How does a child teach himself to read at a young age?

[Karenciavo]

Anyone know? Any web sites you can share? I would love to know if there are any prevailing thoughts on the matter.

Thanks,

Karen

[cathmom]

I don't know, but I was reading at age 3. The way I remember it, I was looking at a book my older sister was reading to me, and one minute the words didn't make sense, and the next minute they did. And I've been reading ever since. I also never understood phonics until I taught my dc with Saxon Phonics.

Edited January 12, 2009 by cathmom
screwed up sense/since - ugh!

[Ria]

I don't know, either, but one of mine was sounding out words at age 3. By 3 1/2 he was reading anything and everything.

 

Ria

[Peek a Boo]

I hadn't spent any 'real' teaching time w/ my almost 5yo other than letting her listen in to SWR lessons w/ my oldest 3, but between PBS, starfall.com, and the Leapfrog letter/Word factory dvds she's doing pretty darn good :) Now that she's self-started I just have to add fuel every once in a while.

 

*I don't use SWR "as intended" :D

 

but i think that is going to vary child by child. My 2d and 3d were NOT interested or motivated to read early.

[AuntieM]

My dd taught began teaching herself at age 2. She is now three and 5 lessons shy of completing 100EL. She reads accurately and fast. She reads other books on her own, but I took her through 100EL to be sure she's got the phonograms down and will follow with the Explode the Code series.

 

She has three siblings 8 to 10 years older than she. They and I read to her a lot. I cannot discount the value of the trickle-down effect, both from their reading and from her probable observation of their/my reading habits (ie, noses in books!). I think part of it is that she saw what was the norm/important to us, and wanted to be in on it.

 

My sister and my oldest son have what may be called a selective photographic memory. If there's something they really want to remember, they make a mental note to "turn it on" and they can remember just about anything (especially written information). Neither of them really understand how or why it works, they just described it to me this way and the results are obvious. I suspect my little dd may have this same ability; if she sees a word once, it seems to be in the vault.

 

I will be watching this thread with interest.

[BMW]

Here's another "I don't know". 2 of my 7 learned to read without being taught. One of them didn't pay attention to the older sibling's lessons, so she didn't "get it" that way... She was reading and reading and a few years later she said, "Oh, I get it! Phonics is spelling!" he-he.

The other child taught herself everything watching her older brother. She wasn't about to have her brother learn anything without her! She was a reading toddler.

[Kfamily]

dd5 began reading at 4. She was the 18month old who would look at chapter books (not picture books) which we always found amazing. I know that once she started to get the feel for reading that she really bumped herself up quickly by

 

1. reading all the time

2. she would watch and follow along with me as I read(harder books) to her

 

Both of these combined with a serious attitude of "books have meaning and I will not allow this reading thing to prevent me from finding out what they have to say". Even now we choose our words carefully. If we say a book is too hard or meant for older sister to read then her immediate response is to deliberately choose that one. Just yesterday she said, "Mom, help me find a book. A hard book.":001_smile:

 

Today at 5 (almost 6) she reads about 5th grade. She seems to love books and has a lot of confidence in reading them.

 

hth

[melissel]

I don't know, but I was reading at age 3. The way I remember it, I was looking at a book my older sister was reading to me, and one minute the words didn't make sense, and the next minute they did. And I've been reading ever sense. I also never understood phonics until I taught my dc with Saxon Phonics.

 

I've heard another early reader explain it this way as well.

 

I asked my DD6 about it and she doesn't remember not being able to read. She started sounding out words on her own when she was 3, and 2 months after her fourth birthday, was reading me street and truck signs from the backseat as we drove. She did not have the attitude that she was GOING TO LEARN how to read. She resisted any and all instruction or prompting. She just...absorbed it.

Edited January 12, 2009 by melissel

[dirty ethel rackham]

I call it "magic." I have no idea how my oldest taught himself to read at age 4. One day, when he was 4, we were in the grocery store and he asked me what bulk foods were. When I asked him where he heard about it, he pointed to the sign. I shouted "When did you learn to read?!"

 

Looking back, I guess we did lay down a good foundation early on. His favorite books as a baby and toddler were alphabet books, so he knew the sounds that letters made early on. Phonemic awareness ... check. We read A LOT! His favorite activity was being read to. We pointed to words, we found letters in books, etc. Early literacy activities ... check. How he got from there to putting sounds together to make words and how he figured out the dipthongs and other letter combinations is a mystery to me. Like I said ... "magic."

[Lolly]

I don't know, but I was reading at age 3. The way I remember it, I was looking at a book my older sister was reading to me, and one minute the words didn't make sense, and the next minute they did. And I've been reading ever since. I also never understood phonics until I taught my dc with Saxon Phonics.

