Ds can’t/ won’t read

[Howmanysleepsnow]

Ds is 6 (year 2 but August born) and can’t read. He’s on stage 3 books (Oxford) and sounds out words but often still can’t recognise them. He’s very reluctant to read at home and often refuses as he “can’t do it”. He won’t even try to sound out words on signs/ in games anymore. His hearing is ok, according to the screening, but he can’t tell the difference between end and start sounds in words day to day (eg 14 and 40). He had speech therapy for the frequent mispronunciation of start/ end sounds and was able to recognise and replicate in sessions. He’s discharged now: partly due to improvement, partly because he hated it and stopped trying/ engaging.
How do I help him when he won’t try at home? Apparently he tries hard in school and is a hard worker and really conscientious, but at home he refuses. I have a meeting with his teacher next week at my request. What do I ask for? He already gets extra small group support.

I said English is compl3x
There are 44 sounds in English (depending on accent) and only 26 letters in the alphabet so we can't have a straightforward 1-1 correspondence as in some other languages.
In English a sound can be spelled with one, two, three or four letters
The same spelling can be represented by different spellings
The same spelling can represent different sound.
None of this means that it's illogical and can't be taught.
In good quality phonics instruction children are taught the different ways sounds can be represented and the different sounds represented by each spelling and how to apply this knowledge "logically"

@Norestformrz I’m curious. What’s your background? You seem very knowledgeable. Do you have specific advice/ recommendations?

How long ago was the modern system of phonics introduced into schools, does anybody know?

I'm a teacher and a SENCO

Prior to the introduction of a National Curriculum 1988 every school was free to teach what and how they wanted and most taught phonics although it was usually taught as "sound of the week" (so much slower) and taught alphabetically. Oxford Reading Tree mixed methods had been published around this time and was the fashionable thing.
Then the National Literacy Strategy 1997 introduced something called Searchlights (mixed methods) so Look and Say was common. The DfE published Progression in Phonics in 1999, Playing with Sounds in 2004 and Letters and Sounds in 2007, but most schools continued with mixed methods until 2012 when the Phonics Screening Check was introduced.

Start by making reading fun. Play word recognition game using flash cards. Look at book find some of the words on fist two or three pages and go through with child before they read book. On e they can recognise these words go to book to read. It will be less daunting for them. Only read four pages of Berk at once. Praise a lot. When focussing on flash card words make it into game etc set on in 3 X 3 square and say can you read one word from top row, then one from middle, one corner word etc. Make a fuss clap if he gets it right. Keep telling him he is clever. before starting game read all words to child. Consider your child may turn out to be dyslexic. School can test for this when child is 7. Read stories to your child a lot. Point to words as you read. Ask child questions about story. Can they predict what will happen, why do they think character did that etc. Don't give up on child or let them see you are distressed. Be calm, set aside 30 mins for reading to your child/word games every day and lots of praise.

Don’t do this ⬆️
Your ds is struggling with hearing the sounds in words, so this is the area that needs attention. If you start teaching him to recognise whole words, not sound them out, then he will struggle for much longer then if you/the school take the time now to fill in the foundation skills he needs for reading. He might be dyslexic, or might not, either way he still needs to learn to hear, blend, segment the sounds in words in order to become a successful reader.
I know whole word recognition seems logical, and indeed the child might make some initial progress with their ‘reading’, but if they can’t sound out the new words that they encounter when they are reading then they can never been an independent reader because they will always need someone around to tell them what the new words say.

I'll second that!

My eldest son sounds very similar. At about that age we did behavioural optometry (although I am still not convinced that it is a load of nonsense but we were desperate!), school did one of the 'bear necessities' range, and we did toe by toe at home. He made 18 months progress in 9 months. However he still had not caught up and still was struggling. We paid for a private dyslexia test and school got an educational psychologist. He was diagnosed as having dyslexia (in addition to other specific learning difficulties) and has received support throughout his schooling.

No matter what the reading approach he is dyslexic and will always be dyslexic. He is just learning different strategies and utilising technology to help become more independent.

When it came to reading we had a two pronged approach. Firstly reading alternate pages / lines / paragraphs etc to enable him to keep up his interest and take off the pressure. Secondly lots of access to audio books or having books read to him. Due to this although his reading accuracy is still very poor his comprehension, vocabulary, knowledge of how stories work, etc is very good. He does better than expected on some reading tests because he makes very educated guesses on the answers!

In contrast ds2 also really struggled to learn to read and in year 1 was in the 'cause for concern' group. However he had the lightbulb moment at the beginning of year 2 and now is an exceptional and avid reader. He is now 11 years and his reading age is 15yrs.

.

Norestformrz,
There are 44 sounds in English (depending on accent) and only 26 letters in the alphabet. True.
...so we can't have a straightforward 1-1 correspondence as in some other languages. We could, but we don't. But not because of a shortage of letters.
In English a sound can be spelled with one, two, three or four letters
Yes, like ch, sh, ou, ough.
The same spelling can be represented by different spellings ???
I think you mean different spellings for a sound, like for /ee/ in 'speak, speech, preach, priest...'
The same spelling can represent different sound.
Your are right about that, but no other language that uses the same 26 letters does, like 'does, shoes, goes'. And that's what makes learning and teaching to read English much harder than all others.

