I read recently that most schools start teaching children when they are six years old because this is the age when most children are ready to learn how to read.
What an outdated idea.
I admit, in the 50′s and 60′s there was this notion of reading readiness, that children just did not have the ability and experience to begin to learn to read until they were six years old. It was based on research that has long since been shown to be outdated and irrelevant. I remember young children being eager to learn how to read and the teacher stopping them because they were not yet ‘ready’!
What a waste.
Well, now we know that some children can begin to identify letters when they are two years old and that many children can read quite well by the age of four. Yes, they need to be ready to read (but this is a different concept from that of Reading Readiness in the last century).
To be ready to read, children need to have developed language, visual-perceptual, and auditory skills, as well as being able to make meaning out of those black squiggles on the paper.
Who is going to help them develop these skills? Not the teacher because they are probably not in school yet. It is the parent that helps their child develop the skills they need. And they do not have to be a trained teacher to make it work.
Just by being with your young child. talking to them and sharing books you are laying the foundations of literacy. You don’t have to teach your child (teachers spend years learning how to teach), you have to lead your child to learning by providing the kind of environment that will encourage your child to want to read and to know that he can learn how to read.
By giving your child the opportunity to develop the basic skills he or she needs to be ready to read you are ensuring that your child will be ready to benefit from their schooling.
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