Strategies to improve reading skills for an 8 year old

[GuestBook]

DD reads out loud with me once or twice a week (she also reads to herself every day). I'm noticing that while her vocabulary and decoding ability is improving, she has some bad habits. I need help to figure out what's going on, and how I can help her improve.

She tends to either skip or misread small words ('then' and 'when' often mixed up; 'He stood up and turned to her' might become 'He stood and turned to her'; 'She was running over the grass' might become 'She was running on the grass).

She will 'guess' at an unfamiliar word, and only sometimes then realise her guess was wrong and go back and decode it properly. Today she saw an unfamiliar word and read it as 'obvious'. I had her go back and decode the word properly. She correctly read 'oblivious'.

If the unfamiliar word is outside her vocabulary - as oblivious was - she will often fail to ask what it means. She'll just move on.

I should say that she CAN decode perfectly well. When she reads a word incorrectly, she can go back to it and decode it in one or two tries.

I should also mention that she has strabismus and her eyes do not track together. I have no idea if that's relevant!

I'd be grateful for any insights and strategies!!

Bumping.

Many children who eventually make the sort of errors which u describe eventually become fluent readers - with practice. But her strabismus may be impeding this, and most people probably don't know much about it (I don't) and so accounts for the lack of responses.

Hi - ex TA here :

I had never heard of it either. We had two young brothers in school whose eyes 'flickered' from side to side, but I'm not sure how much it affected them.

May be this will help, unless you already seen it :

www.strabismus.com/

To me your dd's reading sounds fine! I have a 9.5yo who CANNOT read alone AT ALL because of the energy she has to put in and visual problems, and missing out so many crucial words. She hates reading and will do ANYTHING to avoid it. It is a source of low self-esteem and much upset for her. In the main, she listens to audio books instead.

By contrast, your daughter sounds like she enjoys reading, goes back to revisit when things don't make sense, uses context to discover new words and can decode independently when needed. She also sounds like she has a great vocabulary, which is being developed through reading. She is very young and with practice sounds to me (not a professional mind) like she is WELL on the way to reading success!

How did you find out about the strabismus?

HW xx

Ferguson - eyes flickering is called nystagmus, and it does affect reading.

Handywoman - you need to get your child checked out by a behavioural optometrist if you can afford it. An awful lot of vision problems are correctable with vision therapy.

GuestBook and Handwoman - this eye tracking program may help your children's reading.

This sounds normal. Explain that she needs to learn some extra/more grown up ways of reading as she needs to extend her repertoire of skills.

The mixing up of similar words means she is beginning to develop a sight vocabulary. She is probably relying on the shape of the word. If she does it with 'blendable' words, take her back and highlight the sounds in the word. If it's a 'sight' word that needs memorising then it needs to be made interesting/different/explicit to be remembered. For example the words 'said'. I highlight that the letters in the middle are 'grotty graphemes' (a la Read, Write Inc.). You could use silly sounds, etc. We read it over, we say the sound in silly voice, we write it in fun ways to help commit it

I don't know much about the eye condition but theses techniques help most kids!

IndigoBell, thanks, we have seen a behavioural optometrist as my dd is Dyslexic. She had glasses to improve 'convergence insufficiency' and now has tinted glasses to help with visual stress. I was a bit skeptical about behavioural optometry testing though, because I don't believe there is a way to truly separate the cognitive/neurodevelopmental issues from the visual symptomatology, nobody can put their hand on heart and tell chicken from egg here. It is more a case of 'what works'. In our case the problem seems fairly intractable!

Thanks for posting the vision exercise program. Does it work? I am always wary of these programs you can buy on the internet! Have you used it? Who is behind it?

I would give my eye teeth to have a 9yo with reading skill even approaching that of GuestBook, although of course it is completely natural to have concerns...

HW
x

If you want to help your DDs dylseixa you have to do lots and lots and lots.

My DD had fairly severe dyslexia - ie start of Y3 could not spell a single word correctly, and could only read (very slowly) CVC words.

These are the things we've done which have improved her dyslexia:

• Gone Dairy Free
• Gone Gluten Free
• Loads and loads and loads of supplements
• Computerised Vision therapy (including that program I linked to)
• Auditory Integration Therapy
• Tinsley House - which is a Neurodevelopment therapy.

Things we did which didn't work

• Behaviour Optomterist
• Retained reflex therapy

Although both of those things work for some kids with dyslexia

So you are quite right, you have to fix the neurodevelopment problems as well as the vision and auditory and dietary problems. But you can fix it.

Wow, thank you so much to everyone.

To be honest, I don't know how much the strabismus is impacting the reading (if at all). I suspect it is.

Handywoman We have been back & forth to Moorfields Eye Hospital since she was 3. My MIL (a teacher) was actually the first to notice it, and we had her referred from there. She was diagnosed right away. It could not be corrected, but patching meant she retained near-perfect vision in both eyes, although they don't work as a unit! If untreated, the brain can 'switch off' the vision in the weaker eye.

cherrypieplum thanks for the technique. I do think she needs more practice and a reminder to go back to basics on the synthetic phonics techniques. She likes to read, actually, and can tell me the plotline and the funny bits in a story she's read to herself. So I know she's understanding at least most of what she reads. I just think she's needs to read more carefully, and I'm finding it hard to get her to do that.

IndigoBell Thank you for the suggestions - I have PM'ed you.