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Kathryn
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I actually have quite a bit of issues with this child, but I'm hoping someone else has had this dilemma and can offer guidance on this particular concern. Learning for my DS 9 seems to be quite a struggle and progression is very, very slow. Although age-wise he could be in grade 4 with peers he is prob. on a mid 2nd grade level and would be just average at best. His fluency is def. still not there and we work on basic phonics most every day and flashcards etc. Now that he is officially reading beyond Level 1 books, my concern is how he either skips words or replaces very easy words such as the/a/that etc.
For example, the sentence might read:
The dog loves to chew a bone.
He will read this as:
A dog loves to chew the bone.
Or: Oh yes, that is right.
He'll read as: Oh yes, they is right.
Sometimes I'll just quietly correct him and let him keep reading. Other times I'll have him re-read it. I'll ask if that makes sense as the case in the 2nd example.
His level of reading is not even enough to allow me to give him a worksheet just to review things because he can't completely read it on his own. This makes my schooling time with him have to be almost one on one 80+% of the time which is quite a challenge w/ a 2 yr old running wild and a 10 yr old needing at least some mom-teacher time.
Thoughts/opinions?
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Kathryn in TX
(dd 16, ds 15, dd 8, dd 5)
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Angie Mc
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Kathryn, this ounds very familiar to me  . You might want to check out this post on what I call modified choral reading. I would love to chat more about this but I need to start my bedtime prep. Maybe tomorrow.
Love,
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Angie Mc
Maimeo to Henry! Dave's wife, mom to Mrs. Devin+Michael Pope, Aiden 20,Ian 17,John Paul 11,Catherine (heaven 6/07)
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Kathryn
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| Posted: Nov 30 2009 at 10:39pm | IP Logged
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WOW...ok, I am intrigued. The description of your son is VERY similar to mine (except the "good" attention span...that ebbs and flows  ). I do have some questions from your original post that I can either ask or you can expand when you have time. I actually took one of those on-line tests last Spring about how your child learns and it told me he's a "global" learner.
So did this dr. check for the eye tracking thing too as I've thought about having that checked out as I've read quite a bit about that.
Thanks,
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Kathryn in TX
(dd 16, ds 15, dd 8, dd 5)
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ALmom
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Your child is quite young. Missing little words is very common with eye tracking problems. But at K age, my guess is that tracking is not going to be as efficient as say a 2nd grader or even a first grader - so this isn't implying any kind of difficulty - just a comment that some of the eye skills come together sooner or later for many normal folks. Convergence of both eyes for close work sometimes comes later for some and this will make reading more of a strain and tracking (pointing the eyes together without effort in a smooth way) generally develops after the convergence. It is often better not to push realy hard. If you are seeing real interest in reading and want to continue, my suggestion would be to write the sentences really large and well spaced on a white board or a very big piece of paper and see if that changes anything. At least it will help you sort out eye readiness from reading itself. Always have good lighting, good contrast and larger size print for younger children. The lighting and good contrast is important for everyone's eye health. Also with close up work, holding work at a good 45 degree angle (use a slant desk or build one) and keeping it short are important and may help.
Janet
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Kathryn
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| Posted: Dec 01 2009 at 10:48am | IP Logged
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Hi Janet,
He's actually 9 1/2...not kinder. He does have a slant desk tho.
:-)
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Kathryn in TX
(dd 16, ds 15, dd 8, dd 5)
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ALmom
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OOps Kathryn: I missed the age and it was right there in the first line of your post  . I was actually pretty amazed at what your kinder was reading  thinking - boy this young one sure is advanced.
Yep at 9, you would expect the eye skills to be coming together. A lot depends on how often and whether or not there are other signs in terms of worrying about tracking or eye issues. If you are interested in pursuing that, drop me a PM and I'll share our experiences with vision testing. However, trying the same thing as recommended for kinders might give you a clue, though. Also watch for eye rubbing, lots of motion (though a certain amount of this is totally normal for certain learning styles), odd postures or holding a book very close, head tilts, closing one eye when reading, losing their place when reading, reversals of letters or numbers, misreading little words (which is the one thing you mentioned). I'm sure there are a few more symptoms that I may be missing - and some of it is no improvement with normal practice.
