It doesn't matter how good your child's school is at teaching reading. Without you showing, to your child, that you are interested in the subject, s/he will not read as well as a child who has a mum and dad that is interested in getting involved with reading.

How do I know this? I know this because I have carried out my own research into the matter and have found that there is a direct relationship between a child's reading development and their mum and dad's interest in their reading.

So why should this be the case? ...

The hidden curriculum (or how to ruin behaviour without even knowing)

In my nurseries we don't teach children to pick their nose, yet some pick their nose. We don't teach children to swear, yet some swear. We don't teach children to dunk their biscuits, yet some dunk their biscuits. I'll bet you already know why!

These behaviours are picked up either through peer groups or simply through the close interaction with mum and/or dad. Now for Pippa's reading age you're on shaky ground trying to blame the peer group. So to put it bluntly, I'm blaming mum and dad.

Copying mum and dad is a fundamentally good survival technique, so us little humans do this. We get hold of newspapers we can hardly hold up and pretend to read them - just like mum and dad. We pretend to give tea to our teddy bears, just like mum and dad give us tea.

So far so good BUT the trouble is we equally copy the bad things mum and dad do - not just the good things. So if mum and dad tell us inadvertantly that reading is boring by not being interested when we bring it home us little ones think it only right to be disinterested also. Equally if we show an interest or even better an exaggerated interest then we think it's important enough to do it ourselves.

Dorothy Law Nolte summed it up very well when she wrote the following:

If a child lives with criticism, he learns to condemn.
If a child lives with hostility, he learns to fight.
If a child lives with ridicule, he learns to be shy.
If a child lives with shame, he learns to feel guilty.
If a child lives with indifference, he learns not to care.
BUT
If a child lives with tolerance, he learns to be patient.
If a child lives with encouragement, he learns confidence.
If a child lives with praise, he learns to appreciate.
If a child lives with fairness, he learns justice.
If a child lives with security, he learns to have faith.
If a child lives with approval, he learns to like himself.
If a child lives with acceptance and friendship, he learns to love.

… Dorothy Law Nolte (Well, mostly!)

I'd like to add just one small warning here: Any trend towards dis-interest at a young age may become a lot worse as the child gets older.

Summing Up:
Pippa says your child needs YOU to be interested in his/her reading and this is not a task you can pass on to the teacher or nursery worker - YOU HAVE TO DO IT!

Currently, certainly in England, most of the intellectuals you will meet - and that includes some of the teaching profession - will tell you that teaching reading to a child should start around the time they go to school. Some will actually say starting later may be good for your child. You will hear remarks like: "Well in some scandinavian countries they don't start reading untill they are seven and by the time they are nine they are on the same level as nine year olds in this country."

How can anyone argue against that?

Well, I can! And to complicate matters this argument is on many levels - so let's begin by taking a simple analogy:

1. The Learning To Drive Analogue:

Peter is now twenty-one years old, he learn't to drive when he was seventeen. He didn't have too many distractions at that age and his parents where relatively wealthy so they bought him a little mini as a reward for passing his test. He never looked back, he travelled all over England and became familiar with all the little nuences of driving. All the things you only learn with experience that you don't really know at the time of taking your test.

Paul is again twenty-one years old, but he's only just passed his test. On paper he is just as good a driver (he has his test results to prove it) as Peter. Do we really believe this to be the case?

What about all the roads that Peter has travelled that Paul hasn't. What about the sites he has seen that Paul hasn't. What about all the knowledge that Peter has gained about those roads that Paul has not. What about the freedom to travel that Paul has not had. The freedom to investigate roads that Paul has not yet been able to go down. Oh, yes! Paul may be able to drive now but boy has he missed out on the things Peter has seen/learn't/done.

2. Parallel Learning:

There's no getting away from it, children don't learn just one thing at a time. Just give a young child any object. Besides looking at the object and turning it round in all directions the child will take it to it's mouth, suck it and stroke it's surface. The child may not be able to articulate but s/he is attempting to learn everything about the thing s/he has hold of: it's smell - it's taste - it's feel - it's colour - it's markings - it's dimensions - and the rest.