 

This was me as well. One of my dd's also read very early with no instruction. Like another poster, she was fascinated by books from the time she could look at them on. Today, she could care less about them.

[newbie]

I kept reading to them from birth on. They both caught on about three.

[Mandamom]

early readers, too, the older was 4 and the younger was just under 3.5 when they read their first books.

 

I'm an avid reader and always read books, but I hate doing read alouds so my kids never had that many books read out loud to them when they were younger...I know, bad mommy :(. They still managed to learn to read without direct instruction. I say it is genetics.

 

Even though we used to not do a lot of read alouds (we do now though) we have a very verbal household and don't talk down to our kids in little kid words. Our kids learn words early and use big ones early.

[Michelle in MO]

I have no memory of learning phonics--I'm sure I did, but I just can't remember the specifics. The way I learned how to read was simply by my parents reading books to me over and over again. One day I picked up a book that my parents had read to me repeatedly, and I starting actually reading it myself; it wasn't memorization, because the words made sense. I was very young. By 1st grade I was completely out of readers and was allowed to go to the library and read almost any book I wanted to during reading time. I can't remember how it happened---it just happened. I'm certain that my parents' influence had a lot to do with my being able to read early.

[ereks mom]

We read to him all. the. time. from the time he was born. He was interested in letters and sounds from a very young age, and we would talk about the letters on signs -- grocery store, restaurants, Walmart, you name it -- and the sounds they made, but never in a formal "sit-down-and-do-school" way.

 

From ages 3-5, ER was enrolled in a laboratory school at our local university; early childhood education students were required to do a practicum at the school the term before they did their student teaching. Phonics was not taught (in fact, phonics was frowned upon -- at the time, the whole language thing was in its demise, but phonics was not acceptable either, in educational circles). The educational buzzword at the time was "print-rich environment", so students had access to many, many books, and student-teachers read to them often.

 

One day, I was visiting his classroom, and ER -- then about 5yo -- had brought a book (Little Critter's Joke Book) from home to share with his class. He read it aloud to them with perfect timing, pausing for the punchlines and waiting for the others to laugh after each joke. That was when I realized he could read!

Edited January 12, 2009 by ereks mom

[Mommy22alyns]

I saw the term "natural reader" somewhere and I really like it.

 

I remember my mom teaching me how to read before I went to kindergarten - not sure of my exact age.

 

I haven't done real, formal work with my girls - they've always been read to and had free access to tons of books. Becca was avidly looking at board books from the time she could hold them - 5 months or so. She started sounding out words at a few months past 3 and I was comfortable enough to call her a reader by a month after she turned 4 (to me, this was smoothly reading things and not sounding every word out, reading new material that she hadn't had a chance to memorize).

 

Sylvia sounded out her first word back in November and can read simple CVC words and about the first five BOB books.

 

We also never talked down to the girls and emphasized early phonemic awareness. Oh, and they got a lot of benefit from the Leap Frog videos. We loosely used Hooked on Phonics Learn to Read K with Becca - basically I turned her loose with the CD-ROM and she completed it in a couple of days. I should dig that out for Sylvia.

[Laurel]

I think, for me, I probably figured out the phonics rules myself while watching my parents read to me. My mind just naturally sees patterns, and I know I read phonetically, though I was never explicitly taught phonics.

[1bassoon]

Karen et al -

 

My mom has done doctoral work in reading and reading instruction - I've shot her an email, and will see if there's any research out there.

 

Is that what you're getting at, Karen?

[dirty ethel rackham]

Another thing I meant to mention ... I have several friends who had first-borns like this - the "magic" way. They could read any word you put in front of them, but had no idea how they did it. All of these kids needed to learn phonics in order to spell. Kind of like how you learn to walk but never broke down the mechanics of how you did it.

[Karenciavo]

Karen et al -

 

My mom has done doctoral work in reading and reading instruction - I've shot her an email, and will see if there's any research out there.

 

Is that what you're getting at, Karen?

 

Yes, I wondering if there is any research on the phenomenon, that's what it is to me. My youngest was read to most nights, but it wasn't excessive. He never had a fascination with letters or anything like that. All of a sudden at around 3 years old he was reading. I couldn't tell you what level he reads at, he can *read* just about any word; I've never known him to be stumped, but I hesitate because I'm sure there must be some words that would trip him up. He's not a very good speller, he's OK. Anyway, I love reading about the brain and how it works and I was wondering if there was any research. I guess I'm not using good search words cause Google keeps giving me teach a child to read sites.