I know with my 9 year old who is far sighted, we discovered that he could do something easily with larger print size and struggled with the smaller print size. The difference was so great that he would not have passed (if I were grading) with the smaller print size, but breezed through with the larger size - exact same material. We are still working on some pointing of the eyes with him so I'm really conscious of the eye tracking or struggling things.
However, a certain amount of missing small words is also typical of anyone in a hurry - and sometimes with 9 yo - especially a more kinesthetic or hands on type of learner, they are anxious to get on with something else.
Janet
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rose gardens
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Kathryn wrote:
I actually have quite a bit of issues with this child, but I'm hoping someone else has had this dilemma and can offer guidance on this particular concern. Learning for my DS 9 seems to be quite a struggle and progression is very, very slow. Although age-wise he could be in grade 4 with peers he is prob. on a mid 2nd grade level and would be just average at best. His fluency is def. still not there and we work on basic phonics most every day and flashcards etc. Now that he is officially reading beyond Level 1 books, my concern is how he either skips words or replaces very easy words such as the/a/that etc.
For example, the sentence might read:
The dog loves to chew a bone.
He will read this as:
A dog loves to chew the bone.
Or: Oh yes, that is right.
He'll read as: Oh yes, they is right.
Sometimes I'll just quietly correct him and let him keep reading. Other times I'll have him re-read it. I'll ask if that makes sense as the case in the 2nd example.
His level of reading is not even enough to allow me to give him a worksheet just to review things because he can't completely read it on his own. This makes my schooling time with him have to be almost one on one 80+% of the time which is quite a challenge w/ a 2 yr old running wild and a 10 yr old needing at least some mom-teacher time.
Thoughts/opinions? |
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Little words like "the" and "a" can be confusing to some children--particularly children prone to thinking in pictures because many little words can not be easily pictured. Skipping those words can indicate he doesn't really understand what they mean.
Substituting "they" for "that" may also indicate he is only looking at the first letters then guessing at the words.
I would suggest you read "The Gift of Dyslexia" by Ron Davis. Davis' program, along with other programs developed for problem readers, help children to understand those very little words. "A" can be particularly confusing because several other prepositions begin with the same sound. For example, "a cross" sounds exactly like "across" but the meaning changes dramatically for a prepostion verses an article with a noun. Those prone to thinking in picture may be more likely to picture the noun--and then get a very confused understanding of what they're reading. (My little guy made that mistake when we were working with vocabulary words.)
I would also suggest you check your son's phonetic awareness. Make sure he can hear the difference between sounds in words. I worked with phonics and phonograms extensively with my son, whose now eight year old, plus working on the meaning of little words but he still had reading problems. When I finally decided to break down and buy an expensive program developed for people with dyslexia, I discovered through the pre-screening that my son could not distinguish the difference between many sounds within words!
If you're interested in reading more, pop on over to the special needs section of this board and check out some of the posts about dyslexia.
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Michiel
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Kathryn,
I haven't read the choral reading link yet, which I will, but I need to respond before the day begins or I will never post!
My ds, 8 almost 9, sounds a lot like yours. I definitely see tracking problems. He misses/replaces/fills in himself the easy words and then gets something incredibly challenging since it makes sense in the context. Very frustrating.
Here are my son's problems that I know of:
psychiatric disorder
ADHD
eyes that drift outward (two surgeries so far)
I don't really know how foggy his psych meds make him and if that hampers his progress if at all, but he does need this medicine, so we press on.
Now for the good news: We are having a major reading breakthrough! I am so, so thankful. Here are some things we've been doing.
Read aloud every day. I have about 6 books available at a time on or just a tad above his ability that he chooses from. Due to the attention span, I only require 9 minutes of reading per day. When ds decides that he wants to hand over the reins to me, he gives a signal (usually a dog bark) and I begin reading. I read as many sentences as he has read. If he reads one sentence, I read one and bark back at him. He's supposed to be following along as I read. I never read more than 10 sentences before turning it back to him. After 9 minutes, he can choose to quit or keep on going.
