Learning to read?

So how does he deal with reading completely new words, growstuff? I'm genuinely interested.

When I realised there was a problem, I had countless discussions with the teacher and headteacher and got absolutely nowhere. As far as they were concerned, phonics were the method - end of story. Eventually, I decided to ignore them.

MaizieD

Sorry, growstuff, this is the particular bee in my bonnet.

The evidence for systematic phonics instruction as being the most effective method of teaching practically all children to read is extremely strong. I can assure you I have read reams of research over the past decade or so.

Without knowing anything at all about the method used to teach your son I would suspect that it was a mix of methods which completely confused him. That was my experience with the children I worked with.

Poor reading skills rarely indicate any sort of cognitive deficiency in the child; which I took to be the implication of your statement that I only worked with poor or non readers.

It would be interesting to know how, as an adult, he deals with reading completely new and unfamiliar words, particularly complex ones.

Just seen this. No, it wasn't a mix. The school (and teacher) was addicted to phonics. They wouldn't even consider anything else.

All children do not come from homes where the parents have the ability to help them learn.

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Sorry, growstuff, this is the particular bee in my bonnet.

The evidence for systematic phonics instruction as being the most effective method of teaching practically all children to read is extremely strong. I can assure you I have read reams of research over the past decade or so.

Without knowing anything at all about the method used to teach your son I would suspect that it was a mix of methods which completely confused him. That was my experience with the children I worked with.

Poor reading skills rarely indicate any sort of cognitive deficiency in the child; which I took to be the implication of your statement that I only worked with poor or non readers.

It would be interesting to know how, as an adult, he deals with reading completely new and unfamiliar words, particularly complex ones.

The debate 're phonics v look and say, here is my contribution. I am currently using an app to try and learn some Greek in case we are ever allowed to travel again. As you will all know, they have a different alphabet and I am finding I am using look and say a bit more than phonics. Longer words with a distinctive shape are easy to memorize, using phonics on unfamiliar ones is very slow. So I need both skills. So I think both approaches must be used or some learners will struggle and therefore give up.

DD2 taught herself to read well before she started school watching Sesame Street with DD1 and DS1. They decided to teach her to read and were amazed to find that they were too late.

Some posters seem to assume that all children are exposed to books and reading which sadly isn’t always the case.

If primary school children go back to school in September they would have missed approx 14 weeks of schooling, not a huge amount overall in their school life.

I agree Alexa (not that I'm claiming to be nice ).

My son was the exact opposite Gagajo, which is why I don't believe one method suits all. I don't really know what was going on inside his brain, but he certainly didn't learn to read or spell using phonics.

I had quite a heated discussion with his headteacher when he was in Year 2 because the school was claiming he couldn't read. I was puzzled because I knew he could. I had an interview with her and to try and prove her point she picked a book off her bookshelf and asked him to read a paragraph. It was some kind of dry educational theory book and he read it almost fluently.

But Maizie You worked with the poor or non readers. I've heard many times that phonics works well for them. However, there are others, particularly those with strong visual memories, who are bored rigid by phonics and actually find them confusing when they already know some non-phonetic words. I saw for myself how teaching phonics frustrates good readers/spellers.

My daughter was 7 before she could read because her teacher only used the look/recognise system. She changed schools, got an older experienced teacher who immediately instigated the use of phonics. Bingo. Reading within the year. Later, we got her a tutor who introduced me to multi sensory learning. B in GCSE English.

All my children and grandchildren could read before they went to school. They are all bookworms now.

quizqueen

Must be the first time ever that you and I have agreed about anything!

Phonics rules! Yay!

I spent my last 10 working years working with KS3 children who were poor or non readers. Few of them would have been in that state if they'd had good phonics teaching from the start.

Phonics is most definitely not nonsence only if it not taught correctly. i.e 'Buh' for B etc. The system of look,cover, write check does work for some children,but it will not help a child to decode and unfamiliar word.
To help a child with reading, sitting together every day with a book or two and not forcing the issue if they don't want to. Also if they want to learn the alphabet do it by letter sound 'aah' for a, etc rather than the actual lettername, otherwise this will confuse a child when they start school.
I have seen a lot of children who 'can read' when they start school but it is just remembering words they have seen a lot of times. If you give them a slightly different word, they do not have the skills to decode it and decide if it is the right word to fit in the sentence.

The very first step in teaching children to read is them enjoying the lovely cosy social thing of being read a story by somebody nice.

Ofsted want the younger children back because they're concerned about widening the attainment gap. It's already an issue that middle class, educated parents provide richer experiences for their children and teachers are reporting that it's these same children who are doing the work which is being sent home.

Have you taught young children to read yggdrasil?

Ahem! Not with the prescribed teaching sequence of whole class teaching at the beginning of the lesson they don't.

I am so glad I've left school teaching now and don't have to pay lip service to differentiation.

With differentiation growstuff, children should always be encouraged to read at their own level.

Yes, in my experience, ALL children love being read to. I have lovely memories of a class of fifteen 16 year old boys having Sherlock Holmes stories read to them by me. They were REAL hard nuts. Violent. Foul language. Very unsocialised. But they were silent while I read to them and clamoured for more, turning the stories into a unit of work taught over a half term.

I have a family history of dyslexia and although I'm not dyslexic, struggled to learn to read although I was obsessed once I had. My daughter is dyslexic and loved being read to although completely turned off reading once she struggled with doing it herself. Hyperactive grandson also settles down very well to stories.

Unfortunately Gagajo Some will also get bored. I saw that with my daughter and her behaviour went through a difficult patch until the school let her read real books outside her year.

My daughter could read ages before she started school. My son couldn't read until he was 7. Phonics were a disaster for him, but almost overnight he started picking up real books (not readers) and never looked back. I don't think he's ever been without a book since then.

They're all different. I never forced either of mine to read, but we did always read stories together before bedtime. Parents could do that with their children.

No idea how I learned to read 60+ years ago, Dick and Dora books come to mind, but I have always loved reading.

My own 70’s children learned with Roger Red Hat and family, just memorising words as I recall, but both always been good readers also, so it seemed to work.

GC, not sure about their reading as not so involved obviously, but good readers also so it all works out somehow hopefully.