When did you learn to read?

NfkDumpling

My birthday is late in the year so I was older when I started school so my DM taught me to read and also write a bit as I was an only child so got bored. (Were there two intakes back then?)

She taught me the alphabet, the sounds each letter makes and how they interact together. The naughty E, and the shy Q who daren't go out alone without U for company. How S liked to have friends she could make different sounds with. The UGHT gang who sometimes let O play and other times A.

No phonics! But I still think of each letter as having a gender!

How strange that your last statement should be 'No phonics'. Because what you described is 'phonics' , if not exactly best practice phonics.

I spent the last 12 years of my working life working with children with reading and spelling problems at secondary school. This was before systematic phonics instruction was mandated for the initial teaching of reading in primary school. Some 20% of our Y7s came to us unable to read well enough to access the secondary curriculum. Their main problem was that they had absolutely no idea how to work out what unfamiliar written words (and most written words were unfamiliar to them) 'said'.
I understand that there has been some improvement in the last few years.

I can't remember how I learned to read. I went to school age 5 unable to read and left the infants dept having read every book in the school library. It's a life skill that has been incredibly useful as well as providing a great deal of pleasure.

My children used to love books and being read to from day 1. I used to buy at least one new little book every week. Also members of the local library. As a child I went to the library every week and was always reading, I still enjoy reading and losing myself in a nook. My three children were read to every day and are still avid readers and have a very good command of English language. A few minutes set aside each day for reading makes such a difference in later life.

I drove my mother mad, plonking the book on the ironing board and asking her to help me with reading so she sent me to school just before my 5th birthday. I remember the book with its little two-word sentences. There was a picture of a child balancing on something (a stool, a chair) and underneath it said "I am up. I am on it."

At school we read Ladybird books. I remember writing exercises, copying from cards, and reading books being passed around the class. You could sit quietly and read when you had finished your exercises.

I made sure my boys could read English before they started school because I reckoned it was much harder than German, and they picked up German reading before school on their own.

I hate the German system where they are forbidden to read before they start school. Kindergarten teachers have no training in the 3 R's. They say that "the children should be allowed to play".

I don't remember being able to read stunting my ability to play! Quite the opposite.

Now we have our DGS 3 days a week. He has just started school and is learning the conventional way to read. He is doing well under the patient tutelage of my DH.

He lived in America until last summer, and there they had no qualms about teaching them to read. His parents, too, played many reading and number games (in English). That has been neglected a bit since he started school, but if I look at an English text with him, it comes back and he reads quite fluently.

I will be fascinated to see how he does sums in his head in a couple of years. One big giveaway as to what someone's mother tongue is, is to what language they tot up with. He swaps from German to English, depending on whether I or DH are supervising his school work, and he is just as quick with numbers in Italian.

I wondered if this thread was going to be like the questions we sometimes see in newspapers-
“My mother has a fully functioning vacuum cleaner which is 30 years old. Can anyone beat that?”

Invariably of course someone else writes in who has one 35 years old and then 40 and so it goes on!

I see some folk think those of us who learned to read at an early age are lying. What a sad world we live in.

No attempt was made by my parents to teach me to read, my bedtime stories were always ones that they made up. I can recall my first day at school aged 5 1/2 with the teacher drawing a cat on the blackboard and writing the letters 'c a t' beside it. It was a lightbulb moment for me, realising that all those symbols in the newspapers meant words. At eight I passed the exam into a very prestigious girls school, so I must have caught up quickly.

My first three children knew a few words by the time they started school at four, but the youngest was another matter. He was 23 months when we were given named mugs fir Christmas, and he kept insisting he wanted his, and wouldn't drink out of any others. I thought he was just going by the pictures, so made up six flashcards with the family names on and he unfailingly got them right. There was no stopping him, he demanded more and more books, and had finished the Junior School's reading scheme before he started at primary. The school didn't know what to do with him, he had maths and English lessons with those two years ahead and was asked to mark the homework of his peers, which didn't make him popular.

Blossoming

I see some folk think those of us who learned to read at an early age are lying. What a sad world we live in.

Please could you point out those who have accused anybody of lying because I missed it.

What I have pointed out is the huge difference between what an emergent reader can read at a young age and the advanced reading skills needed for adult life.

For anybody to make the claim that pupils can't read properly, we need to know what exactly is meant by "reading properly".

I was 3/4 when i learnt to read.
Started to read Janet and John and if my memory seerves me well they were little blue books with a diamond in the middle with a number on.
I still love reading.

I think early reading is just something some children do, others start later but catch up. It shouldn't be regarded as anything other than a skill some get earlier than others like skipping. It isn't and indication of intelligence or anything else. So many other things matter. I read early but never mastered maths. I didn't know why until I was doing teacher training and then I realised that I had no real concept of numbers I thought they were just symbols like letters. I thought my times tables were like magic spells and chanting them was enough. It never occurred to me to think of things and see amounts. It worked for a bit but I got lost when things got difficult.

Like trisher, I didn’t grasp numbers although I was a very advanced reader. I didn’ think it mattered, and still don’t, really. Numbers weren’t going to open a whole world of wonder and knowledge and imagination in the way that reading did.

I used to spend quite a lot of time on the Times Ed forums. It was quite interesting to see that there were tw broadly conflicting camps on the matter of the age at which children should be taught to read. There was the Early Years camp which said that they shouldn't be taught in Nursery or Reception; it should all be play based and no 'formal learning', teaching reading early damaged the children's development; then there was everyone else who, like many on this thread, pointed out that they'd all learned to read before they went to school and they were absolutely fine..

Of course, the Steiner schools say that children shouldn't learn to read until they are 7...

