question for Rod, Shay and other PG tutors

I don’t have any answers but my son does this too. He can read lists of words easily and then stumble over the same words when reading. I often write a word on a whiteboard when he starts reversing sounds or adding sounds. For some reason, he can decode it perfectly fine on the white board.

He also will see the first syllable of a word and guess the rest of the word.

He has been extensively been taught decoding so it isn’t that.

My best guess is that when he decodes in isolation that is all he is doing. With full attention, he can do it.

Beth

My son also did this. I think for him it was the whole language method that confused him. He would revert back to those guessing strategies when he was reading a passage even though he could decode the same words in isolation. I had to deprogram him from those strategies. I had to just keep correcting him and telling him to decode. He also needed alot of segmenting work and I am not sure what the underlying deficit that was related too.

My son does have vision issues so maybe if I had gone after those first this would have been easier to deal with. He still gets tired and loses concentration when reading for a longer period of time so we will start vision therapy soon.

I think sometimes children with reading disabilites can get overwhelmed with many words on a page. I know my son can read words in isolation much more easily than in sentences.

Does this child know directionalty (left/right) well? The vision therapist near me mentioned that once children get this down solidly many of the reversals disappear. That may be a combination of practice and developmental level.

As far as skipping lines and skipping words that may be an ocular motor problem. Having the child use a pencil to help track along each line may help. Using some of the LMB techniques of air writing and visualizing letters may also be helpful if his visualizing is poor.

For some children automaticity in recognizing and reading can take a long loooong time.

If the parents decide to investigate vision therapy recommend that they look for a good one that incorporates plenty of motor exercises with therapy. Also, a good book to have at home for reference is Dr. Lane’s “Developing Your Child for Success.” It describes a lot of visual therapy exercises one can do at home to help their child.

Try tracking with a pencil (which for some reason works better than, say, just holding an index card under the words). Is he trying to sneak a peak at the next words (which good readers do)?
You could also have him read a passage once *just* for accuracy — as if it were a foreign language, but just trying to get the words right — and then go back and read it for meaning, & see what happens. (I’ve never done that — I’d just be curious.)

Hi Linda,
This is really common. After I teach the whole program, I put my teenagers into books and it is as if I never did anything! You have to error correct while he is reading. I would give him books at his reading level and help him error correct every sound that he doesn’t get right. If he really can’t decode a word, put your finger under each sound and have him decode the word. I will be very interested about the results of the vision test. Error correction is one of the most important exercises in PG. (At least I think so)

Shay,

I was just speaking to my son’s therapist about the miscalling word problem and she had a perspective I had not encountered before. She told me she thought at least part of his problem is related to reading comprehension. He doesn’t see “making sense” as obligatory and as a result doesn’t self correct. So, for example, he is reading a story and reads “Maggie” as Mama and later “Mama” as Maggie. Clearly, he is looking at the “Ma” and then guessing. But, as his therapist says, the story doesn’t make sense the way he is reading it, but he doesn’t see that.

We are working on visualization with her—a program she does with language impaired children. It is more elementary than V & V—which we may still do. My question to you is whether you have seen any relationship with miscalling words and learning visualization skills.

Clearly, this is not the whole reason for my son’s miscalling words. He does better with a pencil, like Sue suggests, so there is a visual/attention part of it too. But it has puzzled me why he doesn’t self-correct.

Beth

Hi Beth,

Would you happen to know the name of the program if it is commercially available? I won’t be able to take the LMB courses for a few months, and I’d really like to try visualization with a student, but I haven’t found a concrete program for instruction. Thanks in advance!

Linda W, Beth and others,

I do not have an explanation, but… I was having the same problem with my son and was wondering why he does not self-correct when “reading” something that does not make too much sense.

Now I believe it is related to lack of mastery and putting too much work into decoding itself, hence losing sight of the story plot.

Once his decoding and fluency skills improved, he started self-correcting “on the fly” (still there are long sentences where his poor working memory gets into the picture and he cannot really see that he is losing meaning).

He is also performing better on “short words” (although still not perfect, “a” and “the” mixed up et.c.) and the problem with inversion (“was” vs. “saw”) is almost completely gone, BUT… only for short words (up to two syllables)- the multi-syllabic ones still are hard for him (Anitya talked about this problem many times).

Hi Linda,

Yes, it could be visual, especially given the behavior of covering one eye that you mentioned.

However, it could also be that he’s reverting to guessing mid-word, instead of sounding out the complete word.

First, I usually don’t have them read a book in which they’re making errors at a rate of more than about five errors per page. If I give them a Magic Tree House book and get five or six errors in the first paragraph, I drop back to Arthur or Henry and Mudge or a similar book until I start getting only a few errors per page. This tends to take care of the comprehension problem also, as they are reading easier material then.