I have a name for this: parallel learning! And as far as I can ascertain this truly is nature's way. Further, it makes sense doesn't it! If it's survival of the fittest then the more you know the fitter you are. And the quickest way to know it all is to learn it all at the same time. My actual experience with the way children learn leads me to the same conclusion time and time again - all the children I have ever met want to learn everything all at the same time.

If you believe in parallel learning then telling children to wait and we'll tackle reading later becomes a nonsense. You don't give a child a book and then say to them: "Now don't learn the colours, we'll do that later".

I once saw a great quote that I still use in my lectures on reading: "Children are never too young for books. In fact holding back on books until children can read is very much like like not talking to them until they can speak". (by the way if anyone knows where this quote originated I would love to include the authors name in my writings/lecture).

You'll not be surprised to learn that I go a little further. If I was writing the above quote today it would read something like: "Children are never too young to read In fact holding back on reading until children can spell is very much like not talking to them until they can speak."

I would have to add: So long as you teach reading in the right manner (which by the way we will explore later in this text).

3. All ways to learn are valid:

Again, there are some intellectuals who advocate one method of learning above another. I remember in the 1960's and 70's that the use of phonics was frowned upon - sight reading was the new way. During the naughties to this present day we are in the midst of another: 'it must be' period. This time it's the reverse. Now phonics is king.

When we are talking about very early readers choosing one method over the next is just plain crazy. There are so many words to learn out there that no matter how they are learned, we should just be encouraging our children to learn them.

"You'll confuse them!" someone will cry. NO! Because you will explain that there are many ways to learn words (all of which are valid) but there is only one way to spell them correctly. Now they will be free to learn words and learn to read. When they come to spelling the words at a later date they'll understand that they are disecting the words in order to understand why the word sounds the way it does and why they must build the word in a particular way.

Yet another argument I hear time and time again is the 'We shouldn't be pressurising the children to learn to read at such a young age'. Again these arguments don't stack up when you look at the reality of the situation. When you get to really know young children you quickly find that their curiosity is the driving force and the 'pressure to learn' comes from them not from you. When I'm in nursery I don't take books to the children, they bring them to me.

Summing Up:
Pippa says: No excuses - your child needs to learn to read now. OK you'll need to learn strategies for which age group they are currently in BUT reading starts now!

 

Don't try telling me you spell every word out as you read, sure you know how to spell them but spelling is different from reading isn't it (I insist!). For a difficult word like, say: contemporaniously you may well slow down and revert to spelling BUT for other words, let's say: large, spend, little, plastic, steel, etc., etc. you'll move quickly past the words without giving them any real thought. You'll do this because you know the word - it's a sight read - you've turned these 'spelling' words into 'sight' words.

Let me try to demonstrate the power of this. I stumbled upon this little exercise whilst I was having a pint at my local pub. It was on the back of a Beer Mat. The exercise is simple: you have to look at the following text for as short a time as it takes to count the number of F's in the statement. You are not allowed to re-read it or count the F's again - once through only! Here is the statement:

FINISHED FILES ARE THE RESULTS
OF YEARS OF SCIENTIFIC STUDY
COMBINED WITH
THE EXPERIENCE OF YEARS

Having used this time and time again in lectures I have found that most people come up with the answer three - some with two, some with four or five BUT very few with six, which is the correct answer. Why? and why do I congratulate the ones that get it wrong rather than the ones that get it right?

Well the simple answer is: you get it wrong because your site reading skills are so good that you actually have come to igore the letters within any of the words that are blindingly obvious - did you get that - you don't even notice the letters within those words. I still get it wrong at times. You're ignoring letters within words (a) because you know the shape of the word and thus the individual letters are irrelevant and (b) because it helps you read faster - you have this urge to read at speed (we will not go into this here though!).

