How can I support my Year 2 child with slow reading processing?

[AnnikaA]

Looking for some help for my ds age 7 (year 2). He processes very slowly when he reads and it’s causing massive problems because his comprehension is low. So he ends up guessing and feeling stupid because he literally cannot understand what to do. He teacher is very young, inexperienced and honestly not very good so talking to her about slow processing is getting me nowhere. She just says “he’s fine, don’t worry.”

He’s doing okay at school but he feels so stupid and hates the fact he can’t keep up. Also in tests he doesn’t present well particularly when presented with multiple choice. He just guesses because he doesn’t have the time to properly read the question. Eg Jimmy has a bowl of 48 sweets , his friend Freddie moves 15 into his own bowl and Amy moves another 9 into her own bowl. How many does Freddie have left? My son will typically either add 15 and 9 and write the answer is 25, or he’ll add 25 onto 48 because he just sees thhe numbers and guesses what the question might be asking.

By the way he’s fine at maths operations -he can add, subtract , multiply and divide in his head.

What can I do? Is it just a case of doing loads of worksheets to practice so he reduces cognitive load when he recognises a question?

If he's good at Maths, I would start there. Do one question at a time, don't give him a pageful. Read the question to him, ask what he needs to do to work it out. He might need you to break it down into small steps at first. Then when he can answer a whole question without breaking it down, give him more questions with exactly the same steps but different numbers. Ask him to read the question when he shows that he understands how to solve 2/3 step questions and let him practice doing that until he is confident, then you can change one of the operations. The trouble is that there is a lot for him to hold in his head to solve a multi-step problem. There is no reason why he can't write down the calculations as he hears them in the question.
As for reading in general, can you get him reading along with an audio version of a familiar story? It sounds as if he is being asked to skip through several steps towards fluency and comprehension without enough scaffolding. This could very easily knock his confidence and put him off learning for life, so it is very important that no steps are missed.

Presumably hes still on the reading scheme, which book band?

Do you read to him a lot and he read to you, are you asking comprehension questions?

I would think.its too soon to say slow processing as they are still learning in y2