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

DS3 showed no interests in reading whatsoever even though he loved to be read to.

I bought some sight word DVDs for him over the weekend, and he learnt 20+ sight words in less than a week.

He recognizes those sight words in normal contexts and now loves to “read.”

Not that it matters, but I am curious to see if it is considered reading or not.

TIA

Not that I really know but I called mine recognizing words when he did that, starting to read. Then I called him an "emerging reader" when he started sounding out words. I called him a reader when he could decode an early reader book, including re-reading sentences to himself if they didn't make sense to him. I will call him a fluent reader when he doesn't sound out words anymore. I was raised using phonics and that reading was a process so that's where I got those terms from. I think now they do constructivism & whole word reading so my understanding is obsolete.

I agree with La Texican (and mostly see constructivism as an edumacational philosophy that doesn't have a lot of good supporting data, FWIW).

For me, reading starts when kids can sound out basic words. Doing this is proof that they get the foundational idea of reading: letters stand for sounds, and in order to read, you combine a bunch of letter sounds that make a word.

I think alot of people have different ideas of the definition of when a child is reading.

I might have been stingy, but I didn't consider my DD to be reading when she was "reading" the books she had memorized, or any little sight-word primers and things, but when you handed her something she had never seen and could read most or all of the words, stop at words she didn't know and try and sound them out. Or when she started reading streets signs, ceral boxes and things. It's sort of the wild spill-out after the breaking of the code.

Memorizing the basic sight words, knowing all the letters and their sounds, learning the rules of phonics and exceptions and all the many letter blends, reading alot and being read to (a combination of breaking down new words and re-reading familiar text for fluency) is the best way to become a solid reader I think...it happens over time at different stages.

All IMHO, of course.

I was going to keep going, saying, then you get to the comprehension and retelling in their own words.  Then you get to where some people say, "a good reader can visualize the story they're reading".  Or when you can get lost in a book...
Then I realized I missed something with my reading skills from your first post.   Congratulations on your son starting to read!

I swear we had a thread about this a couple or more years ago. I remember people defining ideas like "emerging reader" and so on. It was good, but I can't look for it right now.

FWIW, I was defining an emerging reader, not a fluent reader.

Was this the thread? When do you consider your child a reader?

A few years ago I had the same question and found some answers looking at definitions of "reading" in academic articles (I wish I could remember the specifics).

I remember one article using something like...'reading a 4-5 simple word sentence (assumed non-sight words, no pictures)'. That seemed reasonable to me. At the time I didn't really know what my DS2 was capable of so I typed short, random sentences on my computer (e.g., "The bridge fell on my foot") to get a sense of where he was at.

"didn't consider my DD to be reading when she was "reading" the books she had memorized, or any little sight-word primers and things, but when you handed her something she had never seen and could read most or all of the words, stop at words she didn't know and try and sound them out. Or when she started reading streets signs, ceral boxes and things. It's sort of the wild spill-out after the breaking of the code."

Yeah, that's how I define it, too.

Yes, that was the one. Thanks for finding it!

Val