ml captive reading and homework for pre-schoolers

Thank you for your feedback Wojtek . It is very interesting and inspiring.

The blending of the letters is indeed the concept I struggle to explain to my daughter.

Your technique gave me an idea. I might try teaching 2-letter syllables using my daughter's magnetic letters or foam letters from our play-mat. These are more colourful and appealing plus it should be easier.

Thank you for your tips!

I was educated in International British schools and then lived many years in the UK, so my English is a British one...without me even thinking or realising it. My aim is to pass on to my daughters the English as I have learnt it; so no American. Not because I don't like it or anything of the like, but simply because I wouldn't be able to even if I wanted to.

I remember seeing Adam's post and thinking, "I can't wait until my son is old enough to start reading, so I can put up messages for him on the bathroom wall!" And now, the time is drawing near! I like that you go to the SCRABBLE dictionary for short words! I think I might be tempted to be a little choosier about which words I use...maybe selecting for certain difficult sounds or sound combinations?

Another resource I can recommend along these lines is the classic American children's program, Sesame Street. More than any other kids program I know, Sesame Street really drills phonics. The fuzzy aliens who read words one sound at a time and then slowly combine them...the songs like "C is for Cookie" and the clever way that this show has commercials for letters and numbers, as if each episode were "sponsored" by those letters.

My 3-year-old is just beginning to recognize letter shapes, and he noticed that a round cookie he was eating looked like a "C." Of course, TV is not a particularly active time, but Sesame Street is a good choice especially for phonics.

I don't know if you have seen this site or maybe I have found it somewhere here, but here: The Measured Mom is a really huge resource for teaching reading. Lots of things. Just have a look.

Great ideas! Will definitely be trying them out! Forgot about Sesame Street...another great programme which teaches and encourages reading is Super Why and I've heard of Alphablocks (British programme) which does a lot of phonics...am hoping to buy the series soon. I've made flashcards and we do them once a week (I've learnt not to push it too fast) and I also bought fridge magnetic letters and magnets of sight words that children in UK are expected to know by the end of Reception Year. I'm also working on the Jolly Phonics workbooks little by little but the process is going a lot slower than expected. Also doing captive reading and have been leaving short messages but now after reading your ideas I'm thinking maybe I should just put one word because often she can't read the whole message!!

I've read this thread with a lot of interest, even though my daughter is not close to reading age (2 1/2), because I'm wondering how I will do things when the time comes.

My question is: how should it work with learning to read in two languages? I ask particularly because on the website of one of the bilingual (English-French) schools I was looking at for my daughter when we were living in Paris, it specifically asks parents not to teach reading in English to their children at the same time that the school is teaching them to read in French. According to this website, it is too confusing given the different sounds that are made when different vowels come together, for instance. They therefore ask that parents wait until their children are writing fairly confidently in French (at about age 8, from memory) before moving on to teaching reading in English. Obviously this wouldn't apply if the second language didn't use the same basic alphabet.

What does everyone think about this? I'd love to hear the opinions of people with actual experience.

In my own case, I learnt to read in English first (5) then French at 7. My brother learnt in French first (6) then in English at 7. I think my sister must have learnt both at the same time...none of us had any problems, but obviously that is total anecdata!

I should probably start a separate thread on this issue as it is a pretty big one!

Learning to read is a complex skill and there is no "right" way to do it. But the majority of children master it within a few years so don't worry too much. I've taught the initial stages of primary school for 10 years so taught a lot of children to read and no two children ever go about it in quite the same way even if they're getting the same teaching. The main thing that influences how quickly and well a child learns to read is how much they're read to and enjoy books. This means that you don't have to do any direct "teaching" to have a massive influence on your child. While reading, the main thing to focus on is enjoyment especially while your daughter is small.

Secondary to that you can ask questions - at her age, asking her to point to things you've read about to check her understanding. As she gets older, questions like 'what do you think will happen next' ' how does x feel' or anything else that provokes discussion and helps her to understand on a deeper level. At age 4/5 you can draw more attention to text if she hasn't already shown interest and for the languages you're doing all you need her to learn are that those markings on the page have meaning and that the text goes from top to bottom, left to right, which you can show her by running your finger along the words as you read. If she shows curiosity about letters and words then you can talk about it and play games but don't feel you have to force this if she's not keen.

It's always better to wait until a child is interested and keep things lighthearted and fun. This means you are actually teaching many of the most important skills for reading without doing the formal exercises and schoolwork which most people associate with learning to read. The school website you refer to will be talking about this. If two languages are as similar as French and English and are taught with the same formal methods at the same time it can be confusing for many children but not all. This is because of phonics (sounds made by single letters and letter combinations) which both these languages have in common. I'm not sure this would apply to learning one of those languages plus a language which uses a completely different writing system like Japanese. For that reason it's probably better to learn either French or English formal reading first. Often children then try to apply the rules they are learning from that language into the other language and can ask questions about it. Some automatically reason it out and don't need any formal teaching in the second language. For others they need more time and a lot of questions answered and some formal teaching to figure out that the rules are different but it won't be as difficult a process to learn reading in the second language if it uses the same writing system.

As for which one your daughter does first, I don't think it will necessarily matter in the long run. This more depends on the age she formally starts learning to read at school and how ready she is to learn. If she's desperate to learn to read a year before she starts school and you feel confident teaching her then start with her other language and then you can either ease off a bit when she starts school or you might find it's so well-established that it doesn't have any impact on learning at school. If she'll be young when she starts school and/or you don't have the time/confidence to formally teach her before or she becomes frustrated, leave it until she has been learning for about a year at school or until she starts asking to learn in the other language. Then you can use lots of Adam's excellent suggestions for captive reading and a homework routine to make it a regular part of your lives.

Again, I would emphasise that reading to your child every day if possible for years to come and having a lot of books around in the minority language will have a far greater impact than anything else you do, so if you're managing this then you can relax about it and just let things take their course.

Thanks to both of you for your inputs! It's really quite fascinating how little people grow and learn...and so wonderful to hear first-hand experiences of what is to come down the track! I agree that the main thing is to make reading enjoyable and also model reading ourselves. Every time I feel guilty about sitting down with a book in front of my daughter I remember how important it is that she see me enjoying reading too!

It was also interesting to learn about reading being easier to acquire in French than English - I never would have guessed that! The grammar is so 'particular' that I assumed it would be more difficult, but I suppose that is more about writing than reading, and probably only becomes an issue later down the line when children start to construct more complex sentences.

Alison - congratulations on your maternity leave having started - I assume that means the baby is expected soon!

Cheers for that information, Mayken! That really made me feel better about what I'm doing.

I'm not very surprised by their petition actually: the bilingual school in my town told us during an information meeting that in the UK kids start learning to read a year earlier than in France.