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Do you know of a resource that explains how children learn how to read? I can�t remember how I learned how to read. I know I read before kindergarten, but I�m not sure how or at what age. I have a hard time remembering what I did this morning.

I can�t figure out what DS is doing now. I�m used to him memorizing books and �reading� them to us, or recognizing words associated with symbols (e.g., the red Target circles). However, recently he�s �read� words I�ve never introduced to him in any context (e.g., coffee). How do they (kids) do that? It�s not really reading is it?

I can't answer your question, but it makes me think of another piggyback question. I have heard that the phonics that they teach in many schools sometimes confuse the GT kids who were reading before kindergarten, because they learned how to read differently. I'm thinking that the kids who "teach themselves to read" do something more akin to memorizing words.

Anyone else heard that phonics messes with the early readers?

And Ann -I would say that if your child "reads" something new and out of context, then yes, that's a form of reading. It always surprised me when my child, who was with me pretty much 24/7, would read a word that I knew wasn't in any of the books we had read. Who knows how they do it, but they do it!

I actually used a book "How to Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons" with Pud starting when he was about 3 1/2. He was desperate to read - in tears at rest time because he couldnt read the words in his book. He was reading about halfway through the book but I made him finish the book for the foundation.

He has done Saxon Phonics in 1st grade this year and it did confuse him, in addition to being terribly boring. Things like not being able to read "cape" vs "cap". When I asked to exempt him from the work, I was told that he needs to master phonics to help him with his spelling. I totally do NOT understand how phonics helps anybody who is already reading. The Saxon Phonics people even say it is for remedial or non-reading use. His school also uses it in 2nd grade. I just never saw a value in worksheet after worksheet of making little marks over letters.

By the way, what has helped him with spelling more was what a friend told me (she's a teacher and a dyslexia therapist): every syllable has to have a vowel, that's why "y" is sometimes considered a vowel. That makes great sense to me. After I told him that, he no longer spelled "turtle" as "trtl". He doesn't always get the right vowel but he does get the vowels in there.

As for kids who read on their own, I have no idea how that happens, even though I did it when I was 3. Common wisdom in my family is that I was just copying what my K sister did. I don't remember not knowing how to read.

For us, dd learned to read the same way she learned to speak. She simply did. No phonics or instruction, I simply exposed her to lots of books and we read daily and then one day I discovered she knew how to read.

really interesting question! We exposed my DS5 to print as early as I can remember by just making it available - we never "taught" him we just answered his questions or played silly word/letter/sound games while driving in the car.... we knew he was visual from pretty early on and I labeled everything in the house...it looked pretty silly to visitors that we had labels on everything from the sink to the front door but he loved it and he could read environmental print by 2 years old, was reading words out loud to us that he saw everywhere when he was 3 and was reading from books by about 3.5. We question the same thing...he seemed to learn by osmosis as we like to joke - he was a sponge and just took everything in and next thing we knew he knew all his letters and sounds and figured out how to read all on his own. He can hear/see a word one time and he knows it. I was worried that he hadn't learned phonetically but he seems to be doing fine...he does the same thing...we will be reading along and I will see a word coming up that i am convinced he doesn't know and whamo he surprises me by reading it with no issue. I was also a very early reader and my dad said the same thing - it just was :-)

DS never sat with us when we read to him; he was always moving. He learned to read while moving. DS started by "reading" an exit sign at 23 months. Then he moved on to logos, then he pointed and said "What does that say?" at every sign on the commute to daycare. Then he started correcting me if I read him the wrong sign, "no, not the speed limit sign the one that starts with 'next exit.'" Then, "Why does that sign say 'no admittance. employees only?'" He must have picked up some reading skills figuring out how to operate a computer because he didn't ask me what any of the menus said after we had been through them once. And then he read the Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe the summer before Kindergarten. I have no idea how he learned to read. Except as Belle says, he only needed to be told a word once and it was in. It is the same as I teach him to read Spanish.

It is weird how the can read things they haven't been exposed to. I was making DS read me an article for an Asian history class I am taking. I was behind in my reading and paid him to read to me while I was driving. He would come to a Japanese word (but in letters, not kana), pause for a second, change accent and say it perfectly. He doesn't know Japanese; he never saw these words before; the pronunciation rules are different. How in the world did he know how to do that?1? Frankly, it scares me!

My kids both learned the letter sounds first. But mostly they don't sound out words, the letters seem to be clues that help them infer the right word from context. I think this is true because they can read complicated words in context that they stumble over in isolation. DS can also read Spanish even though he doesn't speak more than a few words of it. His pronunciation is excellent--I think he picked it up at preschool from one of the teachers' aides.

I think phonics is of limited use in English because of all the exceptions. Adults don't read by phonics anyway. We read by word recognition.

You may have seen this before:


DD9 can read that passage fluently and easily. She is clearly not using phonics to do so.

DS5 started reading about a year ago. Prior to that he loved rhyming words. He would spend all day coming up with words that rhyme and then writing them down on paper. One evening during our story time he corrected me when I was reading. He was able to read the rest of the very short book to me. I then bought a few Step 1 readers and the first time through a book was rough but after I told him how to pronounce a word the first time he has never not known how to read it afterwards.

Right now he is comfortably reading the Magic Tree House series. On occasion he comes across a word he doesn't know--he either uses simple phonics to attempt to read it or he just asks me and I tell him. The next time the word comes up there are no issues.

My DD (almost 4) is just starting to recognize some print. Last night I took out the same book the older DS first read and she was able to read a few of the repetitive words. Otherwise she just made the story up by looking at the pictures and called it reading. I give her another 6 months before it just clicks.

I've read that very early readers are whole-word/sight word readers. My 2nd grader definitely had an intuition about phonics as he could read words he had never seen before. I think that once he sounded out a word once or maybe twice, he got it so he may have looked liked a whole-word reader but I don't think overall that he was. He wasn't a precociously early reader though - I think starting about 4yrs old.

My 2nd son, sounded out words like cat, hat and read his first Bob book at 2yrs3-6 months or so but he was definitely using phonics which I had not taught him.

So I think kids can intuitively get phonics w/out explicitly being taught even at young ages.

I've also read that pure sight readers hit a wall at some point (about 2nd grade or so) when the words get harder and more phonics is required. I think many kids don't hit this wall and intuitively grasp phonics early on.

DD3.5 now, has hit the wall. She sounded out a word (Dollar) when we were out when she was 2.5 and she can just sight read, but it isn't consistent. And she could sound out words, but she seems confused now and why I say hit the wall.

She expects to sight read and although she is fully capable of slowly sounding out a word, I ask her what the first letter is when she is having trouble and she says it and then expects the rest to pop into her head. She is having trouble of actually sounding out the words. She wants the fast answer. So she was actually reading better a few months ago.

Ren