WORLD BOOK DAY:
JUST LEAVE IT TO CAPTAIN UNDERPANTS
Thursday 6th March 2008
Too
many parents worry about the age at
which their children learn to read.
But it's all down to the individual,
argues one mother
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.
www.worldbookday.com
www.lovereading4schools.co.uk
Source:
Times
Newspaper & Times Online.
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