How bad would it be if I taught my daughter to read...

[JeanBodel]

---using whole word recognition rather than phonics?

She's 3, she loves books, she wants to read them herself. She's an autumn birth so she won't go to school for another two years. I don't think either of us can wait that long for her to start reading independently.

I've got a whole set of Peter and Jane's (yes, the very set I learnt with 30 years ago). I really don't want to spend lots of money on Jolly Phonics when I know I can teach her with the books I already own.

I just dread getting into trouble with the reception teacher. I don't mean to criticise teachers or phonics in any way. I can see how annoying it would be to have a kid in your class who's shouting out the word without segmenting it.

All advice gratefully received.

I have not read the entirety of this thread yet but it is fascinating.

I have one ds (age 7 in yr3) not taught to read as such before starting school but read to every night he has made slow and steady progress in reading and responded well to phonics teaching. I was anxious not to push him as he is prone to giving up when he struggles and as an August born child I wanted him to remain positive and give him as much time and as little pressure to read as possible. This seems to have worked and he clearly demonstrates his phonics learning in the way he decodes words and sounds.

Then I have dd1 (age 5 in yr1) she was always very interested in the words on the page when being read too, asking for repeated readings of the same books until she had memorised them and could read them back to herself. I did not set out to teach her to read but she was reading pretty much when she started school and has no real interest in phonetic methods - this is not harming her or holding her back in my opinion. The Teachers (she has two class teachers) are not concerned but she does need to practice reading aloud, as she has a tendency to mumble and rush through books so her teachers have set her tasks to read to the class.

dd2 is 3 and just in pre-school - she also likes repeated readings of the same story until she has memorised the book to 'read' back to herself. I won't be surprised if she teaches herself to read in the same way as dd1 and I won't fret about this interfering with the 'system' at school. I have no problem with phonics I learned the same way as my daughter that is the way my brain works and my enthusiasms lay - ds is more analytical and loves a system to hang his reasoning on and if you can make it look like a clever short cut even better - this works for him and I am very happy as for a while I was worried by his initial struggles to grasp reading.

So I can only conclude that regardless of the systems and methods in place some children are going to grasp reading without phonics and teachers should be able to accomodate that - you cannot control the personalities or abilities of the children in a class only manage and respond to the needs of the children as they are.

A child could independently (i.e without having to be 'told' what they 'say') read more words than that just using s,a,t,p,i,n ... Does no-one think that that could be very exciting and empowering for a child?

I don't see why not. Especially for those who get the idea straight away. I was thinking more in terms of OP's 3 year old.

bigmouthstrikesagain:

What do the two who taught themselves by memorising books do when they come to an 'unknown' word? Just interested...

OhBuggerandArse I don't actually know of any teacher who doesn't read stories to their class and it's very sad if this is happening in some schools but they shouldn't be using phonics as an excuse because good effective phonics teaching actually takes up a very small part of the school day.

Maizie - good question - though to be fair dd2 is not reading just repeating familiar stories from memory. DD1 is a bit of a mystery she always asks how to spell words but she can read pretty much anything put in front of her asks what an unfamiliar word is once and retains it - she has been reading independently for a year or so and picks up leaflets when we are out to read or signs in the street and sometimes unfortunately the more 'fruity' grafitti in the local park etc.

This (I think) is how I was as a child and I ran through all the reading books in school very quickly but this 'ability' is pretty meaningless by the time you reach your teens - I have retained my love of reading and still read very quickly but with no where near enough discrimination now . But I digress.

DD1 is a bit of a puzzle for her teachers as they cannot quite work out how her mind works but they seem to enjoy having her in the class - I think she is always going to be an enigma.

bigmouthstrikesagain I would argue there is a big difference between your experience and my own regarding our children picking up reading from exposure to much loved stories and the OP's intention of teaching her child to read Peter & Jane books.
A teacher can't prevent a child from learning (and why would they?)

Mrz - is it really that different? I was the same with ds and dd yet ds learnt via phonics at school and dd self-taught with adult input (answering questions and doggedly reading the same book over and over so I was 'teaching' in some respects including repeatedly reading ds favourite dinosaur facts books at his insistence frequently falling asleep while doing so - so it wasn't only dd!).

This has left me with one child learning via phonics and one through (as far as I can tell) memorising words. I appreciate this is also a bit meaningless being based on anecdotal evidence but I am suspicious of scaremongering over teaching children the 'wrong' way. I am not a teaching professional so I could be talking out of my not inconsiderable arse! But I do hate tiresome handwringing and panicky responses to what should be a great joy - watching your child learning.

mrz my son was hyperlexic at three too (also ASD) and absolutely obsessed with letters numbers and words.I think I must have been fortunate in so far he was taught phonics when he started school although he saw it as entirely separate. Even now he relies on his phenomenal photographic memory first for spelling and reading but if that fails him (rarely) he'll revert to the phonics he was taught.

bigmouthstrikesagain my intention isn't to scaremonger. What I am trying to say, obviously very badly, is that setting out with the intention of teaching whole word recognition isn't the most effective way to begin to learn to read and write.
From personal experience as a parent and a teacher whole word teaching leaves gaps in a child's knowledge. Most children/adult can memorise a limited number of words by sight and then they falter and mutter, many recognise whole words for reading but can't recall how to write the word... My child who "picked up" reading by repeated reading of favourite books also has to ask how to spell words (as did I as a child and for many years as an adult relied on a dictionary) My child who learnt by phonics first reads and writes well.

