When did you learn to read?

I am 60 and can't remember a time when I couldn't read . I think my mother got me going quite young. I did the same for my daughters and they have done the same for their own children. I
The problem these days is the parents are too busy reading themselves to think about teaching their children - on their phones !

I was desperate to learn to read. I can remember the whole class chanting the letters on the blackboard but I was soon reading Janet & John and never looked back. DS was equally keen and was really frustrated at being held back by a time serving teacher. In the end, I bought a load of Ladybird books and taught him and the boy next door to read in my 'after school class'. I suspect his incentive was to read up about football teams.

I was an early reader. A few months at school and I'd cracked it. Apparently I started reading aloud from my comic and my parents couldn't believe it.

greenlady102

Peasblossom

Personally I think it is the early over-emphasis on letters and sounds that is confusing and demotivating many children.

We should be concentrating first on developing confident speech. Then the child needs to understand that the spoken word can be translated into symbols. That the symbols are put together in different forms to convey meaning, like books, notices etc.

Until they understand what’s reading is all about, somebody waving a squiggle at them and going ‘b’ ‘d’ ‘e’ or whatever is totally meaningless. Very difficult to remember. And definitely not interesting.

What they experience is early failure. Then overcoming that is doubly hard.

Learning to read takes time and practice and adult support. It should be a major part of infant school. Instead the curriculum is so overstuffed that it can’t be given the time or resources it needs

absolutely this. I think what parents can do is get kids book aware...read to them, discuss books, model the use of books...and by books I mean kindles and screens generally as well as "real" books

Well, TBH, Peasblossom's interpretation of initial phonics instruction is so inaccurate* that I think it should be ignored. Good phonics instruction has children reading words as soon as they have learnt a few letter/sound correspondences. And that is a matter of a few days after instruction has started.

*(or she's seen some very poor teaching)

Recently I found a piece of 'homework', set by my sister, basic addition, written instruction to draw a picture of my favourite pet and to write the names of my family.
I'd answered the maths question correctly, drawn a picture of some hideous monster (my dog) and named my parents and my sisters.
It was dated a couple of weeks before my third birthday. The writing was atrocious, as you'd expect at that age, but the spelling was spot on.

I can't remember learning to read. I could read when I went to school at 4 years. I do remember spending that first day in the infant class - nightmare.
Next I was put into the class of 7/8 year olds in the care of one of the older children - I never looked back. My sister on the other hand struggled with reading until she was about 10. I was brought up by grandparents - maybe that was the difference.

Like any reading method it has some children reading in a few days and others bored and totally confused.

It was the same for Look and Say, ITA or Real Books. Ive seen it all

Unfortunately the answer now seems to be to give them extra of what they don’t understand and doesn’t work for them instead of acknowledging that we all learn in different ways and that teaching needs to be tailored to the learner.

Phonics are a second level skill that works successfully when it builds on solid first level skills of language an understanding of what the printed word is and how it works.

Without that it’s meaningless. A bit like teaching gear change to someone who’s never seen a car.

Just been clearing the loft this morning (so that our children don’t have to?), and have brought down amongst loads of others. Jennings, Famous Five, Sea of adventure, Treasure Hunters, Young Wives (sequel to Little Women) Heidi, and Heidi goes to school. Dahl books, Swanson books. Loads of different animal,stories.
Bags and bags of books from my childhood and our children’s childhood.

What to do with them? Charity I suppose, part of us as a family though.
Difficult.

I think my brothers and I all learned to read by about 4. My children were the same but then we had books around and enjoyed reading stories out loud
Years ago (nineties) I did some secondary school teaching and was dismayed to find out how poor the literacy and numeracy skills were, of about a third of the pupils. A city school but by no means a deprived area

It seems the curriculum (I don't blame the teachers one bit) meant they were doing so many different subjects and skimming through without benefiting from most of it because of their lack of literacy (and numeracy)

It has often been said that we should prioritise reading, writing and maths (and I would add I.T. skills now) before concerning young people with a broader curriculum

How on earth are they going to cope in the wider world if they can't read, write, do simple arithmetic and know their way around a keyboard?
Worst of all how does it make them feel? Approaching life without the basic skills? Self esteem comes from knowing you are good enough and have the opportunity to improve.
Impossible without basic knowledge of literacy and numeracy what ever route you choose through life

I would like to think that giving every child and young adult the basic means to take care of and support themselves was essential for all of our futures

I learned to read before I was 5, my mum used to read with me and as I grew older we used to go to the library together and swap books, I ve always loved reading. I think the sooner children learn the better, it can lead to all sorts of adventures

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

I was 4 I went to nursery and started to read there.
I was a TA for 30 years. In the early days late 70s till late 80s,
We heard every child read individually we had a book we noted down the words they may have struggled with for the next read. They now sit children round a table and they all read a book with the teacher or TA they also have 30children in a class whereas we only had 23 to 25.
,I think that last bit says it all, Don’t you.

