Were you taught to read in Kindergarten? How about your kids?

In My Humble Opinion
41

I’M NOT ALONE!!! I’ve freaked out so many of my friends with this particular habit. They usually think it’s funny. They should just shut up and go read a book or something. :smiley:

Once she was convinced that I could read and she wasn’t just dealing with a pushy mom, my first grade teacher was great. I don’t know how old I was when I first started reading; I know my family didn’t realize how well I was doing until I was four, but that meant I’d been reading for quite some time beforehand.

I think it’s a bit freaky that some people remember when they learned to read. It’s like breathing for me. I know some kids aren’t quite ready until six or so, but it still just seems weird. I guess that’s what happens when you descend from bookworms.

42

I was reading before kindergarten (thanks to Sesame Street, perhaps?), and I remember leafing through books in my kindergarten room during playtime. I remember we started off each morning with a writing exercise. In the beginning of the year, it was a letter of the alphabet, then our names.

My husband learned to read in first grade.

43

I was reading at 2 1/2. My mom would read to me every night from “My First Book About Jesus” (yes, we were a religious family) and I woke up one morning, and realized I was reading the cover of the book! I opened it and was amazed to realize I was reading the words!

I went out to the kitchen where Dad was sitting with his morning coffee and the LA Times, proudly announced “Daddy! I can read!” and proceeded to read the book for him.

He, naturally, thought I had memorized the book. After his “that’s nice, son” speech, he then handed me the paper, pointed me to Jim Murray’s column (a local sports column) and asked me to read it, which I proceeded to do (missing a few words, of course, but trying to sound them out and succeeding on most of them).

After picking himself up off the floor, he called for my Mom and had me repeat the performance!

Interesting sidelight: In 1991 I was covering the Bob Hope Chrysler Classic golf tournament in Palm Springs for KDES radio. I was assigned a spot at the media desk right next to - you guessed it - Jim Murray, who at this time was almost 90 years old. I introduced myself, and over lunch I told him the story of how his column was the first newspaper story I ever read. The look of pride on his face was awesome - I even got a mention in his column about 3 months later (I guess it was a slow sports day or something).

At age 3 I was reading the nap time stories to my pre-school class. In first grade I was sent to the 6th grade reading class and outdid the 6th graders. At age 9 I was given the autobiography of Captain Eddie Rickenbacker, the WWI Ace of Aces, and devoured the book.

I still love to read and can complete a 600 page novel in under 4 hours.

No kids here, but if I had you can rest assured they’d be reading early and often!

44

In Kindergarten (this would be in 1957), we learned the alphabet. We learned to read in first grade.

My daughter (1989) was supposed to know the alpabet, and maybe to read a few simple words like her name.

45

my mother claims I ‘taught myself’ to read. I’m sure this is BS (I remember alot of math flashcards I’m sure there were reading ones before that I was too young to remember)

In kindergarden? Basic math addition and subtraction and reading and writting.

46

I was reading at 2.

Like a lot of other people, I suspect this had more to do with being read to and exposed to books, rather than being a child genius. The gap between me and my classmates shrank every year. I was the only reader in JK, way ahead on Grade 1, still had a lineup of kids at my desk asking for help in Grade 3, advanced but not way ahead in Grade 8, among the top students in high school but not the best, and average in university. That suggests to me that I was given a head start, rather than having a bigger brain.

47

I learned to read in kindergarten.

My daughter learned to read, write and basic math in kindergarten (K1) with 4-5 years old in an international school. In fact, we were told she was behind on entering, at age 4, since she didn’t already know how to write very well. She couldn’t really read then either, and didn’t read very well until last in her second year of kindergarten (in the USA).

My son is now in kindergarten, but a private Montessori one. He is suddenly reading although we didn’t do much to teach him, and reading some things that amaze me. But he always had his older sister and lots of being read to. His school doesn’t do much to teach reading, AFAIK, but I’ll let you know after his parent-teacher conference the week after next.

FWIW I don’t really think that this is a big deal, one way or the other. In German kids don’t enter first grade until 7 years old, and they seem to do just fine. In fact I think that pushing kids too hard too early can put them off of school and maybe lead to stress and early burnout.

48

I don’t remember if I was taught to read in kindergarden or not, but considering I started kindergarden not knowing any English, odds are I was.

All I know is, my soon-to-be-four-year-old already knows how to spell and read a bit (he’s got a vocabulary of about 60-70 words, IIRC), and any teacher who gives him grief about reading “too soon” will have to answer to me.

