My little man is learning to read!

Last Updated on 21 February 2019 by Colette

Confession time. . . I know that I should be reading with Ben every day.  I preach it often enough.  We share books daily – we religiously have a bedtime story and will almost always look at other books during the course of the day. However I know we don’t read his school books / word walls as much as we should.  I should know better. I do know better.  I guess it is in part down to me not wanting to be a “teacher” to him (this is of course quite difficult as it is pretty much second nature!)

After being so thrilled with the comment in his Reading Record the other week I asked him if he wanted to read to me (I’m very much of the opinion that there is no point forcing the issue – if he doesn’t want to read I’m not going to make him as it’s just a waste of time and effort for both of us and as I’ve said I already do plenty to foster a love of books).  He was more than happy to get his books out for me on this instance and I just couldn’t believe the difference – it was like someone had flicked a switch on.  Instead of sounding out every word, he suddenly had quite an impressive sight vocabulary and on the words he did sound out he remembered not only to blend them again but to reread the whole sentence afterwards to check it make sense.  I’m sure you can imagine I was beaming with pride.

The following day we read his books again (with Chloe copying him sounding out the words and pointing at her own book – very cute).  We also looked at some ORT flashcards he got for Christmas. I was utterly amazed by how many of them he could read by sight – he was able to read over two thirds of the cards. Unsurprisingly he was pretty pleased with himself!  By the time he read them again for Grandad at the weekend he had just 5 cards that he couldn’t read!

On Sunday morning I caught him playing with the cards and noticed he was lying them out on the sofa and trying to make sentences with them!

Ben’s sentence: Kipper and Wilf went to the . . . (he wanted to add the word “shops”)

To top it off the message in his Reading Record today said he’s now able to bring home reading books from the next level up! Hurrah!