if a child arrives in Reception being able to read will this be viewed as a good or a bad thing?

[GoingPostal]

ds is 3, knows all his letters, constantly asks what letter names and objects begin with and I suspect will be keen to get reading before he starts YR in Sept 2011.

My mother is bugging me to get him started (apparently I learnt to read age 2 ) and I sort of agree as reading has come easily to me and given me massive amounts of joy and entertainment for the whole of my memorable life.

But I don't want to do this if it will create problems at school - any thoughts on whether I should go ahead or not please?

and if yes to go ahead, while I understand the need to learn phonics I feel that ds will click more with it by sight-based learning, again would this create problems at school?

My DS was doing that as he just turned 3, but I didn't teach him to read before he started Reception. He took a little while to settle at nursery - he found being away from me for a whole day hard - so I wanted him to be learning to play with other children and get used to being independent, rather than being spotted as an early reader and encouraged to sit and learn.

I also wanted him to fit in at school - I read before I went to school and ended up being bored and bit disruptive. So much depends on your DS's personality and your local schools. Will they focus on him in Reception if he's a little forward, or will he be left to his own devices as he's met the required standard while the teacher concentrates on those who have trouble recognising letters & numbers?

I wouldn't teach him per se but if he asks "what does that say?" then tell him IYSWIM.

Being able to read before school is neither a good or a bad thing. The school will look at your child as a whole and his needs as an individual. Neither will being able to read mean he will be bored or disruptive when he starts school.

Do lots of reading together, sing songs and nursery rhymes, play I spy, talk about letter sounds, rather than letter names.

I personally don't think it's either a good or a bad thing, it's just a thing!

He will undoubtedly be taught phonics at school. If I were you, I would endeavour to use the same/similar system, rather than go down the "whole word" approach.

I'm not saying your DS will be bored/disruptive, just that I was, so in deciding whether to teach my son, more formally, I took that in to account. And I wasn't very good at socialising/playing, which I saw in my son too.

I did as Car Girl suggests - read signs etc when he asked. So he knew all our local bus routes and train stations and supermarkets! He's got on very well at school, socially and with his literacy. But each child is different.

many thanks all views are v helpful!

I knew all sorts of things before I started them at school (including more English than the English teacher when we started foreign language lessons in Yr 4). I may occasionally have been mildly bored but I don't remembering ever minding that and I was certainly never disrupted. Nor did I lose interest in learning; I just took it for granted that I wouldn't be doing all my learning at school. Children are all different.

My child could read long before Reception, it wasn't a problem. In fact, she could read in Nursery and in Nursery most of the children were on the school reading scheme. I had no idea that my child could even read in fact, it was the Nursery teacher who told me (fingers crossed we get her next year!) - they just transfer the records up to the next teacher. Children are all different. Some children in my little girl's class can not read at all, and some do very well. It's just part of being at school....

Schools are so much better these days and because of league table results etc, they actually want their children to do well...and with Reception still being foundation stage they have to adapt the curriculum to the child, not the other way round.

My DD will start reception being able to read - she is currently at a school with a mixed nursery/reception class and has learned to read since January. If we were staying where we are would have just carried on as she is as she would have just gone from being "mornings" to "all day"

We are however moving house before September and she will go to pre-school for a few weeks and then start reception in September. I am hoping her being able to read isn't a problem - as the new school also uses Oxford Reading Tree I am hoping she doesn't have to go through the same books again or I may be the one going "Floppy Floppy" in the corner .

Our foundation stage is mixed for playtimes but not for taught sessions on the carpet.

Our school seems to use a mix and match of different schemes - we are on ORT now, but we started on stage 5.

Trust me - after Ginn you will be begging for Floppy!!!!

Mine is three (will be four in September) and already reads some words like next, the, and, help etc. Just knows it by sight, not by actually working it out by the sounds. I don't think it's possible to actively stop them learning, when you read to them they just start identifying the words after a while I suppose. I wouldn't think too much about it, they'll have loads of learning to do in Reception anyway.

DD and DS1 were both reading when they started reception. I honestly didn't teach them, but both of them just sort of picked it up. As megapixels says, you can't stop them learning.

I think the advice to answer questions is good. (Because that's all I've ever done ). DS2 will start school younger than either of his siblings, and I don't expect him to be reading when he starts - but I was surprised to discover recently that he can identify the initial sounds of words.

