SHHH!!! Can you read? Want to prove it? Meet fellow book worms and discuss the literary brilliance of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone.
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Sun Apr 23, 2006 5:05 pm

I can't really remember not being able to read at all, so I'd imagine pretty young.

When I first started being taught I will have been 4, at school.

Sun Apr 23, 2006 6:18 pm

Ditto Igg. I know I could read when I went into school, though, because I remember we had a "writing to read" program which I found incredibly boring as I already knew everything we were learning.

Tue Apr 25, 2006 5:58 am

Christopher wrote:I started reading and counting at about age 2 thanks to my grandfather (a librarian so amazing he was knighted). Then he died =/


:( He deserves to be recorded in the pages of history.

My mother tells me that I've been 'reading' ever since I was a baby. I used to pick books up and copy the way my brother was holding them, to be just like him, and I'd look at the books (upside-down, too), speaking baby gargle, before I chucked the book away after a little whie.

But that baby gargle must have meant something, because random little words like 'and' and 'the' would pop out among all the 'blah blah blah's. The words became phrases -- 'once upon a time blagh gah bleedee dooga was blejgh the' -- and then I was just always dragging a book around. For my own part, I can't remember a time when I didn't know how to read, so I believe my mother.

Fri Apr 28, 2006 8:58 pm

I was about two when I learned to read and write. By the time I was six, I'd read the entire Chronicles of Narnia twice.

Fortunately, I didn't have one of those teachers who thought I was showing off^^

Fri Apr 28, 2006 9:43 pm

Primary 2, so I was about 6.

Good old Scottish education.

Sat Apr 29, 2006 11:15 am

Age of 2

The first word I read was Tesco off the side of a lorry when we were on the motorway. Mam almost crashed in shock :D

Sat Apr 29, 2006 10:29 pm

Ixistant wrote:Primary 2, so I was about 6.

Good old Scottish education.


Age six is when they got serious about reading at the schools I went to, as well as my younger sibblings(except the youngest). In fact, my youngest sister, who is seven now, told her kingergarten teacher when we first moved here (she was 5) that she could read and the teacher actualy said, "no you can't" and laughed like she said something silly.
She learned to read at school though, because she went to Montessori School instead of public like the rest of us. Through her studies Dr. Montessori discovered that children learn to read much faster at age four than at age six.
I don't remeber when I started reading, but I was always reading harder books than my class. It became like a game to me. My parents read to me all the time before I knew how so it became a part of my life, like dinner and sleeping, so I did it all the time.

Sun Apr 30, 2006 12:35 am

I must have been about two or three. My parents read to me constantly and had me read to them. I think as a child I owned more books than anyone my age I knew. Unfortunately I don't read as much anymore :(.

Sun Apr 30, 2006 1:33 am

I could read some when I was about 4 or 5. But when I got to first grade they didn't have the phonics program at my school, they had the 'word recognition system' which totally screwed up my ability to read. Basically they show the kids 10 words and expect them to memorize what they look like, not sound them out, then the next week they give the kids 10 more words. (my elementary school was really messed up as you'd know from my manditory left-right hand switching) But then I was a fairly good reader by the age of 10 because I had a lot of tutoring that did tell me to sound out the words. I was reading at a 12th grade level by the 6th grade. So, um that's my story.

Sun Apr 30, 2006 10:36 pm

I started reading at 3 and basically taught myself. They didn't actually teach us how to read until 1st grade, but I was a master by then :P.

Fri Jun 09, 2006 7:32 pm

I started reading at about 3 or 4, as far as I can remember. I hated those
super-thin big-lettered picture books they made me read :x

Sat Jun 10, 2006 1:52 am

3 ish, but my mom read to me all the time from about 0 - 5.

Sat Jun 10, 2006 12:38 pm

I'm not sure, actually. I started reading those lame "Matt sat on Sam" books in preschool, but the first time people were aware I could read was the year before, when my parents were going to the liquor store and I read the word "beer."

Fri Jun 30, 2006 1:57 pm

I was reading by the time I was about 2 when we got to first grade we had to work with parteners and I hated having to tell him so many words he would go whats this word And I would be like blue or yellow or some other word I had know for like ever

Fri Jun 30, 2006 3:09 pm

I think somewhere around 4 or 5. I always used to be read to and I used to watch lots of those BBC Literacy Shows on the telly, and copied what they were doing. The first book I ever read in full was one about hedgehogs in a jungle, I think :D I got a sticker 'cause I was the first in my class to do that.
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