Tips to help blending in sight readers?

[OutsidebutnotAlone]

DD is 6, year 2.

She can read her common exception words 50% of the time, and can recognise these in books or on signs etc. but can't read much more than that.

She refuses to blend and instead remembers the story, so when she comes across a word she can't read/doesn't know by sight she just remembers whats been read to her rather than the actual word. If it's an unfamiliar book then she just guesses the word. She won't even attempt to blend.

Teacher says she's a sight reader so commits words to memory so she knows them when she comes across them again but that makes teaching her to read difficult as her brain doesn't recognise the sounds to blend.

She is also suspected dyslexic. Writing is ok but she struggles with spelling even when told the spelling she still can't always write it down correctly even if we do a letter at a time it can still be written wrong, she only learnt to sing the alphabet last year in year 1 and still struggles with digraphs, school haven't even introduced her to trigraphs yet.

We're going through EHCP process to get an assessment for the dyslexia but school are trying some small group work with her, however it's only once a week due to the way the staffing works due to covid, also apparently sight reading is unusual (not sure how true this is I'm not a teacher) so it can be hard to group children up when they read like this. She's in the covid catch up groups but these stop at May Half Term apparently and there's no TA support in KS2 and therefore no reading support unless she gets 1-1 which is unlikely as although she struggles and is behind in all subjects her understanding is there.

She's still on pink level 1 books with 1-2 words in.

School have said covid has not helped her as they could have done targetted support at the end of year 1 with an external tutor (former teacher from the school whose now retired but does targetted English and Maths work on a supply basis for this and another school in the area) if it wasn't for covid, they can't have external visitors at all at the moment so no chance of that help.

Any ideas of how I can help her at home? It feels like it's now or never to get her reading as if I leave it any longer and she goes into KS2 she will never get the opportunity to catch up or be able to read again.

I would always advocate a systematic phonics approach as to teaching reading however, it needs to be recognised that a phonics approach does not suit approximately 5% of children - if they continue to fail following a high-quality phonics teaching and intervention, then other methods should be considered. Children with auditory processing disorder, for instance, may struggle to understand phonics and may be better learning through a whole word approach.

@Soontobe60 Phonics Play was one of the websites school recommended during lockdown and they have a log in for so I will email the teacher and check they're still happy for me to still use that login.

@EddieVeddersfoxymop your DD sounds brilliant thank you for that insight.

@grumpyhetty thank you, APD has also been mentioned but was then discounted so might now be able to rule it back in thank you so much.

@OutsidebutnotAlone - if you suspect APD, there is a brilliant Facebook group APD Support UK. However, I would first consider dyslexia, which is, amongst other things, a phonological deficit. A multi sensory phonics approach is recommended for dyslexia and improving her phonological awareness is the first step. She is too young for a dyslexia diagnosis - it is also likely that lockdown will have had a negative impact on her learning so I would see how things go when she has been back at school for a while.

[quote grumpyhetty]@OutsidebutnotAlone - if you suspect APD, there is a brilliant Facebook group APD Support UK. However, I would first consider dyslexia, which is, amongst other things, a phonological deficit. A multi sensory phonics approach is recommended for dyslexia and improving her phonological awareness is the first step. She is too young for a dyslexia diagnosis - it is also likely that lockdown will have had a negative impact on her learning so I would see how things go when she has been back at school for a while.[/quote]
Thats what school said she can't be diagnosed until Year 3 end of as she's not 7 until end of July and it'll be more likely year 4 or 5 as covid lockdowns could of affected her, but at the same time they're saying after the end of this year she'll have no support with her reading, which doesn't make sense to me as it's such a fundemental skill.

I just want to add another voice. My son who is now 11 never got phonics. He is disabled (cerebral palsy) and the bit of the brain which hears and in particular processes phonic sounds to decode is damaged. He will never be a linguist and foreign languages will probably be a struggle. This is not unusual given the CP.

I know this because he has had brain scans, and a detailed set of educational psychologist reports. Unfortunately the Ed psych who had the most detailed understanding of his auditory processing issues didn't see him until a number of years after phonics has made us miserable. When she did see him she was unequivocal that phonics could never have worked for him.

