Help! Almost free reader but guessing many words; phonics too 'clunky' at this stage

[Newt]

My dd is nearly eight and nearly a 'free' reader in terms of the books she gets from school (Copper book band, level 12). However, when she comes to a word she does not know, eg aeroplane, she guesses wildly (there was even a picture of it in the text 'True Life Survival' but she did not 'get it'. I try to suggest that she sounds out the word, but at this stage, it ruins the flow for her and being a reluctant reader, I can see that the phonic method of sounding out puts her off reading as it is slow. Aeroplane does not sound out easily either, so I told her the word during her reading. This is what I am tending to do, to correct her guess in order for her to keep the flow going. Should I force her to sound out and risk her losing interest in reading..(this happened about a year ago so I stopped forcing her) Not sure what to do...will she get these word eventually with repeated exposure or do I bite the bullet and slow her down with sounding out? All thoughts appreciated

Newt

My dd is nearly eight and nearly a 'free' reader

she has gone from practically no reading to this stage in one year

Are you saying that aged 'nearly 7' she was hardly reading at all? I would not call that a late starter, I would think there was some other reason (possibly eye related) that was holding her back. Did she learn phonics for 3 years, yet remain unable to read? Can she blend all the phonic sounds to read nonsense words without picture clues? Sorry for all the questions but imo it's unusual to make such progress in one year having not been able read much at all for the previous 3 years.

Yes 3 years pretty much unable to read, apart from the odd word recognised in high fequency words etc. She did do phonics at school, but I can't say how effective it was. However, she started on ORT books (Floppy and Biff) with picture clues. I did an intensive program of RWI books with her over 2010 summer holidays to try and bring her up to speed. This seemed to work..we covered a lot of ground over a couple of months, say level 2 to level 5.