My 5 year old can't read....

[Stuffragette]

She is the third dc. She is a mega happy child, loves school, has lots of friends. But we recently had a parent teacher meeting and they said she is behind. She knows her sounds she just isn't blending them. Before the meeting I really couldn't care less. She's happy, she has friends. My theory is she'll get there in the end. But the teacher now has me really worried. What does anyone else think?

[LastnightaDJ]

Disappointing attitude ("failing") from the teacher at such an early stage. So unnecessarily harsh. Give it time. Still plenty time to catch up if need be later.

[mrz]

https://www.tes.com/news/school-news/breaking-news/phonics-leads-easier-more-accurate-reading-new-research-finds

[AnnieAnoniMouse]

Oh, try not to worry 💐

She is a happy little girl. Have you been watching all the stuff about how many of our young children are unhappy/depressed? It's awful, really sad. Happy counts for a LOT.

She's 5, a prem, 'young' for her age...just let her be. Don't make it a big deal, because it simply isn't. Many, most!, children around the world aren't reading at 5. In a year, or maybe two, there will be no difference between her and a child that could read at 3. It's meaningless and you can do more harm that good about trying to make her learn, you don't want to put her off for life. Don't 'test' her because you'll either have to pretend she's right (and confuse her) or continually tell her 'no'. It's really, really not worth it.

Just enjoy her, enjoying life. It's too bloody short to worry whether they're reading at 5 or 6.

💐🐰

[mrz]

If you have an iPad (afraid it doesn't work on phone) http://www.sounds-write.co.uk/page-82-app-for-ipad.aspx is excellent for beginners (first units are free)

[drspouse]

mrz good point re starting earlier because of the sheer bulk of letter-sound correspondences to learn!

[Stuffragette]

Wow, thanks for all your help. She is reception 5, a January baby. She has always been a bit late to things. She was 4 weeks early if that has any relevance. I completely agree that 5 is so young.

But a bit of background, when I was pregnant with her I was on some pretty hefty antidepressants. She wasn't planned so I should have come off the drugs but I couldn't. My depression seems to get worse when pregnant. Anyway, she had mini seizures when she was born and I'm convinced they were withdrawals from the antidepressants. She didn't wake up for 3 weeks. She slept until her due date. Basically anything in the slightest bit wrong I start to panic it's to do with the meds she would have had through me.

She's a lovely lovely happy girl, who has really good speech, no hearing problems. She does seem very young for her 5 years. I don't know if that makes sense. We possibly baby her and that's something I need to think about. But it's horrible being told your child is failing. Esp when she's only flipping 5.

I really appreciate your help on this though.

[MrsWhiteWash]

I'm off the app so can do links

dancing bears - 10 minutes a day and free phonics game teach your monster how to read.

[mrz]

Just as you wouldn't ask a child to calculate quadratic equations when they are first learning numbers you don't ask a child to independently read texts that are too difficult at that point in their learning. Reading taught by phonics can use real books but you wouldn't expect the child to read them independently when they are just beginning to learn to read.
Sending home reading books containing words the child can't read independently gives the message that reading is too difficult whereas sending books that match the child's ability build confidence and the child sees them self as a reader.

[picklemepopcorn]

"reading matter provided was not fully phonically decodeable"

So, reading taught exclusively by phonics can't be used for real books? How does it progress to real books later then?

[mrz]

"By recognising constituent parts- you can do that by working 'back' from whole word recognition to letter-sound correspondence as others have noted. " so you would use Phonics ...

[MaryTheCanary]

"But the set of words that is introduced in early phonics uses only the easiest spellings.

So yes, given there are a lot of sound-to-letter correspondences in English, it is hard to become a fluent, read-anything reader in English.

But it's no harder to learn to read r-a-t in English than r-o-s-a in Spanish, if you are first taught the easiest 20-something sound to letter correspondences."

Sure. But the thing is, because there is so much more to learn AFTER the r-a-t type words, there is a need to start at an earlier point.

It takes about 2-3 years to get really fluent at reading English, so you want to start phonics instruction at 4-5 if you want them to be able to read their textbooks and worksheets and what teacher has written on the board easily by age 7 or so, so that they can get cracking with learning other subjects like history and science.

In other countries with easier writing systems, kids can cover the mechanics of reading much more quickly, so if you start at 6 or even 7, they will also be at the "being able to read a children's textbook" stage by age 7.