None of this means that it's illogical and can't be taught.
To most people that's very illogical. But it can be taught. It just takes much, much longer.
In good quality phonics instruction children are taught the different ways sounds can be represented and the different sounds represented by each spelling. Sure. But there is no way that this can be applied "logically"* - not to not to learning to read ‘shout, should, shoulder’ or to spell ‘food, rude, shrewd…’.
Kids learn them one by one, with years and years of practice.

Actually, kids learn them at a rate of around 3 a week, starting in Reception. This quickly builds to the 150ish correspondences that exist.

An average Y1 child’s phonic knowledge would easily surpass yours, gran75 - not wishing to be rude, that’s just a fact.

Op your gp can refer your child for an auditory assessment which is different from a general hearing assessment. At home, I would take the pressure off for a bit. Use prediction to help him read and enjoy his school readers I.e. you read part of a sentence and he predicts the missing word. E g. If I read Every Friday as a treat we have fish and ..... You would predict what? as the next word. Please come back to let us know how things progress.

Kids don't learn spelling OR reading one by one.
But there IS a lot to learn in English.
I believe French is similar (and they start maternelle really young there too).

Phonics - knowing which letters/letter combination could be making that sound - and hearing sounds in words all play into spelling as well.

My children's spelling problems have been even more persistant that reading and there seems less support and understanding for them - DS is actually the best speller - once his reading was on track we did the apple and pear books.

Many of my own spelling problems are down to poor phonics teaching it was time of whole word teaching- for years words I wrote were strings of seemingly random internal letters which could and did get swapped around in ways that once you see phonic groups make no sense.

Reading is decoding - spelling is encoding - phonics is needed for both.

Loki you are right but I was taught completely by look and say. However,our brains can make inferences without direct teaching e.g. brain, rain, gain ah so ain sounds like ayn. Hope that makes sense.

However,our brains can make inferences without direct teaching e.g. brain, rain, gain ah so ain sounds like ayn. Hope that makes sense.

I think I was probably in that approximate 20% who probably would have benefited from direct teaching. But I must have decoded something else I wouldn't have made any progress with reading.

I struggled with reading till mid primary then spelling through to University when I was finally diagnosed with an educational psychologists with dyslexia.

I think explictly teaching DS phonics meant he actually learnt to read and understand how words are put together - rather than stumble along like I did.

Certainly our youngest has benefitted with us helping with spelling - her teachers are amazed but all her progress in last 12 months - but helping her with spellig means less effort is spent on just spelling when writing so she has more to spend in other areas.

I completely agree that a child with dyslexia needs to be taught using phonics.

All children benefit from learning phonics, but some will race ahead and not need to be taught phonics in quite such a structured way.

I'm not sure what point you're making Mammajay.

I only posted on the thread becuase it sounded like DS - who was like me - I had glue ear and speech therapy in early school years.

I don't think guessing reading words helped DD1 - it was a bad habit school taught her and took years to break - we ended up having to do phonics at home anyway even after she made progress in reading beacuse she needed it for spellings.

I'm fully aware something like 80% of child learn to read with any method - my point was helping with hearing sounds in words now and using phonics to do that may well help with future spelling.

Howmanysleepsnow is perfectly free to ignore my posts and I wish her luck in finding something that helps as I'm very aware how worrying it is to be in this situation.

Rote learning the high frequency words is what made the difference for DS1. That made accessing the rest of the story more achievable for him. Good luck, I understand how frustrating it is.

By year 2 in dcs school if you couldn’t read or write anything then apart from 10 minute reading to a TA there really was little that they did to help.

By year 3 you were given homework and if you couldn’t do it then you were kept in each break and lunchtime till you had completed the homework
This involved Ds staring at a blank sheet of paper for the duration of every break.

I ended up HE and going back to basics with him. We went to the library and got the very basic reading books and every day we sat down and read a book. I then noted which words (at the start all of them) he couldn’t read.

I then typed them up in large print and printed them off, cut them into individual “flash cards” and went through them with him

By the end of the day he had identified each word.

The following day I would go through them again and if he got them first time I would put those words in a separate folder.

Do the same with the reading book etc then at the end of the week reintroduce the previous weeks words and if he got them right first time I would throw them in the bin.

It took him a year for him to be able to read quite slowly
Reading didn’t click till he was 12

No amount of writing practice helped

He was diagnosed with dyslexia and dysgraphia when he was 16

SweepTheHalls,
Rote learning the high frequency words is what made the difference for DS1. It does for all children. When they no longer struggle with any of the 300 or so most used words, their reading always improves dramatically. Half of those have regular spellings and cause no problems anyway, but 100-140 are pretty nasty. I think that for any child that struggles with reading more than most, it's a good idea to concentrate on teaching those as quickly as possible - englishspellingproblems.blogspot.com/2019/01/worst-reading-problems.html

www.spelfabet.com.au/2015/08/reorganising-high-frequency-word-lists/

Loki..no point. I was agreeing that most children benefit from some phonics and children with dyslexia always benefit from phonics.