Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Age or Ability Specific Forums Pre-school Reading questions?

How do you know if child is really reading? I did not learn to read in english so I don't understand how this works. Our language follows phonetic rules so once you get the idea you can read anything. Based on what I have read here it is not like that in english. I have seen reading levels mentioned. What are they? How do you know if child can really read or just sight reads and guesses some based on phonetics? My 2.5 year old is not cooperative so there is no way for me to know how she knows what a word says. She can not read a book yet except for very simple once like "No David" where the same words are repeated over and over again. Is that reading or is should she be able to read anything? Am I supposed to help her or not pay attention? And last do most of the kids sight read?

Wow, a lot of questions.

You contrasted "really reading" with sight reading, which is what I did at first, but I've since given up on the distinction. A lot of people sight read almost exclusively, even as very literate adults, and they are certainly "really reading." Other people read almost exclusively phonetically. The way your DD learns to read will be a mixture of sight words and phonetic guesses--the sight words will become more numerous and the guesses will get more accurate as she gets more practice.

Personally, I like the distinction of "learning to read," "reading," and "reading fluently." Your DD is in the learning to read camp at this point. When your DD starts reading new books (books she's never been read) to herself for pleasure you can say that she's reading. And when she starts reading everything in sight with understanding and without hesitation--when it is rare that she needs help with a word rather than rare that she reads a word--you can say that she's reading fluently. Typically that final step happens at about the 3rd grade level (or, at least, it did for DD).

Yes, kids begin by being able to read some words and gradually progress to reading more and more words, until they can read just about anything. For most kids, the process is pretty slow, but for gifties it is often very fast. DD progressed about one grade level every two months just after her 3rd birthday until she was at about a 4th grade level. Then she slowed down, probably mostly because books that are above that level aren't interesting for her, for the most part. You can check out reading levels for books you have by looking them up in the Scholastic Book Wizard. But keep in mind that as with everything else, gifted kids are often asynchronous in their reading development--they may have comprehension far in advance of their decoding skills, or vice versa.

Should you pay attention? I am hugely in that not paying attention camp with gratified3. Perhaps it is my personality, or DD's, but in our case any interference at all would have been a huge mistake. DD taught herself in her own way, and she did an amazing job.

I understood that to be reading at about 3rd grade level not actual 3rd grade age?

To see what words they know have you tried making a game of it?

With a book that you have read together a lot, one with clear and easy print and not many sentences per page, try reading part way through the book and then after finishing a page say, "hey let's play a game, can you find the word "[choose a easy word they likely know]". It's often easiest if it's the first or last word in a sentence. Your first choices for words to look for might best be nouns, familiar objects that have 3 letter spellings such as "dog" "cat" etc. Once the concept of the game is learned and they enjoy it, then you can check another day about words you don't know if they know.

Finding a word in the midst of print is not exactly the same as reading but it does show recognition. Also allows them to gain confidence at speaking words aloud from print. That was a reading stumbling block for my DS... almost that he didn't realize his knowledge about words could be useful for him. After playing that game some then we moved on to occasionally doing a book by me reading one page and him reading one page.

As far as sight reading... there are some words that are difficult to read phonetically (the, said) and other words that are phonetically easy (Up, Dog, box). Many kids may read in more than one way. Even a word that is more a memorized word like "said" may have some of the letters in the word read phonetically. Once a word is familiar it is so quickly recognized that the mechanism it was learned by may no longer be relevant.

For assessing level one can go by the grade levels given on easy books, or try typing "word lists" and "grade level assessment" or something similar into google. Simple word lists don't assess comprehension of course but it's a start.

Polly

Miraca Gross, in her book Exceptionally Gifted Children, defined "reading" as something like being able to read at least 5 different words without any contextual or visual clues - and she claimed that was more stringent than the definitions used by some authors in the past! By this definition, I'm pretty sure it was learning to speak well enough to say the words that was the limiting factor for my DS, not the learning to decode the print :-) For myself, I decided he could read the day I first saw him read a book he'd never seen before from beginning to end, and noted another important milestone when I realised there was nothing he would consider too hard for him to read if he really wanted to know what it said. Of course, both of these are very fuzzy (in the first case, on the day he first had access to an easy reading book he'd never seen before - who knows how long before that day he'd have been able to read it? - and in the second case, entirely on my judgement).

The phonetics/whole word thing is very interesting. There's a lot of cognitive science/neuroscience work on how reading is done, using for example gaze-tracking equipment and clever experiments involving having people read from a computer screen and modifying the letters that are actually there in a way that depends on what their gaze is doing, plus a lot of brain-based investigation of what is done with the visual information received. It turns out that how adults really read is nothing like what it feels like: we may individually say that we read by whole words or by phonics, but we're fooling ourselves, it's far more complex than either. (Same is true for interpreting what we see more generally, come to that.) You can do an amazing amount of swapping letters around while people are reading a passage without people even noticing! I don't know how differences between languages factor into this, or what the process of moving from beginning reading to a mature mechanism of reading is, but from what little I know I'd wager that the mechanics of adult reading doesn't depend hugely on how phonetically regular the language is. It's something I'd love to learn more about some day.

And another vote for "not pay attention" here, until your DD is obviously frustrated or actively requesting help - which may happen next month, in several years, or never. Just reading to her will provide her with all the input she needs at this stage, IMHO.

Oh, shoot, I really did not mean anything like that "kids even out by the third grade" nonsense. Yes, I was talking about third grade reading level, which as far as I'm concerned has nothing to do with age. (My DD is not yet 4 and definitely a fluent reader--more fluent than dyslexic DH, in fact, though her comprehension obviously isn't as strong.)

Thanks! I did what Polly suggested yesterday, except I did not read the page first I just asked DD to find words. She can find even the difficult longer words. I'm sure she is using her educated guess. It is quit fast too, when I ask something she immediately shows where it is, no time to sound out. If I ask her what something says she might or might not tell me, she is 2.5 stubborn and not cooperative. She also thinks she can read, but she also claims she can read Korean.

I don't think it matters at age 2-3 if they are "actually reading" or not. I believe what matters most, is that you build their interest and confidence about reading.
For example, Anytime my 3yo picks up a book and "reads" it. I praise him for reading whether he actually reading, memorizing, or just making up the story by looking at the pictures. "Wow what a great job you did reading that story!" We also play games, while reading. As long as it is fun and positive you are on the right path.

On a different; I also believe the ability to "guess" a word can also be sign of intelligence.
Just my 2 cents for what they are worth.