Learning to read | Integrated Learning Therapy

A child who struggles to read will struggle at school. How do we know if a child need’s reading is progressing well?

When do children start to learn to read?

In South Africa, school is where formal reading instruction begins. So most children start to learn to read around the age of 6 years. Some schools begin to teach reading preparation in pre-school grades but formal reading begins in Grade 1. Other countries introduce reading earlier if the school beginning age is younger.

The bottom line is that there is no optimal age to start learning to read and, in fact, teaching a child to read before starting school does not necessarily give them an advantage.

Typically, teaching reading begins with children being taught about the sounds that letters make, known as ‘phonics’. This is a critical part of reading and, of course, writing and once they are able to recognise the sounds of letters they progress to reading simple words that use the same letter sounds.

What should I do before they start school?

Parents can help prepare their children for reading by helping them to develop a good vocabulary. So talking to a child about a range of topics, using good language and explaining the meaning of words is an excellent start. Reading to a child is another way of teaching vocabulary and also begins to show them the connections between letters and sounds as they look at written words. Tina Daniel and Signy Wegener, writing for The Conversation, explain that when parents teach children to pay attention to letters and sounds in words, it helps them to learn to break the code.

Having books available to children to explore on their own (and with your help) may also increase their interest in learning to read.

Many children take time to learn

Children learn at different rates. Some children ‘break the code’ of reading very quickly. Others take longer and need more practice and support.

The reasons some children don’t learn to read as quickly or as well as others are often complex.

For example, one child may need more practice making the connections between letters and sounds than others. Another may have limited spoken language skills and need additional support to improve their ability to ‘hear’ the sounds of language or develop their understanding of what words mean.

A child who is finding reading difficult is not necessarily less intelligent than others. Reading difficulties can impact children with a wide range of intellectual abilities and intelligence is not a criterion for diagnosing a reading difficulty.

How do I know if my child needs more help?

Because reading is such an important skill for learning, teachers check on learner’s reading progress, particularly in the foundation learning phase. It is likely that a teacher will approach a parent if they find that a child is not progressing easily.

It is important that help is given when first identified in order to prevent the child from falling further behind. Be prepared to offer additional support to your child but if the difficulty persists, you might find it necessary to find help from a reading expert.

Remember too that reading problems might be related to other issues, including auditory and visual problems, so checking these might be necessary too.

Provided by The Conversation

Image supplied by Freepik

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Martin Doherty, writing for The Conversation, says that at the age of about four, children reach important milestones in brain development.

One of these is a huge improvement in understanding others’ thoughts and feelings. This is the start of empathy. Another is in spatial thinking—understanding how objects are positioned and related. This is the beginning of the ability to read maps.

Martin and his colleague, Catherine Sayer, conducted a study with 175 two to five-year-olds to explore how children are able to use scale models to figure out where something is in the real world. At about four, children are able to use a scale model of a room to work out where something is. We thought that this might result from children’s understanding of how one thing can represent something else. But we actually found that four-year-olds’ ability to use scale models came from their spatial abilities.

At the same age, children start to understand that someone’s behaviour is due to what that person believes, not necessarily what is really the case. This has interesting consequences.

If you’ve played hide-and-seek with young children, you may have noticed that they aren’t always very good at it. They love the ritual of looking in all the wrong places first, but beforehand they may tell you where they are going to hide, hide in the same place every time, or not be especially hidden.

After their fourth birthday, they get much better at hide and seek. They understand that the seeker looks in the wrong places because they don’t know where the hider is.

At about three to four children also start to tell lies. They realize they can make someone believe something that isn’t true.

Understanding symbols

Martin’s earlier research with fellow psychologist Josef Perner suggests that four-year-olds don’t just start to understand how others’ minds work. Figuring this out is part of the development of an understanding of “representation”—that symbols, like thoughts, words, or pictures, can be used to stand for something else.

Children start to think about how words relate to objects. This means, for instance, knowing that “animal” can refer to something you already have a name for, such as “rabbit”. This might help children learn the new word.

Their ability to use a understand the components of pictures also improves around this age. Very young children use a lot of trial and error to complete a jigsaw, picking up random pieces to see if they fit. By the time they are about four years old, they start to use the picture as a guide, trying to connect lines and match bits of colour, while checking the guide picture on the box lid.

Developmental experiments

Another ability children develop at around four is using scale models. A classic set of developmental experiments involved a model of a regular household room. The real room had typical furniture—sofa, table, cupboard and so on—and the model had miniature versions laid out in the same way.

Children were shown where something was hidden in the model and told to find an object hidden in “the same place” in the room. Children of around four can find the object using the identical layouts. If shown a sticker under a particular chair in the model room, for example, they can go straight to the “same” chair in the other room. This is the fundamental understanding required to read maps.

Adults see scale models and maps as representations. Maps represent a town or a country. A scale model of, say, the Eiffel Tower represents the real thing. At first, Martin suspected children’s ability to use scale models is more evidence of understanding representation at this age.

He was wrong. Instead, the researchers found that this ability is based on a development in children’s spatial abilities that also occurs at about four. This is the ability to think about spaces and where objects are within them. Spatial abilities help with maths skills, and good spatial ability is linked to an interest in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

Their experiment was simple. They compared the model room task with a test of understanding how representation works. The two abilities develop around the same age, but they found they were not related. Children who could do one task couldn’t necessarily do the other.

They also had a test of purely spatial ability. Children who passed the model room task also passed the spatial task. So it looks like the model room task relied on children‘s spatial thinking.

They don’t yet know why two important but apparently unrelated abilities arise at the same time. Perhaps it’s related to changes in the growing brain at this interesting age.

Provided by The Conversation.

Image supplied by Freepik.