My kindergarten teacher told my mom that I had read 2 books, and mom didn’t even know I could read. 
I don’t remember doing anything but playing in preschool. Maybe I just picked it up on my own? Hard to say.
I’m not sure how much reading was taught in my kindergarten class (circa 1983). I vaguely remember that at least some students got to read actual books, somewhere around the “See Spot run” level. I sped through them, bored silly, then went and checked out third-grade books from the library.
Wow! I didn’t know there were so many Dopers that were reading before kindergarten!
My mom taught me to read by the time I was three. I was reading the “Tree of Knowledge Encyclopedia” for leisure by age 4… (I would have avoided the “S” volume altogether out of fear of the vivid color panels of Snakes, but that volume also had “Space Exploration.”)
I remember reading my first word all by myself… my mom and her friend and I were having lunch at a department store, and I sounded out the word “Cafeteria” over the buffet line. 
Food has always been important to me.
I could read, for real, before I turned 3. I can’t remember a time when I couldn’t read. The very first thing I remember reading was a street sign. I was in our truck (we were moving), sleeping in Mom’s lap, and I looked up and saw a sign. I saw the shape of the letters, and knew what they meant. It said, “Exxon”. heh.
My parents discovered that I could read through a babysitter. When my folks came home, the babysitter told them in amazement, “He can read!” My parents told her, “No, he just memorizes what we read to him and repeats it.” “No, really,” said the babysitter, “he was reading to me from National Geographic!”
So, by the time I hit kindergarten, I was already quite the reader. Writing didn’t come as quickly, however; I was still writing mostly capitals when I started school.
I love reading, and I love books. I hope to teach my children to read at a young age; I plan to read to them as much as possible. And I’ll be pushing my pro-reading agenda on my brother when I send books to all four of his kids this Christmas.
My Mom tells it like this: A little before I turned three, my folks were traveling to my grandparents house on a family trip. I pointed at a sign outside and said “McDonalds!” and my parents said “Hey, pretty clever! He recognizes the logo!” Then I pointed at a sign without a logo and said “Knoxville Chevrolet!”, and the car grew quiet. They hadn’t made any effort to teach me to read. Best they can figure, I picked up the basics of phonetics from watching Sesame Street and ran with it.
By the time I got to kindergarten, I could read about as well as I can now, although my comprehension obviously wasn’t as good. The funny thing is, in a way I think it ended up hurting me more than it helped as far as school performance. I was a great student in elementary school, but later on when things didn’t come as easily as reading did I guess I didn’t have the discipline to apply myself. In junior high I started failing courses, and I ended up flunking out of high school and not graduating with my senior class. It was very frustrating for me and hugely disappointing for my parents, especially considering the high hopes they had for me when I was little.
Just so you know the story has a happy ending, I turned it around when I got a little older, went to law school, and did just fine.
I was an early reader. My Mom stayed at home with me and read to me. I memorized the books by about age two and she taught me to read at about age 4. I was really bored in school in teh first grade when the other kids were learning their ABCs…
I taught my son learned to read at age 5, my two daughters went to Italian school and learned to read at about age 6 but they learned to read in both Italian and English so that was an added benefit for them.
Hey- that’s pretty funny! That’s almost exactly how my parents figured out that I could read- I was merrily reading off all the businesses until I got to one without a logo, and misread/mispronounced the store name. This gave my parents pause, and then they started asking me to read other stuff on buildings until they were convinced.
I’m amazed on how well some dopers can remember the details of when they learned how to read.
I honestly can’t remember when I learned how to read. It may have been when I was being toilet trained (which means I was either an early reader, slow when it came to being toilet trained, or slow at both 
)
I do recall reading stuff in the bathroom to pass the time while going #2. Ironically this lead to the enjoyment of reading while on the toilet. There are few things that are more relaxing than reading a good magazine/newspaper while relaxing the bowels
I like to read, but I don’t do it as voraciously as some of your do. I do spend a ton of time on the internet though, and it should be noted that most of this time is reading stuff, so personally I think surfing the net counts as reading. For as long as I can remember, I’ve also read during long car rides and before I go to bed.
