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.

Quick update. I downloaded teach your monster to read and reading eggs but he won’t engage yet. I met with his teacher earlier in the week. She agrees that start and end sounds seem to be the problem. I’m going to speak to his GP about a hearing test (in half term as he hates missing school!)
Because he tries hard in school she hadn’t realised how demoralised he was getting. We’ve introduced a reward system for reading 2 pages a night (previously lucky if he’d agree to do this a fortnight!) If he does 5 days he gets to pick the first activity for golden time.
He’s told me previously he’s “read” Horrid Henry books at wet play and was very enthusiastic about them (combination of pictures and his friends liking them I think). He’s been lent one by school to read at home after his reading book, which he was very excited about. He manages a page with support, then we alternate sentences for a page or 2, then I read him 5 or so more to get into the story. He actually told me at one point that he didn’t need my help as he can read! (He does need help, but no more than on his school reading book which is a lot easier!) I’m now thinking a lot of the barrier may have been psychological, plus lack of motivation, although he definitely still needs hearing checking. Hopefully he’ll gain momentum and manage to avoid feeling frustrated.
He’s also joining a small group doing work on vocabulary. His actual vocabulary is brilliant, but we hope it’ll help him focus more on the sounds in words, number of syllables etc.
His teacher is also going to read through the tasks in his school work and homework with him individually to help him get to the stage where he’s confident to decode and work more independently. She’s also going to look at the seating plan in class to see if he’s better right by her side to hear or further in front to see her lips move and if moving seats helps him focus better.

It sounds great that you have a plan. Sometimes it is about finding books that motivate them. It might be worth a trip to the library. There are some great early reader books which look like more grown up books but have lots of pictures on the page to break things up.

In the meantime, if you want to help him a bit more yourself, take on board some of the good advice on here by mums who managed to help their kids.

Oliversmumsarmy : going back to basics with him. ...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

SweepTheHalls 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.
Caringcarer ^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. Once they can recognise these words go to book to read. It will be less daunting for them.*

I said before, if you look at the words that he stumbles over, you will find that they nearly all have irregular pronunciations for some letters in them, like 'rough, through, ....'.

Please, please, please ignore this advice!

I seem to remember that glue ear can be intermittent and the test needs to be done when the child has glue ear or it won't be picked up.

@gran75 how do you support a child to read books like Harry Potter, The Hobbit or His Dark Materials? What is the child supposed to do when they come across a new word like quidditch, muggle, mithril or daemon - as they won’t have already memorised these from a list. Do they have to have an adult with them to tell them what it says?

Learning words as gran advices doesn't stimulate the areas of the brain best "wired" for reading.

Elisheva: What is the child supposed to do when they come across a new word like quidditch, muggle, mithril or daemon?
Decode them! 'Daemon' is a bit tricky, but kids learn very early on that names can have funny spellings. Only the 'ae' is a bit unusual.
In total, only about 1 English word in 4 poses decoding difficulties, and that mainly with vowels. And as lots of words have far more consonants than vowels (bring strong string...) teaching to decode those is absolutely essential. Phonics works beautifully with those and it's worth teaching to decode their ilk to the point of overteaching.
The problem in teaching young children to read is that among the 300 most used English words (google HF), nearly a third (121) are not so easily decodable (of, to, was, one, you...), but a few of them crop up on every page of even the simplest books and can stump and dishearten kids.
Teachers introduce them bit by bit as part of English phonics, and most kids take them in their stride with a bit of practice. But some don't.
By listening to their dc read, and noting the words that keep causing trouble, parents can help in the way that several mums have described. They shouldn't be learned without attention to any of their letters. They just need a bit more attention to their tricky bits and more practice than most words. Once kids can read the 100 or so tricky words pretty much on sight, as all fluent readers eventually do, their reading gets better, because they get stumped much less often.
You can find ca 140 tricky HF words which make the start of learning to read English harder than in most Latin-based languages on englishspellingproblems.blogspot.com/2019/01/worst-reading-problems.html

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I don’t quite understand the lists (from Englishspellingproblem). Would it not make more sense to group words according to phoneme rather than grapheme?
How does the child know if it is a word he can decode or a ‘tricky’ word he has to learn by sight?

My ds was the same. I got graphic novels for him. Ben 10 and star wars. I carried on reading bedtime stories. He just started reading as he wanted to know what they were saying in the books. By 10 he was a very proficient reader. He refused point blank to even try to read or write in years R and 1. He just wasn't interested.

I would suggest taking the stress out of reading - forget the reading books. Have fun! Play games like snap with words he knows, give him confidence! Let him win if need be.
Sit with an old magazine or newspaper and look for words such as 'and' (obviously give him the word). We all learn better if we enjoy it! Then have books around that he likes and has an interest in even if he can't read them. Or read to him and he has one word to look out for 'the' for example so he is following and he has to say that word.
He will get there!