[cathmom]

Another thing I meant to mention ... I have several friends who had first-borns like this - the "magic" way. They could read any word you put in front of them, but had no idea how they did it. All of these kids needed to learn phonics in order to spell. Kind of like how you learn to walk but never broke down the mechanics of how you did it.

 

I have always been able to spell well, no phonics needed (and in fact, phonics thoroughly confused me. I still have to stop and think about the difference between short o and short a.)

[The Governess]

My dd learned all of her letter sounds at http://www.starfall.com, basically on her own playing on the site. When we started "formally" learning to read (I used hooked on phonics) it clicked on the first day. I think all of the exposure she got on the website made all the difference.

[mktyler]

Reading is just pattern recognition. There are 40ish sounds in English and over 400 ways to spell those sounds. Many of our children would be reading easily and early if we spoke Finnish which has a near perfect relationship between its sounds and its spellings.

 

Some children are very good at pattern recognition. Consciously or unconsciously they make connections among the letters in a word and words they know. Early readers are generally detail oriented--they see the small differences in the letters of a word and work out what those differences mean. Emotionally, they are fine with getting things wrong, trying another sound, and fiddling with it till it makes sense. Many kids are completely fascinated with reading, like some kids are fascinated with dinosaurs. Some kids have the ability, but not the temperment or the interest. Its the interaction of these things--ability, temperment, and interest--that will determine if your child will teach himself to read. Print exposure and story exposure may help, but they are not sufficient for most children.

 

If you ask your young readers to read an unfamiliar word most of them will do the same thing: Start at the left, say a sound for letters or groups of letters till they get to the end. They may adjust in the middle and try other sounds to see which fit and which make the word sound like a real word. When they are done they will have said a relatively close approximation of the word. This is reading. Its what good reading programs explicitly teach.

 

If your child starts randomly guessing at the word, or reads a few letters and then randomly guesses, you might want to check up on their reading. Some kids can appear to be reading well in that they read lots of books, but in fact they are not--they are skipping words and guessing at many of the words. They may have problems later on as texts get more difficult. They may also have figured out the rest of the code by that point. ;)

 

Self-learning is wonderful and amazing when it happens, but its not something to shoot for. It requires a child who is able and willing and interested--all things we parents can't control. The best thing is to begin explicit instruction and if they take off, great. If they don't, they can still learn to read.

 

Many people use the fact that some children learn to read with no instruction or minimal instruction to negate the use of good instruction, ie direct, explicit instruction. Studies indicate that at most, the easy readers represent 25% of children, with 50 percent needed solid instruction, and the remaining 25% needed very detailed, incremental instruction with lots of practice.

 

Having gone from the direction of expecting my daughter to teach herself as both of her parent did, and ending up teaching explicitly more than any program on the market (I know, I tried about a dozen) before she became a confident, fluent reader, it seems it would be easier to begin instruction and let your child's response guide the level of instruction.

 

 

Melissa

Minnesota

Reading Program Junkie

dd(10) dd(6) ds(4) ds(1)

Edited January 12, 2009 by mktyler

[AuntieM]

This was just something funny that happened at our house, but it proved to be a good test of reading ability, and we've just kept it up....

 

We let our 3yo open and read each person's fortune from the fortune cookies when we pick up Chinese. It is a sure-fire test for whether there is actual reading taking place, because words are often unfamiliar, as are the fonts. It's really funny! But we would *not* do this if dd did not enjoy it as much as we do. She thinks it's a fun challenge.

 

Another poster pointed out a personality trait of not fearing to fail as part of being a natural reader, and I would agree that this is true in dd's case. She is encouraged by all her siblings, has a level of self-assurance that none of the others had at this young age, and is *very* detail oriented.

 

HTH. It is rather shocking when they can suddenly read and you know you weren't the one to teach them!

[Lolly]

Another thing I meant to mention ... I have several friends who had first-borns like this - the "magic" way. They could read any word you put in front of them, but had no idea how they did it. All of these kids needed to learn phonics in order to spell. Kind of like how you learn to walk but never broke down the mechanics of how you did it.

 

This is true for my eldest. Even with detailed, excruciatingly long tries with phonics, she still doesn't spell very well.

 

On the other hand, I read by "magic" and spelled by "magic". I've always been a little educationally weird though.:001_huh:

[Karenciavo]

Thanks everyone. :001_smile:

[ElizabethB]

I read a study somewhere (I've read thousands of things since I started tutoring with phonics in 1994, I keep track of interesting ones now for my website, but I used to just read them) that for most children, commercials were the link! The slow speaking and emphasis over and over of the product name let children figure out the sound spelling correspondences. (It wasn't 100% scientific, but they had interviewed hundreds of people whose children learned to read, and found that many of them could specifically point to a commercial as the first word or two being read.)