Well can I tell you, your children have the same urge. In fact it's even deeper because they see you going at this tremendous rate and like we have already said - they want to copy you. Just imagine wanting to read at a reasonable rate and every time you come to a word someone says: "spell it!" - "ARGH!!!"

 

Now that's what I call contraversial statement !

I was once remarking on how bad a particular lesson had been given by one of my colleagues. I said the remark to my college lecturer who came back with "Don't worry, the children will learn no matter how bad the teaching is".

Now that casual remark really stayed with me and ever since then I've been analysing whether teaching methodology in some ways restrains learning. In the early years I'm actually convinced that the way we emphasise certain aspects does in fact slow down learning to read.

Let's just delve into the wonderful world of the human mind for a moment. If you feel that all of the letters in a word must be in the correct order and you should know how to spell before you learn words then tell me how does this fit into your universe:

It wluod aeppar taht ti deosn’t mttear in waht oredr the lttrerse
ni a wrod are. So lnog as the frist and lsat lttrese are ni the
rghit plcae, the txet si stlil redablee. Tihs is bcuseae the mnid
deos not raed evrey lteter, but the wrod as a wolhe.

Now let's get things into perspective here. I'm not saying you shouldn't learn to spell - I'm just saying not being able to spell should not hold up reading. You see learning to spell should be thought of as learning to disect words NOT a pre-requisite for learning to read. In Pippa's world learning to spell would come after learning to read (or at least side by side).

It's the same with letters. Yes, to make things even worse for the 'tidy universe' intellectual, I have another problem with todays methodology. Learning letters first, before starting words in my view is again a nonesense ... in fact I would go as far as to say learning the letters in a word before you learn the word will slow down the younger child's reading development.

let's delve a little deeper into the psychology of the child ...

1. Your children live in the real world (not classroom or nursery world) - they attend nursery and primary school for a short period - and they know when they are there it is not the real world ..... if the child sees things in the real world then s/he takes for granted there is importance in learning about it. S/he sees dad read a newspaper - dad leaves it around - the child picks it up and pretends to read it. In the real world your child sees word labels everywhere - street furniture - toilet doors - shop fronts (they all know asda, did you teach them how to spell it?) - sides of lorries - in cafe's and diners. So they are seeing words all the time ... ask yourself: other than in the classroom when do they see individual letters, i.e. letters by themselves / not in the words?

2. At this very young reading age if you have in your mind that you are teaching children letters in order for them to learn words (learning letters as a pre-requisite for learning words) then you need to alter the way you think. They don't need to know the letters first and trying to teach in that way will inevitably slow down their learning to read.

3. To make things worse, early reading age children do not have the necessary reasoning power to initially understand why they are learning letters (i.e. in order to learn words that are built from these letters). And you will find that this fact will be used to argue against teaching young children to read. The argument goes something like - well they need to learn letters - then how to group the letters to form words - and that's too big an intellectual jump.

The reasoning behind this argument is completely false since they don't need to learn letters before they learn words - so get on with teaching your child words and howto read AND DO NOT worry too much in his/her early years about letters and spelling - it will be returned to in due course.

An understanding of how children learn words and thus how to start reading is detailed here.

There are three very basic ways that children (and adults) pick up words and thus conquer the art of reading:

1. Sight Reading - Just learning the word from the way it looks

I've found that children will learn interesting words just because they are interesting or because they see them quite often and associate the word with the sound mum and dad makes every time they see it. ASDA is a great example of this. My children could say asda before they could walk (well that may be a slight exageration). If you sit and read with young children you find words they know that they could not possibly know other than by sight reading. Elephant is a perfect example of this. At this very early stage they could not possibly know that the 'ph' should be sounded like an 'f'. Are they concerned or troubled by this conundrum? Of course not, they just accept it and move on to the next word. Will they be troubled by it in the future? Yes - the perfect time to start disecting words.

As we have shown previously, sight reading is a very important tool for adults, it enables the adult to read at speed and aquire understanding without having to analyse or disect the text. This is equally true for the very beginning reader so never underestimate how useful site reading is to the young reader.