When I completed Elementary school my parents gave me a World Book Encyclopedia set as a graduation present. I would often read a whole volume when looking for something specific (I also have this habit when looking something up in a dictionary). I think I’ve read through that whole encyclopedia hundreds of times over, my mom used to think it strange I would read reference books for fun.
My parents both were very supportive in helping me to learn to read and spell, but my family in general were not avid readers. Some times dinner conversations were awkward because I’d want to discuss a book/author/rhetoric but nobody in the room had any idea what I was talking about, nor any interest in hearing it.
I come from a little town (<2000 people). My mom taught me to read as a baby. The way she told it is that while at the library, at age 3 (this was 1961), I asked my mom what a word in my book was, and she asked me to spell it. I said “s-q-u-i-r-r-e-l”. Then the librarian became intrigued, because she was going to be my Kindergarten teacher, and they had never dealt with someone that young who could read and spell. By Grade 1, I was tested and had reading, spelling and comprehension at 9th grade level - so I was supremely bored by Dick and Jane. But I always got A+ in reading and spelling.
In Grade 2, the school sent me for psychological evaluation, and as a result, the school board created an advanced program for me. I was the first kid to go to accelerated classes at the school across town, where I took Grades 3, 4 and 5 in two years. When I went back to my old school for Grade 6, I was younger than everybody, had learned different subjects in a different way than everybody, and I paid for it mightily. I used to get beaten up for being perceived as smarter than the other kids, and the teachers used to berate me for being a smartass, and reprimand me for being bored to tears. And it went downhill from there. I was never smarter than anybody, I could just read. That was all. Maybe it was an aptitude that I have, like the one for playing music.
Anyway, my mom swore never to do that to my brothers, she would let them learn on their own. Consequently, one of them is well-spoken and has a good vocabulary and spelling, and the other is somewhere slightly above functionally illiterate.
I started school in 1975, in a semi-rural area in Florida. Kindergarten involved reading material of the “Dick and Jane” type. By 2rd grade, our reading books contained stories a few pages long.
Mom tells me that my sister and I both learned to read long before that, because she would run her finger along the page under the words as she read to us. Neither of us remembers that far back, though… to us, it seems as if we could always read… certainly long before kindergarten.
I don’t remember learning to read. I do remember…
…being four, and looking out the front window of the house, watching the big kids going off to kindergarten and womdering what it would be like.
Then I noticed my mom coming up the sidewalk, and she was carrying a paper bag of groceries, and sticking out the top was a book for me. I remember what the book was, too: it was one of the “Science made Simple” series with the pictures and everything, that was later satirised in exactly the same style by the book “Science made Stupid”. Even then, I was fascinated by space and electrical stuff…
Mom told me that I basically taught myself to read by pointing out words and asking what they meant and what they sounded like.
In the late '50s we learned in first grade. My first grade teacher was an old battleaxe, who insisted on phonics even though the school system had moved away from it. I could read a bit before, but not really. By the end of first grade I was reading Jules Verne books. In second grade someone noticed me reading 20,000 Leagues Beneath the Sea. I went to the principal’s office, I read for him, they figured out I really did know what I was reading, and was let alone. In third grade we had some sort of staged reading program. My teacher gave me the hardest one to start with, which I could handle, and then I got to read what I wanted.
My kids were taught in the first grade and got the letter people in kindergarten. This was in the mid-80s. We made a Mr. H Horrible Hair costume for my daughter.
I’m curious what were the hardest books people reading before kindergarten were reading. There were some studies (I’ll have to look them up) that showed that pushing reading before kids were developmentally ready actually hurt, and that many of these kids stopped reading because they were not ready for the level of books they could read. SD is a biased sample, though.
I never went to kindergarten, but I had parents who encouraged reading and an older sister who wanted to be a teacher. I was reading and doing math at a 3rd grade level before I started first grade. I had good teachers, too. “Hmm…this is too easy? Try THIS and we’ll talk about it when you’re done.”
I learned to read when I was 4, the year before Kindergarten. I remember vaguely them teaching reading to the other kids in Kindergarten, but since I had already been through it, I was bored, and essentially ignored the teacher. By first grade, we had 3 different reading level classes. I, along with others who were bright and learned to read early, was in the blue group, and the intelligent late readers were in the intermediate group, then the people who barely knew what an A was made up the bottom group.