By the time I was three and a half I was reading the words to hymns we sang in church. To start with, I couldn't connect the words people were singing with the words on the page of the hymn book, and just burbled along to the tunes and pretending to sing the words! Then suddenly, one Sunday morning, my eyes happened to look at the precise word my grandmother was singing, and light dawned! I suddenly realised reading the words in the hymn book and the words in my reading book were connected. From then on there was no stopping me! I became a bookworm, I was a nightmare to my primary schools - I went to three because of house moves - who didn't know what to do with me in reading lessons, and eventually ended up as a Children's Librarian.
Unsurprisingly, both our sons could read fluently before they started school, but our youngest flatly refused. After all, she had two parents and two older brothers who would happily read her stories, so why should she bother?!

I could read by the age of 4, although I didn't start school until I was nearly 6 because of illness. When my mother politely told her teacher that I could read (it had been suggested I should be kept down a year) the teacher wouldn't believe it until I demonstrated that I could.

I think these days children are more competent at using a computer than being able to read.

Incidentally, my 9-year-old grandson is teaching himself Japanese so that he doesn't have to use subtitles to watch his favourite cartoon on TV which is all in Japanese!

My sister taught me to read when I was three. It was such a natural thing for me, I found it all very easy. Children vary so much. Numbers were, and still are, a problem for me. IMO you are either a letters or numbers person. Luckily my husband is numbers.

I remember Peter and Jane books in my early days at primary school. I think they had a Red Setter dog unless I'm mixed up. My mum& older sister read to me before I started school. Then my mum used to buy me Twinkle magazine every week, moving up to Bunty as I got older and I was mad about The Famous Five, etc. I love reading, go through loads of books.

I was an early reader, before primary school. Can remember reading in church when still in primary. As a retired teacher and a recent home schooler of a 6 yr old, I can say he was mostly bored by the endless phonics lessons and videos, although the teachers work hard to add fun activities. Parents don't always have time to share books with their children and practice at home is vital as is reading bedtime stories.

I must have absorbed reading from a very early age as I went to school at four, and could read then. Not always ideal as I saw newspapers and got upset at different things that I could half understand but not cope with.
I do feel slighty impatient at the suggestion that children will become illiterate because they have missed school this year. Does this mean they are likely to forget everything they have learned in the previous two, three, four years or more? Children who are off school with serious illness or due to accidents don't become illiterate - they have to catch up to a degree but this is a very strong word, when the war generation didn't forget all they knew with the disruption to lessons that they had over six years - and without benefit of zoom and the internet.

I learned to read quite quickly after I started primary school and can easily read several books in a week. I have always loved reading. I taught infants, for many years in several different schools and very few children started school able to read. Some had memorised simple storybooks, knew letter names (and occasionally letter sounds) or could recognise a few words, out of context, but very, very few could really read. My younger son learned to read before starting school as he was only 11 months younger than his brother and was determined to be the same.
I loved teaching infants especially using a combination of look and say and phonics. Letterland was a scheme I loved and I was able to use it so creatively _ the children loved it and former pupils will tell how they remembered making clever cat cookies, dippy duck's disco outfit, water witch's spells, etc. It was a lot of work, on my part, but so worthwhile. Synthetic or jolly phonics I found incredibly lacking in imagination and was glad to move to another specialism in education before it was foisted on me.
So many children nowadays are coming into reception or Primary 1 unable to speak clearly, even after up to 2 years in nursery but, having witnessed many parents not speaking to their small children, I can understand why. As a teacher I was delighted if a child could read on starting school but as long as a child could listen, follow simple instructions, speak clearly, share with others and be kind I was delighted.

I don’t ever remember being taught to read.
When I was in the 3rd year of grammar school, I had a serious illness and was off school for 6 months. When I went back I was just told to copy the missed work from my friend’s work books. 2 years later I still passed 9 O levels. There was no extra help in those days. You just got on and did it.

When i left my last School ( in a very affluent area) many children struggled to read. Many couldn't spell either, the teacher's never corrected poor spelling, they said it wasn't important. Reading was always done by parent helpers, never ever teachers. The children didn't even have a desk in P1 & P2 there was only a table with 2 chairs in the whole classroom, instead they lay cramped on a very small area of the floor and used white board and chunky marker pens instead of pencil and paper. Our children can't read because the education is a disgrace.

I am truly amazed at the number of posters who say that they could read before they went to school. In my days on the TES forums that I mentioned earlier, Early Years teachers said that they had to work with very few children who had learned to read before starting school, or with none at all.

This is all anecdotal, of course. I wonder what the true percentage might be.

I can't remember! Apart from remembering books I did read when I was about 5 or 6 onwards, then no.

I'm amazed at those who do know when they learnt to read.

Not sure exactly when I learned. I do know though I got upset when my parents brought my little sister home and I wanted to read to her but she was asleep! I was just under 5 years 9 months then