Reading...Relax, don't do it......

[Blu]

Reading practice has been a misery and a struggle for us, from Reception until now - half way through year 1. DS 'can' do it, we are confident that he does not have any innate or deep-seated educational or ability problems,but reading practice was like pulling teeth. Laborious, slow, very grudging. We tried incentives, but that made it worse. So I decided not to do it, and told DS's teacher that we would not be doing it at last term's parents meeting. We have done bits, sporadically, when DS has been in the mood (less than once a week) And I have been aware that they have been making progress in class with blending and different phonics etc.

Two days ago he was bossily telling DP how to pick up rabbits, and went to his rabbit book to prove his point. He opened the book at the contents page, looked down the list of about 15 topics, studied it carefully and said "here you are, 'holding your rabbit' page 14". It did indeed say that - and it is not a page I have read to him.

Last night at parents meeting his teacher told us that he has achieved the 1a level he should be at (whatever that means...) and is mostly working at level 2 in reading, She agreed with us that it is mainly fear of not gettting things right that makes him anxious, and to keep the pressure off.

I am posting this solely to re-assure those who are going through the reading practice misery. Don't panic, they will do it in their own time. You don't need to risk putting them off!

aim at end of year two is 2b. It goes 1c,1b,1a,2c,2b,2a, and so on and in general aim is to move two sublevels per year so 1a is pretty good and well on target for the 2b by SATS time next year
(goes right up to levels 7 and 8 in secondary school)

Useful in that children not reaching 1a by summer can get extra help before they move on to junior school and class results show if a teacher is not working to high enough standards if her class average does not go up by at least two sublevels

my friends dd was like this,ponit blank refused to even try to read ,parental meetings,high anxiety that there was something wrong ,then in yr 2 she picked up a book and began to read fluently.It was weird.She's now 15 and a very bright student.

DD2 is not a reader & we spent ages struggling to get her to read books which just didn't interest her. She changed schools in y4 and the teacher was like a breath of fresh air. She just said to keep introducing stuff she thought she might like, that reading a Dr Who magazine was a good test of reading skills as they had lots of complicated words, and that listening to story tapes was fine (she likes to do this when she is doing something else) as it all increases vocab which is important at this age. The important thing was that she said dd COULD read, and would when something sparked her interest.

DD is now in year 5, will quite happily read a book in 2 days when she is interested, & then not bother with anything for a week, but taking the pressure off has meant she can find the stuff that she likes without seeing it as a chore. Well done to your ds for proving he can do it when he wants.

Thanks for the explanation, Astronomer.

It's mad, isn't it? I have known in my head that there is no rush, that children in scandinavia and continental europe don't even start until much later...but the anxiety still rises. Once the system is set in place you sort of feel competitive against the system. I had to force myself to not keep battling away.

I know children are all different and that my (negilgent!) approach will not be right if there are any specific issues at work, but generally, I think we can afford to relax a bit more!

Take heart, those who dread the book bag!