By the way, it's not a binary choice between "PANIC!!! WRITE HER OFF AT AGE 5" vs "She'll pick it up when she is ready." Of course the OP should not start writing her kid off at age 5... or panicking. What she should do is do some extra work with phonics and blending, to help her daughter get over her current area of weakness.

I don't think "She'll do it when she's ready" is helpful at all. She might just suddenly pick it up, she might not. Loads of older kids have serious reading difficulties so these things do NOT necessarily just resolve themselves.

And reading is not a "natural" skill---"readiness" is a nonsense concept when it comes to reading because our brains never evolved to be able to read in the first place, so they can't be "ready" for it at any age.

[Theycalledmethewildrose]

Gosh don't worry. She is still so very very young. In other countries she wouldn't even be at school. I think it is rather sad that she is already being classed as 'behind' when imo she should still be learning through play. All over the world five year olds haven't yet started to read and they will be just if not more successful than their UK counterparts.

[mrz]

TheUnseen I use a Linguistic Phonics programme (Sounds Write) which starts from spoken words and is a government approved programme . I think you are under some misapprehension about phonics in schools.

[mrz]

Syllables and compound words such as car pet are part of SSP

[TheUnseenAcademic]

Actually, that's just clarified my thinking- what we're really talking about (I think) is synthetic phonics, which is the government-mandated approach focused on blending etc which the OP is writing about. I'm probably really writing about analytic phonics as an alternative for those children who struggle with synthetic.
Anyway, I don't work with primary school children and my son is learning really well with the synthetic method, so no one need worry about any damage I might do to 'the children'!

[RumbleMum]

Reception or Y1 OP? Did the teacher indicate they think there's an issue or were they asking you to ramp up the pressure or just flagging a point to watch?

DS1 was like this in reception - I remember there still being hideous tears at this stage in reception over trying to read 'cat'. He just couldn't put it all together. He now reads well at an appropriate level (he's Y2) and after all the pain it was incredibly satisfying to see him curled up in bed reading the Beano earlier. :-)

DS's teacher said they all get there at their own pace and although it's good to practice at home, the most important thing is to impart a love of reading and an enthusiasm for trying. She recommended not pushing DS too hard - just a bit of practice at a time - to avoid putting him off or putting too much pressure on him.

[TheUnseenAcademic]

I know that phonics methods do include morphological features but my point was that you can also learn those through the starting point of whole word recognition (or actually through analytic rather than synthetic phonics which I think is what people are getting at when they say you can work 'down' from whole words to phonic knowledge rather than 'up' from individual letter-sound correspondence and blending).

[TheUnseenAcademic]

By recognising constituent parts- you can do that by working 'back' from whole word recognition to letter-sound correspondence as others have noted. So I might read 'transubstantiation' by recognising the prefix-root-suffix 'trans' 'substantial' 'tion' without blending individual phonemes. I have encountered those morphemes in many other words/contexts.
Anyway, as I said I firmly believe the evidence-base suggesting that phonics is the best approach (combined with a classroom that promotes a love of reading too) but I don't think that means that there's simply no other way to learn.

[mrz]

"If you learn 'car' and 'pet' you can use that knowledge to read 'carpet'. You can learn common prefixes, suffixes and commit root words- morphological knowledge comes into play as well as phonic." This is all part of teaching phonics

[mrz]

Backforgood in case it slipped your mind you'd already offered your advice I merely pointed out that it isn't supported by evidence or good practice I'm sorry if that offends you but I hate to see children failed.

[mrz]

TheUnseen how would you tackle an unfamiliar word if you found yourself in a position where you're given a statement to read with no time to prepare?

[cantkeepawayforever]

It actually made teaching to read much easier than in another school I taught in, where very much more educated and literate parents pushed mixed methods at their children - we did a lot of phonics training for parents there.

[cantkeepawayforever]

BackforGood,

We had about 35% of children with illiterate parents in 1 school I taught in - which in terms of phonics teaching was brilliant as all adults reading with those children were within school and well trained.

The only child I can remember failing the phonics test had very significant SEN - was working at p5-p6 level in Y3 - and the reading results were great.

[TheUnseenAcademic]

I'm not disputing the evidence base showing that phonics is by far the best approach for most children, just the claims that if you don't learn to read in that way you have to learn each individual word separately with no way to tackle new words.

[Feenie]

And your last sentence is also phonics!