Our first child didn't do it really well until he was almost 7. Our second
child could do it at 5 and our third child hasn't mastered it yet. What is
it? Reading, of course, a topic guaranteed to get parents hot under the
collar. Learning to read should be a fun and exciting milestone, instead it
is too often fraught with tension.
“I was so wound-up about Laurie not reading,” admits Sarah, the mother of
three boys, “that one holiday it reached crisis point and I actually threw
the wretched reading book at him!”
Throwing books is obviously not recommended, but most of us can sympathise
with Sarah's frustration. But why do parents get in such a state? Possibly
because reading is one of the few tangible signs of learning: it's hard to
know what goes on in a developing mind; we can't see synapses forming,
theories taking shape, concepts being grasped, but if he can read he is
demonstrably learning something - hooray! And nowadays children start
learning to read sooner than ever. Last year, at the age of 4 and while
still in reception, our youngest child began bringing home his “reading
book” - and he's not alone. “I felt resentful when books started to come
home,” says Alice, another mother. “I had to try and force my child into
this mould, for which she just didn't fit, when she was just a little kid of
5.”
According to many parents, Sarah and Alice included, there's immense pressure
from every direction, even the children themselves.
“All Anna's friends were in the top group,” says Alice. “One little girl
actually told me her ambition was to be in the ‘sparrows' because ‘they are
the best readers'. And I know that I've been impatient with Anna, which
hasn't helped her.”
Why all this impatience when it comes to reading? Does learning to read early
matter? Not necessarily, says Julia Strong, the director of the National
Reading Campaign. “The important thing is that children should be allowed to
develop at a speed that's right for them. Starting too soon can put them off
for life...Certainly in countries where they start formal education later,
such as Sweden, the children are subsequently streets ahead.”
And Professor Lilian Katz, an authority on early childhood education, agrees.
“Teaching younger children can look OK in the short term, but in the long
term children who are taught early are not better off. For a lot of children
5 is too early, and it can have a more negative impact on boys. It can be
seriously damaging for children who see themselves as inept at reading too
early.”
Dr Leonard Sax, in his book Boys Adrift, observes: “We are now asking
five-year-olds to do what six-year-olds used to be expected to do.” Pushing
literacy too early in a system that plays to the strengths of girls, can
leave boys, whose brains mature more slowly, often wrongly labelled as slow
or disruptive.
At the coalface of this debate - at an inner-city primary school - is Doreen
Willis, a Year 1 teacher, who says that while most children should be able
to read by the end of Year 2 (at the age of 6 or 7) some do not do so until
the next year and this doesn't necessarily mean that they won't catch up by
Year 6. “Parents often ask about reading, feeling that their children aren't
progressing quickly enough and not realising that, often, they're making
great strides in other areas,” she says.
Because there are many ways to teach reading, deciding which approach should
be adopted in schools has become something of a political football tossed
between one government to the next, or even one minister to the next. At the
moment, synthetic phonics is in vogue.
At our children's school the prevailing wisdom is something called THRASS -
Teaching Handwriting, Reading and Spelling Skills. So pity poor mum and dad,
sitting on the sideline, keen to have a go, but not sure of the rules.
Should we buy the full set of Oxford Reading Tree, or are reading schemes
old hat? What about Letterland? Should we get flash cards? And what exactly
is a phoneme?
Kate, mother to a keen fledgeling reader, says: “I was so exasperated by the
same old book coming home every night, I went out and bought a full set to
read with Issy myself.”
Many children don't have this advantage and are unable to read at home at all,
either because parents haven't the skill, the money, the time or the
interest - or, sadder yet, because their school fears a book borrowed may
never return.
It's for children such as these that campaigns and events such as World Book
Day - today - and the current National Year of Reading are so important.
“It's about the desire to implement a framework for reading,” says Honor
Wilson-Fletcher, the project director of National Year of Reading, “to make
it part of the fabric of society. It's not just about bedtime stories with
mum and dad; it's about song lyrics and Shakespeare. The important thing is
for parents to relax and show what interests them, to start with what they
love rather than what they think is right.”
