Reading in P1? Need perspective

[HauntingMyWay]

I'm quite nervous posting this incase I'm seen as thinking DD is a genius. I don't.

DD (4) started P1 in August. She learns the words in her word box easily and is confident with the sounds they have done so far.

We read together every night. For about a month we have been getting early readers from the library and we read one of these and then I read a 'chapter' book.
The early readers take 5-7 days and she can read them independently. Learning by sight and rote mostly I'd expect but in the past week she is sounding out words and making sensible attempts. Also we play word games and she can read so many of the words out of context.

Anyway... her school reading books as so simplistic in comparison with little scope for word games. She just reads it and wants to move on to something else.

So:
Are these books essential foundations to learning to read?

Is she in danger of losing interest in reading in school as they are too simple?

When should individual reading levels be assessed and catered to by the teacher?

Thank you so much if you read all that. She is my first and I want to do right by her. Not pushing but not ignoring her needs either.

[KitKatGirl1]

Mill on the Floss is wonderful. You should revisit.

They do indeed read much harder novels at my grammar school in yr 9 than they do for the actual GCSE course. Think The Collector, Treasure Island and Jane Eyre followed by To Kill A Mockingbird...

[maizieD]

I recollect that we had a similar selection of texts to cover, plus some poetry.

Mind you, as I recall, we did spend two years covering the GCE syllabus and, being grammar school, we were the 'top' 15% of our peer group. There are children taking GSCE English now who would not have been expected to tackle it at all in the 60s & 70s. But I would have thought that at least top set children would be expected to read entire novels now.

I also would say that I loathed most of the classic novels (and Shakespeare) we covered in the 5 years up to GCE but at least it gave us familiarity with the language, grammar and style of those earlier writers. So no fear of tackling them when older. Which I, for one, am very glad about as I have had great pleasure from 'classic' literature over the years (though I've never managed to force myself to read The Mill on The Floss again )

[KitKatGirl1]

Can't remember how many hours of lessons for English GCSE (long time ago, as in the first couple of years of them) but we read 5 texts including 2 Shakespeares, a Hardy, an Austen and one twentieth century. They do one text now...

[mrz]

and obviously no course work in those days

[mrz]

I seem to recall just one lesson of art, Domestic Science and RE CecilyP

[CecilyP]

Yes, we studied language and literature as separate subjects too, but that sounds like 10 lessons of English, but only 2 each for all of the other subjects.

[mrz]

Well it didn't seem English heavy but we studied language and literacy as separate subjects just as we studied biology, chemistry and physics as 3 subjects and pure and applied maths as separate subjects I only studied 1 MFL at O level plus art, history, domestic science and RE

[CecilyP]

Really, mrz? You must have had a very English-heavy timetable - what was the reason for that? How did your school manage to fit in other subjects? When I did my O levels, we just had 5 x 40 minute lessons to cover both English Language and English Literature.

[mrz]

I knew things have changed since I did my O levels we had 5 hours for English literacy and 5 hours for English language

[CecilyP]

During my 1960s Grammar school education we were expected to read, in their entirety, at least 3 classic novels every school year and a couple of Shakespeare plays. Today on TES I find an English teacher asking if it is realistic to expect her GCSE pupils to read the whole of a Dickens novel in 7 weeks or should they just 'do' the relevant chapters (i.e the ones the exam questions will cover). (I could read the thing in 7 days, and could have done at age 16)

I am sure you could, maizie, but 7 weeks for GCSE English classes probably, realistically means 7 X 40 minute sessions, with other classes during the week dealing with other aspects necessary to get pass English GCSE. And I doubt if even you could read the whole thing in 280 minutes. The only way of to accomplish the task would be to set several chapters reading for homework each week, something pupils may not do if they have other homework where they have to produce something tangible to hand in.

[learnandsay]

Trends in standards of literacy in the United Kingdom, 1948-1996

www.leeds.ac.uk/educol/documents/000000650.htm

[mrz]

I think declining literacy standards are probably linked to the fact that for years many secondary schools only read extract from the texts they taught rather than complete books.