I could read before I went to school. As a reception teacher I agree with other posters about the need to have children who can speak competently and recognise shape and colour who are ready for reading. I think that it is the job of the parent to prepare them with these things so that when a child enters school they’re ready to learn. As with all new skills, reading takes practice - you would be shocked I think at the number of children in my class who do not read at home with their parents, no comments in their reading record and often a loss of the books we send home for practise. And surprise, surprise those children who practise reading at home become confident readers and those who don’t are the ones who struggle.

I think the thing is Maizie that all children are individuals and learn in different ways and at different rates. Some need more time and support than others.

We used to know that in education and tailor our teaching to the child, especially the first steps of reading.

Now we just bombard them a set schedule of learning that they have to keep up with and label those who don’t as failures.

An article in the paper this morning says that this statement only means that fewer children are achieving the required level for Keystage-something-or-other, which includes much heavy grammar such as fronted adverbials which defeated so many homeschooling parents. Most of those children can prob read books suitable for their age.

More worrying IMO is the reported numbers of 4-5 yr-olds starting school at 5 unable to communicate properly, i.e talk in any kind of sentences (a different thing from choosing to stay silent).

I was remembering a term once popular called "reading readiness" I thought like many of the things we used to use in teaching it had probably been ditched, so I googled it and came across this report cdn.literacytrust.org.uk/media/documents/Ready_to_Read__-_England_June_2015.pdf
Published in 2015 it highlights the effecs of language deprivation in young children and the part poverty plays. Ironically it says steps are being taken to deal with this and better results should be achieved by 2020 (hollow laugh)

I learned to read when I was five, during the first term of Primary 1.

However, if there is one thing that has changed greatly in teaching children, it is attitudes to when and how they should learn to read.

In the 1950s when I was a little one, any child who could not read at the end of Primary 2 was sent to remedial classes.

In the 1960s this was felt to be creating a problem rather than solving one - an attitude that continued through the 1970s.

During the eighties and ninties most primary school teachers felt children should be reading fluently by the end of primary 3, but I have know children who still could not read in primary 5 or 6.

Parents are rarely the problem here - the problem, if problem it is, has been caused by the teaching profession swithering about what does most harm or good. Telling a child that he or she is not good at something, or leaving them to try and pick it up themselves?

I don’t remember when I learnt, but I don’t remember any problems. My parents both read and used the library, so I went with them until I could go on my own, I’m still a voracious reader, bereft without a ‘real’ book. My daughter learnt quickly, my son was slower, but both in infants, I used to read to/with them every night and GC’s are the same with their Mum.

The point in the German and Danish school system about not wanting children to learn to read before they go to school is basically this:

Kindergarten teachers could certainly be taught to teach reading, but they do have other important things to teach pre-school children.

Tne main worry is not kindergarten teachers, but parents who have no training and who might well use a completely different method, or none at all and this can cause problems when the child goes to school and is confronted with a completely different system.

We were taught at school to sound words ke ah te says cat. My mother thought this ridiculous. If she had taught me, I would have started school saying SEE AY TEA says cat - which it does not, it spells cat and no child is likely to make the connection between saying SEE AY TEA and reading cat.

The other and perhaps graver problem is that the children who can read before starting school, or do sums or anything else, will be bored whilst the others are learning these skills. It is hard enough teaching 24 infants at a time, and it becomes even harder if half the class is onto reading book two whilst the other half is learning the alphabet!

Parents are rarely the problem here - the problem, if problem it is, has been caused by the teaching profession swithering about what does most harm or good. Telling a child that he or she is not good at something, or leaving them to try and pick it up themselves?
grandtanteJE65 You wouldn't say things like this if you had seen an alcoholic mother delivering her child to school, reeling into the playground, or the child who hasn't eaten since yesterday's school lunch, or the mum whose ex-husband broke all the windows in her house last night, or any of the other problems nursery and primary school teachers are called upon to deal with every day. The minor miracle is that these children learn anything at all and that some actually manage to build a decent life for themselves.

At the ps I went to anyone who was unable to read fluently by the age of 7 was considered ‘special needs’ though in those days they were called ‘backwards’. Most kids here probably read by that age but perhaps not fluently. Many don’t start school until the age of 6 though. There are some private schools, mainly Germanic ones, that don’t expect children to read until they are quite old. Rudolf Steiner schools in particular . Guess in the end it all works out though I wouldn’t want that for my children.

I started infant school at 4 years old and could already read, as could quite a few pupils. I can’t remember how I learnt but my dear father used to read to my sister and myself every night and I remember my mother taking us to a little local library with my sister in a pram, so I must have been very young.
As others have mentioned, I can’t remember not being able to read.

The other and perhaps graver problem is that the children who can read before starting school, or do sums or anything else, will be bored whilst the others are learning these skills. It is hard enough teaching 24 infants at a time, and it becomes even harder if half the class is onto reading book two whilst the other half is learning the alphabet!

I don’t agree with this assertion. Any teacher worth their salt knows how to manage children working at different levels - at least, the teachers I know can do this! My DD’s went to a small school with just two classes, covering seven years, and the staff there were able to teach the curriculum to all those children more than adequately.

Even if children all start at the same stage at the beginning of term, they will make different progress and diverge in their needs pretty quickly.

Allsortsofbags!
You are amazing ?

I wonder if teaching children to read all together so early is part of the problem. Children who are not yet ready get left behind and cannot catch up because the class has moved on.
I was reading prolifically by seven but my learning disabled son ( despite the best efforts of his special schools) was almost an adult before he started to click with written words- and that was because he wanted to be able to join in with texting his friends. I think a lot of countries start to teach reading at age 6-7 ( rather than age 4)- I wonder if that is more or less successful for the less able pupils?

Some children are really ready to learn to read much earlier than others. Would it be fair to hold them back? I don't think so. An individual approach would be best from ages of 3 onwards.