How often does your school expect you to listen to your child read? How do they encourage you / advise you of this?

[uhoh1973]

DC1 is 6 and in year 1. We read frequently (approx 5 times per week). The school gives us a reading diary but no guidance on how often they should read.
I volunteer to listen to some of the other children read and comment in their reading diary. I can see from their reading diaries that for some of them no one else is listening to them read. There seems to be a very strong correlation between frequency of reading and reading ability.
I am curious what guidance other schools give and how they encourage parents to listen to their children read. Many thanks.

First school was state

Present school is private, small classes etc.

I think reading daily makes such a huge difference. We have always tried to do so.

There's no rigid guidance because that won't necessarily help. Lots of people would be very put out by being told them must reason for X minutes a night with their child (there's plenty of evidence on here that many people do not like being told what to do by schools).

There are also lots of complex reasons that people do or don't listen to their children read or read to their children. It's not the simple issue its sometimes made out to be.

I listen to DS2 (6 in Y2) read most nights. I used to listen every night but he's perfectly capable of reading to himself and doesn't need me to listen to him all the time. He reads to himself every day, both at home and in school. He reads what he likes and hasn't had reading books home from school since about October. He just reads books from home. It tends to be a mixture of novels and non-fiction - although he does tend to be interested in books full of 'facts' about Star Wars (which is like fictional non-fiction for him).

I do read to him pretty much every night, and will often prioritise this over listening to him read if there's not enough time. He likes to chat about what he's been reading and what I'm reading to him, and I think at this stage (when he can decode pretty much anything he wants to read) it's more important to give him the time to talk about it and develop his comprehension than have me just listen to him read it.

I have recently read how important it is for some children, often diagnosed with ADHD, to learn to read aloud and then go on to listening to themselves in their own minds.

I wonder how many ADHD diagnoses might have been avoided if the children had read out loud enough and been listened to enough when learning.

I remember reading books twice being stressed in reception. They were changed once a week so reading 4x a week, plus encouraged to use library etc.

In year 2 I try for 4/5 times a week.

KindDogsTail I'd love to see a link to something that explains the link between ADHD and not being read to and with!

Every day, as much as we can manage. I'm pretty strict about DS (7, Y2) doing this. He's a good reader and has just started reading children's novels ((David Walliams) by himself. He's good at spelling and writing too, and I'm sure this is down to his reading ability.

School encourages daily reading, in newsletters, parents meetings etc. They don't set time limits, but when the books were shorter DS used to read 2 or 3 a day.

I don't think the correlation between reading frequency and ability is anything new or undiscovered. Even DS has noticed that the child who never gets any spellings right is the child whose parents don't read with him, and who is on a much lower level reading book. I asked DS how he knew this lad's parents never read with him. He said that the boy had told everyone in Carpet Time.

HazeyJane Here is a link.
I also know from a relative who managed better in school when she was allowed a more auditory route for tests and so on.

robertberezin.com/how-do-our-children-get-misdiagnosed-with-so-called-adhd-certainly-symptoms-present-themselves-but-they-need-to-be-correctl

Oh gosh bikerrunski that's so sad :-(. I asked one child if they could finish a book at home and they said my parents have no time. When I asked her mum about helping with the pta fundraiser she gave me the same excuse word for word. Depressing... as they never read at home and only read with me it takes the 3 to 4 weeks to finish a book.so they are stuck on a much lower book band than they should be which is demoralizing for the child. Another child is an only child and has 2 sets of grannies living in the same village but apparently no one ever has time to listen to him read. He still cannot distinguish between different letters. ..

uhoh1973 I smell sanctimony

yes parents should read with their children.

the mum who "gave the same excuse word for word" to your badgering about the crappy pta fundraiser (which will raise about 61p per person hour of all the people hectored to sell cakes at 5% of cost price) - well of course she did. If she doesn't have time to read with her child, of course she doesn't have time to do that shit. Back the fuck off.

If you actually care about the children who need more reading practice, then you could have a more positive impact by beginning by trying to understand other people's lives. I can tell you straight off that you are in a different world from me: you are volunteering as a reader AND you have time to dick about with PTA fundraisers.

Most parents are riddled with guilt already this concern trolling is not helpful

please note: for the hard of understanding I am NOT saying "reading at home doesn't matter". I AM saying "people bitching on the internet about it is not helpful"

Hmm helpful. I'm trying to understand what the school can do to help the kids to read more often. I'm not getting bitter or bitchy.

I hope I'm not hijacking this thread too much! My DS is nearly 6 and coming to the end of primary 1 (Scotland). His school gives no guidance on how often we as parents should listen to him read however he gets through one or two reading books per week so he probably reads about 10 to 20 mins per day. I also read to him each night and get him to read out words I think he knows. I think he is in the top reading group in his class so I'm presuming he is a good reader for his age but I wondered if anyone here could recommend books for his age I could supplement his reading with. I've felt for a little while he could do more and I obviously want to encourage his reading as much as possible. I've avoided asking his teacher as I don't want to come across as a pushy parent! Any advice would be great thanks.

Do remember though it is an interaction between the child and the parent. One of mine read voraciously and copiously from age 3. Always wanted to read. Would spend hours and hours of free time reading. One went through a phase of absolutely refusing to read at home for about 6 months. Discussed it with teacher who said not to push it too much, they would read with her at school, sure enough she came around to reading and now reads loads. The other dc has read diligently almost every day but still really struggles and investigating whether SpLD. Three children, same parents but the teachers (all different) and people who read with them in school probably have a very different impression of us as parents if they judge us by the dc reading abilities.

Ours says 10-15 minutes daily on most days, she has flash cards and a reading book and the teacher/TA also reads it with her once a week and comments too. I can see the improvement myself when we've done it more one week than another week. Luckily DM does it with her a couple of times a week. She also gets a 1 page homework sheet for the weekend. She is in reception.

The one thing that has suffered as a result of the above is reading our own books at home. I was a big reader as a child (wish I had more time to now) so we have all kinds of lovely books here. We're just so busy with working FT and school stuff that the others get neglected.

Our school books have hints about talking about the book, acting out scenes, doing characters voices, that sort of thing which may make it more interesting. We do have fun when we're practising.

Dd first school gave no guidance just sent home a reading diary and one book every one to two weeks.

We didn't have a clue.

We were told 'as often as you can' and my YR child gets one book a week. Which she reads in minutes and then carries on with the 10 books she gets out the library each week. Her reading record looks pretty poor, as we just say 'read easily' for the school book. But she reads to herself, fluently, with understanding, for pleasure every single day.

My Y3 child doesn't even have a reading record any more, as far as I know. I certainly don't listen to her read, though we do chat about books and sometimes she asks me to read something she thinks is good and vice versa (I've been rediscovering Noel Streatfield with the excuse of buying them for her). Again, if you judged based on reading records, you would be way off the mark.

IME it's the early years where lots of I Spy, phonics posters, phonics games on the iPad and all that sort of input matters. Once they have those solid foundations, it seems to me best to provide lots of books, library trips and time for reading, and then step back a bit though 10 Rainbow Fairies books at a time from the library makes me want to interfere .