teachers and experienced parents?

[strictlovingmum]

DD Y1 recently moved on to the next level in reading, and finding it little trickier.
My first question is;
How much of the new book she should find unfamiliar/tricky?
Is it usual to struggle with words such as: downstairs, however, everywhere, playroom?
If I help her break these longer words into two she reads them no problem, but as a whole she is unable to read them fluently.
TIA

It sounds like the level my Y1 DD is on. And one of the "objectives" for the level is to be able to break up longer words. I think it's always hard at first when you move up the level, if you keep encouraging her and showing her what to do she'll probably get the hang of it very soon!

Hi strictlovingmum:

I agree with redskyatnight and also found this an extremely painful stage with both DDs. Our school kind of left us to it - so we also adopted a method of breaking up longer words:

So downstairs - teaching them to see down and then stairs and then say them together.

However - teaching them to see How and then ever and then say them together.

We made it a game out home. UH-OH Tricky word. Now do we see any smaller words - let see there's up and stairs. Can you see that. Yes - so let's try and sound out that tricky word....

I started off pointing out smaller words but after several weeks - started to ask if my DD could see the smaller words. This seemed to crack it. It can take several weeks/ months - this stage.

when you get on to multiple syllable words - that's another bump - but then have them sound out in bits or write in to MN again!

Good luck!

My DS can't read everything in his book but you often see that the word is repeated so you get the chance to help and then they can have a go. If it's a reading scheme it will most probably be repeated in the next book as well (i.e oxford reading tree).

My tip for breaking workings down is to have a good understanding of phonics yourself.

You are right downstairs is a compound word down-stairs but most yr1's will have covered the sounds d-ow-n-s-t-air-s. Hope this helps a little.

Teachers feel free to correct me :)

p.s h-ow-e-v-er

Okay you just made me check my old notes from reading intervention. If a child is reading independently they need to be reading 96% of words correctly. For instruction it needs to be 90-95% correct. If it is below 90% they will be frustrated.
You can check this by counting 100 words and seeing how many mistakes they make in it.

Sometimes my kids have got so good at a previous level, that when moved onto a new one they rush and make mistakes. However, try to count to 6 before interferring (or longer if you can), tell her to ask if she needs help.
Also most people do not read fluently on first reading. Eg. if I was reading in Church I would practice beforehand.

To progress with their reading a child should read at instructional level where they will find approx. one in twenty words challenging.

Comprehension of the story should still be good but the challenge should help them to develop their reading and vocabulary.

If a child is struggling with more than approx. five words in a hundred then the book is too difficult for them and will lead to frustration.

Crossed posts with mummytime

Thank you all for replies, she is generally good and gets majority of the words, but as I said in OP she did get confused with compound words which I think is probably normal at this stage, she tends to rush it and sometimes guess the word, but when she slows down she pays attention and reads the word correctly.
Her comprehension is also good she likes discussing what she read, and particularly now that the books are getting more interesting, there is element of excitement and danger in them, so there is more to talk about.
I think teacher placed DD on the right level for her and in the book of this current level there maybe very few words DD will not read automatically, very few she has to sound out first.

I don't know whether it would be acceptable when reading "for school", but what I used to do with my DS was ask him before he started reading whether he wanted help this time or wanted to work words out for himself. If he wanted help, then any time he hesitated I'd tell him what the word he'd hesitated on was. If he wanted to work words out for himself, I'd only help him on a word if he asked me to. Often he wanted to do it himself, but I thought it was nice to give him the option of going for the frustration-free experience if he felt like it. Reading's supposed to be fun, after all, and I don't always feel like struggling either...