What happens if your child can read before they start school?

[SkyWalker95]

I know most kids learn to read in reception, but what if they can already read independently? Surely they have to teach to their ability and won't make them just sit there while the others are learning their sounds right? But what would they be doing instead? I don't really know how primary education works

Great attitude, OP.

There's a significant proportion of children who will pick up the phonic code for themselves just through exposure to text.

They usually make up the children who would learn to read and spell whatever method is used to teach them. Some of those children may have picked some of this up before school although probably with some gaps.

The thing about reading is that if you're going to be spending 30 minutes every day reading to them for four years anyway it's very easy to slip three minutes (or even thirty seconds) of basic phonics into that time. It's not taking time away that you'd otherwise be spending on cutlery handling or sock-putting-on practice.

I knew my DC were going to be smaller, clumsier and less continent than the other DC in their class for a variety of reasons and there was very little I could do about that. But it was easy to make sure that they had strong literacy skills, and I thought it would benefit their self-esteem to be good at something. School coped perfectly well.

I had a terrible primary schoolteacher who insisted on taking me right back to the very beginning of the reading programme - but then apparently teaching orthodoxy of the time was claiming that the under 7s couldn't read chapter books because their eyes couldn't focus properly on small print .

One nice thing about the new phonics checks is that all teachers have got an instant means of checking whether little Johnnie whose mother insists he can read perfectly has just memorised his favourite bedtime story or has internalised the phonics rules and can really read freely. They can check n. and proceed accordingly.

Dd1 - early reader, started school two weeks after her 4th birthday and was reading books with ease.

Dd2 - knew her alphabet easily.

DS - knew most of the alphabet

They're teens now both dd's love to read, but are equally matched. DS can read just as well, but only reads for pleasure on holiday is just as bright but more maths/science. In the long run it was no indication of the child's abilities, it was more an indication of how much time I had to help them to read. DS, the third child in as many years had minimal input and dd1 was the pfb.

Isn't the heavy focus on phonics because it is shown to be the method that allows fewest children to slip through the net and fail to learn to read?

So, with look and say, most children will cope fine, but a reasonable number will struggle. This is how most of us learned ....most of us were fine and actually learned to decode too, even without explicit phonics teaching. However, some struggled and never became good readers and decoding wasn't natural.

I understand why phonics is the current system. However, to those who are so negative about look and say, I can see lots of children and adults who did learn fine through that method and who are now excellent readers and decoders. Therefore I don't believe that synthetic phonics is the only way to teach, even if if is system used today and might be best for the population as a whole....individual children can learn well using other methods too and I don't believe that they necessarily hold them back or mean they won't be able to pass a phonics test later....because good readers automatically decode and learn to do it. However, I do understand that schools need to use a system that works well for everyone, including those who would struggle with other methods.

Sort of Wombat. It allows fewer children to slip through the net because it explicitly teaches the knowledge and skills needed for reading rather than look and say which hopes they will develop those skills just through exposure to text.

Phonics isn't a method of teaching reading. It's a set of key skills needed in order to read well.

In my experience,miss often the younger, less experienced and less confident teacher who is desperate to hold the children back or make them all go from the very beginning and who cannot or won't comment on where an individual child is.

The older teacher with many years experience has seen all kinds of children and what follows on from different starting points. They have the confidence to say if someone is ahead or doing well and to offer more individualised approaches and resources suitable for them. NQTS have great enthusiasm, but simply don't have that experience of a teacher who has been around for a while. Of course that's not their fault and some of them are brilliant from the start, but others will take a while to become really good. However, with funding cuts unfortunately some schools can only afford NQTs. It's a shame because good schools have a mix of experience.

My dd2 could read to Oxford level 6 when she started. She taught herself using a phonics bus toy, all we did was give her books. Her nursery manager made it clear to school she knew phonics and could understand what she was reading. They still sent her home with the books with no words and then level 1 but after a while they actually accepted that she could read and let her go through the levels quickly. I still got frustrated with her bringing home easy books but she was reading so much at home it didn't matter. As everyone else has said there are so many more things to learn in Reception than phonics. They will not be excused the group phonics sessions but it's fine.

Rafals - I know what you mean. Question is, do those key skills always need explicitly teaching? Most of us never had that explicit teaching, yet we read well and decode unknown words and just picked up the skills needed. Don't you think that many of the children currently learning via look and say or mixed methods do the same? The level of anxiety some people seem to feel when they hear about mixed methods or ORT or look and say just strikes me as odd....when clearly lots of children become great readers through these methods, as they have in the past.

My experience is that for a child who doesn't have literacy problems (and I accept that this isn't all) reading via look and say and learning phonics at the same time often results in more slung reading more quickly. The flow of reading is better and because the flow is better, the understanding of meaning is also better. Is that your experience?

I deliberately didn't teach my dd to read despite wanting to as I believed that things had moved on and I would probably teach her the wrong thing and she would get confused. Dd like myself was reading before she went to school and was self taught. When I had my first meeting with her class teacher I was told off for teaching dd to read. I told the reception teacher that dd had taught herself to read. Teachers response was that dc can't teach themselves. The teacher then spent the rest of the school year making dd read every book in each level before she could move up a level. It was torture when I asked dd teacher to move dd up to a more challenging level I was told it wasn't a race! At that point I refused to participate in the school reading scheme and told dd in school she had to read what Mrs w told her to read but at home I just books that were right for dd.

There's always one parent (sadly it's usually a mother) who believes her child is starting school head and shoulders above all others.
Reading/learning to read/phonics is such a small part of reception it really doesn't matter if your child can read or not. What is way more important is that your child is socially ready to be in a classroom with 29 of their peers. Can they share? Communicate well? Wait their turn? Take their coat off and put it back on? Remove their uniform and put their own PE kit on? Carry a tray with lunch on it? Wipe their own bum?! The list of skills that is actually important is way longer than being able to read.
Sadly, too many mothers focus waaaay too heavily on pushing the reading at the expense of skills that they actually need. So he likes it? So what?! My children love chocolate but that doesn't mean they're allowed it 24/7.

