Reading Accuracy

[BrilliantDayForTheRace]

What's the best way to improve accuracy in a not very good Y5 reader?

DD generally (but not always) makes sense of what she reads, but she reads really badly. She might say 'the girl hops and jumps' but what was written is 'the girl hopped and jumped' so it makes sense, but isn't right.

If you are hearing her read, do it at a table and run a pencil along the top of the words she is reading, as she is reading them. When she makes a mistake, the pencil doesn't move on until she has self-corrected. Don't be afraid to have her go slowly, if necessary. A reading ruler can be helpful too. I'm sure others will have more ideas.

I would also draw her attention to where she is wrong. So if she says hops instead of hopped point to the end of the word and say if this was hops there would be a here us there? Then get her to read the word correctly.

That's funny! My DS does the same thing & posters said that they would be very concerned & that he had obviously had terrible phonics teaching, etc. We are just kind of soldiering on. Coaxing DS to read more carefully seems to be the only thing we can try to do.

I have this problem with ds1 (age 7, year 2).
He's a decent reader, good level, excellent comprehension and recall but he gets so many words wrong.

He leaves the plural off all the time so reads 'the girl' instead of 'the girls', he'll frequently add in random words like 'then they went...' when 'then' isn't there, reads Mrs as Miss, says 'a' when the word is 'the' etc.

He gets really irritated when I stop him though, but he's been this way for a good year.

Is it just laziness/lack of concentration? Something that will click?

@escondida

I think your child sounded a bit more extreme! And careless reading can indeed be a result of poor phonics teaching. It is also often a consquence on their teaching focussing on 'meaning' over accuracy. Whatever its cause it is not a Good Thing as it affects meaning, especially as texts get more complex, and impairs the automatic sounding and blending process which establishes words in long term memory.

I don't know if this will help posters whose children get cross about being forced to correct, but I used to turn it into a competition between me & the child. Child got a point for every sentence read accurately; I got a point for every word read inaccurately. I never won! This just works towards establishing a habit of reading accurately.

Of course, if the school isn't bothered about accuracy you will be fighting a bit of an uphill battle

Love your points game maizie, I'll be trying that! We're finding DS reads worse the easier the book is. My theory is his eyes rush ahead of his mouth then he's repeating from memory rather than actually reading as he goes along. Is there a particular way teachers teach children to look at a sentence? Presumably they do need to look ahead in order to read the sentence with correct inflection, but then go back and follow word by word?

my dd does this as she tries to read out loud as fast as she does in her head. I have started a technique of I read, we read, she reads...this helps to slow her. I also saw a a clip on you tube about teaching children to push their thumb amd finger together when seeing comma, full stop etc again just to be mindful to pause momentarily.