What is the general benchmark of expectancy for a typical 4yo to read? Is it basic ability in CVC words + Pre Primer sight words? I'm not sure what I should be expecting from 4yo as we tackle reading. I already KNOW that each child is different and such, but what could your students read at that stage/age?
Mine....all 3....couldn't read diddly-squat at 4. The middle girl could read the cvc and sight words at 5.5 and her older sister lagged behind her a bit. The boy couldn't read much of anything until just about 9 months ago....
I don't know of anyone who expects a 4 year old to know anything unless they're really into early learning/teaching. What you expect of your own child, knowing their abilities and interests is very different sometimes than what you'd expect of just any child or the population as a whole in that age group. When I walk into a preschool class at church as the new teacher for that 7-week rotation, I assume that none of them can read, but most of them can probably count/identify up to 10. (Some can't, by the way!)
Gizzy, there are really NO expectations at that age! The only expectations are the ones that you put on him. Some children are reading, some are not. Some don't even know their ABC's yet. Anyone who EXPECTS children to read at that age are going to be disapointed!
I mean what I can expect him to be able to learn/read? I have read in many places that boys often have trouble with reading/writing until about 7.5-8 or even later.
My two oldest are 8 and 5. Neither of them could read anything besides "NO" at 4yo LOL Josh was (and is) advanced for his age, but still didn't start stringing letters together until age 5. By 5.5yo he was blowing through the primary readers. By 6yo he was reading and 95% comprehending chapter books like Magic Treehouse. Now Asher, at 5yo, is still working on recognizing all his letters (he still struggles with a few) and knowing all his letter sounds. I would guess he's about average?
I have no idea what you can "expect" him to read! No one does! There are NO expectations of a child that young! Some will do very well and read all kinds of easy readers. But some don't. EACH CHILD IS DIFFERENT! What is he CURRENTLY able to do as far as reading readiness skills?
I'm with Jackie. I think you should expect to hand him a book and see what happens. If he asks you to read it, read it. If he asks you to teach him to read it, teach him. If he hands it back, leave him alone for a while.
I'm in the diddly-squat camp. Honestly, reading can wait. Reading gets pushed early because adults like to think we're doing something useful with kids but play is much more important then reading at that age. What kids need at 4 is for us to provide some basic toys, a safe environment and stay out of their way as much as possible.
Well...Bo is 3 and we are doing 100 EZ lessons, HOWEVER: I go off of his reactions to the lessons. If he seems to struggle and not get it, then I will happily put it down for later! The only reason we are doing it is because he asked to learn. Go off of the child. Isn't that why some of us homeschool? So we can go the child's pace? What can you expect him to be able to learn/read? Go off of your gut instincts. If he seems bored with things or asks you to teach him then GO FOR IT! If not, let it slide! Children grow and change everyday and what he wont be able to do today, he will surely be able to do tomarrow (figuratively speaking of course. lol)
if your child is ready to be reading at 4, you will know it, and you will not be able to hold him back. My 4 yr old taught herself, pretty much, to read in just a few weeks. I tried the same thing with dd #2 and nothing happened. It was total frustration and she didn't really make a ton of progress until the middle of her second grade year. it's kind of like potty training... when they are ready, it's easy...when they are not... it's a nightmare!!!!
Ditto. Mine also taught himself ... he was reading 4 months before he decided to potty train himself. :lol:
4yo, likes for me to make a schedule for him and show him where he should be each week, so he can know if he's "doing it right" or not. I tried explaining to him that there isn't a "right and a wrong" but an "I know it or I need more practice with this" but he's not buying it. I'm trying to set a schedule that will be just the right amount of challenging for him, but not frustrating. So far I have him moving at the same pace that 6yo went through TRL (maybe a little faster, I cant remember exactly) because so far he's been moving easily through it, when we hit something that seems tough for him, I'll reduce the day to day assignment from 6 pages to whatever he needs to actually learn the material.
Sounds to me like he's only reading to please you, not because he really wants to. (Sorry.) You're right, there's no "right or wrong" about it, but I don't think he truly understands, and he sees your "expectations" as just that... you're "expecting" him to do something he may or may not be ready for. On some level, he either wants to please you (to make you happy) or he wants NOT to displease you (so not to get in trouble).
