When did you learn to read?

My father taught me to read when I was about four, I still remember sitting on his knee with a book with an illustration of a little girl with her dolls pram and the caption “When I take my dollies out in their pram everyone says what a good little mother I am.”
The school I went to when I was five started to teach us French straight away and I was well into that language when I was six.
I still have my first French book.

I was taught French as an infant, too! It’s so easy to learn languages at that age.

Apparently I taught myself to read before I started school as a rising 5. I used to listen to the other children read to me when I was 6 ! I have no idea how I taught myself other than to say we didn’t watch television or have many toys or any play dates but I did go to the library every day, which was located at the top of my road. Even now I try to read a couple of books a week.

My mother taught me to read when I was three by showing me the road name signs, covering up the syllable and reading out each syllable for me to copy as she uncovered them. Unforunately this meant I was very bored with the ` Nip and Fluff' reading scheme when I got to the Reception Class as I could read most of the newspaper by then!

There is currently a campaign to encourage parents to switch on subtitles when children are watching, because it has been shown to increase reading skills. Has anyone experience of this?

I could read before I went to school and so could my children. I used the Look and Say method then moved onto phonics. It’s how my mum taught us . Three out of four of us became teachers. We all loved reading and my two do as well. I’m glad mum taught us to read as my first teacher wasn’t really interested and spent her time knitting or shouting.

I was an infant teacher for many years, but, latterly, taught children who had specific language difficulties - not always as a result of dyslexia. My advice to teachers would be constant reinforcement and informal assessment, as in checking that they recognise words out of the context of the reading books. I always made lots of additional resources to complement the reading scheme that the school used ( some schemes are better than others ). These included individual word cards, written exercises and games. A pupil would not be moved on to the next level of the scheme until I was satisfied that they could read the words of their current level. There would be no point in presenting them with new words if they were struggling. I observed in later years that children were moved on too soon, resulting in huge gaps in word recognition, and in their ability to decode new words. Though the phonic approach is necessary, so is a sight vocabulary, and I've noticed in more recent years that there is less emphasis on this. It's imperative that lack of progress is recognised early, and not allowed to escalate. Plans do need to be made for each day, week, term etc, but they need to be flexible enough to allow for recognition, and ' treatment ' of failure. Children need success, even though it's in small steps. This must be dealt with in the early years.
I'll get off my soapbox now!

I was late learning to read but haven’t stopped since. My own children were reading before they went to school and I always read to them at bedtime.
One out of my four never read for pleasure, though she got A level English, and her children didn’t ever want to read. I was so sad that most of my grandchildren have no interest in books.
Suddenly, the thirteen year old was reading Jane Eyre then Emma! The journey to loving books isn’t always straight or easy.

Sheilaissue, you have many good points but l started school in September 1969 and there were nearly forty children in the class with one teacher and no TA. This particular teacher was old school but very good. Firm but fair and we all learned well with her. Apparently she would give little lectures to the parents saying that they were not to worry about teaching us to read, that was her job and they were to concentrate on making sure that we could do up our coats as she did not have time to put forty coats on children. And learn we did. Due to being born in the mid sixties at the peak of the post war baby boom (apparently more babies were born in the year l was born than at any other time since the end of the Second World War), l was in large classes all the way through school. Thirty five in a class was the norm - thirty eight in my maths exam class - but I think most of us have done quite well for ourselves.

I could read and write very well before I started school at age five. My grandmother was determined I would have a head start and I had lots of books which I enjoyed. My grandfather taught me numbers, counting, money and simple sums. When I started school I couldn't understand why I had to learn it all over again. I told my GM and she went to see my teacher who really didn't like me after that! The same thing happened when we had sewing lessons in the Juniors. I told the teacher she was doing her cross stitch the wrong way. Big mistake! My GM had a bit of a reputation at my primary school.

I was also able to read when I started school. In school we were taught to improve our reading through various volumes of Beacon readers. These were rather bleak to look at, I much preferred my colourful books at home. As an avid reader, my reading age was always several years in advance of my actual age. Down the generations we have always been a family of bookworms, with bedtime stories featuring heavily, with plenty of varied reading material always available.

Musicgirl your post has just made me realise that some of the people posting on here might have been starting school just as I was starting to teach (1970). I'm so old! My first pupils are now grans!

I was desperate t read and write before I went to school and ‘wrote’ pages of squiggles. After a very short time at my first school of chanting ‘a is for apple, b is for ball’ with the whole class and drawing circles and telegraph poles (I presume because they formed letters) I twigged that I could go faster by listening to what the teacher was telling the higher class who were taught in the same room. I virtually went from non reading and writing to reading and writing overnight.

After that I was a voracious reader. I read every book in the class, joined the library as fast as I could and spent many threepenny bits on jumble sale books. I have never stopped. It is my greatest pleasure.

I became an English teacher. What a surprise!

I can’t remember not reading and have never read quickly.
It hurts when I see children being told they are now free readers. This is ensuring the non free readers are discriminated against. Let children learn at their own pace without obstacles - SATS and free reading awards are definitely nasty approaches to good teaching practice.
A local primary school 5-11 in our area is now coping with the 3rd Head in 4 years. The staff and pupils are leaving in droves. The standard of teaching is poor and I’m sure will be in special measures soon. It’s an academy and I’m sure the LA will take back control. It’s a church school without leadership from the church. Shame on them. These children are treated poorly.

Although I was very enthusiastic about reading from the start, I remember finding writing difficult. In the school I went to until I was 7 we were taught what I think was a very old-fashioned style even for the 1940s. Lots of elaborate loops. I struggled.

