October 31, 2024
When to Begin Reading Instruction (6/8)
Transcript
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Intro
We thank you for joining us for this series with reading specialist and Mason educator Donna Johnson. Let’s listen to her experience and advice.
When to Begin?
Donna: I guess the next question you had for me was, when do we begin teaching a child to read? Is Mason's assertion that we not begin formal reading lessons until six outdated or is there a difference between these formal lessons and what comes before?
"Is Mason's assertion that we not begin formal reading lessons until six outdated?"
Well, here's what I used to tell people: a good time to start teaching a child to read is when they lose their teeth. And that's supposed to sort of be a joke, but I think it does have something to do with your body's chemistry. So, I wouldn't go by that, but my granddaughter that's in kindergarten, she looks like she can't even eat. She's lost so many teeth and if they lose one at school, their teacher gives them this little plastic necklace to put it in so they get it home. It's very cute. So, it's happening and she's six as of March. I don't think the teacher's waiting for that, but you know, I think that could have something to do with it.
Reading Age Globally
Not everyone in every place favors an early start. In many countries - Germany, Iran, Japan - formal schooling starts at around six, not five, like it does here. In Finland, often hailed as a country with one of the best education systems in the world, children begin school at age seven. Estonia, like Finland, waits until seven to teach children to decode words. Yet these two countries are among the top performing nations on an international test called the PISA. It's a P-I-S-A, the Program for International Student Assessment. And that measures 15 year old’s ability to use reading, science, and math knowledge. I think they give it every three years. I didn't write that down. It's an international test. And that's the one where you hear that the United States is in 24th place or something. And those countries that don't teach reading till later are at the top. Finland has established a one year preschool class for six-year-olds as of the late 1990s, but it's to help them transition from home to daycare to first grade. But that doesn't mean they're teaching reading early, just to make that clear.
So, we see that in most Western European countries - the UK is an exception, they're more like us - children are expected to start to learn to read at the age of six. Even in the US, the practice of teaching children to decode words in kindergarten at age five is fairly recent. My daughters, they're almost 40, but they didn't do that. They learned the alphabet and the sounds of letters and a few sight words.
"People mistakenly thought that since we're so far behind in this, we need to start teaching them earlier."
Teaching reading in kindergarten became popular for a couple reasons. People mistakenly thought that since we're so far behind in this, we need to start teaching them earlier. That was absolutely the opposite of what they should have thought. Also, when No Child Left Behind and the state testing started, they thought the same thing. You don't take the state tests usually till grade three, but they thought, well, if we start in kindergarten, they'll be ready to read by grade three.
What to do before formal teaching
Danielle: So, does that ‘beginning teaching to read,’ is that that's when you start phonemic awareness or would you consider phonemic awareness before that?
Donna: Yeah, there's so many things parents should be doing before formal ‘teaching to read.’ You would still be doing things with phonological awareness, doing a lot of rhyming and nursery rhymes with kids. Well, you should start reading to your child before they're born. They can hear you. So, just reading all the time. No matter what I'm doing, if a kid would come to me with a book at home or at school or whatever, well, maybe not at school, but I'll stop and read anytime. I just don't think you can overdo that because if a child loves stories, even if they struggle at first, they really want to have access. And if they can't, if it's, well, we'll talk more about that later. But nowadays, you can always listen to audiobooks or, I still buy a lot of children’s books and a couple of times recently I've had one by a certain author with me when we were visiting a grandchild, or maybe even two, or maybe they have a library book, and then we find out there's another one by that author and we go on YouTube and you can almost always find somebody reading a picture book. And so we have access to the other one. Kids love stories and there's so many, there’s a lot you probably don't want to get nowadays, but there's a lot of just wonderful books. So, I think that happens before they're born and you know it hasn't stopped ever, even as adults, even as they get older. Reading, I mean. I read to my husband in the car, I know some people do audio books, but we don't do that. But if there's a book that I've read that I think he's really going to like, or even if he thinks he doesn’t and you start reading, you get hooked in because there's so many good books.
"You should start reading to your child before they're born. They can hear you."
So, I would say a parent should look into phonemic awareness, what that means, how you work with it, the importance of rhyming and manipulating letters and sound just for fun. Because they don't have to know - if you say the word "cat" and then you say, "hmm, what would that be like if you took off the kuh?" You know, they can't do that when they're the baby, but as they get older, they can start to manipulate those sounds because they have the oral language part of their brain. And you can change the first letter. What if we put a buh in front of it? You don't have to know what a B is, but they could go buh-at. So, there's just a lot of stuff, as long as it's fun and short, I would say. So that, and whenever a child is ready to do something, there's no reason to not go ahead as long as it's fun and it's short. And you also can't say a child can read because they can read Stop and McDonald's. Because that's whole word and that's not reading. Reading is when you're putting the letters and matching the sound of the graphing to a phoneme.
"Whenever a child is ready to do something, there's no reason to not go ahead as long as it's fun and it's short."
I've never taught preschool or kindergarten, but I can see why people like that at that age if it's in a setting where it's appropriate. Now, one thing I think I'm coming up to here in a minute. I'm just going to wait till I get to it so I don't get too lost here.
Kindergarten the new first grade?
Anyway, that idea of our kindergarten being the new first grade is all wrong and anybody that knows anything about research knows that. One thing I dug out, Better Late Than Early, from the 1970s by Raymond and Dorothy Moore. Yeah, I'm coming to my little thing about that. Well, while I'm turning the page, on that international test, the PISA, of 15 year olds - in 2015 US students ranked 24th in the world on that reading test. And in the United Kingdom where they all start reading at age five, they rank 21st. In contrast, Finnish students ranked fourth and Estonian students ranked sixth. And both of them start reading at age seven. Head Start presumed that students would do better if in Head Start programs, they started to read at age five. It just hasn't happened.
Danielle: In regard to the schools, like the Finnish schools, that start later and do better, do you think that the transparency of those languages as compared to English makes a difference? Or do you think that the decoding is its own thing and the transparency of the language, which we've talked about before, that that doesn't really have any bearing on that?
Donna: I don’t know, because the other countries that I mentioned, there was an Arab country in there, too. That's a good question. I think whether your language is more of a code or maybe it's pictorial, or whatever you call Japanese and Chinese - any child can struggle with any kind of different language or whether it goes right to left or left to right - any, any child in any country can struggle with print text. So, I think it has more to do with the age and just giving them more time to physically and mentally, cognitively be developed a little more. And then you're just teaching them at the right time and it's not a struggle. Let them go out and play more.
Danielle: That would make sense. When we talk about sensory processing issues in the autistic world - the OTs have, and this is very, very old information that's been out there for a long time, they have this pyramid diagram, you may have seen it before - but that sensory integration is on the very foundation. And that's what they say is that really none of these higher learning skills can be done until your brain can deal with the sensory information in the environment. So, that would be consistent.
Donna: Yeah. So I, I think it may be has to do more with it being the right time.
"If a child loves stories, they really want to have access."
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