With this in mind, what can we do to show that we're interested and help
children along the road to reading? The good news is that there are lots of
simple things. Singing and repeating nursery rhymes are important precursors
to developing language and listening skills, the building blocks for
literacy. While continuing to read to them is as important as listening
because, apart from the bonding experience involved in cuddling up together
to share a book, the listener is subtly imbibing reading skills: the
left-to-right orientation of the page, the way that inflection and tone
changes meaning, as well as a love of stories.
If your children are reluctant to read a whole book, encourage them to read
tiny bits with you, the speech bubbles, for example, or the title. Look for
familiar words when you are out and go through catalogues and brochures
following written instructions whenever possible (recipes, for example).
Have a wide variety of reading material, let children choose, offer books that
will appeal to them and try not to infer that “storybooks” are the only
important, or valuable, types of reading. This is particularly relevant for
boys, who tend to dip in and out of factual books, comics, annuals and
football magazines - all important reading material.
“Parents must not expect too much, too soon,” cautions Pat Layzell, a former
teacher and founder of The Children's Discovery Centre in southwest London,
which promotes reading. Layzell believes there's too much pressure to
achieve and emphasises the importance of finding the right material to get
children started and continuing to read to them (she insists that she has
never known a child who has been regularly read to who hasn't learnt to do
it by him or herself). Layzell also recommends old-fashioned patience,
explaining that an emerging reader will reread old favourites and citing
“reading readiness”, as key because “just like walking, talking and sitting
up, reading is a developmental milestone that takes place only when the
child is ready”.
In my experience, as a parent with three very different readers, this has
certainly been the case. The first child was very reluctant to read to us so
we read to him every night instead. We had lots of books at home, we left
interesting stories lying around, we read poetry and took him to plays, to
the library, even to see authors at the theatre and struggled hard not to
let him know we were worried about his reading (and we were). Slowly,
excruciatingly, he began to take an interest in reading for himself. But it
wasn't until he picked up a series called The Adventures of Captain
Underpants, by Dav Pilkey, that it took off - that's what flicked the switch
for him. Suddenly he became what he is now: a booklover and an habitual
reader. Thank goodness, or should that be, thank Captain Underpants.
Some mothers' names in this piece have been changed.
World Book Day, now in its second decade, is today recognised in more than
100 countries. It is a partnership of publishers, booksellers and others
interested in promoting books and reading. It aims to provide every
schoolchild with a £1 book token or the chance to buy a book for £1.
worldbookday.com lovereading4schools.co.uk
Books chosen by children
Age 5/6: The Cat in the Hat, by Dr Seuss; Don't Forget the
Bacon, by Pat Hutchins; This is the Bear, by Sarah Hayes
Age 6/7: The Adventures of Captain Underpants, by Dav Pilkey; Pirate
School: Just a Bit of Wind, by Jeremy Strong; Mrs Wobble the Waitress,
by Allan Ahlberg
Age 7/8: The Worst Witch, by Jill Murphy; Mr Majeika, by
Humphrey Carpenter; The Owl Who Was Afraid of the Dark, by Jill
Tomlinson
Age 8/9: Battle of Bubble and Squeak, by Philippa Pearce; Demon
Headmaster, by Gillian Cross; The Butterfly Lion, by Michael
Morpurgo
Age 9/10: Dragon Rider, by Cornelia Funke; Stormbreaker,
by Anthony Horowitz; Journey to the River Sea, by Eva Ibbotson
Age 10/11: Mortal Engines, by Philip Reeve; Holes, by
Louis Sachar; Noughts and Crosses, by Malorie Blackman
Non-fiction: Usborne Young Reading: Series 1 & 2; Friendly
Matches, by Allan Ahlberg; Grossology: The Science of Really Gross
Things, by Sylvia Branzei
