Reading help yet again please!

[ihearttc]

After telling his teacher for the last 6 months that I thought DS had a problem with reading in that he can memorise words perfectly but still cannot work out a lot of words phonetically they have now come to the same conclusion! They've basically said as I have been saying that DS has an almost photographic memory and looks at the whole shape of words but cannot split them up to decode them.

He has been flying along with his reading and is on ORT level 5 but thats only because thats mostly made up of words that are sight words and he knows...given a book with phonetic words in he just freezes and cannot do it.

So we've got to go right back to the beginning and start again and Im after some advice on how to do it...he's in Reception btw.

Most of the reading schemes at his school seem to be a mix of sight words (or whatever the correct term is)plus some phonetic words but Im after books that are mainly phonetic words that he has to sound out every single time.

He doesn't need to go right back to "The cat sat on the mat" stage but something about the same level that he is on but more phonetic based.

I was looking at the Superphonics books which seem quite good and I think would appeal to him...I was thinking of getting purple and turquoise level. Does anyone have any experience of those?

Finally is there anything else I can to to help him cause feel like Im banging my head on a brick wall? He has this amazing memory and can tell you a word after just looking at it once but cannot see that if there is a word you don't know you just need to split it up and sound it out...for example the book he had the other night had the word "quiet" in it and he struggled for ages and couldn't do it. I told him what it was and now he knows it. Ive spoken to both teachers about it and they've said its quite unusual to be like that with words and that most children get phonics far easier than they can sight words but Im not quite sure how to make him get it?

Sorry for the long rambling post...am just very frustrated lol!

He sounds similar to my DS - in that he initially read (and still does to some extent) by "knowing" words and "guessing" the rest based on context rather than using any phonics. He also got a fair way up the reading scheme before he got stalled.

With my DS something "clicked" half way through Year 1. he suddenly realised how to sound out and blend words and started doing this for every unfamiliar word.

"All" we did was read every night and encourage him to "sound out" a few words. Plus he obviously had phonics lessons at school. I can only assume that it was the constant repetition and practice that meant something "clicked".

as your DS is still young I'd suggest doing something similar - he will get phonics teaching at school, you can support by getting him to sound out some simple words at home and just see how he goes.

Exactly the same as redsky for us. Ds is in reception too - same memory thing, prefers sight recognition, flew through the scheme but didn't really sound out.

We kept emphasising (gently) the need to sound out new words rather than not try/ give up and he now does it. Could it just be a confidence thing if it is his natural style to do whole word/ sight reading?

I'm not convinced you'd need to go back levels in the reading schemes but switching to a more phonics based one would help. It's surely fine if he continues reading whole words if he knows them already (isn't that what adults do?) - isn't the point simply that he needs to be able to sound out new words (or am I being thick here?)

word families maybe? like cat, sat, mat, bat, hat... see if he can tell the difference?

understand it's frustrating but in a way I don't see why there's a problem - I learnt to read by sight i.e. just memorising the words. never did a single bit of phonics training. never did me harm, quite the opposite in fact!

I reckon if your DS had been in this situation a few decades back before they really pushed phonics as the standard, he may have been a star pupil!

It's really important that you discourage him from memorising whole words. Try using the notched card -slide it along grapheme (spelling unit) by grapheme to make him sound out
www.piperbooks.co.uk/documents/Notched_Card_Technique_000.pdf

Also, have a look at the choice of excellent decodable books here- I personally like and use the Dandelion ones:
www.dyslexics.org.uk/resources_and_further_11.htm

HTH

Phonics is great - but doesn't work with everyone, especially people who learn visually.

The 'whole language' approach to learning to read works around sight reading.

It may be that your DS would get more out of a different approach to reading - after all most adults don't read phonetically, all my reading is sight reading (otherwise I'd never be able to scan a document and read it so fast).

Although your son's teacher will have to teach phonics in the classroom, try talking to her to see if there is anything you can do at home to encourage your son's sight reading in addition to the phonics at school. You might find that a mix of the two approaches works well for him.

hang on, hang on - why do you have to go back if your son is reading.

He can read!

My dd1 never 'got' phonics. Well, she did, but it was well behind her sight recognition. Now, at the end of year 1, she is a free reader and can read anything.

She seems to use the phonics for spelling but never for reading. She doesn't use it to work out new words (partly because words she doesn't know are too long to sound out nowdays) so I just give her those and she knows them the next time.

What we did when she was in reception was just tell her the words that she didn't know (like quiet) and from then on she would always know it.

I think your son would get a bit fed up if was made to do something that he doesn't really need to do. And he will get lots of phonics help at school. Remember that lots of us older ones never did phonics and we can read.

Just to add, your son doesn't have a problem with reading...he just doesn't read in the way that reading is currently taught.

He reads in a much more fluent way!

Try this:-

www.amazon.co.uk/C-T-Cat-Teach-Phonics/dp/0716021234/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid =1277978364&sr=8-3

DD was like this but they really need to know phonics too!

Also used letterland teachers books and leappad phonics series- I presume there must be a tag equivalent.

Try the ragtag rhymes books.

They are phonics based and have nonsense words such as 'Ap-ap' and 'dat' which have to decode because they are not real words.

They are lots of fun and my dd loves them.

My lot learnt to read just as your son has by using their visual memory. They were at school "pre phonics teaching" when memory learning was the preferred method so it was never considered an issue.
My youngest dd also learnt to read as her siblings did (at home though without my teaching her).
She was taught phonics at school but doesn't really use them for reading because her memory is huge and she spots patterns in words rather than individual sounds but she finds phonics useful for spelling.
I wouldn't think it necessary to start again just widen the repertoire of books and expose him to more words and let the method that suits him best work for him.