Then I moved to a different school, where we did ‘Marion Richardson’. Much simpler, much clearer. I galloped ahead after that. I wrote stories and poems - lots of poems. I still have some of them, unfortunately not dated. My mother had given me two poetry books which I loved, and I still have them, bearing the marks of much use. They are A Child’s Garland and For Your Delight. They had children’s verses, but .also Shakespeare and excerpts from the Bible (Authorised Version).

With a primary school teacher mother there was no way I wouldn't be reading by the time I went to school. I always had my nose stuck in a book - and still do a lot of the time! DD was another early reader but DS had no confidence. I remember a conversation when he was about 6 when presented with a book which he said he'd never be able to read. In hindsight I think he was a bit dyslexic but school never recognised it. He still finds reading hard work 30 years on.

No idea at what age I started reading but dad owned a newsagent/bookseller business and we lived above the shop. I used to sit under the counter and read Beano and Dandy and then put them back when I’d finished. Later I used to look through the books on nature. You’d never know they’d been looked at and even now, if I lend books to a friend she comments on how they always look brand new.

My mum taught me to read before I started school and it stood me in good stead. Can’t really remember a time when I couldn’t read.

I could read before I went to school, I learned simply by being read to by mother. Over and over again I requested my favourite stories and I knew where the page turns were and I knew if mother turned the page early! (She also learned the stories by heart with so much repetition!) Once I realised that each group of symbols (letters) was a word, it began to be really easy to work out the sounds of the individual letters. There was no effort involved in the process of learning to read as far as I was concerned, just pure enjoyment.
The first year I was at school there was little in the way of learning to read, just a lot of play time, but when I went into Standard 1 as it was then, when I was 6 years old, we were asked to each stand up in turn and tell a story from a book we were reading by ourselves. I had been given a copy of, "Black Beauty" for my 6th birthday and was obsessed with it to the point that I practically knew it off by heart I had read it so often. When it was my turn, I decided to tell the story of the hunt from Chapter 2 so I stood and began, " Before I was two years old, a circumstance happened which I have never forgotten..." I was cut short by the teacher who said that I needed to tell the story from a book I was reading by myself, not a story that my mummy had read to me. In vain I protested that I WAS reading the book myself but I was sent to the headmistress's study for, "telling lies".
I was branded a liar and treated accordingly until I went into Standard 2 at the age of 7 and met a different teacher. She decided to actually test my, "reading age" and gave me several, progressively harder, passages to read aloud. I ended up reading right up to the most complex passage the test had to offer which was apparently text considered suitable for a child of 12.5 years. The test went no further and the teacher, bless her, took me with her and reported to the Head that she deemed my reading age to be, "off the scale". Her exact words were, "this child reads like an adult, she deserves an apology". I don't remember ever getting one though and the Head and the Standard 1 teacher made plain their distaste for my until the day I left.
I hated school for the rest of my days.

I could read before I started school, always been a bookworm

I could read before I went to school , but it wasn’t remarked on until I lifted the News of the Word , and asked my Dad the meaning of some words in a report I was reading , the Paper was banned from my hands ?

Something that I don't think has been mentioned on this thread is that even before Covid, there's a seven year gap in reading ages by the age of 11 and has been for as long as I can remember. In other words, by the age of 11, some children are reading like a typical 14 year old and others like a typical 7 year old.

There have been various schemes over the years to narrow that gap, but it has persisted. Some children have benefited from catch-up programmes, but not all, and the time they have spent on reading has meant they have lost on other areas of the curriculum. More emphasis on reading in the early years would also mean that these children are missing out on other areas. I don't know what the answer is. Maybe it just needs to be accepted that some people will be better readers than others.

This has been a known problems for years. No doubt disrupted schooling has made it worse, but I hope nobody falls into the trap of thinking that it's only been caused by Covid and that throwing a few million at the problem or making some children give up their holidays for extra reading will solve it.

It's a longstanding problem and needs sustained effort over many years to fix (if it ever can be). Please don't make Covid a scapegoat.

What I see on following this thread is how many children could read before starting school and how many relate this to sharing books with grandparents and parents.
With so many working parents AND grandparents, I wonder how many future GN posters will have the same memories.
Now, with increasing need for teaching children to speak or string a sentence together in EYFS, starting to read and reading fluency may not happen till later.
However, parental and GP expectations are often based on their own ‘I could read before I started school’ experiences and they question us as teachers about why their Reception child isn’t reading.
What would pre-school readers on GN suggest to help?

I cannot remember when I started to read, but I remember sitting on the teachers knee when I was about 6 crying because I couldn't read one of the words. I can't remember what the books was but it was part of a scheme and was quite small with a blue cover. I do clearly remember the classic Janet and John books. By the time I was eleven I would read anything and had read all the Little Women books. However when I was at teacher training college in the mid 70s we were told not to rush teaching reading as once a child could read they only saw the world via the written word. The example used was the humble corn flake box. Before a child can read, they recognise the fact it is a cornflakes box by the pictures, colours and shapes. Once the child can read, they don't see the colours and shapes, just the words. It made sense at the time. But the mid 70s were a bit anti traditional teaching!

There are two very simple ways of helping a child learn to read. One is to sit and read with and to the child as much as possible, and not just a rushed thing to do before bedtime ( though that is important)Making it such a special and loved part of their lives. The other is to make sure that your child or grandchild sees you read. Why should they want to do something that you never do yourself?