If he finishes a book, he draws from the bag. It is full of slips of paper with prizes, most low or no-cost: pack of gum, pop, icee, trip to the park, friend over, next netflix movie choice, window shopping, stay up 30 minutes later, no room cleanup, and the big one, Rest of the Day OFF. It is a huge motivator to keep reading. Huge.
Also, due to the eye problems, I remind ds to use his finger under the word he is reading. It helps, though he'll still read "the" for "a."
Every little mistake, I stop us and read again the word before the mistake. He's OK with this and corrects it, and lately he's corrected himself. Progress.....
Any time ds wants to read, we read. So two days ago, we read 6 books together, which also means 6 prizes, and that's all we got done in school for that day. But success builds upon itself, and I see the light dawning. We are both really excited. I'm consoling myseslf with the thought that we'll soon be aadvancing onto chapter books, and we won't be redeeming 6 prizes in a day, but for now, it's gotten us over a huge hump.
I hope this helps.
Michiel
Mother of ds 11 and ds 8
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Kathryn
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I tried the reading aloud together and that was only so-so. I can tell at reading at his pace with him how much effort it takes to go soo slow. I think his phonetic awareness is low. I had him take the initial screening for the Barton ? program a couple weeks ago and he did fail the 3rd part of that but yeh, I didn't really know where to go from there in terms of buying an expensive program like the LIPS one. I've read about dyslexia and he's been screened for it but that didn't seem to be the problem.
Today while reading here are 3 things I noted:
The story was about a bookmobile...he kept saying bookmovile. I kept saying, it's a B, not a V and corrected and he would say it correctly but then next time, he'd say bookmovile again. It must have been in the story 10x and he said it wrong every time.
He also doesn't read with the proper punctuation. He keeps reading instead of pausing at commas and end of sentences almost in a monotone. Then he'll say some sentences as a statement when there's a question mark at the end of it.
He usually makes plural words singular (books, he'll say book) but oddly enough if it's singular, sometimes he'll make it plural by adding an s.
I did notice some eye rubbing but no other things you mentioned Janet. He will lose his place if I'm not fingering each word or holding a ruler under each line but sometimes that's b/c he starts looking at the picture and thinking about the story and then wants to stop and ask a question or make a statement. Not always so I would say yes, that sometimes he does lose his place.
I guess some of this could just be fluency building and understanding what he's reading. ? Although ADD could be a concern, he's not rushing thru the readings at all. In fact he really tries but it's somewhat slow and I can tell very labor intensive for him. But he rarely complains and he does try. I think he wants to read better but I'm not sure there's a great motivation to do so...he just does what he's asked not really seeking to move ahead or improve. ?
Any of this help anyone make a diagnosis thru the cyber world?  Talk about labor intensive...trying to find exactly WHAT is the exact problem...seems so many of us have done that.
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Kathryn in TX
(dd 16, ds 15, dd 8, dd 5)
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rose gardens
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Kathryn wrote:
I tried the reading aloud together and that was only so-so. I can tell at reading at his pace with him how much effort it takes to go soo slow. I think his phonetic awareness is low. I had him take the initial screening for the Barton ? program a couple weeks ago and he did fail the 3rd part of that but yeh, I didn't really know where to go from there in terms of buying an expensive program like the LIPS one. I've read about dyslexia and he's been screened for it but that didn't seem to be the problem.
Today while reading here are 3 things I noted:
The story was about a bookmobile...he kept saying bookmovile. I kept saying, it's a B, not a V and corrected and he would say it correctly but then next time, he'd say bookmovile again. It must have been in the story 10x and he said it wrong every time.
He also doesn't read with the proper punctuation. He keeps reading instead of pausing at commas and end of sentences almost in a monotone. Then he'll say some sentences as a statement when there's a question mark at the end of it.
He usually makes plural words singular (books, he'll say book) but oddly enough if it's singular, sometimes he'll make it plural by adding an s.
I did notice some eye rubbing but no other things you mentioned Janet. He will lose his place if I'm not fingering each word or holding a ruler under each line but sometimes that's b/c he starts looking at the picture and thinking about the story and then wants to stop and ask a question or make a statement. Not always so I would say yes, that sometimes he does lose his place.