49

I was a comparatively late reader - four. Apparently I had great difficulty reading so my mother sat me down and read to/with me every day. By four and a half I was reading and then there was no stopping me.

BTW I’d just like to highlight Rico’s comment

This is just brilliant.

50

Taught to read? They had a hard time getting me to do anything but! OK, I don’t know if that’s true for kindergarten, but I know that I was reading books instead of doing classwork in first and second grade, and then I never really stopped.

51

I learned to read, somehow without my parents knowledge, probably when I was three.

In kindergarten, my teacher never let me go get books from even the first-grade rooms. I had to stick to the Sunshine books. They had turqouise covers and were the modern-day equivilent of Dick and Jane.

In first grade, my best friend and I could both read far ahead of the rest of the class. Our teacher told us to go to the library during reading group and left us alone. I always ended up in the big-kid section.

By third grade, I could read way faster than any of my peers, because I did it so compulsively. I got in trouble for reading during non-reading time, every day.

Gyrate, I remember SRA cards, too. We started doing them in fourth grade. I hated them, and finished the entire set in a matter of months.

52

<obligatory reading story>
Well, according to my mother, when I was 4 months old, if you gave me a book upside down then I would turn it rightside up, but if you gave me a book rightside up then I’d leave it alone. My uncle didn’t believe her, so he tried it out and I did it.

When I was about 18 months, I could say the letters on my blocks.

When I was about 3, the daycare lady told my mom that I was reading all the little books in her place. That was the first my mother knew of it.

I don’t remember what we did in kindergarten. In first grade, I remember putting our reading book for the quarter (?) under my desk so I could read through it while the teacher was droning on. ISTR that it was based on us knowing how to read, though; it was like Dick and Jane, not ABC. This would have been 1990-1991

My brother learned to read in kindergarten. That was mid-90s.

53

Ditto what ** zweisamkeit ** said about learning to read. Apparently I figured it out by about 2 or so. I figured out how to write my first name not too long afterward- apparently the same process works for learning how to write as well.

I do remember kindergarten being primarily about counting and the “Letter People”(remember this was 1977), which were inflatable characters for each letter- they had some attribute that was alliterative and also used the multiple sounds of some letters. We also learned how to print the letters.

First grade was occupied with basic “1+1=2” type math, and reading class. This was very standard phonics type stuff- some book called “Tag” about a dog and a boy and girl. More letter practice as well. I don’t remember much about that- my teacher figured out that I could read pretty early and would dump a book in my lap and have me read it/write a book report to stop me being disruptive during class.

By 2nd grade we were expected to read, and we started cursive writing, if I’m not mistaken.

My younger brother (7 years younger) was taught by some sort of “sight reading” system, that my mom(teacher w/25 years experience) thought was asinine. About all I know about it was that he could read well, but had little of the writing/spelling integration that phonics gives students. In other words, he could read like crazy but seemed to be pretty well incapable of writing, even by my first grade standards.

54

The letter people! My kindergarten diploma is spelled out in letter people :smiley: We had inflatable ones in the classroom too.

You know, though phonics doesn’t make sense to everyone. Despite reading well by grade K I couldn’t understand the phonics stuff we were learning. (though perhaps as others have said, why would I sound out words I knew?) But I don’t recall ever sounding out words, mostly because I learned to by looking at the whole words: cat looks like CAT rather than cat sounds like ku-at. By fourth grade I only spelled as well as a third or fourth grader, but my reading comprehension level tested at just under the 11th grade level (something strange like grade 10 and 7 months) so I guess it worked out ok given I now spell fairly decently as well.

55

I’m late into this thread because the hamsters wouldn’t let me read it! I too have books on the go constantly though since discovering the dope it tends to be this that I read…

I was reading at about the same time I entered British school, which was the term in which you turned five. I was four and 7 months. I remember being able to read well but getting caught up on pronunciations. I remember knowing that “clothes” were clothes but reading it “cloths” when called on to read to the teacher.

I would like advice about my children, who are Japanese/English, being raised in the Japanese public school system. Both the 3 year old and the 7 year old first grader speak English very well, the three year old a bit slow at first but about average for a native speaker now, and the 7 year old very fluent in both languages and advanced in English (he sounds about 10 or 11 years old but with the emotional maturity of a 7 year old.)

I worry constantly that they are falling behind their native speaking peers, as one day I hope they will have the choice of going to an international school, or to the US or England. If they can’t read or write English then this will be hard for them to do.