Second, the error corrections and the way you give them are obviously important. With a guesser, you want to continually reinforce the fact that he “got” the word when he decoded it, whereas he failed when he fell back on his old strategy. Remember to praise any noticeable increase in competence.

It’s also easy to forget to mention that he just read a complete page without an error, because you’re looking for errors to correct. If he does that, mention it and point out how the new strategy is working now that he’s really using it….praise his new competence. That is what all kids really want to achieve…a feeling of competence at whatever they are doing.

Also, if he reads a page or a paragraph or so without an error, stop at times and ask a quick question or two about what he read. I’ve found that, when reading accurately, they usually know exactly what’s going on. I don’t make it seem like a test, just a “Hey, I’m wondering if you know….” kind of exploration. If they do, I just comment something like “Yes, I thought you had that figured out,” and let them continue.

A kid, however, who is reading accurately but without understanding what he’s reading could easily have a vision problem. He’s managing to overcome it to the extent that he can decode, but he’s still under enough visual stress that he can’t relax and enjoy the story he’s reading. In time, a kid like this will wear down and start making a lot of mistakes again. On a bad day, he will start out like he never had any of your instruction, and go downhill from there.

Finally, a lot of errors that are caused by what I call “jumping to a guess” (which is behavior that is unfortunately encouraged in some curricula) result in the child retrieving a very similar word. Once it’s been retrieved, it can become “stuck” and be very difficult to remove. You’ve probably seen the kid who correctly says “b..ow…l” then blends “blow!” Once he’s got “blow” in his head, getting it out can be tough. This is not a visual issue. He’s got a blending problem and has to work it out himself with your error corrections. When he finally gets it, praise his success…..Rod

No doubt that decoding skills are probably part of the picture. Interestingly, though is the fact that he will do the same things with books much easier than his reading level as well as those at his reading level. In most cases, he can read the word—if you ask him what it is, he will accurately tell you. Very strange, I think.

Beth

It is a program she has developed that isn’t commercially available. I understand the V & V book is pretty easy to use. You might try to just get the book until you can attend training.

Beth

Maybe it’s a combination of a lack in visualization skills, attention and “insecure” decoding ability. It seems like each of those could be caused by the other.

My son has a similar problem of not using context and sometimes coming up with an illogical word, when, if he thought about it (or even looking at a picture on the page), the word would seem simple to figure out correctly (or guess!).

But I think my son still has decoding issues. I find his reading will vary quite a bit. Sometimes he’ll have an easier time reading than at other times. Also, I find that even after tremendous repetition of one thing (for example long/short vowels), if we stop focusing on it for a week or two (to work on something else) he’ll completely forget what we went over before. And it’s almost as if I never taught him anything. It’s very discouraging.

Even tonight. We’ve been doing a visual forcusing near/far exercise. He has to alternate reading lines of letters on a chalk board, and on a flash card to the beat of a metronome. A couple of times he completely blanked out on “q” and miscalled a few other letters.

Laura,
I think you are very right about repetition.

I think that this is an issue that are really hard to address since (as Anitya I think mentioned already) some of these children need thousands of repetitions to master some skills (vs. a dozen needed for other children). My son certainly needs constant work on a skill otherwise he will lose it easily (this is a motto in his school- repetition, repetition, repetition and lots of it….).

He is learning from Saxon Math now and I think it really helps him since almost all homework does have additions, subtraction et.c. , and he does three rounds of his speed arithmetic every single day (including weekends). With all this, he still sometimes counts and does not recall math facts easily (he is in 5th grade and never really had problems with math- except not mastering math facts, but he certainly learned to compensate and added seven 6s to find out the answer to 6x7). He hit a wall however with divisions…

With reading, I suppose the task is even harder since there are irregularities, since not every word is easily decodable. However, I had observed recently that he would try various versions for a pronunciation of a word until it makes sense. This is something that I had not observed previously, so I suppose he has finally master some skills and he starts applying them effortlessly.

Beth,
I think that in such case your therapist suggestion seems to be very right that he is not really “playing the story as he reads it”.
Did you try the “pre-reading” work? Does this help him?

Laura,

Gosh, we have that same problem. He just does not hold those symbols in his head. I think we are just spinning are wheels trying to teach that stuff until they really can visualize those symbols. The VT will address visualization which I am very happy about. They don’t do it until the second month of the program, They want to get the eyes working well first.

Ewa,

What do you mean by “rereading work”?

Beth

I think if you child is trying out different ways of saying a word until it makes sense, you have crossed a major hurdle!!!

I still am dreaming about that day!!!! And worrying about him being stuck at a 4th grade reading level!!

Beth

Beth,
I meant “pre-reading”. I was told that with children like ours, one needs to prepare them for what they will be reading about, so they will have their mind set up for a certain experience.

