Learning to read at 4/5 or later?

[Pico2]

This is just out of curiosity. Looking at children in reception, some learn to read really quickly and others after 2 terms are still struggling with the one letter sounds. I know that many countries start formal learning later. Is there any evidence (for reading English) that those children who will spend the next couple of years struggling would do better or worse if they started at 7?

Hopefully they learn something between 4 and 7. I've not seen a struggling group being taught, but I'd find it stressful learning something I found that hard and I wonder if the gain from starting early is worth that.

Also, is there some sort of 'readiness' that comes at different ages for different children, or would those not ready at 4 still not be ready at 7 without some sort of intervention?

It doesn't rattle me in the slightest Jolie

With more practice prescribed for kids who are struggling.

I'm at a loss as to why you are being so obtuse?

RafaIsTheKingOfClay - that sounds fantastic, do you know what they are doing to get those results?

The majority of schemes in most subjects would suggest early intervention for children who are struggling, that won't change at 7. I don't know how relevant that is given that we don't know for sure that fewer children would be struggling if we started at 7.

Does the SEN system for Finland mean that children with an identified delay reach statutory school age a year earlier? To give them more practice/time to reach expectations. I don't see how that's different to starting at the same age as peers and being given a light touch intervention over and above.

Practise

I was schooled in an English speaking school but in the German school system until 7 or so, so did kindergarten etc. (Raf family).

I'm guessing things have changed a lot and even so there is a lot of variance between schools, but I do recall struggling coming into the English school system as it was a lot more formalised.

We were taught to read - but it was much less formal and I don't remember doing all the phonics stuff. I have a feeling it was done at a much more child-led pace and things were certainly more play based.

I know my mum was worried I'd be behind when we moved back to England - actually, in terms of reading, I was ahead and went straight to free-reading as I was beyond the highest level of the book scheme. (And caused considerable consternation when I bought in Stephen King's Skeleton Crew one week)

Maths was definitely behind though. I don't think I'd done much more than counting and simple addition.

So, although the plural of anecdotes is not data, I have to say I think there are benefits to learning being more play based environment.

Or maybe schools were just less concerned about levels and shit back then....

mrz, do you think correcting typos makes you look anything other than silly?

Ok I have just asked dh, he is deputy head of a primary school. He said that statistically, in the uk, children who are familiar with letter sounds when starting reception are more likely to achieve a high score in the phonics test and are more likely to be reading at expected level at end of year 1. I can't tell you the source of the data I don't have it here. But it's based on baseline assessment of children starting reception and linked with phonics test and year 1 assessments.

So to me, as a childminder, this means that children should be exposed to phonics from a young age, within play, songs, drawings, books etc (not formal sitting down at a desk learning). That's from about the age of 2. So my objective as a childminder is that the children in my care are familiar with letter sounds by the time they start reception - not necessarily read, but understand that words are made of sounds, represented by letters, reading from left to right, etc. So far - I have looked after 20+ children, they all achieve this (except one child who later on was diagnosed with adhd).

A big focus on the prime areas in nursery, a well taught phonics scheme and intervention, early and well targeted intervention for SALT and reading and scrapping mixed methods/reading recovery were what made the biggest difference early on I think.

I have a hypothesis that the success of that lead to higher expectations. The whole mentality of the children not achieving because of the lack of support from home, lack of reading at home, because they are boys or summer born disappeared. Now that they know that children can achieve that's what they expect even from children who enter nursery a long way below where they should be.

They don't seem to have had to go down the very formal route in R Yr1 that many schools have.

I'm sure they are marvellous, Trouble. But historically the training of teachers in reading has been poor. I suspect it still is. Even the best teacher isn't going to be able to do much with that. And it really isn't the fault of the teachers.

I teach in a deprived area and many of our pupils arrive with very little spoken language never mind knowledge of sounds yet most achieve high scores in the phonics screening check and go on to reach national expectations or above in KS2 (GCSEs A and A*)

We have pre-schools not linked to a primary school but they have to apply the early years foundation stage, early learning goals. Same with childminders and commercial nurseries. There are also school - based nurseries, in my experience they have a more formal and better recorded application of eyfs and employ fully qualified teachers and/or nursery nurses - qualifications that childminders don't have.

the troublewithangels some schools have nursery classes but there are also separate nursery schools and of course independent nursery settings lots of choice depending on your preferences

They are in some schools. Some primaries schools will go from Yr R to Yr 6. Some will have an attached nursery. It depends on the school.

I did say it was a hypothesis, I didn't say it was easy. But your frustration is probably the same frustration I feel when I hear people talk about schools having poor results in reading because of their intake. This school isn't unique. There are many schools up and down the country getting similar results with disadvantaged intakes.

There are many things we can't change for children living in deprivation. Leaving school functionally illiterate is one thing we can and should.

Not phonics formally, but just playing with letters, for example today we were singing old McDonald and I would say the letter sound for c-a-t and sing miow. Or play with letter puzzles using the correct ( yes, childminders can learn the correct way of applying letter sounds) letter sounds. Or spot the letters on car number plates. Or show a child how to recognise their name on the clothes peg.

I don't think cut was suggesting formal phonics was she.

More like phonological and phonemic awareness type activities. I don't think it's that different to what many parents might do at home e.g. pointing to text as you read it, playing I-spy, talking about familiar words such as their name.

Sorry, I got on my soap box a bit. It wasn't supposed to be personal.

The middle and upper school drop is a well known thing. It can be because the underlying phonics is shakey and the texts are becoming to complex for children to rely on guesswork and sight words.

The other thing that can hold children back at this stage is vocabulary and background knowledge. It's where the focus on building language skills and vocabulary in early years and KS1 comes in to its own. Without that basis it can be difficult for the children to comprehend more difficult texts. But it is still difficult. It is much easier with a cohort that have a wide variety of spoken language modelled at home and have spent a large amount of time listening to good quality texts.

Vocabulary is a huge barrier for our pupils

I think it's a barrier in most schools with disadvantaged intakes. And it has as big an impact on writing as reading.

Why the vocabulary is such a huge problem? My ds has great vocabulary (on the report every year), but most came from watching tv, playing games and watching you tube. That's what most of children do these days, disadvantaged or not?