Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Age or Ability Specific Forums Pre-school Teach how to read

DS8 and DD5 taught themselves to read at ages 2 and 3. (We never read to them.) DD3 isn't showing any signs of reading yet, though she knows the alphabet. We sometimes see older siblings explaining schooly things to younger siblings, so maybe DD5 will teach DD3 to read as part of their playing. Has anyone had older siblings teaching younger siblings to read?

I've always just read with my kids (or in the case of my younger ones, my oldest has read with them), pointing to each word as I read it. I make a point to read clearly, not too quickly, and with marked expression. As they've shown facility with letter sounds, I have had them sound out the occasional cvc word, or read familiar sight words. As their decoding ability and reading vocabulary increases, I read less and less of it (just inserting the more challenging words necessary to maintain the flow of the narrative), until they reach a level of proficiency that allows them to read it all independently.

With my first, we started off with old favorites like Dr. Seuss and P.D. Eastman. The younger children have shifted to add Mo Willems and BOB books. I also do the above strategy with books well above their independent reading level, which gives access to a much wider range of topics and vocabulary. And because I predominantly have them read aloud the words that they don't have to puzzle over for too long, we can maintain prosody, and build fluency.

Yes. That's why my post mentions my oldest reading to my younger ones. #1 asked to be taught to read at 3, and was. #1 has gone on to do much more explicit instruction in phonemic awareness, word attack, and blending with the younger siblings than I had planned to do myself!

I am *so* not an expert at this - each of my kids basically just suddenly started reading - we read to them a ton but none of them asked to be taught to read. However, fwiw, their preschool had a philosophy of teaching children to write letters and then words as a precursor to reading, so that's something that may be fun to add in to the mix.

polarbear

One reason I suggested word making self-discovery is because we did reading and pointing as well as having Closed Captioned on TV and DS8 has a wicked memory and he remembers all these whole words to read, but not the construction of words. Recovering spelling after being a voracious whole word reader since he was 2 has been challenging.

It could be his vision issues were key to his not deconstructing words, but I also think in retrospect that earlier grapheme type awareness might've made things easier on him now.

Ok so here's my take on it. I haven't read the other posts yet. I am a former Special Education teacher. Fast forward a few years later and I had a two year old begging me to teach him to read. I was like, "No, you'll learn in Kindergarten." For six months straight, he obsessed over letters and books and begged me to teach him.
Met a wonderful mother of a son who is gifted, entered K at a 3rd grade self taught reading level. She said to me, "You can't stop that train, might as well get on board."
So I did, told him the sounds whenever he asked. A few days later, he told me he knew them all, and sure enough he did. So I said, "Ok I'll teach you to read." Here and there, he'd ask me to teach him, so I would. He was SIGNIFICANTLY happier.
My now friend's son, although read at a 3rd grade level, does have holes in his reading ability due to being self taught.
I thought about this thoroughly and I think if your child is begging to learn to read, they are ready. If you start to teach them how to blend the sounds and they aren't interested then you have your answer, they weren't ready-on that day atleast. When they know the sounds and hear you sound out words, usually they will try start reading themselves-good indicator that they are ready for direct instruction. BOB books are perfect for this time or any first readers. I just bought another box set for my son at COSTCO. I feel bad that I didn't "listen" to him before when he was asking me. For the first few months, I would feel like I was just contributing to his future boredom in school. But the truth is, I couldn't stop it and still can't. He's happier reading.

GGG, agree with you, when they ask for learning, we can't stop it :P My son ask me to teach him reading too, and I just bought two set of BOB books from costco too :P and he loves it !!! My DS3 is not that into reading, sometimes he refuse to have story time... glad that the BOB books have numbers on each page and on each bk, i think this is why my number obsessive son want me to read these book with him. He also tried to read the words out too. He can read the words out phonically, however, i don't know how much he can understand it as we are not speaking english at home, anyways as long as he think reading is fun, that's good enough for his age.
Other than BOB books, fantastic phonics is useful too, and it is more easy for my son to follow, he can read the sentence out but he seems like BOB bks more. You can try some free download (I didn't learn phonics before, so somehow it is a bit hard for me to teach my son, but glad that i have a chance to learn it now ^^)
http://www.early-reading.com/