Why Maverick? If a child has a very good memory why does it matter?

Hi

my ds in reception exactly the same has now got the sounding out idea but still memorises a bit. The Dr Seuss books were great as he could hear that they rhymed and it helped withe breaking up and sounding out

it annoys me a bit TBH, this (modern?) obsession with using particular 'methods' for things. often happens in maths - why should a child have to add up a specific way when they can do it perfectly well - often better - another way? it leads to so much upset with some children

I am honestly surprised that there have been so many replies saying (basically) that if your child has difficulties with phonics what they need is more phonics.
I hadn't realised that all other approaches are now forbidden even in your own home .

it's an amazingly hot topic piprabbit. I used to post on a different parenting site - before I discovered the fabness of MN - and there was a thread about phonics. I mentioned what I said above, about my mum teaching me to read with no phonics - and a lady obsessed with trained in synthetic phonics told me how rubbish and irresponsible that was I wanted to stick my superior reading age where the sun don't shine

problem with insisting on one method fits all, is that some kids - like perhaps the OP's - end up feeling a failure! when they clearly aren't!

I like the idea of using phonics in schools, I was taught using a phonetic alphabet.
But I really had assumed that there would be recognition of the way that people have different learning styles and may suit a more tailored approach where that causes difficulties.

It's true that some children have good memories for words, but I wonder if their memories run to tens of thousands?
It is thought that a load of about 2000 is upper limit for most.
Given that English is an alphabetic code, it makes eminent sense that children are taught to handle it, and this will be the route to expertise in reading and spelling, and learning to read and spell this way will not harm those who do have excellent memories.

The tragedy is that the whole word memorising does harm many children.

And of course many children who do appear to memorise, have simply cracked the alphabetic code and can process words rather quickly. Someone has already mentoned the children who spot larger units to help them remember, the part word assemblers.

Once a kind parent is not around to help sight word memorisers out with new words, it seems they might have a problem. Better by far to teach them how to figure out words themselves.

But I'm not sitting here sounding out the words as I read your post.
I'm reading whole words. So, yes, at some stage I must have transistioned from phonetic to whole word reading.
Perhaps some children do not need to make that transition as they are already reading whole words.
Not all children, just a few who need a different approach to help them learn.

I'm sure it's best that all children do learn to decode eventually, as it'll help with spellings too, but to insist on that is, for some children, counterproductive. possibly making a big deal of it too early (the OP's child is only in reception!) will cause more problems when as others have said, it may just 'click' later on.

encourage phonics by all means but I would've thought that implying phonics is the be-all-and-end-all is disheartening to those children who don't learn that way.

can't help wondering, if my mum had insisted on teaching me with phonics, how I would've handled it?

I probably would've been overthinking all the rules and getting really annoyed, in my precocious, perfectionist way, when certain words didn't obey the rules!

ghoti for dinner anyone?

Malaleuca

Children don't need to memorise 10,000 words - children who learn visually can work out a new word from its context and how it looks like compared to other words.

Plus, phonics won't get you through 10,000 words because most English words aren't phonetic.

Also, if as adults we read a 'foreign' book like Tolstoi, we may never bother pronouncing a name, we will just recognise the letter pattern each time we come across it.

I'm with you mathmadmummy!

My DD is 11 and has just [last week]been diagnosed as Dyslexic,she has no problems with attainment in school and indeed comes out in assesments as above average.

However her perception is that she 'can't' read and she is stupidas she adds or misses words and appears quite hesitant when reading aloud.

Her Ed Phsyc report explains that she sees everything visually, she actually has the reading level of a 16 year old but rather than break words down as the majority of children, she recognises them as pictures,and is in effect speed reading,which is leading to the additions/omissions.

Her spelling age is 13 years as she spells visually too

Totally with you on the brick wall-there is a dent in mine where I've been hitting my head for the last 8 years!

HTH best of luck

I made my own phonetic flashcards when I was being all PFB with DS1. I used them with all my children from about 3, starting with the single letters.

They all enjoyed them, and were all good readers. When DS1 was recently diagnosed with dyslexia, I did wonder whether the reason we'd never had any problems with his reading was because he had a good grounding in the phonetic method. Isn't that supposed to be easier for dyslexics?

George Bernard Shaw displayed his lack of understanding of the English Alphabet Code in his 'witty' remark that the word fish could be spelled in English as ghoti:

'< gh > is a two-letter spelling that represents one of two sounds in English: 'g' at the beginning of some words such as Ghana gherkin ghetto and ghost; and ' f ' at the end of others such as laugh rough and tough. In the middle of a few words it can represent either ' f ' or 'g': laughter and
spaghetti. There are NO examples of < gh > representing the sound ' f ' at the beginning of an English word. Traditional spelling 'rules' tend to be very unhelpful because exceptions to them often occur more frequently than the 'rules' themselves. However, in this case, we could construct a perfect rule: within English words that begin with the sound ' f ', that sound ' f ' is NEVER represented by the spelling < gh > at the beginning of the word!

The single letter spelling < o > can represent several vowel sounds in English, but it only represents the sound ' i ' in one word, women.

The two-letter spelling < ti > only represents the sound 'sh' in three English suffixes that date back to words derived from Latin, < -tion > < -tious > and . There are NO examples of representing 'sh' in any other circumstances. There are, of course, words that end in < ti >, such as yeti, but in all those words the < t > and < i > are single-letter spellings, each of them representing
one sound.

So Bernard Shaw's 'clever' remark about English spelling turns out to have no basis in fact at all. Sadly though, it is still regularly cited by those with limited phonic understanding and unfortunately misinforms teachers about how literacy should be taught.'

With thanks to www.sounds-write.co.uk