year 2 weird reading habits

[escondida]

DS is 7 and reading okay or better, but he often misses out words, or inserts them. Sometimes his changes are the right meaning like maybe he read the line properly but rephrased it in his head according to other expectations. Other times he stumbles to continue the sentence because the word he missed out is essential for all the other words to make sense.

I know he reads by whole word so exactly becomes excellent etc. So I'm kind of used to it, but I thought by now he wouldn't add and take away so many words. It happens maybe once every 2 sentences, and he's good about taking correction. He still swaps 'and' for 'said' a lot, too.

Is this just something that some kids normally do? I try to get him to follow my finger so that he reads one word at a time (obv. not very effective). Is there some trick to help them stop the omissions & additions?

We had this issue with my DD, for her it seemed like she was just rushing ahead and would guess random words, put words in, take words out etc. it made the whole thing very frustrating because it felt like either we spent the whole time correcting her which is no fun, or she didn't understand the text (because she'd put random words in) and would get frustrated that it made no sense.
We got her to use a strip of paper under the line to keep track (finger pointing would have been better but she hated that). We started reading alternate pages, so she'd read one then we'd read one, to speed the story up a bit so she didn't have to rush herself.
And she had her eyes checked and now wears glasses.
I don't know if those made a difference or if she just outgrew it but she's now yr 4 and doesn't have any issues any more.

Most of the 7yo boys I know (DD is 8 and in Y3 so I know a reasonable number of them) have watched things along the lines of Star Wars or seen cartoons which feature spaceships etc. Genuinely, I would be really surprised if any of them didn't have some idea of what those words mean.

Sorry, the grin was for Feenie.

I read like this. I always struggled to read out loud as accuracy matters then. I think it's because I read fast - about 50% faster than DH. I struggled with phonics - though this wasn't as much of a focus when I was at school. If it's any help, it really hasn't been a problem for me.

Im afraid I would be very concerned if a child in my class displayed the reading difficulties you describe. What you describe isn't reading OK or better it's a struggling reader.

He needs to be encouraged to slow down and read what is actually there. Reading through the word left to right not guessing from the first part of the word. It's important he understands it's important to read accurately.

Using a card to cover the words, revealing it sound by sound can encourage some children to focus on the words.

I'd have gone for word by word before sound by sound. Then gone to sounds if that didn't work. Hopefully should be enough to slow him down.

Its worth getting your ds checked by an optometrist. There may be no problem, but what have you got to lose? I got my dd checked, and it showed that she had difficulties with tracking the words across the page, as well as other things. It also showed she was really bright, but not able to show that to her teacher, which in turn was holding her back. Theres no harm in getting him checked, if there is a problem you'll get help to support your ds with that, if there isn't, well you just lost a bit of time out of your life, thats it. She's the same age as your ds.

I would normally go word by word if I thought it was a tracking problem but the OP said he does things like read "excellent" when the word is "exactly", thus would suggest he is guessing from the initial part of the word ( whether he has been taught this as a strategy or just a habit isn't possible to say but I would suspect taught) so he needs to be taught to focus on reading through the word looking at all of it rather than saying a word he knows that starts in the same way.

haven't read through everything but have you tried talking to the teacher? that way you can try to implement what they do to ensure it's the same message at home and school.

reading should be really fun too! so try not to get too hung up on it, you want to be able to enjoy listening to him read and vice versa

My dd guesses words in that way as well as she's scanning over them so quickly. its part of her visual processing disorder.

Considering the substitution of similar looking words (your example challenge/change) I was thinking about this:

Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.

