think that is always the danger with blanket labels that cover a wide range of problems.

The OEDC PISA, which is often quoted to demonstrate the superiority of other systems, allows countries to exclude up to 5% of the target population. Exclusions for intellectual disability depended on the professional opinion of the school principal or by other qualified staff - a completely uncontrollable source of uncertainty.

It appears that some countries defined additional criteria: Denmark, Finland, Ireland, Poland, and Spain excluded students with dyslexia
Denmark also students with dyscalculia; Luxembourg recently immigrated students. - Actual student exclusion rates of OECD countries varied from 0.7% to 7.3%. Canada, Denmark, New Zealand, Spain, and the USA exceeded the 5% limit. Nevertheless, data from these countries were fully included in all analyses.

Mrz, the children who really struggle have other difficulties (visual, spacial, audio processing ....) that no changes to the spelling system will rectify

That claim is simply ridiculous. For any child who has the problems typically associated with dyslexia, such as below average phonological processing skills, poorer decoding ability and a weaker working memory, making the connection between spellings and their sounds is obviously easier when the sounds are constant, as in 'keep sleep deep' than when they keep changing as in 'treat great threat' and the 68 other spellings with variable sounds I have shown at
englishspellingproblems.blogspot.com/2009/12/reading-problems.html

Furthermore, the 1963-4 research with i.t.a. (not subsequent use of i.t.a. by many schools to avoid spelling reform) proved that making English spelling more regular can enable more children to learn to read easily
englishspellingproblems.blogspot.com/2010/04/proof-that-reform-would-make-difference_01.html

Irrespective of how u feel about improving English spelling, it's inconsistencies definitely make learning to read harder and slower and much more dependent on sufficient adult help than more regular spelling systems do. To deny that is a bit like saying that learning to juggle with three balls is no harder than learning to throw and catch just one.

Sorry masha but to quote you "That claim is simply ridiculous"

Masha - if your claim was right, then dyslexics would confidently get to the CVC stage of learning to read - and then get stuck.

But that's not what happens. They get stuck far, far earlier. Even if all words were as easy to read as 'top','bus', and 'hat' they would still struggle.

Some people are never able to read CVC words. And mrz just quoted Finland as excluding dyslexics - isn't Finnish the language you always hold up as the best phonetic language? So why do they still have dyslexics?

www.comenius-individual-support.eu/Material-Dateien/Brussels2-20110203/PISA_Presentation_digest%202.pdf page 41

Indigo,
Frith, Wimmer and Landerl looked at the difficulties faced by English and German dyslexics and reported in the Scientific Studies of Reading in 1998:
?English dyslexic children suffered from much more severe impairments in reading than the German dyslexic children?. They concluded that English dyslexics ?were at an enormous disadvantage in their struggle to learn to read and write? and that ?the adverse effect of English orthography remains evident at age 12 and may well persist?.

In Finland dyslexia is virtually non-existent. They have just 4% of pupils who struggle with reading for various reasons, including very low IQ.

"In Finland dyslexia is virtually non-existent."
but it does exist despite the regular orthographic system which suggests that the changes to English you regularly (or should that be U?) promote are unlikely to be the cure all you claim ...

Masha - dyslexia and stats are far more complex then you make out.

For example. It's very easy to get a dx of dyslexia in the UK - all you have to do is pay an EP £400. It is also very valuable to get a dx of dyslexia, it generally leads to exam concessions, like extra time, or a scribe, or a computer.

Are those two things true in Germany and Finland?

There isn't one definition of dyslexia, nor one diagnostic criteria. Each EP seems to make up there own. So are the UK EPs using the same diagnostic criteria as German and Finnish?

Also, I don't know the stats, but many people with a dx of dyslexia can read perfectly well, they are diagnosed on spelling problems. But they would also have memory and sequencing and other problems which aren't diagnosed as a separate disorder. In Germany and Finland those people might not get a dx of dsylexia, but still have all the problems.

Like my previous post said, it is possible that kids in Germany and Finland get far better treatment for the underlying problems which are causing their dyslexia than UK kids. Very possible (give that UK kids get no treatment at all.)

4% of the populations is still a huge amount. Far more than the amount of people with very low IQ, or who are non-verbal. If you are one of those 4% it matters not one bit that Finnish is easy to learn.

All I can say for 100% is my DD has now finally made it to the CVC stage, and so might be able to read Finnish if she'd had the same huge number of hours of tuition - but all her other problems would still exist making her still hugely disabled. Even if she could read and write she would still not be able to cope with school.

For example at the moment we're working on 'sh' - she can never remember whether to write 'sh' or 'hs' and just randomly guesses every time. Sometimes she get's 'sh' right first time when reading, sometimes she 'self-correct's and gets it right second time, and sometimes she panics, get's upset, and can't remember how to pronounce 'sh' at all. With a memory that bad, life is incredibly difficult - even if you can read.

Blaming the English language is very superficial, and shows no understanding of the problems caused by the label 'dyslexia'.