The 7 year old yesterday produced this piece of writing:
Jurassic Park Continued

TAe JURASSIC PARK Woz FuLL ov DiNossro. TheN a LoT OF PeepLe cAme AND FixeD uP JURASSIC PARK. 2 weeks LATer The DiNossros came And,SmasheD it oLL Up, AGAIN!! The Peeple gave the DiNoSSAurs A Lot ov FooD, so TheY GoT too FAT to run.

This was done by dint of us talking about the film we had just watched, and kid saying he wasn’t satisfied with the ending, and me suggesting we write our own satisfactory ending. So we sat there with him writing and discussing each bit, and then him having decided what the next sentence would be, me dictating it back to him word by word. (He seemed unable to carry a whole sentence in his head and write at the same time.) I told him how to spell Jurassic Park and he pretty much worked out the rest himself. His letters are haywire and many come out backwards. (He reads and writes Japanese at or slightly below grade level too btw.)

Is his writing about 1st grade level? Lower? Too low? We try to do about 10 minutes a day of reading or writing or drills but that is about all we can do, as his Japanese school work is obviously important too. All his videos are English, and our home language and 90% of the books I read to him are English. Any other ideas or suggestions? He is “allergic” to reading and will cry if I try to make him. On the other hand he adores being read to, and we are ploughing through the “Swallows and Amazons” series at the moment. He will read odd words, chapter headings and simple sentences to me over my shoulder as he finds them, but I have given up for the moment on the “reading” because I can’t stand the crying.

The three year and 5 months boy is suddenly writing. He joins in my kindergarten English classes and now knows all his letter and numbers up to about 50, and the sounds the letters make. He can write maybe 20 words by himself, most of them 3 letter words. As of yesterday he is starting to write phrases but they need him to read them to me! Yesterday’s was “EEGOIN 2 PAk.” (We’re going to the park) and today’s was “Welkum 2 luch” (Welcome to my lunch.) I am stunned by this, and apart from giving him tracing worksheets, writing out words he wants me to write for him, and praising him to the skies, I don’t know what to do to encourage him. I don’t know if he can read yet. Maybe odd little words. He also knows about half of the hiragana phonetic symbols of Japanese, and can write his own name in both languages.

If anyone could tell me where the kids fit in with average US/British kids of three and seven, and how to take them on, I’d be very grateful.

56

Perhaps we should have a separate thread for “When I learned to read.” I’m afraid the posts which actually answer the OPs question are few.

57

I was wondering what some of you all define as “reading” ?

My definition would be, at minimum, reading simple sentences of the “See Tom run. Jane has a cat.” variety.

However, a few of the posts above seem to equate “reading” with word recognition (ball, cat), which seems a bit below the level I’d describe as “reading”.

To the OP: I was taught to read sentences and short stories in first grade (Illinois, circa 1967). before that, I was taught word recognition and phonics in Kindergarten and pre-school.

My son, age 4, is in preschool and is getting some phonics. I understand that “reading”, whatever that means, is taught in the local kindergartens, but my son has almost another year before he’ll start ‘real’ school.

58

My dad was dyslexic and didn’t learn to read properly until he was almost in college, so he made absolutely sure my sisters and I could read before we started school. I remember sitting in his lap at night and reading to each other. My sisters say he used a phonics book, but all I remember are Little Golden Books. It worked, because we all were reading before we started kindergarten.

According to family legend, I started reading when I was two. My mother took me to K-Mart for the first time, and when I got out of the car, I looked at the sign and asked her, “Is this K-Mart?”

I wasn’t given any grief about reading ahead of the rest of the class in kindergarten. I remember learning the alphabet according to Astro (this was 1985) and learning to write by copying a short paragraph the teacher wrote on the board each day. In first grade we had a halfway nap time when the class had to put their heads down on their desks (I still firmly believe this causes back problems) while one student played a record of children’s songs. Whenever it was my turn to play the record, I read all the books on the shelf next to the turntable. I got through all of them long before we read them in class.

59

While in college I tutored a second grader for reading and writing and his looks about as good as hers did - it’s worth noting she was in the program not because she was doing poorly but because she needed more adult attention. Your son’s paper looks better than 1st grade for the simple reason that it actually has vowels in it… I bet if you started a thread asking for elementary teachers’ opinions you’d get a more qualified answer, though; while I now evaluate student writing for a living, we don’t score below grades 3 and 4.

60

Bunny (mom of otterish) taught me to read by finding individual letters on cereal boxes during breakfast every day, and learning what sound each made. When we tried to start putting them together into words, though, it became evident to her that something wasn’t right. Being a smart Bunny, she sought expert help. The dyslexic otter was reading like a champ well before kindergarten.