How to teach reading

[Artechim]

How do I teach DS how to read? ATM he can recognise all the letters of the alphabet and knows the phonics of most of them. I am not sure how to progress onto words though.

Also, how do I get him to hold a pen correctly? He is holding it at the top like you would hold a knife in a stabbing motion. He can write a couple of letters but I am sure he would find it a bit easier if he held the pen better.

TIA

[Junglemum]

I used to just correct DD's grip and show her how mummy did it. Now she is great at it. Those pencils in a triangle shape are good, they encourage correct grip.

As for reading..... sorry! By reading to him, he'll start picking up words. My SIL is a prep teacher and i noticed she always points to words as she's reading. i do know that there are also phonics type teaching programs available. Have a look on that modern teaching aids website.

[mrsmac]

Send him to school and someone trained to do it will teach him!

[Visitor7]

Once he gets to school he will certainly start to read. With DD1, we follow the words on the books with a finger and Nina watches.

[deletedit]

DD#1 knew her alphabet and was writing phonetically (ie, really dreadful spelling - "I love you" became "I luf joo") before she started school. She had sight words from school on little flash cards. Simple words like 'the', 'of', 'big' etc. I read to her from simple books every day and whenever we hit one of her sight words I'd ask her what it was.

Sounds good? Hell no. She REFUSED point blank to cooperate, she REFUSED to read her sight words off cards OR books OR when we found them on common objects ("Big red" on the tomato sauce) and tried to bribe her to get her to read them. She argued with me no end when I pointed to words in books as I read them out, because I was apparently reading them wrong, or they were spelt wrong, or she didn't agree with what I said. Trying to teach her to read was a truly horrible experience and the daily savage arguments almost brought me to tears. I was supposed to do all this stuff with her after school but with such an argumentative child it simply wasn't possible - way to make you feel like a failure.

She ended up just deciding on her own she wanted to read just before she turned 6. She went from being totally illiterate to a 8yo reading level within a year, and is currently 9 with a 15yo reading level. She changed schools last year and because she is such a good reader the teachers assumed she had been reading since she was 3 and gave me a look of total disbelief when we said she'd only learnt to read at the end of her first year at school.

DD#2 on the other hand is just absorbing stuff like a sponge, she knows most of her alphabet already and can count, and she likes being read to. She can remember what was in her books so she'll sit there 'reading' them out loud by rote, running her finger along the words. She's never argued with me about anything other than bedtime or the number of biscuits she can have while DD#1 argues with me about EVERYTHING (except bedtime and the number of biscuits she can have). I'm fully expecting DD#2 to be reading sometime when she's 3, maybe earlier but I'd be surprised if she does that early.

Edit: I should mention we have around 400 children's books in this house (plus adult books too), with a range from 1-15yo reading level, sorted on the bookshelf with the baby ones at the bottom and the teenage ones at 9yo height, so our toddler just helps herself to books and makes us read them to her

[Phteven]

I think it's more important to teach your children to enjoy books and reading that to teach them to read. They will have teachers at school who can teach them to read.

[Jennifer13]

We read a lot to DD and I know preschool does a lot more with letters and stuff. DD just occupies herself writing letters and words over and over at home, there's no real need for me to 'teach' her. I've started doing a short workbook on letters (Wow! I can read - I got it from preschool) and the like since she loves writing so much, but it's a page at a time and it sits there to get used about once a month when we're stuck inside and DD is antsy before dinner.

I only started on a couple of small things after one day last year when we drove into the shopping centre and DD (aged 3) piped up from the back seat, "Look Mum, that sign says c-o-l-e-s". For her, it's just something she likes doing and I'm following her lead. Same as she knows how to spell and write the names of most of her friends and gives me things with other words I completely don't expect and have certainly never taught (love, for one). She asks me to tell her the letter for words she doesn't know and I answer, but no more than that.

I think pencil grip is a developmental thing. DD had a tri-grip before she was two, but she was highly unusual. I've noticed in DD's preschool class that most of the girls have it perfectly but some of the boys not so much. DD just loves to write and draw, always has. And believe me, it has nothing to do with intelligence - one little boy can count well into the 100s and can barely write his name. It just isn't his 'thing'. It's a fine motor skill. I think you're better off encouraging his fine motor abilities with things like playdough and it will come to him.

I personally don't remember learning to read and I'm fairly sure I could read either before or pretty much as soon as I was at school. My Mum always took us to the library so I doubt I ever had an issue with not getting readers that I liked, I picked what I wanted. I do this for DD too. She can pick out whatever books she likes there.

[*Ali*]

My DD is 4 and obsessed with words- she loves to sound out every single word she can, that is just her a natural progression for her learning. For me I am not moving her too quickly into formal reading, but we do lots and lots of focus on making sounds and finding sounds etc.
I guess I am lucky because I get to look at the situation from 2 perspectives, as I am a teacher too. I run to both schools of thought, both whole language and phonics based- I think over the years we have really lost the art of teaching phonics, hence all the talk about lowering levels of spelling etc. So my advice would be to just do general stuff with him, rather than moving him too quickly into reading books- some thigns we do at home is when we are playing blocks I will say a work and DD will use the letter blocks to make that word, you could use playdough or pipecleaners for turning into letters to make the words, use old magazines to find and cut out certain words ie all words starting with b etc. For now I would keep it simple and keep to CVC (constanant vowel constant) mum, dad, dog, cat, mat etc I it is also very important like Mrs Mac said to look at things like rhyme, letter patterns etc, because kids need to develop tools to help them read and write, so being able to hear a rhyme in a word, bat, cat, mat etc means they dont have to work as hard to read and write, because they know at makes the 'at' sound. This is why I personally like a phonics based approach rather than the flash card system where children learn words by rote, if they learn how to read and how to spell, they are developing a tool box, where as if they learn each word as a whole then they have to work much harder, because they are remembering words only by sight, and do not have the skills to decode that word when it is used in a context- ie in a book.

I have to say that I also hear where mrsmac is coming from, because it is really hard for a child in the class that is far beyond all their classmates, they bored and frustrated because they want to join in with their peers, but they find the work far to easy- it is for this reason I haven't moved DD into reading books etc yet, I have just 'extended her sideways' as I like to call it- taken her skills and given her lots of opportunities to to use them in fun ways so that she is still able to learn alongside her peers- as she gets older she will progress at her own rate, but for now I am happy to let her enjoy her skills in lots of play based ways.