For example, when my son starts a book, they talk about the cover, what do they think the book will be about, what do they know about this subject et.c. Apparently, it helps them with visualization once they know what the subject they are reading about is and they review what do they already know about that (they would for example discuss- what could that mean that for example the children in the picture do not wear shoes, what could this situation be that is presented on the picture et.c.).

Actually, you did say prereading!!! I have not done that, although it does sound like a good idea. I guess we did that in school when we read novels. Ironically, the Maggie versus Mama mixup I referred to earlier was in a book he had already read. So I doubt such an approach will solve the whole problem!!

Thanks for the good idea.

Beth

Beth,
I posted this to give you a “hope-bringing” example… I was full of joy when this happened. I did not expect this happen so fast; only two months ago, he would have not made an attempt like that. But, he has done a lot of reading since that.

My son will be 11 in two weeks, and he is probably reading at the 4th (maybe going into a 5th) grade level. All of this after 2.5 years of intensive remediation. In the summer between 3rd and 4th grade he was reading at the 1.8/2.3 grade level (with the lowest being fluency and the highest being “sight word” reading) when the school report told us his reading skills were mid-third grade, which we did not believe and started our own journey (he was receiving help since 1st grade).

After 35 hours of summer tutoring and a year of daily 1 hour sessions of 1:1 with Wilson and drills at home, he gained a year, which brought him to 3.3 grade level at the end of 4th grade. After another 22 hours of 1:1 in the summer, one week of summer school in the LD school, daily fluencies over the summer and 5 months in the new school I am guessing he has gained another year, but I will not know until they test him at the end of this school year.

His writing is however much lower (even when we forget about the spelling), but I am hoping they will help him to get there, so he will be able to go back with just accommodations and no more regular visits to resource room……

Beth,

the neuropsychologist who evaluated our son had told us that the experience of learning how to read is really like “breaking the code” and once they get this, they will be over. He had also firmly said that he has no doubt that our son will learn how to read - that was something we really needed to hear - we were still on the path of “you have too high expectations” excuse.

I think our children are just so “inefficient” when they are learning and it is a lengthy experience and it is hard to keep hope on the way (at least for me it is); although as I mentioned we do have great gains recently…. (but we went through months of reading the word once and not being able to read the same word two sentences later)

Thanks Ewa for sharing this great idea!

I’ll try it! And it’s so simple I have to wonder why I didn’t think of it before. Obviously I focus way too much on decoding and orthographic patterns and not the entire process of reading.

That does bring hope!!!!

Right now I give him time to do this on his own, but he’ll often struggle and then I’m the one who is constantly pointing to a troublesome vowel (or ?) and saying things like. “What’s an alternative sound for this?”

And it doesn’t seem to matter how many times we go over it. Two minutes later he’ll make the same exact error.

This morning we went over spelling words. One that he had difficulty with was “kept.” I had him spell it on the table, I told him to make a “photo in his mind of the word,” and I asked him questions like “what’s the 3rd letter?” etc… Then we worked on four other spelling words that were difficult for him.
After this I gave him a little quiz and doggone it he spelled it “cept”!!!! Only moments before, and the previous day, I had reminded him and talked a lot about “soft c” (the “ce” that symbolizes the “s” sound).

That was one of those moments I wanted to pull all my hair out! But I realize I need to patiently plod onward.

Thanks for sharing. My son can read—close to grade level actually. It has been a herculean effort though. And he still doesn’t do the things good readers do. When he reads a word wrong, I have to ask him what other sounds letters can represent—and he doesn’t always remember, no matter how many times we’ve gone over it. I would say most the time though he is reading a word wrong he actually can easily decode it. When you ask him again, he can tell you.

Beth

I would say that Shay is on the money with her strong support of error correction. If you don’t know when you are wrong, how can you fix anything?

As far as making sense, well, a lot of kids in guessing oriented instruction have stopped expecting books to make sense. Books are something from Mars that teachers force on you as evil-tasting medicine. You have to re-teach the idea that the written language is related to the real world. I spend a lot of time on that. Discussing naturally after every page or even every paragraph is important. Don’t worry about hurrying up to “cover the material” — remember, there is absolutely no value in a fast mistake. First right, *then* faster.

I also spend a lot of time on reading for accuracy. I make students go back and correct each and every error. Yes, every one. Especially those “little” ones, which foul up every single sentence if left to go on. At first the student finds this difficult and it is a battle; after some time the student realizes that he is reading a lot better and will correct more often — although it may take two or more years to get a confirmed guesser out of the habit.

I don’t know why that c stuff is ****so**** hard. Maybe they’ve seen “C is for cat” just one (million) times too many.

Beth,

I sometimes wonder how may repetitions are needed that things stay with my son “for ever”…

After the winter break, he reversed “4” whe working on his “winter math package” and when asked to correct this, he told me he had forgotten how “4” looks like…