your baby can read

tandraig

milliebear - i really dont mean to have a go at you. its just that my daughter was such a promising reader - she was narrator for the primary school play cos she was so good - then her teacher changed and all of a sudden she lost interest in reading and her reports were carp!

tandraig

A good teacher is a gift - my history teacher for one. my maths teacher in college who identified dyslexia - my OU teacher who taught me quantitative mathematics. my teacher on counselling course - these people I look up to and see them as giving me a gift. opening my eyes - to things i hadnt seen before - so i really dont have a down on teachers. I just have a down on teachers who put kids down! either because they try to holdthe kid back or dont understand the kids problems.

milliebear00001

tandraig wrote: »

milliebear - i really dont mean to have a go at you. its just that my daughter was such a promising reader - she was narrator for the primary school play cos she was so good - then her teacher changed and all of a sudden she lost interest in reading and her reports were carp!

Well I actually think that's really sad. It's obviously true that there are some rubbish teachers about, but the vast majority of us really try to do our best, and in most classrooms I know, early readers are catered for well. Our jobs would be much easier if all children started at the same level (and they all came from homes where they'd been read to and even talked to rather than plonked in front of the TV everyday) but we're well aware the world doesn't work like that! The best teachers have ways and means of making sure the work they give children best fits their needs and abilities.

LadyMorticia

I think being taught to read earlier might have helped me, to be honest.

I didn't learn to read until I was 6-7. I was even admitted to Reception early because of concerns about my ability.

I'm not entirely sure why it took me so long to learn to read. I had to have learning support because I was struggling so much.
Saying that, once I started reading I excelled to the top of the class.
From one extreme to the other.lol.

x

bonty44

DS1 was reading (and decoding) the Wind in The Willows at the age of 5 ... but has not been 'allowed' to progress through the reading scheme at school because they want the other children to 'catch up'. It's the same for his literacy, too. So we just take it all with a VERY big pinch of salt and carry on reading what he wants to read and he uses his dictionary and thesaurus for his homework and he produces work to his ability.

Can't believe his school WANTS to hold him back.

They're going to have fun with DS2 who is even more fluent with his reading ...

Caroline73_2

What concerns me most is that teachers like milliebear tell parents that they are teaching the 'wrong' way, when actually she means not the way schools teach.

My eldest son didn't understand phonics, he never did and still doesn't get it now. He is 11 and on the G&T register for English maths, science and humanities but had to be taken out of class in Yr 2 for one to one teaching to learn to read (which they had to teach him the 'wrong' way in order for him to learn)

This one style suits all obviously doesn't!

lynnexxxo

I am another one who thinks teaching kids to read before school is not doing then any favours. The way i see it, its one of the things that the early school years focus on, and with so main other things to learn in the world, why do something that is going to be done anyway ? My son is in primary 1 and comes home positively buzzing that he has a 'new letter'. I feel if i had already taught him all the letters and sounds then that early thrill oflearning would be taken away.

I understand its difficult if they want to learn, or if they have older siblings they pick a lot up. Parents with gifted children sometimes get recommended to help them learn a muscal instrument instead. You could get a keyboard, write the notes on the keys and help then play little tunes (if i hear freres jaques one more time!!!)

blaque*angel

It looks like i have a lot to read...i will catch up with this later!

consultant31

lynnexxxo wrote: »

I am another one who thinks teaching kids to read before school is not doing then any favours. The way i see it, its one of the things that the early school years focus on, and with so main other things to learn in the world, why do something that is going to be done anyway ? My son is in primary 1 and comes home positively buzzing that he has a 'new letter'. I feel if i had already taught him all the letters and sounds then that early thrill oflearning would be taken away.

My son leaned to read using flashcards when he was 2½. He wasn't pushed into it, he used to ask me what various signs said, which was what made me get the flashcards. By the time he was 3 he could read pages from the Times and used to read to the class at playschool.

Because of the fact that he was held back at his primary school by teachers who couldn't cope with having a child who didn't fit in, we made lots of financial sacrifices and sent him to a private school. He has since got a first class honours degree in Law.

I often wonder where his education would have ended had he stayed in the same school system. It wasn't to do with the teachers as such, but the system doesn't allow for some children to be quicker than others. If some of the class are a little behind, they all seem to have to slow down.

Maybe I'm well out of date, my son is 30 now and DGS is only a baby so I don't really know how it works these days.

The flashcards never worked with my daughter though and after a couple of weeks trying, I just left them. She was more interested in music and learnt to play the piano before she started school.

grastgirl

I don't remember being taught to read by my parents, as far as I can tell they just read to me and pointed to the words, incidentally improving my mother's reading in the process (she left senior school with a reading age of 11). I can remember being frustrated with the Janet and John books I had when I first started school because they were easy and boring (so no lack of comprehension). I agree that it's no good teaching a child to read without having lots of conversations with them about everything and anything to increase their verbal vocabulary, because it's their verbal vocabularly they use to decode the written words. I did try to read Great Expectations at the age of 11 or so, with the help of Dad for the more unusual words, although I didn't finish it because it's way too complex a storyline (even now). My brother on the other hand had problems with reading due to hearing problems giving him slow speech development even though he had the same help from my parents as I did. He actually memorised the story using the pictures as a guide, so if you covered up the pictures he couldn't read the book, he managed to trick us this way for a long time because he had a phenomenal memory.

I've been racking my brains trying to think how else you'd sound out T other than tuh and can only come up with shortning tuh to ti, which is probably just as bad, or making it into the various compound sounds such as th, tr, etc. Its interesting that phonics is so different from the way some people have been taught.