I am saying this because when he was 4/5/6 he struggled to read, when he was 7/8/9 he struggled to spell. Everyone said phonics phonic phonics apart from my mother who was a retired teacher. She said read a lot, read everything and read often. Newspapers, recipes, road signs, subtitles it doesn't matter but let him see words everywhere. By 9 my son could read well above the average for his age, in fact he was said to have a reading age of 16. I don't know if that is true. His spelling is still not great but is about average, with a spell check he always gets the right words.

He got there with reading a lot, so his brain could sight see the words because he couldn't hear the phonemes etc, he could hear and understand full words just not bits of them, as he has auditory processing issues (again due to brain damage). He then put 2 and 2 together with what he saw all around him.

I think he does now decode, but he had to know thousands of words to be able to do it, to guess those words from their shape and how they looked, and context. He has to rewire his brain to do this. He had to do that to walk, and write and many other things too.

When tested also made nonsense words the nearest real word in phonics checks (so got 50% on those tests 100% of the real words and 0% of the nonsense words). So he may still not get quidditch or muffle, but now he looks them up when he is reading.

I am posting because yes phonics is the best method for most children. But for my son phonics was the wrong way, and trying to do more of a method which was never going to work just made us all miserable and failed him. He couldn't learn with phonics, and I now know why. I didn't know when he was 4,5 and 6.

This isn't to say it might not be the best way for you, but I get very angry at the one size fits all approach when one size fits somewhere between 90 and 99% and this is better than when I was young, unless you are one of the 1-10% it can never work for.

She should be getting ongoing support with her reading if she is behind - a diagnosis isn’t needed for her to get appropriate support and the school are obliged to follow the SEND Code of practice if she is struggling. Have you had her eyesight and hearing checked - it is always useful to rule out the obvious

[quote onthinice]@drspouse not sure what you mean there. Phonics is phonics, there are other spelling rules that children learn further on through school as well. I was saying you need phonics as a foundation and then you will build on this with learning further spelling rules.[/quote]
All the "spelling rules" you talk about are also phonics. So, there are two sounds you mention that "o" can be read as. Neither are more "phonics" than the other.

Sight readers look at shape of words to help so emphasise the tall letters tails etc. I'm a special needs teacher, lots of sight readers who never learn to blend and little phonics knowledge so don't panic about that. Label everything in your house- bed, fridge, tap, window etc- nice clear writing with letters correct size. Then have a tricky word well- you, she, he, be, - then up to phase 5 people, mr. Mrs. Etc (google these if not sure) it's all about exposure to the visuals. Then make a few games up- spread a few words on floor, can she jump to ' went' etc. Or I spy a word with 3 letters one tall, one with a tail and a little round middle one? Tap.
Lots if repetition but I wouldnt push phonics if that's not how she learns you're wasting time in my experience.

Then you can print/write the words she knows and get her to trace over them- rainbow colours, favourite colour etc.

Plenty of children in juniors still needs support with reading, you really need to punch the school to continue helping your DD - easier said than done I know!
DS(12) is severely dyslexic and reading didn’t really click until he was about 9, he was having reading practice (phonics and sight reading) at school everyday and finally it began to pay off. He’s in year 8 and still needs a high level of support but his reading is better than could have been expected due to the help he got in years 2-5, his amazing TA left in year 5 and the replacements didn’t have the same knack of being able to teach DS.

@grumpyhetty

She should be getting ongoing support with her reading if she is behind - a diagnosis isn’t needed for her to get appropriate support and the school are obliged to follow the SEND Code of practice if she is struggling. Have you had her eyesight and hearing checked - it is always useful to rule out the obvious

She's had hearing and eye sight checks, and had grommets and squint correction as a toddler, she has ongoing tests for both and both ExH and I wear glassess full time so it wouldn't surprise me if she needed them. She has passed every hearing test she's ever had though, the grommets where due to repeated infections which have cleared up since the surgery. I will get these looked at again though thank you.

