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!

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

exactly!
I think his point was simply that the English language is ridiculous confusing

Wow...so many responses-really wasn't expecting that! Thanks everyone for all your input-its all really useful!

I don't think she meant literally go back to the beginning again (don't think I could take 1 word a page for a little while lol!) but more go back to the basics of getting him to sound words out which for him is like pulling teeth. Can't remember who said it but he can work out new words from words he already knows if that makes sense...for example he knows "thought" but knew "bought" because Im assuming in his head he just replaced the "th" with a "b".

I think Im finding it all the more frustrating because I didn't learn to read phonetically and I have had no problems with reading so I also cannot see the point of a one way fits all policy but at the same time I want to do whats best for him...I think the schools point was at some point in the next year or so he going to get stuck if he can't work things out phonetically so he needs to have the grounding there to do that.

His school does JP and he knew all his sounds within the first 2 months of being there...he just cannot translate them into words. As I understand it for him words are shapes which he is seeing and not different letters which he has to split up to make words.

He loves reading (which for a 5 year old boy I suppose is slightly unusual!) and Im very reluctant to do anything to stop that but at the same point I can sort of see what they are saying. Ive told him that what he can do is very very special but that me and his teacher are going to try and help him work out new words as well so that he can read more interesting stuff which he seems quite happy with and I think Im going to get some slightly more phonic based books alongside "normal" ones and see what happens...if he cannot do it then we'll just carry on as we are.

yes I think it's very important not to upset him about it in case it jeopardises his love of reading.

that's really good that he can work out e.g. bought from thought - so he can do whole families of words (as I suggested above) at once and that may help him understand the way words are broken up into (?) phonemes.

one possibility could be to write the non-changing part of a word on a whiteboard (e.g. 'ought') and then getting him to experiment with magnetic letters on the front - th, b, br, f etc to make new words.

sorry I could be talking rubbish there as I'm no teacher! I did enjoy this book though and it could have some fun games to help your DS. it is US English but that shouldn't affect much.

I reckon that children like your son learn the 'rules' from being able to read

and that phonetic types

learn to read from the 'rules'

E.g. the OPs son can work out 'thought' from 'bought'. This is what my dd does...works out words from her knowledge of other words.

MMM-Lol...Im no teacher either but it feels at the moment like Im having to do all the hard work at home! And no you're not talking rubbish either-it makes perfect sense to me!

He did it with ight as well...he knew right so can just see that if that says right, then you put a n in front and it turns into night etc. But nobody has taught him that he just worked it out!

That book looks fantastic and seems just what I need...the questions he is asking I have absolutely no idea how to answer (magic e being one of them!) so I'll order that tonight!

Civil-that sounds exactly right...how old is your dd? Has she come across any problems reading like this?

that book goes quite heavily into all the rules like magic e etc, IIRC. as I said it is from US but that is only relevant with a few sounds so it's perfectly usable

iheartc - my dd is now 6 (just) and in year 1, about to go into year 2.

She hasn't come across any problems - she can read Narnia and Enid Blyton and has completed the school reading scheme. They obviously do lots of phonics at school, but she - and others - are at the stage when it's not to do with learning to read (because her phonics group can all read fluently) but more to do with spelling.

With your son'e ight, night and right words, he is doing very well. He is a reader!

(And he has quite a lot of understanding of phonics - he just can't do the blending stuff).

I don't know how many of you have seen the whizzy video of children doing jolly phonics and rapidly blending. Well, my dd has never been able to do this and yet she is a very good reader.

My DD is 11...... comes out in assesments as above average.
.... she actually has the reading level of a 16 year old ...
Her spelling age is 13 years as she spells visually too

Just re the post from tom 57. With a talented 11 year old who reads and spells well above her age level, what is the purpose of a dyslexia assessment?

Is it her her inability to use her hearing (after all it is a sound-letter code) to read and spell mean it is very effortful to maintain these very high standards?
Just curious.

Yes Mal, from what I understand she leans everything visually-to the extent that when tested on rhyming words they were unable to asses her as she 'sees' the words in her head,rather than hearing them[obviously she does hear them but thats not her main way of processing.]

We had her assessed because whilst she achieves in test situations,she seemed to be constantly 'in trouble' with teachers for being 'difficult','failing to reach her potential','not trying' etc.
To the extent that she believed she was stupid.She still firmly believes she can't read well. But the report shows that she's reading/picturing so fast, that words become jumbled,and what she has to do is slow down.

What I was trying to say to the OP[poss slightly ineptly!] was there may be reasons why her DS is a certain way,I would certainly not have thought DD was Dyslexic and I really wish we has investigated her different approach to learning in the earlier years.It would have made such a difference to her experience of school.The post just made me feel a bit sad for DD and OP's DS

Some years ago a guest on the UK Reading Reform foundation notice board posted a message entitled "The Brightest Children need help too" about her experience as a whole word memoriser. Readers of this thread might be interested in it.
rrf.org.uk/messageforum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=1616&p=10667&hilit=foreign+language#p10667

tom57 - often with bright children, their dyslexia is hidden by their ability to compensate in other ways.

Hope that your dd enjoys the next stage of her education.

Tom-the thought had crossed my mind about him possibly having other issues but had actually not considered dyslexia because I assumed (wrongly I might add!) that he wouldn't them be able to read at all but after reading your experiences I realise that is most definitely not the case.

There is definitely something going on but have absolutely no idea how to go about trying to work out what. He had 2 books home from school tonight...a Rigby Star green level one which wasn't phonetic which he read every single word of perfectly and a Songbirds one which was like pulling teeth because he couldn't sound out even the easy words which then made him get very upset. He has then got a Topsy&Tim book out from the library and read that all the way through as wel with virtually no problem. Its just awful seeing him like this-he knows words which are actually quite hard for a reception child but just cannot sound out words which you would expect him to be able to.

Just as a matter of interest-he also had to do a Salford Reading test earlier in the year and apparently he did quite badly on that yet his actual every day reading ability is very good so they were very surprised...does anyone know if it tests their ability to decode words? Just wondered if that might explain why he did so badly.

Malaleuca-I can't get that link to work at the moment but I will def have a look later. I almost feel like because he is quite bright and very articulate and has been "reading" so well he has been overlooked to a certain extent...all the effort seems to have been made with the children that have been visably struggling. He hasn't even actually read to the teacher since easter until this week...its always been a parent helper which is absolutely fine but I don't think has helped the situation.

ihearttc;

Try this rrf.org.uk/messageforum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=1616&p=10667&hilit=foreign+language#p10667

Looking at your OP makes me wonder if your son has ever been taught phonics properly at all. A child who has been properly taught will just about always have had to work out what a word 'says' for themselves and not had much/any opportunity to memorise whole words just by being 'told' them. It is quite possible that he can't sound out words because he really doesn't know how to do it...Also, if he has been managing to learn words as wholes he will have no idea about letter/sound correspondences, which will also leave him at a loss when it comes to sounding out and blending.

While I know that some children appear to be able to learn to read very competently with look & say techniques I think that it is far too early to be saying that is what he is doing. His reading vocabulary is still relatively small, so he still has capacity for memorising new words; he may well hit a big bump as he gets older as words become more numerous and he reaches the limit of his memory for them.

I personally would have a go at the phonics with him because it is the most reliable strategy for word recognition and will be a skill he will be able to call on throughout his life..