[akmommy]

I was a self taught reader and I don't really remember when I began reading, as far as I know I was always able to read.

I had three older brothers (7, 5 and 4 yrs older) and parents who were very active in reading to us and making sure we learned to read well. I think I just picked it up from being read to and being in the room when my brothers were learning and practicing.

I wouldn't call any of my kids self taught and only one was reading early, but none of them required much instruction to get them reading.

[LaxMom]

I read a study somewhere (I've read thousands of things since I started tutoring with phonics in 1994, I keep track of interesting ones now for my website, but I used to just read them) that for most children, commercials were the link! The slow speaking and emphasis over and over of the product name let children figure out the sound spelling correspondences. (It wasn't 100% scientific, but they had interviewed hundreds of people whose children learned to read, and found that many of them could specifically point to a commercial as the first word or two being read.)

My parents blame my early reading on Sesame Street and the Electric Company. :D (Plus countless hours of them reading to me.)

 

Some children are very good at pattern recognition. Consciously or unconsciously they make connections among the letters in a word and words they know. Early readers are generally detail oriented--they see the small differences in the letters of a word and work out what those differences mean. Emotionally, they are fine with getting things wrong, trying another sound, and fiddling with it till it makes sense. ...

 

If you ask your young readers to read an unfamiliar word most of them will do the same thing: Start at the left, say a sound for letters or groups of letters till they get to the end. They may adjust in the middle and try other sounds to see which fit and which make the word sound like a real word. When they are done they will have said a relatively close approximation of the word. This is reading. Its what good reading programs explicitly teach.

This would definitely describe me as a kid. I was/am a natural speller, though, too. I distinctly remember being five and annoying my mother by repeatedly spelling encyclopedia behind her while she was trying to cook supper... took her a while to catch on.

 

I wonder why the same wouldn't translate to spelling. That's interesting. I never learned phonics; I had a delightful first grade teacher who would give me a book while she taught phonics, so I would be staring at a wall.

 

If your child starts randomly guessing at the word, or reads a few letters and then randomly guesses, you might want to check up on their reading. Some kids can appear to be reading well in that they read lots of books, but in fact they are not--they are skipping words and guessing at many of the words. They may have problems later on as texts get more difficult. They may also have figured out the rest of the code by that point. ;)

We had this very concern about my seven-year-old this fall. She read the Harry Potter series in about two months and we were wondering how much she got out of the books, how many words she had just skipped over, etc. We recently let her watch the first movie and she spent half the time telling my husband what was coming next, why the person you were about to meet is important, etc.

 

She had a very short introduction to phonics and hated it so we stopped. But she reads fluently and quickly, and is a pretty natural speller, too. My four-year-olds are more interested in spelling than decoding. I wonder what that means?:001_huh:

[Lizzie in Ma]

I couldn't tell you what level he reads at, he can *read* just about any word; I've never known him to be stumped, but I hesitate because I'm sure there must be some words that would trip him up. He's not a very good speller, he's OK.

 

That is my little one in a nutshell too. She can and does read anything and has since about 4. Her spelling is coming along but it is at "grade level".

:lurk5:

[mktyler]

My Crazy House asked:

 

I wonder why the same wouldn't translate to spelling.

 

Spelling is really a very different beast. For reading you have the letters to guide you along the way. But in spelling, you have to remember the one-right way to spell a word. Some people can see the words in their minds. This is how I spell-I basically read it from my brain. But not all good readers are good spellers, although it can help, just do to exposure. Some kids need a lot more pathways to memorization: word associations, writing, explicit phonics for knowing the possibilities, understanding the morphemic (meaning) based parts of our language (roots and affixes).

 

Melissa

Reading Program Junkie

dd(10) dd(6) ds(4) ds(1)

[Jenny in Florida]

I asked my DD6 about it and she doesn't remember not being able to read.

 

You know, I've often wondered about this. I'm not in touch with my parents, so I don't know how and when I learned to read. I do have one memory of being in my crib with a Dr. Seuss book and wanting my parents to come and listen to me read it. But I honestly don't know what the story is behind that.

 

I, too, have a very highly visual memory. For example, I tend to remember how to get to the places I drive by what things look like, not by street names or distances. And when I want to remember the title or author of a book, I can "read" the information off a picture in my mind of the book cover. So, I suspect spontaneous, early reading may come more easily to people with that kind of brain.

 

Neither of mine taught themselves to read spontaneously, and neither of them read especially early, by the way, although I'm pretty sure at least one of them is significantly brighter than I am.

[Quiver0f10]

My oldest taught herself to read @ 4.5-5. One day she just read. She says it's because I read to her so often, but the other kids didn't teach themselves so I am not sure it I agree with her.