4Real Forums: Reluctant reader

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Topic: Reluctant reader

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doris
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Posted: Sept 21 2007 at 6:00pm \| IP Logged

I almost know the answers to my questions before I write, but here goes anyway!

My son is nearly 5.5. He knows all the letters and some common digraphs. We started reading some books from the Oxford Reading Tree a few months back, and he apparently got on quite well with them -- although he wasn't exactly keen and we didn't do it particularly often.

Now, after a long summer when he's done practically no reading at all (inadequate mother that I am!) we've gone back to the books and his reading is *terrible*. He refuses to read the word 'the' and claims he's never seen it before. If he has 'wanted' two pages in a row, he still can't read it on the third page.

My dd (now 7) was like this to a certain extent, and she's now an avid and fluent reader. The part of me who would reply to someone else's post would say 'Oh, don't worry! They come to it at different times! He will get there in the end!' But the anxious part of me (and the part which compares what they'd be doing at school) frets that he is very behind and I must be doing something wrong --either that or he has some problem which we haven't discovered.

I'm also dimly aware of the Montessori theory that reckons that children could and should be reading at about 4. Not in our house, although we do try to use some Montessori methods.

The other relevant info is that he *loves* read-alouds and loves *looking* at books.

Any and all advice gratefully received.

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Kathryn UK
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Posted: Sept 22 2007 at 3:23am \| IP Logged

About the Montessori theory of reading at 4 ... she was teaching children to read Italian, which is a completely phonetic language. No nasty, unphonetic words like "the" and "wanted"

. In Italian once you know the letter sounds, it is simply a case of stringing them together into words.

I would forget having him practice reading as such for now, but would work on reading skills piecemeal. Find some phonics games or puzzles, or just use letter tiles (ELC do them) to spell out words. You can also play games with sight words - more interesting and less threatening than flash cards.

Here are a few games we used at the learning to read stage ...

Using letter tiles or cards, set out a common word ending (-at, -in, etc.). Pick out a bunch of consonants and place them face down. Take it in turns to pick a letter and see whether it makes a word. If it does, the picker keeps the letter. Count up scores when all letters have been used. You can also vary this by starting with the first couple of letters and trying different consonants on the end.

Sight word bingo. Take the words from the 100 most frequent words list (you should be able to find this online easily) and make up bingo cards in sets of 25 words. You could also use a set of flash cards for your word base.

Memory - matching pairs of sight words. It's easy enough to print out cards of your own, or you could just buy two identical sets of flash cards.

Go Fish - again you need a set of cards in pairs. You can find the rules here.

Then there are quite a number of commercial games for early readers - my dds liked Junior Scrabble and a game with a kind of word post box that I have forgotten the name of!

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ozlouise
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Joined: July 06 2007
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Posted: Sept 22 2007 at 3:39am \| IP Logged

doris wrote:

The other relevant info is that he *loves* read-alouds and loves *looking* at books.

My son would have been at a similar level at 5 and a half. He also loved books and would sit for ages being read to. He told my friend (who is a teacher) that he doesn't like to read. As we sat down that night with a book I said `I thought you didn't like to read books' - he said `I like REAL books'. He hated and still hates the early readers. We do them but he would rather battle through the DK non-fiction readers than the easier phonetically controlled ones that we have.

All that to say - he sounds pretty normal to me and you won't believe his reading in another years time.

Louise

c_rob
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Joined: Sept 12 2007
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Posted: Sept 22 2007 at 7:38am \| IP Logged

I would agree with Kathryn. My older son (21yo) did not read until he was 11. He had enormous difficulty with "the" and "I", etc and he and I were so frustrated. We used the Lindamood priciples and looked at the phonics and piecemeal of the language. We played with it and we learnt the rules - all the rules of spelling and pronunciation. It took us three years. At the end, he read his first book - "Lord of the Rings". He rereads it about 6 times a year for comfort. It's do-able, but I wouldn't just wait for it to come to him.
SRA also produce a book called "spelling mastery" that works through the age levels and has been very successful with our younger son (10yo).

Best of luck.
Christine

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