I guess some of this could just be fluency building and understanding what he's reading. ? Although ADD could be a concern, he's not rushing thru the readings at all. In fact he really tries but it's somewhat slow and I can tell very labor intensive for him. But he rarely complains and he does try. I think he wants to read better but I'm not sure there's a great motivation to do so...he just does what he's asked not really seeking to move ahead or improve. ?
Any of this help anyone make a diagnosis thru the cyber world? Talk about labor intensive...trying to find exactly WHAT is the exact problem...seems so many of us have done that. |
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I know what you mean about labor intensive. 
If your son didn't pass the third section of the Barton screening, plus he repeatedly says the /v/ sound for the /b/ sound, and he adds sounds to words that don't belong there...my cyber-diagnostic instincts say there's a phonemic awareness problem. (My son has that issue--and I'm seeing it everywhere I look now, kinda like a first year med-student. ) Sounds also like fluency problems too, as you mentioned. But Ron Davis, whom I mentioned earlier, discusses in his book how punctuation marks can also confuse some persons.
On the phonemic awareness issue, my son improved with LiPS enough so that he's finally hearing the sounds within words. Yeah! (It was very hard work for him and I'm proud of him.)
If you can't afford the whole LiPS program, the LiPS manual can be used with home-made manipulatives. Much of the important work is done by the student just feeling and seeing (in a mirror and with the instructor) what's happening with his mouth, lips, tongue. You might want the static clings or some supply with the lip pictures, but you don't have to buy the entire clinical or classroom set in order to do the program. I only bought the manual and some of the supplies, not the entire kit. I only used it to the point where I could start Barton--and the first level of Barton works on some of the later lessons of LiPS.
There are other ways to work on phonemic awareness too. You can play word games that ask questions like, what do you get if you "take the ball away from baseball?" (base) More advanced: "What do you get if you take the l from clap?" (cap) That kind of stuff demonstrates and develops phonemic awareness. Programs like Bartons and LiPS represent sounds with manipulatives, and you can do that on your own. But I found the LiPS manual extrememly helpful and my son couldn't do much of that type of thing until we worked through identifying how his mouth makes sounds.
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Angie Mc
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Kathryn wrote:
So did this dr. check for the eye tracking thing too as I've thought about having that checked out as I've read quite a bit about that.
Thanks, |
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Yes, the doctor tested for everything having to do with his eyes and reading. When had told me the results he said, "I have some good news and some bad news. The good news is that your son's eyes are fine. The bad news it that your son's eyes are fine."  In other words, the problem wasn't with the eyes so we would need to keep piecing the puzzle together without that piece of help!
Kathryn wrote:
I tried the reading aloud together and that was only so-so. I can tell at reading at his pace with him how much effort it takes to go soo slow. I think his phonetic awareness is low. I had him take the initial screening for the Barton ? program a couple weeks ago and he did fail the 3rd part of that but yeh, I didn't really know where to go from there in terms of buying an expensive program like the LIPS one. I've read about dyslexia and he's been screened for it but that didn't seem to be the problem.
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Kathryn, reading aloud together never worked for my ds either, until we did it the way I described in the modified choral link. It was the pressing through a paragraph and repeating that paragraph until mastery, that was the key. For an inexpensive way to learn about phonetic awareness, you might want to try, Reading Reflex. This isn't a heavy-handed phonics program but gets the job done. It is short on tedium and long on applying priorities to sound phonetic rules based on research - which is a blessing for the global learner.
I'm out the door to a presentation! But I didn't want to leave before mentioning that my dh still drops a lot of details when he reads aloud...very similar to his son...yet he managed to earn advanced degrees and has a nice job .
Keep asking questions and I look forward to chiming in again when I have a few minutes.
