NotSheep

I’ve written before about learning to read – about my experiences with Barney, George and Freddy, and about my thoughts about learning to read generally. Jax has just written about checking out Small’s reading-age and it prompted me to do the same (but with regard to my own children, obviously, rather than Jax’s).

So I got out my clipboard and pen and sat them all at their desks…oops, no, that’s not what I mean, is it? Being flu-ey (again) this weekend, I mean that I sat up on the bed and hurt my throat calling the child who sounded nearest and then pushed my laptop towards him.

George didn’t surprise me at all – he tried two different tests and showed a reading-age of about 16 on both. Freddy surprised me a little – he’s not quite as much into reading as his older brothers, although I suspect that he’s probably far more into it than most nine-year-old boys. Anyway, he had a go at the same two tests, and got a reading-age of about 14 on them.

Then I got Jack to try (”D’you want a go at this?” – all very coercive ) And that, typically, was where it got really, erm, interesting.

I might just have mentioned it before, but Jack is a child who insists on doing things His Own Way. The idea that having three sons might have provided me with some kind of preparation for raising a fourth has been thoroughly and repeatedly punctured. Jack is very logical, very capable of figuring out how to figure things out, and very, very determined. By age three, Jack was capable of holding his own in a debate. He is very certain that he knows everything, and even more certain (it seems) that nobody else knows anything, and thus he believes it is imperative that he always tells us everything, because otherwise, well, how would we ever know anything?

And when it came to learning to read, Jack did what Jack always does: he took an entirely unexpected and unpredictable route. As it turns out, he’s also doing it in a way that makes his ability very difficult to measure. (Part of me wants to say here, “Good for him!” )

I’ve heard it said that autonomously-educated children often start to read at about age seven. Jack hasn’t been autonomously-educated, but it’s been pretty close – partly because I’m more laid-back about skool-for-six-year-olds than I used to be, and partly because leading a child like Jack is a fairly impossible task.

By the middle of 2007, when he was just over five, I thought it likely Jack would be reading soon – I could see the steps he was taking towards it. But I’d forgotten that I was dealing with Jack, who doesn’t believe in conformity (hm, I wonder where he gets that?) By October 2007, when he was 5.5, I was a bit surprised that he wasn’t already reading well, but could still see him moving towards it – although I could also see how his conviction that he already knew everything was getting in the way (sounding out “c…r…i…s….p…s…”, then, under his breath, “packet…” – because the picture was of a packet of crisps, so obviously he just had to make the letters fit what he knew they should say).

By early 2008, I was getting frustrated, because he still wasn’t reading. He could sound out occasional words, but not enough to make the rest of the text fit, and it was starting to get to me that he wasn’t making the next step of turning that corner into being a reader. And he pretty much stayed there, with one toe around the corner – but just that one toe – for most of 2008, before finally taking a good hard look around the corner just a few weeks ago.

He now recognises most of the words he comes across regularly, but still does a fair bit of sounding-out. He’s very good at sounding words out, often figuring out words I really hadn’t expected him to get. He also still regularly says the wrong word because it’s what he expects to come next, never mind what’s actually on the paper.

But anyway. Reading tests.

Most of these tests are similar: there’s a list of words and the child reads them. When he gets a certain number wrong, you stop, and you count up how many of the words on the test he read correctly. That number is then converted into either a reading-age or a grade-level.

Jack reads fluently to the words that indicate a reading-age of seven – which is fair enough, for he’ll be seven next month. It’s what he does after that which makes a mockery of the tests. He reads some of the words in the next bit…and the next bit…and the next bit… by the time he reaches the words which represent a reading-age of 12 or 13, he’s still getting about one right out of every four. If I follow the instructions for each of the tests, they tell me his reading-age is anything from 7 to 13.8.

I suppose if a child learns to read easy words and then slightly more difficult words and then even more difficult words, the tests work. But this is Jack, who doesn’t do linear (though he can read it!)

I don’t think for a minute that he has a reading-age of anything like 13.8; in fact I’d have said his reading-age was somewhere between 6 and 7. But he is familiar with lots of more difficult words, because he hears them in use (and uses them himself) and that and his pretty-damn-good sounding-out skills get him quite a long way towards “reading” them successfully – which means that the tests generally assess him as being a more competent reader than he really is. He’s reading, and he’s getting better at reading. He’s just doing it in his own unconventional way.

As usual.