DS, year 2, has plateaued in reading, could you advise me?

[BumsOnSeats]

Ds is 6.4, and is doing ok at school. He is pretty average (not the usual MN type, I know!), but as a summer born boy who is pretty immature, I am fine with that.

However, he seems to be stuck with reading. He is on Orange level on a phonics-based scheme, and has been since the second half of the summer term (although reading Stage 8 on ORT at home). I would say Orange was the right level for him atm, but he doesn't seem to be going forwards at all.

He appears to prefer sight reading to using phonics, and while he has good comprehension, is still not self-correcting when he makes mistakes. More worryingly, as he isn't using his phonic knowledge, he seems to be forgetting it. I tried him on a few sounds recently (ear, ee, ph etc) and he couldn't tell me their sounds, although he can read tricky words with them in if he recognises the word.

I mentioned this to his teacher, who said that his phonics were fine, and he just needs to practice. We read together about 4 times a week (but I only have non-phonic ORT at home, and he only gets one phonic book a week from school), and he does guided reading once every 3 weeks at school. I think he needs to go backwards before he can forwards iyswim, but how to do it? He bristles at the idea of doing the phonic sounds and actions, as he sees it as babyish. He is fine with single sounds, and the obvious sh, th type sounds, but really does seem lost on the more complicated/less frequent ones.

So, how to heklp him at home if school won't do any work with him on phonics there? They ran two ELS groups last year and I asked if he could be included but they said he didn't need it...

You could use Dancing Bears to re-teach him to read using phonics if you wanted......

Thanks Indigo, but I was hoping for free tips . I guess I need a way to get him to relearn phonics, but in a more sophisticated way than just Jolly Phonics which he deems babyish. He is fine with the sight words he knows or can guess, but is stumped with new words as he just isn't employing any phonic strategies. This is obviously going to limit his progress.

He doesn't learn that well with me tbh, I would prefer it if school would take the lead as he tends to be more sensible there. Maybe he DOES use phonics there, which is why they don't see the problem .

You son is my DD!!! also year 2 and 6.5 years. She is on stage 7 but has found reading plodding at times.

I'm no expert but I found that she left year 1 on level 6 and really quite reluctant. We read loads over the summer and did the library summer reading challenge. She loved the short term rewards for reading books and she loved choosing new books each visit.

I noticed her improvement as soon as we got a new ORT book at the start of term and she quickly went up to stage 7.

I'm guessing what I'm saying is that sometimes it just doesn't seem like much is happening but suddenly there's a step up and the next step clicks into place. Keep going, however depressingly drudging it seems to be.

www.oxfordowl.co.uk/Library/Index/?AgeGroup=3&Series=Project%20X www.oxfordowl.co.uk/Library/Index/?AgeGroup=4&Series=Project%20X have a look at Project X

I think many children are attracted to what is easy when they are reading. That is why the old ORT books are attractive to some children - lots of repeated text and the ability to guess what the words are by looking at the pictures. I'd be inclined to go back to the school and find out if the "1 book a week" thing is a rule or if you can go and change his decodable books more often.

I agree Riverside, reading from lots of different types of books is really important to counter act the repeating common words and phrases ort use.

Could choosing library books and then having a reward chart help his motivation?

Thanks for all replies

mrz - link looks great. Just DS's sort of thing.
RiversideMum - yes, just 1 book a week, no more. I have asked! We don't get books at halfterm either, or if they are sick on Fridays!
MigratingCoconuts - I agree about variety of books too. DS is not motivated by rewards charts though, and our library doesn't have much choice at all of books that he can read himself . I tried to get him to do the challenge this summer but he really didn't want to.

I still hope there may be some remedial phonics resources I can use to improve his basic knowledge...

The 1 book a week a thing is shocking. We've always had 2 (at least, on the go & apart from very early on when they need to read & reread you can swap whenever you need to).

I actually noticed the very same thing in my dd1 this afternoon. She was reading a book that had a lot of unfamiliar but mostly phonetic words in it but she just wouldn't sound them out, even when I asked & then told her to! She actually said, "I don't need to sound out anymore mummy, I'm getting older you know," (she's 6 & in year 1 but just moved into a predominately year 2 class). They do seem to get to a point where they think they don't need phonics anymore & that it's babyish. I then asked her how she thought I'd read a word I'd never seen before & when I told her I'd sound it out in my head, she looked amazed, but I think it has helped her realise there's nothing childish about it. Perhaps if you explained to your ds that phonetics is actually one of the most logical ways to approach reading he'd be more receptive. I have told my dd1 that there's no harm sounding out in her head rather than out loud but I think I'm going to have do more work on it. In the end I couldn't take any more of the random guessing & said we'd do more tomorrow!

DS (6.5) is the same. On Orange level (Rigby Star) since end of last year. I feel his reading has improved and his teacher says so too. DS is a reluctant reader, I have tried all sorts of things. I can just about make him read his school book (once) and then we plough our way through the ORT books on Oxford Owl (he likes Biff & Chip best).

Since summer we read levels ORT levels 7-9 which he reads well, apart from a couple of unknown words he needs help with, but we also get these words in the Orange level books. The only difference seems to be that DS reads the Orange books well in one go, whereas the ORT Level 9 books are longer and he can't read them in one go, and we sometimes have to re-read pages for comprehension.

I feel one Orange level book per week won't let him progress, on the other hand it might help him with his confidence - but that would be squashed quickly if he tried to read other books anyway.

You can show him how to break down the word, also point out words within words, sound out word together and then let him connect the sounds together to form word, also even if you get only 1 book read it every night,(I know this can be a little borring for us, the listener) if DS lets the teacher know he wants a change of book and that he is confident with it surely they'll swap it for him. I really think reading is confidence and practise, I think that maybe going back over phonics may not be the way to go but let him learn how you decode words, and follow your lead and also for you to read his reading book to him after he's finished reading the book, so he can hear it read fluently...maybe these things may help your DS as they have helped my DD.

I think you should let him read the way he feels comfortable. When DS struggles with a word, yes, I tend to break it down into parts or syllables, I just cover the first bit with my finger, then he can often work it out, e.g. read-ing, child-ish, know-ledge. I think phonic awareness will come later when they read better and compare words. I learned to read in a phonetic language (German) and learned English later in school, but was never aware that it was more difficult to read and write it.