When did you learn to read?

You might be sad to know that 'Bangers and Mash', as you say a really good reading scheme responsible for enabling many children to learn to read, was banned in the 1980s because it was considered racist.

As far as teaching my own children to read, I was very successful with child number one, who I taught aged about 4 and half myself with a really good phonic reading scheme, two monkeys called "Bangers and Mash" when he was in nursery and he progressed well, he was reading fluently by the time he started in reception, mainly because he really loved the books so was happy to do it. Ironically he reads hardly anything at all now. Son number two, stubbornly refused to co-operate when I tried the same tactics with a "I don't read to you, you read to me!" Once he went into reception it all came together and he was an avid reader throughout childhood, they both were Harry and Potter and all that, but unlike my older son he is still a voracious reader I'm happy to say.

By the time that I was six, I was reading, not well, but learning to read new words.
At ten, at a different school, Friday afternoon was Library afternoon, where we could borrow books and spend the afternoon reading.
Our children went to a school where the Headmistress said that teaching children to read was vital, as they could then go on to learn for themselves.
Additionally, all through school we were taught the importance of grammar and punctuation.
Our teachers stood us in good stead.

I went to school aged 4 and 3/4, soon after I started, I remember our teacher asked us to go up to her desk individually. She was assessing us to see if we knew any words in the book she had or could read already. I remember grizzling because I only knew the word "mother" she told me not to cry I would soon learn to read. I believe that was the case for all of us after a few weeks we could read an early story book, there was a lot of reading round the class. I remember it being very colourful, lots of pictures and it featured mainly, mother, baby, some older siblings and a dog called Rover. I think I got a whole shelf of Noddy books for Christmas soon after that and by then I could read them on my own and have had a love affair with books ever since.

I don't remember my parents reading bedtime stories which I did to my children. I remember my mother reading to me during the day sometimes. I also remember my father listening to our reading to see how we were progressing when we were in infants. I think most of my generation read themselves to sleep. Many a time I was still reading when one of my parents came in and annoyingly told me" time to put the light off now!"

welbeck I think you are right, I can remember starting school and being very puzzled that other children could not read.

My mother used to sing me to sleep with lullabies. I can still remember them. She read to me, not at bedtime, but after lunch.

I think reading to a child once they are in bed is relatively recent development. It is dependent on their being a good level of lighting and probably a bedside lamp in the room and my memory of childhood is of 60 watt bulbs in bedrooms, because electricity was expensive. I can remember in the 1970s an electrician being amazed that we had 100 watt bulbs in every ceiling light in the house, he clearly thought it a wanton extravagence.

I read to my children a lot because it was what DS most enjoyed, a cuddle and a read, but again, I did it mainly during the day. Once the children could read, which was pre-school, I just tucked them up in bed with a book. They had bedside lamps.

i never experienced being read to by parents on going to bed, nor did i hear of it till i was grown up.
i just thought there was a settling-down for babies, maybe with a lullaby.
i wonder how common it really was.
i think this forum tends to attract an unrepresentative slice of the population. with all these early readers infant teachers would have nothing much to do. but that wasn't/isn't the norm.

3. I was reading adult books by 5 (at least Montezuma's Revenge etc). Can't remember being taught. I think early readers tend to have the facility to see patterns and are so keen to read they ignore the difficulties of (eg) the and ought and rough and just assimilate them to process later. Didn't stop me climbing trees and swimming BUT where and when I lived we didn't have television or radio. I don't think it's a matter of intelligence, more of facility and books being around and seeing family reading.

Shortage of books - same problem for me in those days. as far as I remember the main book I learnt from was Little Black Sambo. I expect it's been banned now.

I think a lot of us war babies learnt to read early because we had so few books, because there were not many available because paper was rationed.

By the time your mother has read The Mother Goose Nursery Rhymes book or the two Rupert books you had for about 150 times. You are matching every word she reads with the word on the page. Noticing words you recognise on other bits of paper round the house - in my case newspapers - and you are away, reading anything and everything.

This applied to me and to DH in a very different home in another part of the country.

Because of my birth date I didn’t start school until well after 5 - I was dying to go. No nursery or play school, fairly normal then I think - just at home with 2 younger siblings. My mother used to say I’d part-taught myself with an old alphabet picture book I loved (do so wish I could find a 2nd hand copy!) but I can’t think it amounted to much.

However I hadn’t long been at school when I reached the ‘milestone’ of being given a lovely new hymn book for morning assembly. They didn’t give you one until they thought you could read well enough, so it was a proud moment. Until we had one we were told to ‘sing to la’.

I'm told that I came home from Kindergarten (Reception equivalent in North America) totally disgusted because they wouldn't guarantee we would learn to read. My father pulled out some old readers and taught me himself. Eventually I taught my younger brother to read before he started Kindergarten.

