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You are here: Home / Family Life / Learning to read

Learning to read

by Mumonthebrink 16 Comments

Learning to readTwo weeks ago I had the privilege to help out with the Oxfordshire Children’s Read-a-thon.  An amazing event aimed at re-enthusing children about reading. In preparation for the event and talking to the inspirational Anne Wattam, whose brainchild the whole event was, I kept on being confronted by shocking literacy figures.

The current system to teach children to read at schools just doesn’t seem to be working:  One in five people in Britain are functionally illiterate (don’t have the reading ability to read and understand anything but the simplest text). [1]  That is a shocking statistic!

According to research by the National Literacy Trust children, especially boys, are switching off from reading at the age of 7.  They start falling behind barely after having started the learning.

I won’t start my rant about teaching to read English through phonics… only about 40% of English is truly phonetic afterall! [2]

And I won’t rant about my children being in school or on their way to and from school for nearly 8 hours a day, leaving about 2 hours of quality time at home (discarding meals, bathing, getting dressed time) and me being expected to spend a portion of those precious 2 hours on “school work”. No I won’t!  Especially because until now I haven’t actually encouraged Angelina to do school work at home. I’ve left it to her whether she wanted to do any of it or just play.  I’ve wanted her and her brothers to enjoy being a children and playing.  They’ve got the rest of their lives to work.

In the run up to the Read-a-thon I did however put in a concerted effort and sat down every evening to read with Angelina. I was shocked at how she struggled with some very common words and yet read some very complex ones.  I felt so guilty and felt like I was failing her by entrusting the school to do all the teaching.  I guess it’s not particularly her school’s fault, as nationally we seem to be having trouble- a combination of adopting a misinterpreted system for teaching and there not being the resources necessary to guide each child individually.

The issue of just how to encourage my kids to sit down to do more school work in the little time they have after school has been on my mind for a while now.  I want to let them play and not feel like any additional learning is a chore.

This January I subscribed to Reading Eggs, an online resource to help children learn to read.  We trialed it with a free trial, liked it and I subscribed.  This online, interactive tool took away the chore element of learning.  The children were happy to sit by the computer and “play”, especially when they discovered the playrooms and games available on the platform too.  It worked for us.  For a couple of weeks Angelina popped online each day, then my laptop broke and our efforts foundered.

I’ve just seen (because google adwords often serves you up sites you’ve been to before) Reading Eggs had launched the Great Literacy Challenge a couple of weeks ago with a 5 week free trail (and for every new sign up Reading Eggs will donate £1 to their charity partner Tommy’s!  Thus helping to fund research into stillbirth, premature birth and miscarriage.)

Now I’m on a mission: we’re taking the Great Literacy Challenge. I’m going to make sure that my children don’t become one of the one in five! I want them to enjoy books just as much as I have always done.

I’ve signed Hugo up for the free 5 week trial and we still have Angelina’s subscription till January.  So every afternoon or evening they can have 30 minutes on the computer.

We started the new routine today.

Angelina can do 2-3 lessons in the 30 minutes. Tonight she restarted from where she left off in the spring, lesson 28.

Hugo started on lesson 1.  With him we are going to do one lesson every 1 to 2 days and then practice writing the letter.

Angelina loves writing, but writes everything phonetically. She hates it when I correct her writing and dismisses it as irrelevant. I’m trying to figure out how to incorporate daily writing tasks with her; something that’s fun. Any suggestions welcome!

 

I’d love to hear your views on teaching children to read (and write)!
Do you practice daily?
Do you let the school take the lead or have you taken matters into your own hands?
Any specific method or tools you’ve found useful?

 

Do come back to find out about our progress.

 

Sources: [1]  Human Development Report 2009, Overcoming barriers: Human mobility and development, pg 180

[2] How phonemic is English spelling?, The English spelling society
Image from CatherineHH

Disclaimer: In case you may be wondering- this is NOT a sponsored post. 

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Filed Under: Family Life Tagged With: Books, Learning, Parenting, reading

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Eliza_Do_Lots says

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    I was very lucky that I was very interested in reading and writing, and that I’m from a family of readers. I grew up surrounded by books and people who enjoyed them, and saw my family reading for pleasure, so it was ingrained in me from a young age – and I certainly seem to have children who adore books.

    I had a grandmother who spent time with me sitting at the kitchen table with those fun work books where you learn to trace letters and see how they sound in words, and I get the same for Roman, and Jasper has just begun to take an interest (though both get very frustrated if their lines don’t exactly match the drawn ones – Jasper struggles because he’s two, and Roman struggles because he’s left handed and smudges some lines as he draws them)

    We read every day, and one book is never enough; we read at least half a dozen and I either trace the words with my finger or get the children to, and then we talk about the pictures in the book. This is sometimes fun and sometimes really frustrating because sometimes I just can’t be bothered, but I do it because I know how much it will help them, and I hope it does.

    I have started asking Jellybean to sound out some of the simpler words the way he will be doing at school and next week we have a meeting at school to understand more about phonetics because I, like you, think it misses a lot out – but I know that it’s more rounded than I think it is now.

    Learning isn’t just about sitting down at a desk, it’s about the way we use language everywhere, and your children knowing the words for things and being able to discuss them and reason them will help them to grasp reading, your interaction will support reading, and even if they aren’t looking at letters written down you can spell things out to them so they can associate those sounds with the written forms when they DO look at books, and it comes together in time.