(not really any Cambridge research on this I believe, by the way)

What I see with my own DS is that he is pretty good at using phonics to decode words he doesn't know, but also by now he has accumulated quite a lot of words he does 'know' and no longer needs to 'decode'. However he is clearly still a beginner reader, and sometimes he encounters words where he THINKS he knows it, when in fact it is a different word that just looks similar to the word that he does know. Same first letter, same last letter, same or similar letters in the middle - like your challenge/change example. If he didn't 'know' change yet, he would approach challenge as a new word and decode it using his phonics. But as he thinks he recognises a known word he doesn't double-check by decoding, but just reads 'change' until he realises that it doesn't make sense.
It makes sense to me - I don't double check each word I read by sounding it out either, I only sound out new words (new to me). Only when something I read doesn't make sense do I check if I read it correctly. And I know that I read more precisely than most people (also more slowly). Therefore I don't worry much about this 'habit' of DS' and just encourage him to check if what he read makes sense and to reread if he got something wrong.

Regarding dropping words/introducing words that aren't on the page, I know it is not the same thing but it made me think of this little brain teaser:

Count the letters 'f' in the following sentence (lower case AND upper case)

Fin­ished files are the result of years of sci­en­tific study com­bined with the expe­ri­ence of years.

Very few people get the correct answer (first time round), which, incidentally, is six. (I got 5, so I am pretty clever ;) )

This goes to show that even when we are consciously LOOKING for something, our brain may skip over words.

Or, look at the first teaser on this page:
www.dailycognition.com/index.php/2008/08/13/7-illusions-illustrating-how-powerful-stupid-your-mind-can-be.html

I have got to admit that I got it wrong :)

So (just speculating here) I think when we ask beginner readers to read precisely every word on the page, we are asking them to do something that we do not do ourselves, despite regarding ourselves as accomplished readers.
I think it is still important to encourage beginner readers to read precisely, especially when they are 'reading to learn' (rather than 'reading for pleasure/enjoyment'). But just keep in mind that our brains apparently don't really work that way.

The Cambridge thing has been comprehensively debunked. We do find it more difficult to read because the letters are mixed up as the brain is unscrambling the anagrams. It's just doing it faster than you realise. It's more difficult to sort anagrams where the first and last letters are moved so we become more conscious that we are doing it. I think Cambridge did actually release that paragraph, but as a hoax rather than research. I'm not sure they expected quite so many people to fall for it.

I'm not sure I'd trust the 95% figures on those tests. These pop up on my FB all the time and the results are never anything like the quoted figures.

But as he thinks he recognises a known word he doesn't double-check by decoding, but just reads 'change' until he realises that it doesn't make sense.

That is fine if you have a child who expects what it reads to make sense.

The problem I found with KS3 children who exhibited the same reading habits as the OP's son was that they didn't actually appear to expect what they read to make sense! They would read about the first 2 or 3 words correctly then launch into all sorts of meaningless garbage if I didn't stop them! Of course, these were the ones who said they hated reading because it was boring. I can well believe that it was!

So, it really is worth nipping poor habits in the bud and expecting accuracy until accurate reading is well established (if you see what I mean).

The cognitive trickery that Meita references is really more on the level of a bit of 'fun', rather than a serious explanation of skilled reading habits.

Whoever perpetrated that flaming 'Cambridge research' actually needs shooting ! It keeps popping up in 'conversations' where you would have expected the person who refers to it to have had a bit more sense. Though it was very scaring when someone told me that a friend of theirs, a medical doctor, read it and never noticed anything amiss with it

Rafa that doesn't change the point, I think: As an accomplished reader, I notice right away that 'rscheearch' is all mixed up. I know that it isn't 'research'. I can still interpret it as 'research', because I know that this is what I'm meant to be doing. I can 'read' it whilst knowing that I'm not actually reading, knowing that what is actually written is a nonsense word, or perhaps a word I don't know.

My point is that a beginner reader will have some familiarity with some words, but not the same kind of instant absolute recognition that accomplished readers have. So if two words are similar enough for even us accomplished readers to be able to interpret one for the other if asked to (same letters, same first and last letter) it is easy for a beginner reader to think they recognise a known word, rather than realising that although it looks similar to a known word, it is a new word and thus needs to be decoded by sounding out.

