My daughter…
She just turned four. She has a pretty good grasp of phonics, an interest in books and I think a little guidance would have her reading. But I’m not pushing it. She missed the cut off for kindergarten by two weeks and I have no interest in her being as bored as I was in school.
I couldn’t read when I went into the second grade. My mom was a grade school teacher, and I was constantly exposed… but I just didn’t care.
Then I found this book, The Hardy Boys, The Desert Giant and for some godawful reason the book intrigued me and I wanted to read it. So, I learned how to read and I read it. Took me a month.
That’s the way I’m trying to teach my daughter. I’m trying to expose her to a lot of things and make them available. But, and this is a big but, I am only working at exposing her to such a point as she can judge the usefulness and interest herself.
So, we sit down and read books. Sometimes she wants me to read them to her. Sometimes she wants to read them herself. Her version of reading is to look at the pictures and make up stories concerning them which she “reads” to me.
I figure this is an exercise in creativity in and of itself, and try not to get hung up on the fact that the stories that she reads me bear no resemblance to the stories in the book.
I figure when she wants to know for herself what the words actually say she’ll pick it up pretty quick with whatever willing help I can provide her.
I’m thinking of getting a Dick & Jane primer for this purpose. Something entirely in short words just to get him started, since all his other books have adult-level sentence construction and some fair-sized multisyllabic words.
Mine alternates between books-with-plots (Harold and the Purple Crayon, The Very Hungry Caterpillar) and word books (Cars and Trucks and Things That Go, My First Word Book).
Sounds like my ex-stepdaughter. She’s in 2nd grade now and according to my wife still can’t really read. She lacked the attention span to learn.
I don’t know why people worry about reading age–as far as I know, as long as a child is reading at or before the age of six, it’s not a particularly stong indicator of latter success.
My understanding (and please correct me if Iam wrong–I am not a child pschyologist) is that there is a physiologocal leap that has to be made before a child can read. Something in the brain has to develop before the child can make the leap to the abstract level that symbols = sounds = words. If they aren’t ready to make that leap, you can’t teach it. Some kids make the leap at 3, some at 5, most by 5–if they haven’t by six, there is grounds for concern. It’s like walking–some walk at 9 months: some don’t walk until they are 14 months–as long as you are walking by 18 months, there’s no cause to worry, and really no reason to think that early walking predicts much about latter athletic ability. This is why cultures across the world start teaching children to read at around 5-6–individuals can be tught before then, if they are ready, but it isn’t until that age range that oyu can say that most children are ready to learn to read.
They tell me that I knew all my letters and could match them to the sounds they made by 18 months, because I liked sounds, and could be taught all that orally. Reading made no sense to me until I was six years old. But (like most dopers) I was still National Merit, I still never tested outside the 99th percentile rank on a standardized test in my life.
Reading is highly abstract. There is no more virture or advantage to reading at 3 than there is to reading at 5. It’s like pushing a kid to walk early–you may have some slight effect, but biology plays a bigger part, and in the end, it’s not clear it really matters.
Tanookie - Ask her to expand on the stories. And then teach her to write.
Gabe is in a montessori school. They focus on writing first, reading second. He can write better than he reads - he invents the spelling, but he gets the sense of it down. Start by letting her dictate, so she gets the idea that words out loud have symbols on paper. Then read them back to her. Then use either highlighter or dotted lines on paper so that she can make the words herself (following along). Put up her stories about the books on the fridge.
Basically, all she lacks is the hook between language and symbol. If she wants to TELL you stories, rather than read them, start from the writing side instead. Teach her going from the word out loud, to the sound of the letter in the word, to the symbol for that sound. Gabe is not a brilliant reader, but he was reading last year (started K this year), somewhat. Smart, sure, but not really excited about reading yet. But you should read some of his stories (or hear the ones he hasn’t written yet). He was interested in reading, somewhat, but he is more interested from the other direction - HIS words -> on-paper words, not someone else’s words -> his ear. Kids are pretty self-absorbed at this age, so it feeds into their world better this way.
Oh, and Brendan only JUST got interested in having stories read to him at all, and he just turned 2 last month. He was pretty bored by the idea before now. But someone flipped a switch in his head, and now he’s potty training (on his own!), and wanting to read stories, and insisting (randomly) on walking instead of being carried. Sometimes they are like that.
Come to think of it, I think I will have to start writing down more of Gabe’s stories. They are pretty long and involved, but can be fascinating …
(oh, and take your time about it - you’ve got a few years to have fun with it!)
I second hedra.
I’m a Montessori teacher, and she is right on!
I have seen a child as young as 2.5 sight reading words (that is, he was memorizing the total shape of the word, not sounding out each letter). He expressed an interest, and was given the opportunity to learn a few words. He saw the letters c- a- t together and recognized it as the word “cat” in the same way that he’d see a picture of a triangle and recognize it as “triangle”. Make sense? However, that is unusual, and certainly not necessary!
We do a lot of spoken language stuff before getting children into associating letter sounds with shapes - this would generally come around 3. As they get to know enough sounds, they’ll do work with ‘building’ words and writing. Later, when they show interest, they discover that they can decode what they have written (it really is easier for little ones to learn to write first!) However, none of this is forced, and to the children, it’s fun. We get them into the drama of reading by acting out simple sentences, as well as having books around and telling stories on our own. We have fun with it.
Probably most children in a Montessori class are doing some sort of reading by 4 1/2; the fluency and skill varies a lot. Every child learns at a different pace. Also, the technical ability comes before the abililty to relate to characters, follow a long, complicated plot, etc. Why push it? He’ll get there! (An aside - my fiance has never really enjoyed reading, in large part because he was put into a “slow” reading class in school and never got over the stigma of it. I think he associates books with pressure. Really sad!)
Thanks for getting me out of ‘lurk’ mode!