Very inbterested in this hyperlexic / ASD thing. DS has many ASD traits, and before he went to school he first used to memorise entire books (I am not talking Peter and Jane, I mean things like the Little Red Train books from Benedict Blaithwaite, the original versions of Thomas the Tank Engine, that kind of thing) and then appeared to use that to work out how to read unfamiliar books.

He was taught phonics at school by a teacher sensitive to his 'difference', who presented it to him primarily as a tool for encoding (spelling) and only (for him) as a secondary tool for decoding. However, she did remark that for someone who APPEARED to have learned to read by learning whole words, he did have an extremely good 'self taught' knowledge of phonics (so he had by himself generalised from 'heel' containing the ee sound, to being able to say what phoneme the grapheme ee was used for, to being able to read new 'ee' words.

I hadn't come across the 'hyperlexic' term before. My experience for DS, though, did suggest that maybe even children who appear to use 'whole words' to read actually use a 'self taught' system of phonics alongside it - in the same way that we as adults may think we read whole words but research shows that (in general) we do actually decode using phonics.

My son can not identify any individual phonemes either alone or in words (except ) he can identify some morphemes in words

sorry mrz it does look like I am accusing you of the handwringing etc. but I meant the tone of some of the wider debate around phonics and reading.

I entirely accept that dd1 is going to find spelling more of a challenge but I can't see any way things could have been different - she is being taught in a class that uses a phonics based system so we will see if that helps her or if the fact that she is already a reader means she does not absorb it the way her older sibling has but ds certainly gains confidence from helping dd with her spelling so that is a silver lining.

What happened with my son was that because he was an exceptional reader he was never taught phonics and in Y6 he was still not writing anything ! His EP was telling me not to worry because he had a reading age of an adult. If I could turn back the clock I would have begun to work more on phonics with him when he first began to show his aptitude for reading.

mrz Your son was let down by his teachers there clearly!

At dd last parents eve her teacher was keen to get us encouraging dd to hold her pen more comfortably as her grip is awkward and although her spelling is not at the standard of her reading she is keen to write and is always writing (short messages) and making books with large drawings and lines in place of text so the desire to write is there and she is being encouraged.

As far as phonics goes I would not be confident to teach it obviously but we have the charts for her to refer to and she does so independently at school according to her teacher - it is very difficult to teach dd anything as she will ask for help then dismiss me in a brutal fashion as soon as she thinks she has got it, which is always immediately. Very frustrating.

No my son was let down by my pride I was so carried away by his reading I didn't pay enough attention to the bigger picture and didn't question his EP

mrz you are being very hard on yourself - when you have clearly a bright child with an exceptional reading age and a professional telling you not to worry... hindsight etc.

I think you are being very harsh on yourself mrz.
I will freely admit questioning the point of ds being taught c a t is cat when he could read anything put before him. Only now reading of your son do I see his teacher's wisdom
Ds could write though I thought the two went together as everything he wrote was spelt correctly. Was very embarrassing trying to explain to his teacher that this child who couldn't string three words together was perferctly capable of writing (and he did) Mr S is a bald-headed and it wasn't something I had taught him.

*you can guess the rest

Yes I have a child with a very high IQ and exceptional reading ability and three different EPs telling me how clever he is while he is so unhappy he is self harming so he doesn't have to go to school.
Which is why when I read Ledditsno's post I wanted to cry (I can felly understand where Indigo is coming from)

and no I'm not being hard enough on myself

He always wrote very personal and critical insults that seemed way beyond his years and only stopped years later when a very wise teacher told him if he rubbed it out he'd pretend he hadn't seen it and that stopped it.
So I suffered the humiliation numerous times and no amount of consequences had had any effect.

You know what though mrz hindsight is a wonderful thing. My son who was a walking calculator and dictionary before school and I thought would do great things started at an independent special school last week with a whole host of GCSEs but with the social skills and life skills of a pre schooler.
With hindsight we should have ditched the academics and concentrated on giving him the skills to achieve at least some chance of independence.

My dd is not doing so well in spelling currentlyso I was reading an article on spelling last night (When I should have been in bed) that had some really interesting research about implicit and explicit memory and spelling.
www2.psych.ubc.ca/~pgraf/Psy583Readings/Steffler%202001.pdf

It was the section on the research of Karniloff Smith that was interesting. I'm not sure if Mrz was suggesting her son has some sort of implicit knowledge of phonics to be able to read non words even though he is unable to tap into this knowledge explicitly? The article, if I remember correctly (and it was late) seemed to imply this was possible.

To the OP. People can learn through all sorts of inefficient methods. My child could learn road safety from watching me. However, I think it is more efficient and likely to avoid possible future danger to give her some explicit guidance and so I teach her Green Cross Code.
The same is true of reading. Your child may learn via whole words (many do) but seeing as effective readers read by understanding that words are a code I will teach her more effectivley by making this explicit to her and avoid the risk that she will not infer this information.

mrz Thanks!