[MuddlingMackem]

Britta, that's scary! And if she was head and shoulders above why was was she still on ORT 5 (unless they can't borrow books from higher classes)? Why couldn't they just move her up to Roald Dahl even? Fun to read and better than ORT when she's past that stage. Mind, not that that means she couldn't still enjoy them; DS pinches the books DD brings home if they're ones that he missed when he was on ORT and he's Y4 now.

Agree with you about the background knowledge necessary for reading some things. I tried to read 'Little Women' when I was 8 or 9 and just wasn't able to get into it, even though I could read it easily, I just didn't have the background knowledge necessary. I went back to it a few years later when I had the background and really enjoyed it.

[NeverKnowinglyUnderstood]

we have had the same issue as MrsZ with DS1.
he has been able to read without learning phonics.
however, now aged 8 he is having interventions at school to help him as he can't spell and this is totally affecting his writing and general ability to get his point across through the written word.

I don't think there is anything to worry about but rather than getting her to learn the book of by heart I would totally suggest changing the book or if you don't want to do that flick through the book and don't read it in order. Point out different words without the sentence to see if she can read it.

[BrittaPerry]

The schools solution in reception, btw, was to get dd to read to the other children, to increase her social skills, because she tends to think she is a grown up. Which of course getting her to act like a teacher was going to help...

She does much better socially when she plays in the street or at social groups, and much better academically at home. The school was very well meaning, but just didn't suit dd. (as our schools didn't suit me or dh, and none of us are literary geniuses).

[BrittaPerry]

The teacher told me that dd1 was 'head and shoulders ahead' in literacy, and they were having trouble keeping up with her. Which is alarming - she is hardly reading war and peace.

Of course, people not reading the classics is not just straightforward reading problems, you also often need knowledge of the bible, history, greek myths etc, but if you are scared to try you will fall at the first hurdle.

[BrittaPerry]

Well I've met loads. Then again, I've met quite a few people with levels of literacy not much better (or sometimes worse) than the average 8 or 9 year old. Mostly through working with them - care wok doesn't really need much literacy, neither does bar work or waiting on. I woukd sa these people still need phonics, because they need basic decoding and encoding skills, but they also clearly have had their confidence severely knocked somewhere.

I always remember when one of my co workers brought her 10 year old into work and I sat watching her at the end of the shift while her mum did handover. I was reading a university book, and the child had never even heard of university.

I have met a smaller amount of people with professional qualifications (including a primary school teacher) who must be able to read such things, but they still say they aren't clever enough.

And my kids do phonics to help them gain basic literacy skills...

[MuddlingMackem]

BrittaPerry Tue 30-Oct-12 09:30:13

We have just deregistered Dd- she is reading and understanding Alice in Wonderland at home. At school she was still on ORT 5 and bored.

[mrz]

You say "Obviously they both do Jolly Phonics, Education City, Letterland and the rest (including the ORT and Usborne very first readers sets that we have)," but as a teacher it isn't at all obvious why they would be doing this ...sorry totally at a loss.

[mrz]

"And yes, people are intimidated by classic literature and broadsheet newspapers. They say things like "I'm not clever enough" or "I'm not the right type of person" before they even try."

How sad ... thankfully I've never met anyone who has said that

[maizieD]

Personally I'd put people not even trying broadsheets / classics down to their cultural norms / expectations as much as the relative salience of phonics in their personal journey on learning to read. Seems to me like the phonics thing is a bit of a red herring there either way?

When you look at 19th century popular literature, newspapers and magazines it is very evident that 'cultural norms and expectations' have taken a nose dive over the intervening century as far as complexity of text is concerned. I have some very turgid novels given as Sunday School prizes to my Edwardian forebears (who were not of highly educated middle class origin) presumably in the expectation that these children would be perfectly capable of reading them.