Yeah DS expects what he reads to make sense - sometimes that can make it hard, if the text takes an unexpected turn, or follows a format he is unfamiliar with. He then tries to make the letters fit into what he thinks would make sense and I have to strongly remind him to look at the actual letters and sound them out.
Unless school gets their act together, he may well fail on the 'alien' words in the phonics test (it is still over a year away though). At the moment when he encounters a word he doesn't know, it is about 30-30-30: He sounds it out, then tries a different sounding (e.g. flow - /f/ /l/ /ou/ as in how, then /f/ /l/ /ow/ as in snow) and if it still doesn't mean anything to him, he'd either 1) ask me 'what does that mean?' or 2) gloss over it, assuming it is just a word he doesn't know yet and that it will become clear later in the story, or 3) substitute it with a word he does know but is not at all the word that is written.

That's really not how it works Meita. The sorts of behaviours that the OP is talking about are not usual especially not at the rate that she says they are happening. It is worrying because potentially this is going to hold him back a lot in all areas of the curriculum as he moves through the education system.

I have ben a volunteer reader for year 2 children. I would say quite a few of them guessed words that were similar rather than reading the actual word on the page. I would say "don't guess, look at the word" then help them break it down as per their phonics. Or I say "that doesn't sound right" to my daughter when she's guessing a word or skipping over in a sentence. Which she does in her keeness to keep going. However she does normally notice that it doesn't then make sense and will self correct.

I asked DS to be more careful and he has improved a lot, but I'm still uncomfortable with the additions & omissions Below some text DS read last night. I only corrected his mispronunciations at the time.

Strikethrough he left the word out.
Bold he added a word
Italics he said it wrong

========================
"As he was passing the newsagent's shop he saw a sign.
Jewels stolen
Diamond ring
Silver badge
Gold watch
Police baffled
'Aha!' cried Mr. Croc. 'My first mystery! I'll start looking for clues.'
Mr Croc walked on outside the jeweller's shop, he suddenly stopped. There in a crack in the wall something was glittering.
'Aha! Maybe it's the lost diamond ring.'
Croc knelt down and peered through his magnifying glass. 'No' he said. 'It's just a bit of silver foil.'
Just then Mrs. Poodle came out of the shop. She tripped over Mr Croc's big feet, and landed... 'Aaargh!' right on top of Mr Croc.
Her new clock flew out of her hands and went spinning into the air. Down it came into Mr Hound's arms. 'Lucky I was passing.'
Mrs Poodle picked herself up. 'What are earth are you doing, Mr Croc?' she said.
'Sorry, Mrs Poodle' replied Mr Croc. 'I was being a detective.'
'No, Mr Croc,' replied Mrs Poodle, crossly. 'You were being a nuisance.'

Mr Croc went on his way. As he and had Mr Hound were passing the park he noticed something else. There was a glove in the hedge.
'Aha!' said Mr Croc. 'Perhaps the it's a thief that left that behind. It could be a clue.'
Mr Hound started to warn Mr Croc, but it was too late. Mr Croc grabbed the glove and pulled.
Unfortunately, the glove belonged to a Mr Green, the park keeper... and his hand was still inside it. In a flash, Mr Croc pulled Mr Green halfway through the hedge.

‘Sorry, Mr Green’ said Mr Croc. ‘I was being a detective.’
‘No, Mr Croc,’ replied said Mr Green, crossly. ‘You were being a nuisance.’
Two magpies at the top of a nearby tree called out sharply. ‘Ka ka ka ka!’ Lower down, a pair of squirrels made a chattering noise. It sounded as if they were all laughing at Mr Croc.
‘My mystery solving isn’t going very well.’
‘Perhaps it would be better if you put an advert in the paper’ said Mr Hound. Mr Croc rushed to the newspaper office and gave them an advert.

Mr Croc’s Detective Agency.
Come to me if you ’ve got want to get a crime to solve. "

DS is now a free reader, but he still does all this funny stuff.

?