Reading - tracking lines and missing out words - normal?

[survivingspring]

My dd is 5 and reads quite well. However I've noticed that as she's become more fluent and we've moved onto chapter books she is starting to miss out words and has some difficulty following onto the next line. Is this normal as they progress?

The reason for my concern is partly because she has SN and was assessed a year ago by an OT who said she thought she might have visual processing difficulties. If this is the case does anyone know what can be done to help her?

well I think it is worth getting it checked out. My 5 year old suddenly started doing this when she got to level 7 and the font got smaller and more text. She also started skipping full stops claiming she couldn't see them (I didn't believe her and told her she was just not concentrating). Then when spelling out new words I realised she often missed out a section in them and if I mentioned 'what about the d?' she would look puzzled and say 'what d?'. This coupled with the fact she complained about the white board at school and then I realised that she could read some story books that were much much harder than level 7 but which were on a coloured background (where she did notice all punctuation etc and they weren't books she knew) made me suspicious that there was more to it. I spoke to her teacher who asked the school SENCO and she suggested a particular opticians with a vision therapy department. So we went to them and ended up getting my daughter coloured glasses. She only got them in the holidays but the difference is astonishing. She now reads chapter books! her stamina has easily increased at least 5 times what it was, she notices punctuation, she has stopped rubbing her eyes and rocking to and from the page, she does expression etc without thinking about it. just a different child with her reading.

in the test they get them to read a load of random words and note mistakes, missed words or lines etc as well as time them. then they change the colours then get them to reread it noting everything again. First time my daughter missed words out all over the place and almost every other line. second time she missed one word but self corrected and then missed the next line but I think that was due to her self correcting the mistake towards the end of the previous line. she also read it all much quicker.

I think I would say speak to the teacher and SENCO and see what they suggest. We went straight to coloured glasses rather than overlays because the primary issue at first was the white board contrasts, the reading has been a happy incidental discovery really.

Many young children do have problems tracking so it isn't necessarily an indicator and it would be more common as text gets smaller and closer together but equally it sounds like more than that if it is just starting and they thought she may have a problem anyway so I think you need to get it checked out.

the place we went to also do tracking tests and can then give exercises to help train them to keep in control of it but we are hoping that the glasses might be making enough of a difference that we might not need that. I would rather leave it until the summer holidays if possible just for logistical reasons with fitting it in.

Thanks that's really helpful

I didn't realise you could have a specific test for it so will try to find out where we could go locally.

The OT actually dismissed the results of the test as there had been no obvious difficulties and she was tired when she took the test. From what you say though it might be worth further investigation.

It's been hard to tell as she made a huge leap in reading recently and its hard to know what is normal when fluency increases! I can't remember what happened with DS at the same stage

I think all of them are different. If they have had a big leap then they often do then plateau whilst they consolidate everything but as there has been a possible issue raised in the past it is worth checking.