During my 1960s Grammar school education we were expected to read, in their entirety, at least 3 classic novels every school year and a couple of Shakespeare plays. Today on TES I find an English teacher asking if it is realistic to expect her GCSE pupils to read the whole of a Dickens novel in 7 weeks or should they just 'do' the relevant chapters (i.e the ones the exam questions will cover). (I could read the thing in 7 days, and could have done at age 16)

While we could cite influences such as the prevalence of television and, more recently, of computer games as recreational activities which have replaced reading there is also the fact to consider that from the 1970s on the prevailing method of teaching reading has been whole word/look & say with a smattering of phonics. While it is hard to find data on reading standards over this period there was a notable case in the early 1990sof an EP who was sacked by his LA for looking at local reading data and pointing out, in print, that reading standards had declined as these methods took hold. I strongly suspect that 'cultural norms' have been driven down as much by people's sheer inability to read competently as by any other influences.

[BrittaPerry]

No, I think we have gone on to separate arguments :-)

I'm just saying that i think phonics is great for starting off, but once a child can read well enough to be independent, then being exact on phonics isn't the main thing any more.

I'm sure other children learn differently - I'm not a teacher, so I have only read up on things that crop up around my own children. I have personally found, from my learning and from my own DD1, that the insistence that we have both come up against at school that being able to perfectly sound out every word is essential to being able to "read" - to me, reading is understanding and appreciating the text, not just being able to say it out loud. I would be happier, if it was a choice, for DD1 to understand the meaning of a word she couldn't pronounce than for her to be pronouncing words she couldn't understand.

DD1 is year one, and will have a good stab at reading pretty much everything. When we read through something together though, our focus is on understanding the text. If she says a word wrong when she is reading out loud (I still ask her to do that at least daily, just like I read to her) then I quickly correct her, but it isn't the focus. For example, today she was reading a picture book, and I asked her to read some aloud to me and DD2. She stumbled over the word "worrisome" so I read it to her, and at the end of that line asked her what she thought it meant. She said it sounded like, and had some of the same letters as, "worry" so maybe it was saying that the girl was worried about the thing. To me, realising that "worry" is in there is more important than the fact that she pronounced it wrong.

DD2 is 2, so she is still on her first few sounds in reading, but we can talk on a more basic level about what is happening in a story, and soon we will start encouraging her to pick out words and sounds in stories that we are reading to her.

Obviously they both do Jolly Phonics, Education City, Letterland and the rest (including the ORT and Usborne very first readers sets that we have), but we read lots of "grown up" poetry, sing songs, read the newspaper together and so on and our focus is much more on enjoying reading and working things out as we go, with a background of games etc to try to eliminate any blind spots.

But then I was just on Amazon looking for Latin resources so I can familiarise myself with them before starting DD1 next year. So I maybe have an unusual outlook [hgrin]

[arkestra]

maizieD: Personally I'd put people not even trying broadsheets / classics down to their cultural norms / expectations as much as the relative salience of phonics in their personal journey on learning to read. Seems to me like the phonics thing is a bit of a red herring there either way?

Ideally one would be able to don an evil scientist coat and do some Kasper Hauser type experiment to settle the matter definitively but I've always found it hard to get that kind of thing past an ethics committee.

Agree that phonics is an very effective structuring tool for many when learning to read - and even for those who can teach themselves to read on a pattern recognition basis with no phonics at all, it's still useful for spelling/writing.

[maizieD]

Whoops, cross post.

And yes, people are intimidated by classic literature and broadsheet newspapers. They say things like "I'm not clever enough" or "I'm not the right type of person" before they even try.

Yes, and it mostly because they don't have a clue how to work out what the words 'say'. For most people that is enough to severely dent their confidence and make them steer well clear of any words/texts which are outside their comfort zone.

I'm afraid that saying 'I can do it so why can't everyone else?' (which is what you seem to be saying) isn't realistic.

[maizieD]

A dictionary is fine if you can read and understand the definition. Don't forget that we are talking about average Y1s here.

But what I am really intrigued by is this interesting idea that implies that phonics taught children are frightened of long and complex new words that can only be attempted by the specially trained.. It would be interesting to get some clarification from BrittaPerry..