Love,
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Angie Mc
Maimeo to Henry! Dave's wife, mom to Mrs. Devin+Michael Pope, Aiden 20,Ian 17,John Paul 11,Catherine (heaven 6/07)
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ALmom
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Kathryn:
Not qualified to diagnose - plus definitely not on the internet. Here are a few simple things you might do to begin to narrow down the problem:
1) Get a really good eye test but go with someone who tests near vision as well as far vision (a really good developmental optometrist). There really is a difference in how a regular optometrist tests and a developmental optometrist. I don't have the same confidence with our far sighted guys with the regular optometrist. With our developmental optometrist, we asked for the full learning related vision exam. He allowed a bit more time in the eye exam - but this part was covered by our vision insurance. (We did need additional testing that was then covered by medical, although none of the therapy was covered). This will also detect things like far sightedness, astigmatism, focusing difficulties. Sometimes something as simple as needing glasses will resolve a lot.
Just for your information, our far sighted children have never really taken off with reading until around age 10 so a certain amount of things can be simply variation in normal development and readiness.
Another thing you might spot check is how the child coordinates both sides of the body. Many of my children with difficulties could not skip, do jumping jacks and some were obviously avoiding using both hands together. If there are issues with say jumping jacks and things like that, then a really good occupational therapist can often address some of this in pretty short order if you get to that point. Of course with things like formal testing, you also can do plenty of games and sneaky things at home to see if practice improves things:
bouncing balls to metranome and stuff, any kind of exercise using both sides of the body in a steady rhythm. Physical exercise is really good at helping concentration, too.
I'll be back with more - gotta get dinner on.
Edited to add a few things above and: For complete symptom list related to learning related vision problems, you can look at pavevision.org I do know they have some brochures that compare symptoms of vision issues, ADD/ADHD, sensory integration disorder and dyslexia which often share quite a few symptoms.
I'm sure there are folks who would test or do some basic hearing/ auditory processing screening but I'm not very familiar with this. Our developmental optometrist did a kind of rough auditory processing screening as sometimes visual processing difficulties go together with auditory processing ones.
I am curious about simple, at home strategies for some of the minor mix ups - my child can sound out a word just fine, but then not know what it means even though it is a word easily in his vocabulary. I tell him to say it fast and sometimes the lightbulb goes off and sometimes he flips the sounds when he says them fast. (This is my child that doesn't seem to have any vision issues but is just now starting to read at 7 - but he has been far sighted and we are putting off serious reading work waiting for the decline in far-sightedness to occur).
I'm wondering if exercising with things like monkey bars, jungle gym, jumping jacks, skipping etc. would help. Please share things that you find that do work.
Janet
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Angie Mc
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ALmom wrote:
I am curious about simple, at home strategies for some of the minor mix ups - my child can sound out a word just fine, but then not know what it means even though it is a word easily in his vocabulary. I tell him to say it fast and sometimes the lightbulb goes off and sometimes he flips the sounds when he says them fast. (This is my child that doesn't seem to have any vision issues but is just now starting to read at 7 - but he has been far sighted and we are putting off serious reading work waiting for the decline in far-sightedness to occur).
I'm wondering if exercising with things like monkey bars, jungle gym, jumping jacks, skipping etc. would help. Please share things that you find that do work.
Janet
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Janet, this reminded me of the theory that those who start to walk early and/or miss the crawling stage might have trouble with reading...can't remember the details but do remember that the child I describe in my modified choral reading post DID walk early and didn't crawl. I remember having him do some cross body integration exercises.
Any other ideas?
Love,
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Angie Mc
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ALmom
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Angie:
My children with the visual issues, some of them did walk early - some did not. Most had none of the risk factors discussed on the web site I referenced. However, we do have a strong history of amblyopia in our family - so I personally suspect a connection. I do know that for a few of mine who just seemed to take huge amounts of time to do work, the occupational therapy (7 weeks or less) made a huge difference for them. This was not difficult and the children did this pretty much on their own with 1x per week visits to the therapist (for 30 minutes). It helped that I had a very strong endorsement for this therapist from another homeschooler.
