do I trust the teacher or trust my instincts

[Chocolotta]

This is a weird one, probably - or that's how it seemed when I talked to DS's teacher.

DS is in Y1, and his teacher says he's good at literacy. He's above average on the reading book levels too - they don't have book bands at school, but he's reading books from the Y2 classroom.

My worry, is that whenever DS reads at home, he can barely get a sentence out. He's very quick at reading, and I think he reads by memorising whole words rather than by phonics, because he often struggles with new words and just reads an approximation (sometimes not even starting with the same letter) and carries on even if it doesn't make sense. He skips words and adds others in practically every sentence. Every time I hear him read at home, he does this. He makes 4 or 5 mistakes on every page, even mixing up a and the, or when and then. I have written about it in DS's reading diary, and I do correct DS as he goes along, but it gets so dispiriting for him after a page or so where I've stopped him in every sentence.

Anyway, I let him read his book a few days ago without me correcting him, and noted down all the mistakes in his reading book - they ran to a couple of hundred. After he'd finished, DS had no idea what the book was about.

So DS's teacher talked to me after school today, and said DS's reading was above average, like an 8-year old, and at school he didn't have any problems and I might want a new reading diary for him in case other parents who heard him read, read what I'd written. So I went away feeling (a) I am a horrible parent criticising my child like this and (b) I am imagining problems that aren't there.

I know I'm not imagining the fact that DS finds it hard to read accurately when he's with me. I'm embarrassed that the teacher thought I was being so critical (and possibly unhinged) on this.

What should I do? Go with the flow, and just hope the problem will sort itself out? The teacher didn't want to move him to easier books. I worry that DS has a problem reading, but it's masked by the fact that he's quite bright and has memorised tons of words already, he just can't make the step to fluent reading because he can't handle new words, and he goes too fast for himself.

Very interesting thread. I recognize some of the symptoms of the fast reading, making mistakes etc with DS who is Reception age but also ahead in his reading for his age. He perhaps doesn't make as many mistakes as the op's son but certainly exchanges what's on the page for something different sometimes.

Unlike pp I don't think he's dyslexic but I think he generally wants to know what's happening in the story so rushes ahead. He doesn't like stopping for words he doesn't know and luckily (I think?!) there aren't many of these at the stage he is reading at. I do get him to stop and sound the word out if it's a new word and found myself stressing the importance of this to him yesterday. For him I think his brain/comprehension skills are a bit behind his decoding skills so I'm hesitant for him to read much harder books than he already is- I think he'll stay at the level he's got to for a while which is fine. Technically I think he would cope (it's rare he sounds out a word on current level), but I think he would struggle with the comprehension and not have the stamina for a longer story in one go.

So if I was OP I would go back to an easier book, stress the importance of accuracy to DS, read a bit less- perhaps only half the story a night? And ask questions either as you go along to slow him down, or at the end if he wants to keep going with the story. Also point out the phonics in any tricky words, model them and see if your DS picks up on it.

DS also had a slight stammer at 2/3 when his brain was faster than his mouth . I think this is the reading equivalent, or could be!

Chocolatta:

I don't know about the dyslexia - but as others have suggested that may be a possibility.

However, both my DDs (neither of whom are dyslexic) exhibited similar behaviour in KS1. Our solution was to do the school guided reading books, but to also include our own and old favourites. We would gradually work on sounding out and getting frequently missed words correct.

DD2 (now Y2) still tends to skip, sometimes whole passages, when encountering a difficult word/ words in a text. So our solutions have been to ensure regular home reading (after bath-time works best for us) - and to 'take turns' but to stress accuracy. We did't overkill it - but just kept working on the read every word there thing and helping where we needed. Gradually we've been helping less and less and DD2 seems to be working her way through this phase of 'skipping' words.

DH came up with a lovely game which was to have DDs follow his reading and catch him when he added words or said the wrong word. They had great fun catching Daddy being naughty.

The funny thing I've noticed with both DDs (currently Y2 & Y4) is they are completely uninterested/ unconcerned if they don't know the meaning a word. Maybe it was just me, but I was always asking what does this word mean - so much so my Mum bought me a children's dictionary; I think it was intended to take some of the pressure off her to define every word I encountered.