Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Age or Ability Specific Forums Pre-school What's considered reading?

I remember when DS started to recognize some words I got really interested in the what-is-reading discussion. I found in Exceptionally Gifted Children, a Miraca Gross book, a discussion of this. She says,

"...let me explain what I mean by 'reading'. A young child who is shown the picture of a cat with 'cat' written underneath, and responds by saying the word, is not necessarily reading. She may be responding to the pictorial clue, rather than decoding the word. It is only when the child is able to recognize and pronounce the word 'cat' in another conext, with no pictorial clue to assist her, that we can be sure that she is responding to, and analysing, the collection of printed symbols which make up the word 'cat' rather than the picture of an animal with which she is well familiar. Therefore, for the purposes of this study, reading is defined as the ability to decode and comprehend more than five words from a a printed sournce without the use of pictures as textual clues."

Gross goes on to say that her definition is "more cautious" than that used by many in studies of early readers.

Her definition is more inclusive than I would have guessed myself, I would have thought a typical definition would be reading and understanding a short emergent reader type book with perhaps a short sentence per page.

Her description is the only definition I've seen given in print by anyone studying gifted kids, curious if others have come across other well known gifted experts' definitions.

Polly