I am a certified reading teacher so reading is my passion! My 4 year old is reading at a first grade level. However, I have to say you can't just start showing your child a bunch of flash cards suddenly at age 4 and expect him/her to be a successful reader. The main goal of reading is to be able to gather information, so comprehension is huge! Also, it will be very difficult to learn phonics without being comfortable with manipulating speech sounds. That being said, the two greatest predictors of reading success are 1) vocabulary and 2)phonemic awareness (playing with sounds, i.e. rhyming, clapping syllables, etc.) You can't learn that stuff from flash cards. It comes from life experiences! I would say if your child isn't ready to jump into reading words yet, build on those experiences through field trips and read-alouds. Discuss what you find, which will build vocabulary. Play sound games any time; in the car, when you're cooking, etc. Make it an adventure and the actual reading of the words will come about naturally and easily when your child has built this foundation! Good luck and let me know if I can help at all.
I don't have any expectations. That being said he suprises me all the time. Ds will be 4 in Nov. He has been reading a few words here and there for a good 9 months. He loves to try and sound out words and is anxious for me to teach him more. We have a couple level 1 readers and he can manage about 1/2 the words of each sentence. He has always shown a love of letters and words and began printing the alphabet shortly after his second bday. Again this is him and just shows that every child is different.
I don't believe any 4 year old should be expected to read. Some may. Most won't. That doesn't mean you can't help build a foundation for a child who loves to read. This foundation isn't found in learning to read CVC words or knowing that B says buh. It is found in getting lost in the pages of a book. Finding joy between the pages of a book with your little one is probably the best way to promote reading skills at that age. Here is a great article on teaching a child to read at an early age. An excerpt:
Thanks, I told the boys back in January of this year that we'd be learning to read and they thought I meant through books, I made a few stabs at formally teaching 6yo but we hit a road block after letter sounds and names so we took several months off and worked on vocabulary, sounds in words and such. 6yo couldn't hear short vowel sounds so I went through a phase where I'd say words slowly to them in passing, like: Who turned on the laaaamp--lamp in here? Do not jump on the beeeed. What diiiid I just say?! (A classic with young boys, :roll. The boys started shouting out the word I was doing in slow mo so I knew they were getting and then they started slowing up their own words and later identifying the sounds they were hearing (it got annoying when they'd speak entire sentences in slow-mo--always when i was in a hurry, but what could I say?) I have worked on their vocabulary, formally since April and every time we read words in isolation, I have them use the word in a sentence to show me that they understand, the other day 4yo read "but" and said... "Like, if you say--but, mom, I'm innocent?" <--Which was the cutest thing ever, lol. I dont use flash cards to teach reading. I made them word strips of the Dolch words in a ziplock bag somewhere that they play with and enjoy reading over but I dont use them as flash cards, if I could've gotten them as fridge magnets I would've --thats how they are used just on the carpet instead. The kids like to play sound games and spelling games by themselves which I dont really have any part of. They take it and make it their own, sometimes they argue over how a word is really spelled and I'll step in to tell them but they mostly do it of their own accord.
I'm with the others - my gut reaction was to say "none." But then, I thought, let's go about this another way. So, I tried to find some standards set by national organizations of reading teachers (my experience with these types of groups is they tend to actually focus on what they think children need to learn, unlike the NEA, but that's already being covered in another thread). Surprisingly, I couldn't find any national standards/benchmarks for pre-k reading. But I did find this: http://nccic.acf.hhs.gov/pubs/goodstart/elgwebsites.html which is a listing of each state's preK reading guidelines. I felt pretty good about mine. It has three for the end of a preK year: III.A.1. Child engages in pre‐reading and reading related activities. III.A.2. Child uses books and other written materials to engage in prereading behaviors. III.A.3. Child asks to be read to or asks the meaning of written text. Each of these had an example of what it would look like in a child's behavior, and they all sounded pretty good to me. But...I tend to approach things from a more ontogenetic stance. and, I realized reading this that, while my own children may have roughly followed along this developmental path, they did not necessarily do so along the common-4yo-as-preK age.
