Unlocking the Joy of Reading

If there is a one-size-fits-all, failsafe tool out there somewhere to teach a child to read, I will not hesitate to take back what I am about to say. From my experience, there are numerous ways in which children learn to read, and we need to continually adapt our approach because what enthuses one child doesn’t necessarily enthuse another. Some children advance happily with reading-scheme books, gobbling them up in their self-explanatory, systematic way: 1a, 1b, 1c, 2a, 2b… Some randomly pick out books from a loosely ability-grouped selection, jumping ahead and backtracking at their leisure. And there are those who sit with chapter books, analysing the words and decoding the sounds long before comprehension is possible - though the fantasy and fun of how this looks is what drives them.

Some children seem to teach themselves to read, refusing any instruction, while at the other end of the spectrum, others benefit immensely from some tutoring with a systematic approach for a certain period. Some children read aby age five, many take off around the age of seven, and a few grasp the skill seemingly quickly and suddenly in their later primary years. However, with enough exposure and approaches most children are reading by the age of eleven.

Reading has its undeniable advantages, but it is perhaps also worth noting one or two of its drawbacks. Barely five-years-old, Sally was already an avid reader; she read in the car on the way to school and was often seen engrossed in a book beyond her years during her playtimes. In play, in her friendship interactions, she frequently appeared awkward. I wondered at times if she was retreating to books to compensate for her social discomforts, or if her reading talent was slowing down her opportunities to develop socially. Perhaps it was a combination of the two. One day, while all together in the classroom, a storm suddenly arrived over the school with thunder crashing about our ears. All the children, except Sally, rushed out of the door to stand in the porch entrance and watch the downpour and incredible show of jagged flashing strikes across the dark sky. The excitement was palpable inside and out. Sally, on the other hand, was frightened, telling us how, in a book she had been reading, the story depicted a scene of lightning striking a child’s home, causing the roof to collapse. Fantasy and reality were blurring for this little girl, so much so that she was unable to participate in the enjoyable thrill and be witness to an impressive natural phenomenon, despite our reassurances.

Zac, on the other hand, was one of the later readers and writers, but with an ability to remember facts and figures more than most. He loved his outdoor sessions on nature topics, eager to observe and notice what perhaps a well-crafted non-fiction, knowledge-imparting book might have robbed him of doing. Who needs to spend time finding out through observing if the information can be quickly obtained by the flick of a few pages (or the click of a mouse) where it says it all - and more? Who knows, maybe one downside of the cultural push for early reading capacity is the loss of those qualities needed to truly discover something for oneself. Direct observation and critical thinking are often what leads to innovations and breakthroughs. Very young children are having breakthroughs all the time as they discover what rolls, floats, sinks, breaks, falls, breathes, speaks, and many other wonders of matter, nature and language. But then something happens when textbooks, lectures and ‘being told’ take priority in their discoveries of the world; the child is no longer the principal actor and discoverer of their learning landscape but the follower of someone else’s.

Eren was nearly nine years old, and despite my efforts to bring literacy activities into his learning world, he still didn’t know how to read or write. This was near the beginning of my career as a teacher. I was a little worried - though his parents weren’t worried at all! They saw an alive, witty and happy child, and they felt the penny would drop in his own time. It did. I was sitting with a couple of children with a small A4 whiteboard practising matching sounds with their correct letter representations. One child gave me some letters to display on the board and asked me to read the ‘word’ that these letters created. It was a pseudoword and a rather silly sounding one that made us all giggle. On hearing the fun, a few other children gravitated towards us, including Eren, who also started to demand the ‘words’ made by ever-lengthening strings of letters that included x’s, y’s and z’s. Eren was hooked. This child, who thrived on humour and fun, laughed and loved the power these letter pictures could have. He, too, wanted to unlock the sound/letter code, and in a few months, Eren was reading fluently. After he left school at age eleven, apparently his reading test result at secondary school was calculated to be that of an average fifteen-year-old.

Eren’s parents were a gift to my evolving understanding of a child. They didn’t worry about him, and they didn’t expect him to meet national curriculum targets. Out of careful observation and deep respect, they trusted in their child’s innate (and sometimes quirky) capacity to learn and to enjoy learning. I think they trusted me because I was not claiming to know or understand Eren more than they did, and also because we had entered into an open and friendly relationship in which we walked this education journey with their son together.