I was taught to read in the 1st grade in Atlanta public schools in the 1960’s. They didn’t even try in Kindergarten, which was only a half-day program at any rate.
My kids were started on the concepts in Kindergarten, but not pushed. They are in first grade this year, and being worked at it much harder than I was in first grade. They are in Private school in Alabama.
My Duaghter is getting the hang of it and enjoys reading. My Son only reads 3 things avidly: road signs, scoreboards, and Gameboy on-screen text.
On a related note: One of their little readers was illustrated by none other than Slug Signorino! I recognized the style immediately and went hunting for the credits.
We did not have any organized reading education in kindergarten. Many things in the room had their names on oak tag signs taped to them. The teacher read to us frequently. We had reading groups, and SRA cards starting in first grade.
My son was in an all-day kindergarten last year and while reading was certainly a focus it was not a requirement. At orientation we were told that the goal of the program was to help each child progress rather than force them all to the same point. Children coming in not knowing the alphabet would learn it, children who started able to read simple words would learn more complex ones, etc. My son was not a full fledged reader at the end of kindergarten. He started reading on his own, enthusiastically during the second week of first grade.
I’m not sure exactly when or how I learned how to read. All I know is that around the age of 3 I figured it out and started reading to my parents. Then around four I told my parents not to bother reading to me anymore, I wanted to be left alone to read to myself. That started me off to being the bookworm I am today.
I remember being in my second year of preschool and doing all sorts of special projects that my teachers gave me. I would have been in kindergarten but the darn school system decided to change the cutoff date (had to be 5 to start) to 15 days before my birthday, so despite me acing all the screening tests and all, they wouldn’t let me in. I remember turning 5 and demanding to go to kindergarten because I was bored.
My kindergarten teacher was awesome. (I’m still in touch with her and her daughter is one of my close friends from high school.) I had a reading specialist come in for me and this other girl and we read and did exercises through the third grade level while everyone else was starting out on Superkids. (I think they’re like the letter people.) Then when I got to first grade, I was dismayed to find that we’d be working in the same workbooks I had completed the year before. I couldn’t get out of it either. I did get to make my own spelling list out and do my own type of book reports. Plus a small group of us got taken out of class for extra reading skills through third grade. They really did encourage us to read. This was back in New England in '83.
I taught myself how to read. One day, I was sitting on my mom’s lap and she was reading a book. I asked her where she was at and she pointed to the spot. I started reading. When I reached the end of the page, I asked her where she was and she was only about half way done. When I told her I was done reading, she started asking me random words.
She dug out one of my brother’s Hardy Boys books and had me read that.
Considering my mom mostly read Harlequin Romances, I can see now why she didn’t want me reading her book.
Both of my kids learned to read in Kindergarten, but it took my daughter longer to catch on.
I taught myself to read when I was between three and four. My brother (a year older) was spending time with my Mom reading at night and I was intrigued and jealous. After listening to her coach him on sounding things out (and having “followed her finger” at bedtime readings for years) I found it was easy to read. My first public performance was a book called “Henry” about a boy with big hands and big feet who wanted to play football. After that, I was unstoppable. Teachers all through grade school had to literally wrestle books out of my hands to get me to do anything else.
So, no, I didn’t learn to read in Kindergarten. I was worried about my stepson because he wasn’t interested in books much until just before he started school, even though I read to him all the time (still do!). But now he’s off the charts (99 percentile) in his reading SATs.
Students were definitely taught to read in my kindergarten class (1982-83). I remember having “Dick and Jane” type books, as well as special units on each consonant and vowel.
I remember it very clearly because it was a huge deal. I could read very well long before I reached kindergarten, and none of the other kids were even close–not even the other smarties.
The average kids started learning their consonants. The smart kids got skipped to vowels (which were trickier). They quickly figured out that I didn’t even need the units on the vowels, so I breezed through them, and then had nothing to do.
I spent a large chunk of kindergarten helping the teacher correct the other kids’ work on their reading and spelling lessons! So yeah, having helped teach my own kindergarten class, I can say that we were definitely taught to read.