2. Context Clues - Understanding/Learning words from their context

Context or 'associated surroundings' in Pippa's world usually means a picture, a drawing or an illustration. In fact that's one of the reasons picture books are so useful in the early stages of learning to read. Let's try to impart context into what I am saying:

If you don't understand German then the word flugzeuge will evade you. If I placed the word in a sentence, let's say: Jeremy searched all over for his flugzeuge. Well there are some context sensitive clues there, aren't there. For example now you're beginning to think that the word refers to an object of some kind. If I actually introduced a picture (click on the word: flugzeuge) suddenly it's meaning becomes perfectly clear. This is an excellent way of a child learning unfamiliar words.

Adults do this all the time. Like most people I am far too lazy to get out of my seat and look for the dictionary when I find an unfamiliar word. So I read the words before and after the word I don't understand. I do this to see if I can tell what the word means by analysing it's context. Besides saving me the physical effort of getting up it is also a nice intellectual game I like to play. If I can't crack it I will eventually get up and look the word up in a dictionary, but only after many attempts at cracking the code first. With the early reader it's the same game - hey there's a picture there I wonder if it gives me any clues?

Now you as the parental guide and the child's Guru in this endeavour should be encouraging this. I've met many instances of parents covering the pictures up and telling their child that it's cheating looking at the picture - yet another block put in place for learning words. Your child IS NOT cheating when s/he is using pictures to decifer the script and using pictures for this purpose should be actively encouraged.

3. Phonic Vocabulary - Lerning the sounds of letters/groups of letters and thus the sound of the whole word

Did you notice I placed phonics last in my list of three? If you did then well done! Because where beginning readers are concerned this is exactly where phonics belong. O.K., twelve months after beginning to learn to read phonics will have become much more relevant and thus much more important, BUT for the beginning reader it is not essential stuff. That is not to say that very simple phonic learning should not run in parallel with learning to read - it's just that learning to read should not be held back by a lack of phonic knowledge.

Using Phonics but keeping it simple: The beginning sounds of words

Take examples of words that begin with a certain letter and group them together - but keep it simple - like so:
Let's try words beginning with 'p': pat - pal - pot - pit - pin
Let's try words beginning with the letter 'm' : my - mum - mad - mop - mask
etc.

Using Phonics but keeping it simple: Constructing whole words from the beginning

a
at
bat
cat

Using Phonics but keeping it simple: Rhymes are a great way of introducing sounds in words

Pippa said: "I'd like to stay"
But had no time to sit and play
"I think I should be on my way"
Well it was a very busy day

Using Phonics BUT BEING CONSISTENT: Avoiding some simple traps ...

Don't try to spell all words phonetically to your child. Cow is a good example - a three letter word that does not fit simple phonetics. DON'T try to introduce your child to rules of spelling - it's too early. That will come later. Remember the object is to get them reading not become grammar experts.

 

Hearing Children Read

Remember the aim: You are trying to give confidence to your child and to help him or her enjoy the reading experience.

1. Prior to sitting down with your child:
It's always best if YOU know the story before you sit down with your child. Make sure you are both seated comfortably and that there are no distractions in the room (brothers/sisters/friends playing noisily nearby or the television being on, etc.). Smile and have a general chat about the book for a few minutes. What's Pippa wearing today? How is she getting to the emergency this time? What new words are we learning today? What happens in the story. Remember to help your child get as much information out of the pictures as possible. Start by saying: "Shall we read now?" So that your child knows you are sharing in the reading process. I tend to add "Can I read with you now and again?" Which enables me to help when the going gets tough. Don't forget that your child is using many clues to help him/her read - all of which are valid - all of which you should encourage. Our objective however is to get them to start recognising individual words so if necessary replicate words onto individual flash cards and use these also.