Yes, get them doing whatever they are able to do. It could be maths, reading, drawing... it doesn't matter. The important thing is that it is done in a friendly manner with no pressure. I've seen so many parents turn their loving darlings into neurotic infants by putting too much pressure on them. Provided you are careful how you tread, all learning is a great thing and getting children interested in books early on is one step on the way to combatting the constant barrage of computer and TV material out there.

Go for it!

Yes if he's interested then go for it. I was worried I would teach my ds the wrong way so he couldn't read when he started in reception. The teacher when we went to meet her before he started said it was fine he couldn't read and meant she didn't have to spend time undoing things he had learnt incorrectly. He has picked it up soooo quickly though and I must admit if I had known how they did it, I could have prepared him sooo much more. The biggest thing though is that he is emotionally and socially prepared as best you can for school. A friend of mine is a teacher and she says all the kids who have been to prep school, can read already, brilliant writing, etc but put a lump of playdoh in front of them and they haven't got a clue what to do with it. Good luck

I completely agree with CharlieBoo. I didn't teach DD although she is very bright, because I was worried about doing it wrong. She couldn't read when she started school but now at almost the end of reception, she has learnt so much and can read really well. If she had pushed us to teach her, I would have tried, so I guess you should be guided a bit by your child. My DD has developed immensely during her reception year, not just reading but sums, drawing, colouring and emotionally.

One of my friends has a DS of the same age who is bright and could read from very early on in reception at a higher level than his peers. She was told that it was just as important to concentrate on writing, spelling etc so that he didn't leap ahead on one skill and get left behind on others.

Actually, one other thing in relation to reading at nursery/pre-school. DD"s nursery was very strongly of the view that they were not permitted to teach the children to read and that it had to be left until reception. I think that was partly because the children went on to lots of schools so perhaps they all use slightly different teaching styles. So DD did lots of stuff at nursery but didn't do any reading.

We are moving and I looked around the nursery DS will go to. It feeds into the village primary school and 90% of the reception class have attended the nursery at least part of the time. For what its worth, it has an outstanding ofsted rating. They place the children in the last year of the nursery into an academic year the September before they start school, so they are together as a school group for 12 months before they start school. When I observed the class last week, they were sitting in a circle playing a phonics game. They knew all the jolly phonics sounds and were signing the songs which DD learnt in her first term at reception.

I guess its slightly off topic, but I thought it was interesting to see such a different approach, with the nursery directly feeding into the school's way of teaching. I will be interested to see what difference it makes to DS's transition from nursery to school when the time comes.

My boys could read when they started reception. They were assessed by the the teacher and given suitable reading books and extension work with a few other children, who could also read. It wasn't a problem.

Try and find out what attitude your intended school has towards early readers. DD1 started school able to read reasonably well - knew all the words they're supposed to know at the end of Reception etc. The school just ignored it , put her onto the 'no word' books, and insisted on ploughing through EVERY ORT book from Stage 1 onwards, even though she could easily read Stage 5 at the beginning of the first term. They were just lazy box-tickers, IMO, so we just moved schools.

My DD started school reading fluently, it was all she ever wanted to do so I taught her - using phonics as everybody said that was the way to go. It wasn't a problem at all at school. When the others were doing the more nuts and bolts reading she would just....read a book! And she still went to all the phonics classes with her friends anyway - because she loves reading, she loved phonics, and was happy to do it all again. And was adamant she wasn't going to be left out of anything! Also the teachers found creative ways of including her - like getting her to read out the blurb on the back of the book when they did group reading, stuff like that.

If reading is their natural "thing", I don't see why they shouldn't be helped to do it as soon as they want to. Just as they would be if their thing was football, or drawing, or whatever else. My DD never wanted to play, or run around, she just wanted to read, and once she could, she was happy. Now in year 3 many children have caught her up anyway. It's never presented a problem.

A sensible school won't mind; they have children turning up in all sorts of states, abilities etc.

But if you have a good reader and leave it until they start school, they will learn to read very quickly.

MajesticScallop has really said it all; just follow your child's lead and enjoy it.

Oh, and it doesn't matter if you teach them in the 'wrong' way. My perception is that reading isn't really taught - just learned.

My dd seemed to learn by word recognition. However, the jolly phonics (that I never got) has probably helped her with her writing and some of her reading. (But really, she just seems to know what a word is, and has never done the 'sounding' out thing).

thank you for all the replies, very helpful and positive!

Send him to pre school. Ds1 could read and write by the time he started reception because he had been taught at pre school. Ds2 is at pre school now and learning to read and write.