How to help reading fluency

[mowglika]

My ds has just started year 1, and his school are only just getting reading levels sorted. His reading is still the same level as it was 6 months, he sounds out every word before he reads it and he struggles to blend longer with words together

Any idea on what I can do to get him reading more fluently? I do try and read with him often but because he is still sounding out every word it takes a long time to get through most books and he runs out of steam fairly quickly 😬

Am in a similar situation and mostly posting to bookmark for suggestions!

our school has recently revisited book bands and reading guidance and have recommended that it’s better for a child to practice on books that they can do 90% on their own, and keep practicing that book until totally fluid/ reading with intonation. Supposedly better for reinforcing skills than constantly giving a new book to figure out. In practice we get two books at a time - one main book they need to ‘master’ and one book of a similar level and their choosing to mix it up so they don’t get bored. We tend to rotate between the two (plus some books of similar level we have at home) making sure the main book is read every other night at least. School is good about checking progress, so some books we have ‘mastered’ in a couple of days, others a couple of weeks.

I do see it making a difference, especially for my slower/ less confident reader (I have y1 twins). I do find it can be very slow going for stretches, and then they make quick progress out of the blue!

If he is needing to sound out most words then the book is not at his appropriate challenge level.

After he has read a sentence by sounding it all out, ask him to read it again without the decoding.

If he still keeps stopping to decode then I would be querying the school's judgement.

He’s maybe in the habit of sounding out - can he read it if you tell him to sound out in his head then say the word?

Does he have a chance to read by himself after he goes to bed?

DS6 has quietly gone from not really reading at all to reading very fluently, over the course of about 6 months. I think some of it is from reading in bed.

They do start learning it very young in the uk - hopefully he will get there when he is ready, as long as he has lots of opportunity to practice.

Nessy is great.

Reading eggs or teach your monster to read are excellent for starting off reading.

He doesn’t really have the patience for reading by himself, I def have to lead otherwise he gets bored. Reading the same book until he’s mastered it is an idea..

i think with some of the shorter words he is decoding out of habit like and and was but he still struggles with longer words. He can do the blending in his head if I ask him to but again it takes him a while and he can’t read by sight yet. It doesn’t help that he likes to rewrite the book in his head and in his own words 😅

thanks for the suggestions, I will try rereading simpler books and asking him to read by himself.

I’ll look into teach your monster, I did have this app years ago but never needed it with my oldest, he picked it all up quite quickly himself..

i was also wondering if there was any other resource/s to help children pick up their sight reading and fluency?

I second the Teach Your Monster To Read app. Listening to them read every night is the big one IMO, but also getting them to read signs and adverts when out and about eg (pointing at Asda as you drive past) "Is that the supermarket? What's that one called?". Obviously you need to carefully pick words that are manageable with their current phonics level, ie maybe give reading 'Sainsbury's' a swerve for now if still towards the beginning of the phonics scheme! It's also worth familiarising yourself with the specific phonics scheme used and terms like digraph etc, so you are able to 'speak their language' when helping decode trickier words and know which graphemes they are familiar with/yet to learn if going off piste with reading home books or billboards.

"he sounds out every word before he reads it"

As well as learning to sound out, DD's teacher placed quite a lot of emphasis on separate sight word practice- not in sentences but just lists of them (DD sort of memorised where they were on the page so I then had to cut them up and shuffle the pack). Do it really quickfire so they don't have time to think and sound out- go as fast as playing Snap! To begin with I'd say the word sharp and fast, get her to repeat after me then I'd flick the next card out and say it before she had any time to chew over the last one. When she was good at that and starting to pre empt me I'd turn over a load of them at a time , say one at random, get her to point to it as fast as she could then chuck it in the done pile and quickly say the next one for her to find . If too tricky then reduce the options to two totally different looking sight words, just keep it moving as fast and postively as you can, real 60 seconds fastest finger on the buzzer style.

There are some good sight word/ high frequency word videos on youtube. These are my favourite:

m.youtube.com/watch?v=1RVk1nTub6o

I'd give her my phone when she was tucked into bed and she'd do them every night. The background music is quite pleasant and the words are on screen just the right length of time- ie long enough to repeat after the narrator but not long enough to try sounding out.

Obviously this doesn't help with the longer words but if they have a good memory bank of sight words it can keep the flow better when reading a proper sentence.

Following. My son is just learning to read too.

Following. My DGS is in Y1.

Elephant and piggy was our intro to solo reading, DS loved it!

We also did teach your monster to read but it was kind of before he could read iyswim

This is a good strategy. Look up Dolch Words which are the most common words in all reading and get him to learn these off. Print them out and start with four adding in 2 new ones everyday. But keep revising the ones he knows until they are totally off by heart. Spend a few minutes..not ages..on these every day. He will have less words to sound then and will enjoy reading more. Also discuss the pictures with him and talk about the book before you start so he has some idea of what's happening which would give him some extra clues to the words.

The single best thing you can do is read to him, with him looking at the book, over and over and over.

I would advise do far more reading to him, as much as you can. My DH luckily loves to read aloud and read for many hours each week to the kids, I think this really took the pressure off the kids as what they were asked to do was so small in comparison.

Children really learn a lot from listening and watching, as well as from doing.

Thank you for this, I will try this, flash cards of common words is a good idea too, I can knock these out today and try them. Will look up the dolch words

We read a lot less than I would like, he’s the squeezed middle and between his older and younger siblings he probably doesn’t get as much time as he needs. 🙁 hopefully he will enjoy the videos above while I get baby ready for bed etc

For anyone else struggling with this, I’m going to try:
flashcards common words for sight reading
YouTube videos of sight words
Rereading books til he can read them confidently
Reading to him more often
Might try teach your monster to read app

Thanks I do this when I remember at tescos etc

It is helpful to know the phonics scheme as he forgets to look for digraphs and trigraphs, another thing that slows him down in ‘getting’ reading, so I point them out when he doesn’t see them

If he has a younger sibling and time is short, can he read the sibling their bedtime story (ie his school book)? 2 birds, 1 stone, and DD1 loved doing this for her sister when she was learning to read as it made her feel really grown up.