    Reply
    • Mumonthebrink says

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      Thank you for the very constructive and in-depth comment Elizabeth!

      I think your point about using language and the comprehension of the text is very important. For us the difficulty comes from being a multilingual family- we therefore give our children breadth of languages but not necessarily the depth in any individual language.

      Reply
      • Eliza_Do_Lots says

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        But being trilingual will be such a massive advantage later in life that if they’re a little slower learning to read it won’t really matter – I don’t for a moment thing they’ll be illiterate, they’re bright children with bright parents, and their languages will be priceless skills in adulthood in broadening the opportunities they have.

        Reply
  2. Charlie says

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    I’m very lucky that my sons teachers are amazing. He struggled with reading throughout his first year at school but by the time he hit year 1 he was off and running so to say. About Easter time he discovered a set of books in school he was really enjoying so the teacher doubled his reading load saying while he was enjoying them to push him on (but they weren’t set reading he had the option to do it) He kept it up all summer and loved it.
    I think the secret is finding something they actually enjoy – so if my son is into dinosaurs we will read dinosaur stories and reference books even if he needs help with the books for older kids – his interest is there so he will try a lot harder with them then he will with sine of the assigned reading which he sometimes doesn’t find as interesting.

    Reply
    • Mumonthebrink says

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      That is brilliant advice Charlie! We know it is true for us- what interests us is much more motivating- so why wouldn’t that work for our kids?!

      Reply
      • Charlie says

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        Exactly right? also some school reading hasn’t been updated for years and i think that leads to a disinterest in certain aspects – it sounds silly but one of the books i was reading last school year with my son involved a shopping trip looking for a cassette. I spent more time explaining what a cassette was and the fact that no they didn’t have music on a “iPod/Phone/Pad/MP3/PC than we did reading the actual story!

        Reply
        • Mumonthebrink says

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          That is more a lesson into history. Brilliant!

          I do actually like books that stir up curiosity. In my view it helps with improving comprehension.

          Reply
  3. vicx says

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    We have this problem with my now 6 year old and it has got to the point where I am seriously researching and looking into the possibility of taking him out of school and teaching him at home. Ive been trying to help him at home with the method the school are using (phonetics) and have found it incredibly hard to explain to him why the letters when grouped together dont sound the same as what he’s being taught. Anyway i was advised by one of the HE groups on FB to try learning eggs and finally finally i feel like we are starting to make progress. I’m still considering taking him out of school though. Hes been there 3 years so far.

    Reply
    • Mumonthebrink says

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      Vicx, schools are over-stretched, yet try to do the best they can within the tight constraints they are given. HomeEd is an option always open to us in this country, luckily. An option I have considered many times. On the other hand, I have really liked and respected my kids’ teachers, so it would be a hard decision to make. My kids also really like their classmates and love going to school and this has been the main factor why I haven’t done it.

      I read a friend’s FB update today, where she talks about her 9 year old daughter finally learning to read. Her view was – each child will just click at one point or another. I guess she’s right! …but I’m still going to carry on with reading eggs with my little monkeys. 😉

      Reply
  4. Kate Davis says

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    So far both my children are showing a love of books. My 4 yo daughter loves going to the library and is starting to read books herself. My 2 yo insists on having a book read to him before bed. Like you, we struggle to find the time to read together between school and work so I will look into reading eggs, although I think the school will start using an electronic programme later in the year.

    My sister is a teaching librarian in an overseas primary school. Her advice I’m trying to follow is to
    * read lots, because the children will mimic what they see around them, particularly their parents
    * look for letters and words everywhere don’t make it just about books.
    * don’t read books that are too difficult, if they need to sound out every word they don’t get the understanding of the story and it is not fun
    * encourage them by reading things they find fun

    Do you know if the read-a-thon is going to be an annual event? It sounded like a lot of fun, but classed with our village fair.

    Reply
    • Mumonthebrink says

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      Fantastic advice!!!

      I hope the Read-a-thon will be an annual event. It was so much fun. I’d love to do a follow up with the parents to see if their little ones have started reading more after.

      Reply
  5. liveotherwise says

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    It doesn’t matter if they write phonetically to begin with – in fact, it’s a perfectly natural way to start. In Montessori education, writing often comes before reading. I know that sounds peculiar, but the two are approached separately, and it’s not unusual to find a child who can write a word but not be able to read it somewhere else.

    As other commenters have said, it’s all about following the child’s interest and keeping it fun. And I saw that FB update as well – I think it talked about home education didn’t it? 🙂

    Reply
    • Mumonthebrink says

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      Interesting point about the writing in a Montessori setting. I shall look into it.

      Reply
  6. Farhan says

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    Hey there, I thought I’d add my two penneth in. I was away from my boy for about ten months travelling between London on the weekends and then up to Bristol during the week for work. Before I went I spent some twenty to thirty minutes everyday teaching him to read and count. When I was in Bristol I used the phone (I didn’t have a tablet at that time) to try to keep his counting practice up.

    What I’ve always tried to do is to keep it fun, my aim is to give him the love of books. Now I’m really pleased that he picks books up on his own and brings them to me to read to him.

    I figure when a child enjoys doing something than they are more likely to pursue it for themselves.

    Reply
  7. Help kids read says

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    It is essential for parents to create a healthy learning environment for their kids. it is imperative as it nourish urge of reading and learning in kids at early stage…HOP is the best problem which Help kids read and nourish their reading skills.

    Reply

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