The funny thing was that my father came home from his orientation week (no Kindergarten in those days; just a one-week orientation at the end of June before you started Grade 1 in September), and told Grandma school wasn't much good as they hadn't learned to read yet!

My parents are both avid readers (Mum especially) and encouraged our reading. Between us six kids, we checked out an average of about 70-80 books out of the library every 3 weeks!

I tend to agree with those parents, Greta, if they have children whose talents and interests lie in other directions. Native English speakers have a huge advantage, and apart from the obvious sheer good manners of having enough of a language to get by when abroad, they’re never likely to use other languages. There are so many other things to learn and be interested in.

I’ve studied five languages and they all came in useful working both here and abroad. On the other hand I was hopeless at sciences and dropped them as soon as I could. Friends who went on to study and work in the sciences and who hated languages had to struggle on to O level French regardless. It seemed unfair and illogical.

I started school in Sweden at the age of 7. Before then we just ran around and played with other children. There was a lot of skipping, throwing balls, hide and seek, in other words a lot of movement. At home we were not encouraged to read as such but there was story telling and singing.

I believe most children learnt to read fairly quickly because of the late start. We all read from the same book. My British 7 year old grandchild knows which reading level his school mates are on; it has become a competition.

At the age of 10 we all started to learn English. Learning a foreign language teaches you a lot about your own mother tongue and here I think British children are losing out.
I worked for many years as a Modern Language teacher in an English secondary school and was often saddened by negative comments from some parents. They couldn't see why their child should have to learn a foreign language because ”he/she is never going to need it”.

I couldn't read a word before I went to school, as I was totally disinterested.
As soon as I started, though, I could read well.
Blaming covid is ridiculous, just the same as thinking that it has stopped children from being able to use cutlery.

Do you remember what it was like to listen to a young stumble over words? It has to be done! We need to read to them and not just at bedtime.

Rote learning (whole word memorization) and phonics are taught according to what the child can grasp. I learned phonics, so did my kiddos. When I taught adult students to read I used both.

Parents need to be present, and patient.

I can remember all my class in nursery calling out the sounds of the letters as our teacher held up cards with them on.
I picked it up rather quickly and remember being sent along with a few others to the head teacher’s office where she praised us all for our efforts.
I don’t remember if I had any help before starting school but my DM was an avid reader who always had her head in a book and I definitely take after her.
She developed my love for reading by getting me all the classics which I read while in primary school.
I’m so grateful to her for that gift.

My parents made absolute certain that my sister and I could read before starting school, as did I with both of my sons.

In my early-mid fifties now, I'm still a prolific reader, getting through at least 5 books a week but my sons don't read as much now they're adults as they did when they were in primary school.

I was always taught that books were precious and had to treat them with respect but I fear that youngsters today will skim through the internet for bits of information and not actually bother reading properly.

This also leads me to my pet hate of terrible/lazy spelling and punctuation. I guess text messaging is too blame for a lot of this where people will use short-form 'words' instead of typing words out in full, for example, "cul8r" as opposed to "see you later". When my youngest was still at school, a teacher even wrote "Gr8" on a piece of work, so if teachers are doing this how on earth can we expect children to learn to spell and write things properly?

I read before starting school, and taught my children and grandchildren too. My DDs could read Enid Blyton books before starting. DGC read different books. We are all still keen readers.
I agree about children seeing you read, Lisbethann55 - it’s how children learn to do and enjoy a lot of things.
Adaunas I would probably have been one of the parents whose expectation was that children learnt to read in the first year at school, based on my own experience of early reading.

adaunas Both my children attended full-time nursery from the age of six months until starting primary school. One could read well before she started primary school; the other couldn't but didn't stop when he started and is now the better and hungrier reader.

Yes, I read to both of them at bedtime, but that was it. The trick was to send them to a good nursery. They were taught far more about reading than I bet most parents do because (unlike parents) the staff weren't distracted by loads of household chores.

For some reason, my son was far behind my daughter in reading, but he blossomed in other areas. I was worried when he was at primary school and the teacher showed her frustration with him, but that was solved when I moved him to a different primary school. He skipped being able to read "baby" books and started choosing books for himself which I didn't think he would be able to read, but he could. As he ended up with 12 academic A/A*s at GCSE, the slow start obviously didn't hold him back.

My point is that not sitting on a parent's/grandparent's lap isn't necessarily a bad thing. FWIW my mother didn't work when my sisters and I were young. I was a very early reader, but one of my sisters couldn't read until she'd been at primary school for a couple of years. She's now the kind of person who takes a book or her Kindle everywhere, whereas I'm not.

I could read before I started school. I also taught my daughters to read when they were about 3 years old, using Glen Dolman's Teach Your Baby To Read scheme. I also taught a couple of my granddaughters to read when they were a similar age, using Montessori materials - which were very good and I would recommend them.

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?

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!

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?

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.

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 ?