@Cactusowl

Plenty of children in juniors still needs support with reading, you really need to punch the school to continue helping your DD - easier said than done I know! DS(12) is severely dyslexic and reading didn’t really click until he was about 9, he was having reading practice (phonics and sight reading) at school everyday and finally it began to pay off. He’s in year 8 and still needs a high level of support but his reading is better than could have been expected due to the help he got in years 2-5, his amazing TA left in year 5 and the replacements didn’t have the same knack of being able to teach DS.

They've said there's no TA support in KS2 at all and it's usually TAs who support reading so there will be no reading support unless she gets 1-1 in her EHCP which is unlikely as her understanding is there. I have questioned it and they've said usually the tutor (the retired teacher) would come in and support children from across the school but due to covid she can't and they don't know if she'll come back at all, they could well have lost that resource and therefore have no support for KS2.

Hopefully your DD will get an EHCP and your DD will get a reading intervention written into section F, even if she doesn’t have an 1-1 they will need to find a way to support her in KS2.

A history of ear infections/glue ear will have impacted on her phonological awareness and therefore her reading - there is also a link to dyslexia and APD. If she does not have good binocular vision, this can also affect reading - I would definitely mention her difficulty with reading at her next checkup. If you can afford it, I would look for a private specialist teacher. Make sure they have at least a Level 5 qualification www.patoss-dyslexia.org/ is a good place to look

@grumpyhetty

A history of ear infections/glue ear will have impacted on her phonological awareness and therefore her reading - there is also a link to dyslexia and APD. If she does not have good binocular vision, this can also affect reading - I would definitely mention her difficulty with reading at her next checkup. If you can afford it, I would look for a private specialist teacher. Make sure they have at least a Level 5 qualification www.patoss-dyslexia.org/ is a good place to look

Thank you I am looking into possible glue ear reoccurence and will mention her reading at her next eye test as well.

@Cactusowl

Hopefully your DD will get an EHCP and your DD will get a reading intervention written into section F, even if she doesn’t have an 1-1 they will need to find a way to support her in KS2.

Hopefully. But really you shouldn’t need that in order for a child reading at this level to get reading intervention. Apart from being a squeaky wheel on this with the school, I’d have a look at something like bear necessities or toe by toe.

Outsidebutnotalone I'd recommend the free online course "Help your child to read and write" https://www.udemy.com/course/help-your-child-to-read-and-write/(1) & https://www.udemy.com/course/help-your-child-to-read-and-write-part-2/

3ormorecharacters "The point being that you did use decoding to read these words
But I didn't need to. All I needed to know was that 'muggle' is a non magical person and 'Quidditch' I'd a game. I work this out from context (or guessing, if you like). " you're basically describing the actions of poor readers who simply skip words they don't know.

I'd recommend Stanislas Dehaene's work Reading in the Brain ...there's even a handy video
And Mark Seidenberg Language at the speed of sight as starting points

Onthinice ignore the spelling rules they really don't work they are generalisations and for every rule there are exceptions.

3ormorecharacters https://news.stanford.edu/2015/05/28/reading-brain-phonics-052815/
"Words learned through the letter-sound instruction elicited neural activity biased toward the left side of the brain, which encompasses visual and language regions. In contrast, words learned via whole-word association showed activity biased toward right hemisphere processing.
McCandliss noted that this strong left hemisphere engagement during early word recognition is a hallmark of skilled readers, and is characteristically lacking in children and adults who are struggling with reading. "

"3ormorecharacters is right in that as an adult we're sight readers until we come across a new word which of course is rarer." Actually it's not true Outsidebutnotalone as Professor Dehaene says, "whole-word reading is a myth". The brain processes every single letter and does not look at the whole word shape.

Word shape is a myth I'm afraid

For spelling this is produced by two teachers https://missiebee1.wordpress.com/2021/04/07/teeching-speling-yousing-fonix-in-kee-stayj-too/
Or
https://thatspellingthing.com

She is also suspected dyslexic
Both dh and ds are dyslexic and they had a huge problem with sight-reading. DH was 10 before he could read because they refused to use anything other than Look and Say which failed so many children.

You could try Easyread - it's really helped DS. Focuses a lot on sight readers and why they sight read rather than using phonics.

Please, please, please don't encourage sight reading it really limits your child's future reading success.