I would say that I would expect a genuinely gifted child to be able to find constructive ways of occupying themselves at nursery, or in a properly organised Reception class UNLESS the nursery or reception class was deliberately putting a ceiling in what the child could do.

If you have a child who can read, but can't occupy themselves with a book or maths equipment or toys or pen and paper or any other of the myriad pieces of equipment available in a nursery / reception class, then I would say that their ability is currently rather narrow, and everyone involved could do with looking at that education in the round. What is it that is stopping that child learning through play with the equipment, resources and materials around them? Is it that they have come to regard 'education' as 'only reading / writing', because that has been prioritised / praised over other forms of learning, by parents or teachers? Do they in fact have few inner resources and require adult attention?

A child who can read has the world at their fingertips. Finding out why they are bored, in a well-equipped nursery, would seem to me to be a higher priority than worrying about reception reading.

My DS, a fluent reader on arrival in reception, LOVED Reception and its well-stocked bookcase, short taught sessions of phonics (which he learned from for writing) and other subjects, and large swathes of time for exploratory, imaginative play (which for him did involve a LOT of reading of books for older children, and a LOT of complex maths involving negative numbers). Year 1, with its more rigid structure and limited-task worksheets, was MUCH more of an issue, despite it looking much more 'educational' in its narrowest sense.

No, I don't agree with you, Asparagus. If the child likes swimming, they will let them swim. If the child likes football, they will put them in foot ball class. If they are interested in music, they will let them learn musical instruments. If they like to read, they will give them more books. Totally different from giving them chocolate.

Dd2 and dd3 could read fluently when they started school. They were never ever bored. Or naughty for that matter. Reading is only a tiny part of school. Dd3 helped another child read. Which was very good for her

I could read before I started school
I was self taught
I did it by remembering the words
I wasnt bored or naughty at school

It irritates me that people assume that because my child could read and do sums clearly she couldn't socialise and do up her own buttons. She's actually very sociable and has been independent since a young age. When I say she's ahead, I mean across the board; particularly socially and reading/writing, but I can't think of a single ELG where DD didn't start reception ahead of where DS finished it (and he met or exceeded all the ELGs).

Actually, being sociable is the main thing holding DD back from learning in reception, and making her a bit bored. She wants to play with people and do the same as her friends. But what her friends are doing is basic phonics games, so yes that is a bit boring to DD who picked up basic phonics 3 years ago when DS was in reception.
She'd like to include writing in her role playing, but there's no point when the other children can't read the things she writes.

She has amusingly learned to do "reception class spelling". So if you ask her how to spell something, she'll tell you the correct way, and then say "but someone in my class would spell it ..." naive phonics way.

Are some of you really saying that by letting my son do what he likes to it makes me a terrible parent

No, but by not guiding him away from a skill he's already mastered, and encouraging other skills is a wasted opportunity. I'd say this is even more relevant when the next couple of years of school are going to be focused on that same skill.

Sure he enjoys it, he's 4, he'd enjoy lots of things (particularly if he's getting praise for doing it, or rewards for completing) Learning to read is a closed skill - once you've learnt it, you've learnt it - so there's little point doing it out of sync with the peers. Using the opportunity to encourage development of other skills and interest simply makes a better use of time I'd say.

I don't think that early reading necessarily means they are more intelligent, but it is a good start on the road. There has been a roughly 6 year span between the age that two of my dc became fluent readers. I would not say that one is particularly cleverer than the other but one had a spLD which made it harder, so reading early may be a good sign that they will have fewer issues when they get older. It was the youngest who read earliest because they saw siblings learning and it was normal. It was a pastime for him - still is. From 9 months (long before he could talk) he was to be found with a book (often upside down) making phonic sounds.

I think we have been lucky that he has been allowed to have free choice of books which means he hasn't been bored. He turned phonics into a social study of how children from different countries pronounced phenomes.

"Ok so maybe I should explain a little better. He learnt to read by leaning his phonics ( it's started off as a speech therapy thing )and is quite confident with all of them including the tricky ones like magic e igh ear ect". So he knows the 180ish common ways Sounds are represented in English? How many ways does he know to spell the sound /or/ ? For example does he know that ear represents different sounds?

I'll ignore magic e as it doesn't exist

To answer OP's original question of what happens...

No-one notices for 8 weeks or so till there's a parents' evening.

After that they finally hear the child read, make astonished noises, and things look up for a bit. Appropriate targets are set, they let her choose a chapter book from the school library and read that 1:1 with the teacher once a week. After about half a term of that they start forgetting to take the class to the library and not quite fitting in child's individual reading so you're on your own finding appropriate books at home.

Child carries on joining in phonics lessons, but doesn't mind as it's just singing a few songs for her. Expectations for quantity and quality of writing are generally higher.

(Obviously just one possible outcome! Friends in similar situations have had quite varied paths.)

Oh dear catkind is that really what they do in your child's school?

I have no idea how people can say that teaching yourself to read aged 2 or 3 without tutoring, doesn't make you inherently brighter. I have contact with people who have literacy skills severely below average.

I have come to realise lately that mn is a rarefied bubble, as the people on the crappy courses I get sent on, have basically little comprehension of the wider world. Mn has little comprehension of just how thick the general populace is.

My early readers sat through all the phonics but in reality it's only a few minutes each day and I assumed it would be good for confidence and concrete any learning.

I'm already pitying the future reception teacher if excuses are already being made re behaviour and a hot housed chid by the parents.