Yr2 DS has poor short term and working memory ( lowest 1%) How best to help him out of school?

[Thebesthaveallgone]

He has been working very hard with his reading at home but seems to make little progress . His main strategy for unfamiliar words is guessing which doesn't always work ! School are happy for him to use lots of strategies which include guessing from pictures.
He appears to know his phonics but struggles to use them. Do I go back to basics ? If so, any recommendations ?

[Cloud2]

Have you tried to play games to improve his working memory? I don't have experienced with you DS's situation , but I used to play games with DS2 to increase his memory to remeber longer sentence.

[DazzleU]

Bear Necessities A

Possibly AB fast track if reading age if over 7 - but A possibly better place to build up from.

10 minutes a day - flash cards with phonics on, using phonics and later word building exercises.

Can also recommend their spelling program - if you have time to do both does seem to get results - there more awareness about how words are constructed and lots of repetition so things eventually stick.

Also found my DC who seems to have poor working memory who initially couldn't remember the dictation sentences has over time reached point where he can.

Little and often and going over things again and again - seems to help. Found same thing in maths - things need to be explained several times and then lots and lots of practise to bed ideas down. We use one of the many on-line maths programs to do that.

Another phonic based program - Australian based is - www.spelfabet.com.au/ - when we have more time will go back to some of these work books - more form spelling aspect so mine get more practise.

I would discourage the guessing as much as possible - my DC school promotes it as a viable technique - they never grew out of it by themselves and it does cause inaccurate reading.

[Thebesthaveallgone]

Thank you both, that's very helpful.
I will have a look at those. I do have the Apple and Pears but haven't started it yet.
We have been concentrating on phonics which he can recall but not recognise when he is reading. Though I wonder if this is because he guesses the unfamiliar words because it takes less effort !
I tell him not to guess but to sound out but he gets confused because school say it's fine to guess!
At the moment it feels like there are so many things we need to keep going over. It doesn't help that he'd rather play with his Lego ??

[DazzleU]

My older DC could recall the phonics sounds from cards fine - but didn't always apply it to words in front of her.

I think the going through cards and getting faster more automatic recall probably helped a bit - though with common sounds she was already there.

I ended up going through fast-track AB - with the blue card and splitting words up for her - and insisting that she didn't guesses. It slowly transferred more and more to normal reading - even now she guesses at times - though spent fair bit of time splitting and sounding out words up with her there as well.

She is now working through book C. She is doing apple and pears spelling books as well - her spelling was atrocious - and it does seem to be all coming together a bit more - she'll break longer words down now rather than guess them as much.

It does take time - it's like a bad habit that still crops up every now and again. Good luck.

[DazzleU]

I tell him not to guess but to sound out but he gets confused because school say it's fine to guess!

I've had this argument - but try and avoid it it by splitting the words up into sounds so they can blend it together and getting them to focus on that.

It's annoying me at the minute youngest is doing great at reading - but will still sound words out occasionally - she coming under pressure at school not to do that - their solution is to encourage guessing the words so her reading flow is better .

I'm plugging away with at home with dancing bears and trying to get her to sound out under her breath and ignore all the guessing stuff.