Educational Milestones for Start of Reception????

[paulinec]

I Know all children are difference, but, i am wanting to give the same start to ds2 that i gave to ds1 when starting reception. What eductional standard should he "ideally" be at when entering reception. He is a bright boy and very capable.

cod I bet the majority of the 20% of children who leave primary school not being able to read, and those who 'pass' the gov't test but cannot read well enough to access the secondary curriculum cannot read 'rainforest' - they are the ones who suffer from a bad system which was only used because it was 'fashionable' not because anyone proved it actually worked

But then why should I care - my kids can read so forget the rest?

Or do my best to tell other parents what CAN work and let them make an educated decision what they want for their children.

Message withdrawn

Thanks to phonics, my five year old son can read almost anything he wants to. He can read all the words that Willowcatkin listed without a problem.

His only problem is that his comprehension is behind is decoding. My son is partially deaf and lack of hearing has made it harder for him to develop good language skills. However learning new words by decoding is doing wonders for his language skills.

Good point cod

Paulinec - if you do not want your child to be eternally bored in Reception, do nothing at all academic as most teachers will not be able to spot what level he is at until at least half way through the year and he will just 'mark time' - probably the worst possible thing at the start of his school life.

Focus on independence for dressing, toiletting, eating with a knife and fork etc (as most others have said) and maybe talk a bit about what school will be like and what he will do there.

If you know some other children who are going to the same school, some meet ups beforehand could be beneficial so he has a ready made friendship group and some similar experiences to talk about.

TBH I'm totally confused about the OP. If you've already had a child in Reception, what are you asking exactly? What 'start' did you give him?

agree double edged sword having a child ahead of the game at reception

But if a child shows natural ability, are you supposed to sit on them and shelve it until the rest of the year is ready to learn?
Nah

DS was mightily bored in reception, but at dd's school when she starts in September they have said that any child who can already read and is confident with phonics, will be able to spend free reading time with a TA in the library corner to allow teachers to concentrate on learners for literacy hour etc.
It is a very small reception class of 12 pupils with high parental input as well.

if it's not good for her I'll just home ed her

sorry, if i have been confusing in op with mentioning ds1, just wanted opinions of other mums in same situation with a bright capable child. Not saying ds1 wasnt he was also, but just wondered whether him starting reception reading so well and knowing his key words helped him or hindered him. Hope this a bit clearer. Thanks everyone.

Willow, yes I believe he can. Once he had grasped the sounds of the alphabet I taught him to break words down and he seems to be ok with that. Well maybe the phonics they teach him at school will spiral him even further.

It just looks to be cluttering their minds with information when it is something that can be easily understood just as it is.

tena I'm with you
Keeping it simple
Sod bloody Olly Orange

I will share some information with you that was advised by a learned man in his 90's who followed a profession of educational psychology amongst other things and is recommended by the National Gifted Association.

He told me that the state leave it too late to recognise gifted children (although since that conversation there has been a slight improvement). If you recognise signs that your child is unusually bright and he is willing to learn then give him the best start you can. It is later that they often become distracted by peers and disinterested in learning.
Whilst they are young they learn willingly and it sets a good foundation for later life. I think he had a very good point and I am looking forward to putting my feet up later on and letting ds take the lead.

If he doesnt take the lead at the very least, he will have the basics on which to get by. I hope

Er. "It just looks to be cluttering their minds with information when it is something that can be easily understood just as it is".
But "as it is" IS phonics.

If you have taught your son how to break down words and sound them out, then you have taught him phonics. That is all it is. It is not some obscure 'system' that complicates the beauty of literature or prevents children recognising patterns in words. It is the code for understanding how the 26 letters of the Roman alphabet represent the sounds of the English language.

People cannot become fluent readers without understanding how the phonetic code works, and some children learn this implicitly. Others find it helpful to be taught explicitly that 'oa' represents the sound in 'goat'.

It is also nothing to do with Olly Orange, whoever he may be .

singersgirl, I read with the children and the phonics games they were playing were looking at stick figures pointing which meant 'you'. There was also a stick figure in a skirt for some reason that one is 'dad'.

How confusing is that.

Well, that isn't phonics, even though someone might be calling it phonics. I agree, that sounds very confusing and probably is cluttering up their brains with stuff.

Well it sent me doolally, I had to rely on the kids to tell me and then get confirmation from a chart. That to me was ridiculous as it proves not to be logical.

But it does in essence entail learning a set of phonic rules then bending them for all the blinking exceptions.

And had to laugh at Tenas diagnosing giftedness in young ones being woeful

So bad infact that I was told ds was learning disabled in reception.

DD seems very bright at reading esp now she is 4.5 and is absorbing information at an amazing rate, so she asks, I answer...

to, too, two, toe, tow
there, their and they're

just because English is a bit weird my dear daughter...

Just because a child can get by guess and memorising words at primary school doesnt mean that they will cope at secondary school or even university. A bright child can compensate for dyslexia, but as the work gets harder then the ablity to compenstate gets less and less. It is not unusual for dyslexia to be diagnosed at university level.

Synthetic phonics helps dyslexic children and it doesn't hurt others. I would be intersted to see a study that shows that synthetic phonics damages a gifted child rather than anedotes about a particular child.

Child development is a journey rather than a race. It is quite possible for a child to be gifted at three years old and a duffer at eleven. Sometimes children with special needs over take other children when they have over come the special need.

I am sceptical if you can assess a child's reading ablity by what stage they are on in the Oxford Reading Tree. The acid test is seeing what they can read without any pictures to help them. Also a child has to understand what they have read.

Comprehension is key certainly
I remember ds reading Narnia chronicles at age 6 and the teacher banging on about
But he won't understand...
But he bloody did

DS was such a good reader and still remains one at aged 13 (and he is on gifted + talented at his grammar) I have just simply gone down the same road with dd

All I hope to impart is a love of reading to be honest because IMHO that stands a child in such good stead for the future, for all learning.

How they get to be a fluent reader is largely irrelevant so long as they spend the time being read to and hearing words, having the sounds explained.
I certainly was never taught in anything resembling todays methods.

And it never did me no harm

Piffle, I think you're teaching your daughter the basic phonics and what the phonicists (I made that up) like to call 'less common correspondences'. I agree it is irrelevant how they get there once they're there, but for many children, the getting there could be made simpler. I agree with Frances5 about the synthetic phonics stuff. By the way, I remember doing phonics at school in the early 70s, as well as flashcards.

Certainly children differ in how they grasp language - written and spoken

And it is absolutely right to have different methods for different needs.

All I'm saying is that for kids who have got it before reception, going over it another way is not the best for them.

But then I firmly believe that resources should be targetted towards those who take longer to learn without question.
The solution?
Who knows

How you choose to prepare your child is up to you. State schools are great at giving a simple education to the masses. With classes of 30 sometimes children can not work as fast as otherwise. The only alternative is the home educate rather like the parents of those children who appeared on the programme "Genius Children" a few weeks back.

However I think there is more to school than learning to read and write.

absolutely, hoem ed is something I would turn to if school was not the right environment for dd.
But I would worry about the social side a lot.

But some kids are square pegs in round holes, certainly my ds is but I have kept him in the system rather than take him out to hot house him in some other way. He has an IQ comparable to the kids in that programme, but at the end of the day, he has to function as normal grown man in society one day - brains or no brains.

At the end of the day, we all just want our kids to be happy and enjoy their lives... I intend to make it as easy as possible for that to happen.