The joy of reading.

It is so lovely to watch the joy on HB’s face when he realises he can read.  He can actually read by himself…and when he realised he could do it, he was so extremely excited…the look on his face made me want to cry.

I don’t remember learning to read, I am sure I must have been formally taught to read.  I don’t remember that joy HB felt when he realised he could read by himself.

Hubby even made a video for him, and showed it to HB…him reading by himself, with me just pointing to the words.  Without even trying to teach him, he seems to have picked up the sight words by himself.  I have just been concentrating on the synthetic phonics, because that is what he needs to learn, but the reading seems to have allowed him to work out the sight words at the same time.

With all the talk about how behind my little boy, this little achievement gives me the confidence to know, even if he is a few months behind the rest of his class, he can still do it.  He still has the ability to read and love it.

I have been so afraid, he will not want to read, because it is all about school work.  I know he does not love schoolwork, however, we have to do it. We go to the library and he is allowed to choose whatever he wants to read. He does understand there are English and Afrikaans books, so he will ask if a book is Afrikaans.  Then there are the books we read for school.  These readers are excellent.  We read the first round, with him only reading the phonics.  Second round is him reading all the words he thinks he knows and third round is reading with actual expression.  He loves the stories, and I like being able to sit with him and read too, not  just instruct.

We now use this manner of reading with all books.

In the meantime he has also learnt to read different fonts (which we had not actually taught to him…and he has picked up most of the capital letters).  At this stage they do not learn capitals.  Maybe it is for next term, I am not sure.

In the end we decided to make an actual appointment with another educational psychologist for an assessment. There is only one term of school left, and we need to make decisions and prepare our child for Grade 1 or staying another year in Grade 0. A proper school readiness assessment will help us make that decision. The school will want one by their staff psychologist, but it happens too late in the year. We also need to understand the ways in which he needs help from an emotional point of view.  The wait and see approach is not working, and the distraction of the school staff with personal issues, means he is not getting the full help he needs at school. Whether he stays or moves on is immaterial at this point, it is about making the right decision for him.  I feel I cannot rely on the school alone to make this decision.

While I feel for the personal lives of the school staff, I cannot put that in front of the needs of my child.  I will do everything I can do to make sure he remains happy and know that he is loved.