A basic book on how children learn to read please

[Sleepymorningcuddles]

Hi, I'm delivering music instruction and trying (despite scarcity of time) to teach some pre-notation concepts (chord charts).

It's got me interested in how children convert squiggley symbols into silent sounds into meaning-I wondered if there is a succinct well written popular type book anyone could recommend that explains how we learn to read? It's to educate myself because of the environment I'm in. It doesn't need to be teacher-training material, just for general readers.

Thanks.

more years than EYFS has existed

You teach EYFS and you don't think reading children rhymes is teaching? Neither montessori nor EYFS is much about direct teaching, all about understanding how children naturally learn and how best to facilitate it. I surely don't need to tell you that.

It's about exposure to ideas - the idea that some words begin with the same sound, or sound the same at the end, the idea that some notes are high and some are low and some are long or short. And when they follow that through and start playing a scale on the piano with one finger, or start naming all the things they can see beginning with b. You don't teach a preschooler to play scales, you most certainly don't teach it by showing them one written down, but they can't try it if you don't have a piano, and it's much easier to teach them to read music if they've been playing around with notes and ideas first. Am I talking about montessori or EYFS? Can you tell?

Where on earth did I say that catkind?

It means that young children can usually meet the "target" without the need for direct teaching.
Well, they can reach most preschool EYFS targets without direct teaching because EYFS is not about direct teaching. You've yet to say anything showing how EYFS is different from montessori in this respect.

Actually EYFS is about a balance catkind. Some learning is child led, some adult led and other learning is adult directed .

Montessori practice typically features

small and mixed-age classes (EYFS not so small single age classes - large mixed aged classes)
a focus on one-to-one learning activities to enable the assessment and recording of individual progress (EYFS group and whole class activities)
uninterrupted free-flow work cycles with continuous access to snacks and drinks throughout the day (EYFS varies from school to school )
freedom to choose from a range of activities including indoor, outdoor, individual and group learning activities and play, as well as practical life skill activities and sensorial activities (EYFS will be a feature alongside other more directed focused activities)
teachers as enablers and developers of independent learners who provide a caring and nurturing environment based on mutual respect between adults and children (EYFS teachers will support independent learning but also deliver direct instruction)
less focus on developing the imagination and more on ‘real-world’ activities such as washing or cooking as opposed to role playing. (EYFS greater focus on imagination)

EYFS isn't based on a single pedagogy but is something of a chimera - Montessori/Emilia Reggio/ Te Wh?riki plus an obvious Scandanavian influence etc etc etc

Nice sound byte. Now explain how it differs from montessori in its approach to pre-reading skills.

x-post, hadn't read the long one yet!

OK now I've read it, question still stands.
I'd also maybe comment that you're still seeming focussed on reception level EYFS, nursery level EYFS is often much more similar to montessori in terms of setting and approach.

EYFS would focus on language development and reading would be taught directly withing a language rich curriculum rather than seeing certain skills as a pre requisite to teaching reading.

within

The Montessori philosophy is totally absent in many EYFS settings

Yes, language development, aka pre-literacy skills as described in the EYFS earlier goals under reading and writing and before they start on GPCs, including things like... ooh, say, rhyme, alliteration, hearing the first letter sound of words, oral segmenting and blending. Now where have I heard those before? Hint: meita's description of how montessori settings approach reading. The things you said EYFS didn't do.

Round and round we go. Do you like this game? You have to be doing this on purpose, right?

No catkins under the much more important prime learning area of Communication and language

Rather than the specific learning area of literacy

No game catkins I just disagree with your view

If you're interested in the subject you might like Steven Pinker's The Language Instinct. It's not about learning to read but is about how we acquire language.

Thanks, I've read that one. There's a good response by Phillip Ball called The Music Instinct.
Maybe someone can translate the debates upthread for me? I'm lost!

If you read The Language Instinct you should also read The Language Instinct Debate Geoffrey Sampson

Just found "Proust and the Squid" at the top of the bookshelves!

Children's Reading and the Development of Phonological Awareness Keith Stanovich

cheers!

You disagree with what view of mine mrz? My "view" that things that are in the targets of EYFS are things that EYFS does? It's hardly a controversial one is it?

So far your argument seems to be that the pre-reading skills described are "not the way it is done" in EYFS because it is not directly taught and children meet the targets naturally through reading them rhymes and playing games and stuff.

I'm completely baffled as to how this constitutes "not done" as lots of EYFS nursery/CM settings don't do direct teaching of anything, and still manage to "do" EYFS. And how this makes the approach to pre-reading skills different to montessori which also doesn't teach directly.

Or possibly because it's not what you consider the most important area of EYFS? Or because it's not an "essential prerequisite" to reading instruction - what in preschool EYFS is an "essential prerequisite" to anything in reception EYFS? Sorry, you can't start reception yet, you haven't mastered mark-making/speaking in sentences?

Help me out here, give me a logical thread to follow.

No catkind I disagree that the activities (Phase 1 if you like) are taught (directly or indirectly) as a prerequisite to teaching children to read in EYFS. All those value able experiences are ongoing and part of any good early years setting. The activities found in Phase 1 aren't necessary in a language rich environment because children will be developing knowledge in hundreds of other ways.
Children can and do learn to read perfectly well without being aware of rhyme or alliteration ...

You seem to be changing your argument as you go.

My argument is that things that are in EYFS goals are in EYFS.
The rest is me trying to head off what I think you think are counterarguments to that, but really really aren't, like the prerequisite bit, or the fact that things happen on an ongoing basis as part of any good early years setting. The fact that it's normal good practice means it's not part of EYFS? What???