Some of mine simply learn differently than I do so it has taken me a while to adjust what I use to match how they learn. Some may also have had some minor auditory processing things that were never diagnosed - but not a big enough problem for us to worry about this - just thought if we could sneakily play and have fun doing things that may help this area, that is probably all we need anyways. (And I will say some of the things we have done with occupational therapist, cross marching,etc. seem to have helped)
Too much wordiness is a huge confusion factor or a major factor in making something take a long time for one of mine (and you can guess how much trouble this child has had working with me over the years!) I don't think this is a particular learning difficulty - but a gift in seeing the big picture and in 3 d. The child is highly creative, can learn and dig into any subject in her own way and has the ability to learn hands on in a way that would baffle me no end. (One presentation of hoses on a fire truck and she seems to know exactly where they are, what their dimensions are, etc.) She is not one to sit around and chat at family gatherings -she'll either be in the midst of the football game outside or doing dishes - but doing something in an active sort of way. Gossip is never a temptation for her A quick big picture as opposed to the typical wordiness of textbooks will give her all she needs to pursue something of interest. She has learned to deal with textbooks when she must, though it is more work for her.
My 9yo (who is just finishing vision therapy) and my 7 yo (with no vision issues other than eyes staying far sighted longer than average) both had some minor auditory mix ups as they learn(ed) to read and spell in the early stages. I typically use a phonetic program for reading - a varied hodgepodge of what I have on hand from Sing Spell Read and Write, Little Angel Readers, CHC, and some of the montessori language (pink... series). We have used WRR which is heavily phonetic once they are reading, but I have discovered a few things in recent years related to me:
My children who have minor mix ups seem to have improved once I enunciated better. We are in the south and while I don't have a heavy southern accent - some of my children start out at the younger ages with a very drawn out drawl. I tend to slur a lot in my speech. I just made this connection again with my youngest. I used to think short e sounded like short i in certain situations and made no distinction in my pronunciation - until some wise person pointed out the difference. I had to practice hearing it myself for a while and learn how to say the short e. Now I know better. I have spoken to my children about how, when we speak, we often are in a hurry, get lazy or tend to slur quite a bit and lose the distinctness of the sound in the way we pronounce things. My 7 yo was really battling words like get and gets (which he wanted to say as guest by the time he drawled it all out - remember he drawls anyways and then he drawls even more to try and sound the word out). Well, I did discover that by using what the violin instructor has been showing him - use a short bow to get really good control - and encouraging him to not drawl out the vowels so much, he seems to have begun to connect things. He announced at the dinner table that he now knows how to pronounce get correctly - it is not git.
One of the things we do is go over the words in the story before reading the story. This way I begin to learn if he knows what they actually mean. It isn't really reading until you sound them out and know what they are. This clues me in to when he is not hearing things quite right and we can go over that part of things. He gets very, very excited when the light bulb goes off. Then by the time we hit the stories, he has sorted these words out individually already and if he stumbles, I can give a short hint that brings it back to mind.
Sometimes, I think too, when he is tired or has not had enough physical exercise, he just races with mind and eyes and thus is putting things together or flipping them around or doing what I call the guessing game - recognize part of the sound and don't bother to look at the rest, just remember words on the list that shared whichever part of the word he happens to be looking to. I also reinforce the left to right by drawing my finger under any words he is having to re-sound out. If it takes a long time to sound something out, we go back and I'll re-read to the point where he left off so we don't lose the sense of the story. Then we read and re-read until the book is very, very easy.
I'm not in a hurry with him. I know my 7 you does not have any learning issues at all - it is just normal variation of development. (Oh and he crawled for a long time, and climbed, and ....He learned how to ride a bike earlier than anyone and hasn't had trouble using a fork or tying his shoes. I suspect it is just a matter of when those integration things come together and since he is a little on the far-sighted side, it tends to happen a bit later - that is all. I know my children with vision issues had no problem reading and loving it even if they didn't really learn to read until after 10. Without any problems, I know He'll be fine as well - but it is nice when they know how to read. It opens so much more up to them and they don't always have to wait for mom to help in order to find out about something they are interested in learning more about. We are doing a lot more memorization work right now until the far-sightedness is gone.
I would love to do some auditory type games with the 2 youngest - but am not at a point where I can justify investing in a huge and costly program like Barton. I'd love ideas to reinforce the progress we are making.
Janet
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4Real Forums : Language Arts Come Alive
Topic: Skipping/Missing "easy" words
