Son with GDD - how do I help him read?

[rubenz]

Hello

I am posting looking for some ideas or advice on how I might be able to help my son with global developmental delay progress with his reading.

A bit of background - he is 7.5 and nearing the end of P3 (we are in Scotland). Has been in the NHS system from months old when his failure to meet early milestones was noted. Has had extensive investigations but no diagnosis yet. Biggest issues are with language (expressive more affected, receptive far better but still delayed) and fine motor skills. He also has issues with vision - his actual eyesight is fine with glasses, but he has problems with visual perception, tracking, etc.

So! With all this going on we knew that reading was going to be very difficult for him.

However, he has made some progress. He knows all his sounds and a fair amount of two letter sounds (diagraphs?). For 2 years he has been able to sound out and blend CVC words and some longer words when reading. Phonics appears to be a relative strength for him. If you ask him to tell you the sounds in many spoken words, not looking at a page just by listening, he is generally able to tell you the sounds in the word.

That said, we just don't seem able to get past the stage of having to sound everything out before blending. As I mentioned, he has been doing this for 2 years now. How does this skill become automatic, is there anything I can do to help him with this or is it just a case of plodding on? I'm beginning to wonder if phonics is good for him long term, I know he will struggle with the more complex rules further down the line. However, the whole word method does not appear to help either - we do practise common and tricky words, he can get the hang of this, but unless we practise them most days he tends to forget them and this is just not sustainable.

Have posted in SN chat as well.

Many thanks!

[Ferguson]

I was a primary TA and worked with SEN children, and I will give you a couple of things that MAY help a bit, but I can't really promise they will:

ONE - An inexpensive and easy to use book, that can encourage children with reading, spelling and writing, and really help them to understand Phonics, is reviewed in the MN Book Reviews section. Just search ‘Phonics’. I think he might enjoy using this book, as it is colourful and entertaining, and easy for children to use on their own, or with adult support.

TWO - When I worked with less able Yr2 children, who were finding learning to read particularly difficult, we often used a SoundWorks kit, which consisted of a set of wooden letter blocks, which the child used to build simple words.? The theory was that, for some children, it is easier to SPELL words than READ them, which is a later stage.

It started with three-letter words, with a vowel in the middle - "a" glued onto a board.

The child then looked at the individual letter blocks, and was asked to make the word "c a t". Then he was asked, how do we change "c a t" into "h a t", which letter do we need to change? Then change "hat" into "ham" (with an emphasis on the "mmmm" sound). Work slowly, and pronounce the sounds accurately and clearly.

So, if you can find or make suitable letters, and make a card with "a" glued in the middle, your child may enjoy building the words. Use letters that are occurring in words in the books he is bringing home, and then go on to make cards for the other vowels if it seems to work with "a".

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Another technique I have used with children who can't write sentences unaided, is they DICTATE their story to me, and I would type it on the computer. They enjoy seeing their text appear on the screen, and often they do have good ideas, but are unable to write it themselves.

So, if you have a tape recorder, or a phone that records, could he dictate information into it, for a story or a description of his weekend, or something. Is he able to assemble ideas in his head, and then dictate them? For many children, the ideas are there, but it is the physical writing and spelling that is the difficulty. If he can then write the words, or if that is too difficult for him, an adult could write or type them.

[rubenz]

Thanks for the replies.

He's actually not too bad at spelling words if he's given a selection of letters and asked to build a word. Cannot write at all though, so this is how we practice 'spelling'. Dication is a good idea for further ahead, at the moment his expressive language is just too poor to manage this.

He has been using the Biff and Chip ORT books since P1, but has never progressed using these at all. We were told at the beginning of P3 he would be starting read write inc, and he did manage to get onto level 2 of these, but just recently we were told that there was no appropriate peer group in school for him to participate in the intervention programme they were running using rwi, as he is just too far behind even the struggling readers in p2. And so he is now back on the very first Biff and Chip books again . So disheartening as he (and we) put such a lot of effort into getting to the point he reached. So nice to hear encouragement therefore instead of negativity!!

Thanks again.

[maizieD]

That is terrible, rubenz. Why can't they work with him one to one?

It may be very frustrating for you that he is still sounding out and blending words but, as you have noted, this is the only method which is going to enable him to read. It may well just 'click' but even if it doesn't he is still able to read what the words 'say'; which is very important. I would approach the 'tricky' words by sounding out and blending, too; they usually only have on unusual correspondence in them and repetition of that through sounding the word out will help him to fix it in memory in the same way that he has already 'fixed' the other correspondences he knows.

Do plod on, I suspect that it's the only way he'll learn. I would find him some decodable books, containing the correspondences he knows, to practise with. I'm assuming that the ORT books he's expected to read are the 'old' Look & Say ones rather than OUP's 'Floppy's Phonics' series? If they are the old ones they won't be helping him at all.

Or you could consider the BRI books from here:www.piperbooks.co.uk/
They are slightly different in approach but still are based on decoding and blending. However, they give an enormous amount of practice and don't move on as fast as 'ordinary' decodables.

[rubenz]

Thanks maizie.

He does get confused about which words to sound out and which ones to just say, he often tries to sound out the common words he has learned, like was. So idea to sound out everything sounds good. Might be a silly question though, but how would he sound out 'was' for example?

The ORT books he is on now are the new phonics ones, but still a bit soul destroying to get very basic books back again. School in general are very good about the support they give him, but I think sometimes they do tend to underestimate his ability. Any conversations we have had with them about this are usually met with a 'we know best' attitude, and we don't want our relationship with them to break down as our son is very happy there. So we try and do what we can from home, but difficult to find the time sometimes.

The BRI books look interesting, I think they might be worth a try, thanks for the link.

[maizieD]

'Was'?

/w/ is completely 'normal', /a/ is very frequently said as /o/ after a 'w' (think wash, want, swan, what, wasp etc.) and the 's' is a /z/ sound, also very common, although adults probably don't notice it. Think pins, sounds (!), shoes, words etc.

People make a fuss about 'was' because it comes in the High Frequency Word list and there is a very mistaken perception that HFWs are somehow more difficult than 'ordinary' words. They are not, they are just more frequently used (that's how they get their label, HFWs)

[rubenz]

Great, thanks again!

[TheMouseBitesBack]

Have a look at behavioural optometry/vision therapy. ( google British Association of Behavioural Optometrists). My DD has GDD amongst other things. He had similar issues with reading as your son. The above therapy helped significantly, retained reflexes were impacting on his development and academic progress.

Unfortunately its v.expensive, but I would recommend.