2. Prompting and Helping:
How you should prompt or help your child depends on how old s/he is and her/his current reading ability; good prompting encourages children to think – I have given some examples below:

In the early stages if your child makes a mistake but does not self-correct ask him/her to look at the picture (if appropriate). “Does the picture help you to guess what the word may be? … “. The older and the more advanced child could be encouraged to re-read the lines by: ”Are you sure that’s what it says? …” Or “Would you like to read this part again as that word (point to the word) did not sound right” … Give your child time to self correct. If your child does not know the word tell them the word, then ask him/her to read the sentence again. You can join in for support. Now praise her/him for trying so hard.

If your child stops because s/he simply does not know the word then encourage him/her by saying something like: ”Can you guess what the word might be?” ... Or “What word would fit in here?” … You may find that asking your child to read on and then going back through the sentence will give your child context clues: … “Let’s miss the word out and read on … Can you guess now?” Again tell your child the word if s/he does not know it – now re-read the sentence again, with your child saying the right word. Always praise your child during and after the session … something appropriate, like: “well done you read that really well” … Or “I liked the way you tried to work that new word out”.

NEVER get annoyed with your child … it would be better not to have sat down and read with your child at all … enjoyment is the key.
NEVER cover up pictures, your child uses these as clues.
Your child may guess the sentence, DO NOT try to stop this.
S/he may learn the words off-by-heart, don’t worry if this happens.
Do remember however that s/he needs to learn the words – take the flash cards out; play games, etc. but ensure that the learning of the words is not ignored

Always encourage your child to read with expression and if s/he does then praise her/him appropriately:
“I liked the way you read that. You made it sound exciting” … Or “You made it sound very interesting” … Or “You made it sound just like people talk”.

Always let your child read the story on their own if s/he so wishes.

  3. After the reading session:

 If your child does well DO NOT immediately assume that s/he has learnt the necessary words. Play a game or use flash cards to assess the situation – if words are not recognised then use different strategies (play games – do not re-read the story) to help the child remember the word.

STRATEGIES: Get the key word card – place it with the book – ask the child to find that particular word throughout the book. Keep saying the word every time the word is found. Encourage the child to say the word also. If the word is phonically simple then use phonics to describe the word: “c. a. t. … cat!” etc

 

There's a few simple rules here for the books you're going to select for your children:
The earlier your child's reading age the simpler the text you must select!
The earlier your child's reading age the greater the need for graphics (to retain interest and understanding)
As your child's reading age increases you should be looking for books that extend their reading vocabulary - bigger words, more complex sentence structure - but not necessarily more sentences per page.

So for very young readers there is no reason whatsoever to insist on having text on the page at all. Oxford reading tree have some great examples of these 'no words' books and these can be thoroughly recommended. By using these books your child is learning that books contain stories - that the stories have to be read in order, from front to back - that you can't miss out pages because if you do you won't get the whole story.

Adding a single word to a graphics page is an obvious next step. Hug by Jez Alborough is a good example here. But these books need to be simple - one picture with one word on each page is my preference.

Single sentence books should be next and we're back to Oxford Reading Tree, Biff and Chip books as excellent examples of these.

As your child becomes a more confident reader then more sentences with more word variety will extend their ability to read. The Pippa books are designed to be read at this stage and are full of words that will extend your child's reading ability.

 

 

Each and everyone of us is born with 80 to 120 Billion Neurons in our brain. As we develop our brain develops connecting these nuerons together via chemical pathways called synapses. These connections are made depending on our actions - the more we repeat a certain action, the stonger the connection becomes. Putting this in the simplest of terms: repetition is good for you when you're learning something new.

Anyone trying to learn a new skill needs to practice on a regular basis, reading is no different.

When I was studying for my PGCE I was placed in a number of primary schools and on a regular basis, was asked to read with the children. This was a fascinating time for me as I discovered how truly varied was the reading ability of the children. In these facilities I found that children would read approximately three times a week assuming there was nothing more important to attend to. Luckily on my last placement I ended up at a very small rural school where, partly due to the dedication of the staff and partly due to the size of the school, children read every day - without fail. The difference in reading ability of these pupils was remarkable and so consistant.

One of my most important messages to you as parents is, if practicable, read with your child EVERY DAY! At least until they are past the Pippa stage.