Elisheva
In phonics teaching they can be grouped in lots of different ways, but in real books which are not written specifically for teaching, kids meet words in all sorts of ways (here there were.. only two other ...then she went...) and some kids find that very confusing.

Simply wrong gran!

Sooooo, masha - any particular reason why you have turned up to list us all after so long?

So when a child encounters a new word, how do they know if they should sound it out or if it’s a word that ‘can’t’ be sounded out so they need to ask an adult to tell them what it says?

Or you could just teach the alphabetic code that masha refuses to believe exists, thereby giving them the skills to decode everything?

Whilst I completely agree that learning to read with phonics is the best way for the vast majority of children and that all children need to have access to excellent phonics teaching unfortunately for a small few phonics are exceptionally difficult.

For children who struggle to differentiate between sounds, difficulties blending sounds and difficulties hearing sounds the early phonic stages are so hard. Even with the easiest books it is a battle to sound out so many words and by the time they have struggled through a sentence or two they have forgotten what they have read. This is demoralising and counter productive.

We continued to put a lot of effort into phonics but books with more repetition, more story and more of the key words made a huge difference in my ds's confidence.

I am certainly not advocating the 'look and say' method but we tried lots of different reading schemes using 'reading chest' to find one that suited my ds.

@lorisparkle that certainly sounds like DS. It feels like once we master the early stages, it’ll be easy, we just need to find a way in!

We very much did a holistic approach to reading.

1. Ds was still learning to talk in year 1 so we were doing loads of work on how to discriminate certain speech sounds then how to pronounce them , then how to blend them, then how to put them into words, then into sentences and only when he could do that did we expect him to use them in free speech.

1. Extra phonics work - in year 2 we started toe by toe at home and school did one of the sound foundations books

1. Different reading books from 'reading chest' - taking it in turns to read, reading together, only reading one or two words per sentence

1. Lots of having stories read to him.

Ds1 is dyslexic and still struggles, however he was assessed privately in year 3 and had extra time, a reader and a scribe in his SATS, he is now in year 9 , can read enough to get by and is likely to have extra time and a scribe/laptop for his GCSE. He is predicted fairly good grades and hopefully will scrape the equivalent of a c in English.

If your ds is struggling with hearing, discriminating and/or pronouncing sounds then I would look for additional professional support. The SALT said that 6 is the ideal age to work on speech sounds.

@lorisparkle he did SALT for a while, though they said he was only borderline needing input at the start. He was discharged because of a combination of improvement and disengagement (he hates thinking he needs extra help, and is smart enough to realise that was what this was despite it being dressed up as games!). We do still subtly use techniques at home and, I think, at school.
Our current approach will be similar to yours so hopefully it helps us too.

@lorisparkle I am really pleased that Howmanysleepnow intends to follow your advice.
I so agree with your view that all children need to have access to excellent phonics teaching unfortunately for a small few phonics are exceptionally difficult.
I hope Elisheva read the post where you say that.

Re your question Eli when a child encounters a new word, how do they know if they should sound it out or if it’s a word that ‘can’t’ be sounded out so they need to ask an adult.
Sounding out is what they should always try first, with all words that they can't read yet. And as I explained before, consonants pose v. few decoding difficulties. So they should sound them out and then try to work out the letters that stump them, using phonics, context, memory, knowledge of vocab and grammar. Asking an adult last.

But parents can be of great help. That's why schools send home reading books for kids to read aloud. Kids should use their phonics, but it's a great help to have someone to help out with the words that they find hard. And the words they find hard (some more than others) are invariably ones with some tricky vowels.
Just imagine what it's like for kids who don't get such help at home.

unfortunately for a small few phonics are exceptionally difficult.
So then they need more phonics, not sending off down a side path trying to memorise more and more words, or guess at words from pictures, context or shape.

Unfortunately for ds1 who found phonics exceptionally hard some of the phonics reading scheme books were horrendous. (Ds2 and 3 had no problems with these). There was a danger of putting him off reading and books for life. Yes he did need more intense phonics work (toe by toe was excellent as it had so much overlearning and repetition) but if we had not found reading books that had a greater interest and a more natural story style I think he would have refused to read at all.

My ds1 hates anything that sets him apart from his peers - he was recommended a wobble cushion and a writing slope but refused to use both. We are currently trying to convince him to use a laptop throughout the school day but it is an ongoing battle!

some of the phonics reading scheme books were horrendous
They are! My ds learned to read from pokemon cards and the Guinness Book of Records.