Trepidation About Your Child Learning to Read?
Trepidation About a Prep Child Learning to Read Blog 9 by Wendy Barr
( 1050 words – read it in 5 mins)
How did you feel when your child started Prep?
In the first few days of any school year, the air around the school gate is charged with anticipation, excitement and often peels of laughter.
Even some tears!
And that’s just from the Mums (or Dads!)
For children, weighed down by their brand-new schools bags, these emotions come in swings and round-a-bouts throughout their first term at school, reflecting uncertainty about this new change in their daily routine.
What is certain though, is the fact that they are embarking on a journey of life-long learning, where everything is dependent on their success with learning to read.
A daunting, but exciting prospect for parents.
Twenty-five years ago, even as a teacher, I remember feeling the weight of this challenge for each of my three children, in their turn. Not one of them coping in the same way as another.
These days, with so many children enjoying the benefits of child-care centres from an early age, I’m curious about how families are now dealing with the joys and stresses of starting school and ultimately, travelling along the road to literacy success.
So recently, I caught up with some parents of new Preps, to tease out their feelings about this.
Amy is a Mum whose eldest boy has just started in Prep.
Gemma is a mother of three. Her youngest is a girl, joining her older brothers at school.
Trudy’s little boy has an older sister, but he began school last year and is now in Grade 1.
This is what they had to say.
ME: How did you feel about waving goodbye to your new Prep, in their first weeks of school?
Amy: Sad. It’s another big milestone! But I know he’s really ready and looking for the next challenge. He’s been in child care, so he’s so used to waving goodbye. There were no tears.
Gemma: Really positive. She is well and truly ready to start school and couldn’t wait to come with her brothers.
Trudy: I was really excited for both of them, in their turn. I thought the eldest was ready. And my work as a nanny in Europe (BC) conditioned me for it.
We travelled so much last year and they went to three different schools. It was great to see them making friends so easily.
But, my days were sooo long! I was finished my jobs by 11.30am and I found that I missed them.
ME: What are your expectations around your child learning to read?
Amy: I thought that it would be a gradual introduction. But I was really surprised when he brought home a reader and a journal on the FIRST day!! He has ‘golden words’ to learn through the week and has to be tested on Friday.
I was over-whelmed initially – it would have been good to have had some warning at the initiation sessions. The books are quite simple, but getting the time to read with him is tricky.
Gemma: Being a teacher, I pretty much knew what to expect and she loved having some ‘work’ like her brothers. There are nights where she’s ‘over-it’ already though!!
Trudy: I don’t think I had any expectations at the beginning when my girl started school. I was happy that she’d learnt to write her full name and knew her ABCs before starting.
I was really surprised though, when she brought home the list of 100 words in the first few weeks. Many of them were so long!
In Europe, it’s mostly play-based classes and they don’t start to read and write until they’re 7.
ME: How confident do you feel about knowing what to say and do, when your child brings home books to read?
Amy: I’m a good reader and speller, so I feel confident. I helped him with ‘sounding-out’ and ‘dragging-out’ the sounds in words and he’s pretty smart and quick to learn.
Gemma: It can be tricky with your own children, but so far so good. She’s responding well to reading together and talking a lot about the story afterwards, which of course is really important.
Trudy: I guess I had plenty of practice as a nanny earlier on. I liked that the books were suitable where the pictures easily matched the text. Generally, it worked best when I read the book to them first and gave them lots of encouragement when they tried for themselves. I would have liked more than one book though.
When we came back (from our travels overseas last year), my little girl felt she was behind the other kids and my Prep boy definitely struggled.
I think that I did too much of the work showing them how to ‘sound-out’ – not sure it was helpful.
My Conclusion?
Two points stood out to me from these discussions:
- Time in child-care has indeed made the transition into school so much smoother for the child, as they are used to being separated from Mum or Dad for longer periods of time. The parent waving goodbye at the school gate will always feel the pang of separation. It’s reassuring to know that Prep classrooms these days are all so well equipped with play-based learning activities, ensuring a familiar and inviting environment.
- With child-care centres moving more towards kindergarten education and parents giving their children rich experiences and lots of conversation about everyday occurrences, children are ready to delve into their literacy journey.
My advice for home support?
- Keep up the conversations at home, especially about the books they want to share
- Remember that their strongest strategy for reading will always be their familiarity with the English language, so encourage them to run the words of the simple book language together, just like in talking. For instance: ‘Look at ….’ ‘Here comes ….. ‘ ‘…..in the box.’ ‘… up the hill.’
- Talk about the direction of reading and model where a sentence starts and which way we go to read.
- Similarly, emphasis the start of a word and the left-to-right way they look at it.
- Be specific about listening for sounds in words from the picture and matching some letters that they know, that may have those sounds.
- Think about ‘sounding-out’ as a writing activity.
A huge thank you to the parents featured in this blog, for their insightful comments.
Enjoy the challenges ahead and keep those conversations going.