trouble perceiving whole words

On what data are you basing the visual-memory deficit? How is the visual processing overall? (What are WISC scaled scores in Coding and Symbol Search?) What other tests were given?

Is her connection to phonetic code deficient? I’m suggesting that this is a possibility.

Have you had her trace the words and say them while she’s tracing? This was a successful technique used by Grace Fernald in the first half of the 20th century. You can either write the words on a card and go over them with a line of white glue or you can use really heavy marker and cover them with screen wire or a piece of transluscent plastic needlepoint canvas. Feeling the texture provides an extra pathway to the brain.

Sometimes repeatedly chanting the spellings of words helps. I often had my first graders just say t-h-e, the, repeatedly until the word locked in.

Grace, Retired Teacher, IL,
Reading and spelling consultant

When my son first learned to read he sounded everything out. This was actually really good. I think they tried to push their whole language techniques on him and encouraged guessing strategies that are now a hinderance. I am trying to get back the boy who sounded everything out.

I think your ideas are good. Encourage chunking, imaging and mostly just have her practice, practice and practice some more.

Rome wasn’t built in a day.

Lisa, I tutor a boy with similar difficulties. He has phonemic awareness deficits but although I worked very hard with him using LIPS, and although he was making some progress, it was slower than I’d like. He’s in third grade and still reads slowly, forgets sight words, and also struggles with any of the chunking activities.

A few months ago, I added Great Leaps to our work and decided to also focus hard on Seeing Stars for his symbol imagery. He’s finally moving along a little better. We do LIPS multi-syllable work, use a Seeing Stars workbook, Great Leaps, and last week I started him on the Vowel Power workbook. I also use repeat reading strategies using a timer to help improve his fluency. It’s a lot, but I think that the combination of approaches is what’s finally moving him along. I finally feel as though he’s making steady progress.

How old is she and what reading program had she been taught with? You should be happy that she can decode words!

I’m with Joan F and Shay. I do not teach “sight words”, ever. Once kids get the idea of what is going on in reading, familiarity and practice build speed and fluency. Hurry up and guess is a real dead end.

I would also ask what age and what reading level. If the kid is in K or 1, wonderful!! You should be happy you have a real reader and not another disaster waiting to fail in Grade 3.

If she is in Grade 5 or up, are the books simply too hard for her? Can she go more easily at a lower level? In that case, what she needs is practice, practice, practice reading out of massed text such as old basal readers ( “Easy” story books with one sentence per page simply don’t cut it for practice.)

Is she one of the very, very rare kids who have been well-taught in reading as a mechanical skill, but who have never just read for fun? In that case, I’d take a book that is fairly easy for her, and pair read one page for her and one page for the tutor, discussing comprehension issues on the way, and illustrating reading with expression.