How to increase reading rate, accuracy and comprehension are

Ditto the same question. My high school son came home with flyer from his high school for a speed reading, comprehension and study skills program offered therough a local university. They are using the Institute of Reading Development program (based out of California). I called for information and really got a slick sales pitch. It sounds great but is $300 for 5 week (1x per week for 21/2 hours). In our area I can get him 5-6 sessions with a private tutor for that. Are these programs just what they sound like…too good to be true? Thanks for any input. sincerely, Eileen

You don’t say what your son’s learning difference is. Without knowing that, a general suggestion to improve speed in reading is to read for pleasure 20 minutes a day. That reading should be in a book at their grade level - no higher - and some even say it can be in a book one to two grade levels below. The point is that the syntax and vocabularly should be all very comfortable for the reader.

Think of it like this. If you were training to increase your running speed, you’d train on familiar ground. You wouldn’t want to pick up the pace over unfamiliar ground.

Homework sadly makes it difficult for students to find 20 minutes a day to read for pleasure but if done in the course of a summer, it can still help to improve their speed.

Rarely though can the gap be fully closed. Homework is assigned to a group of students, fast readers and slower readers alike. My own son reads slowly and so the evening’s homework took him twice or three times as long. Now in college, he chooses his courses and only takes one heavy reading class each semester and fills out with math and engineering classes that have little reading. His 7th grade was much harder than his first year at college and all because of the reading involved!

I’d warn you off ‘speed reading’ programs as those programs are intended for adults and for adults who are already very strong readers. “Speed reading’ is actually a process where words are skipped - something that will not help the comprehension of a middle school textbook. Speed reading is really a parlor trick - not a valid study skill.

Good luck.

He does read orally daily and does so with nice inflection, accuracy and pauses, but my question was about silent reading…I know that I read very rapidly(no, I don’t have an LD) silently, and don’t read every word. How does speed reading training work? He does not need every word in every novel he needs to read for class, but he does need more time left over to read the text books slowly. Does that make sense? I can’t imagine he can get through high school reading at a rate of 25%. He does understand when I read to him at a fairly rapid rate, just to get through the material.

there are software programs that teach speed reading-sorry I dont have the experience to recommend one

Someone, I think its Davis, recommends teaching speed reading because he believes that is how dyslexics are wired to read and we actually confuse the issue by trying to make them slow down because that is how WE THINK it should be done with our personal learning styles

I dont know if I agree, but I am of the ‘try anything’ mentality

If Im right on the source, it was “The gift of Dyslexia”. He outlined a method of highlighting words with the idea you read teh word after the highlight-then the 2nd word after the highlight??? Don’t quote me ;) but you might want to check the book

I remember I did try it briefly with my son but stopped because I wasnt sure if it was the right approach. . I remember being shocked at how quickly he did this exercise and noticing he was outpacing me(and Im fast)because he was scanning vertically while I was wasting time going L-R

My kiddo is 11 and reads very quickly with poor comprehension and too many errors, so, like I said, Im not sure its for him…..but your guy sounds like a good candidate

Interesting, my son reads very fast zipping over periods and commas most of the time. I always tell him to slow down. His comprehension is good for short passages even with all the skipping but he loses it when he reads for long periods.

When we do the vision exercises he can track his eyes very fast but he can’t do them slow. I have started to believe that is why he reads so fast. He loses hs place when he slows down or stops for periods. When I have him track his eyes slow his eyes jump around. He can’t sustain the tracking. I can really see how that would make you lose your place.

I read very quickly. I basically taught myself to speed read in high school. It allows me to absorb a large amount of material. My husband, who thinks it is cheating, reads every word but reads but 10% of what I do.

I think a person can learn to read different things differently. I speed through magazines, novels, the newspaper, but read every word of academic articles I care about.

I think it might be worth a try.

Beth

Hi,

Two suggestions, one cheap, one more expensive…..and I agree with those who say to avoid the speed reading class. If you can read aloud to him faster than he can read silently, his problem won’t be addressed by speed reading methods.

First suggestion: Go to the library and get the book Reading Reflex and administer the three auditory skills tests and the Code Knowledge test in it to your son. At his age, his auditory skills should be nearly perfect, and his code knowledge should be 90 percent or higher. It’s possible that he doesn’t know exactly how the English code works, and is doing a lot of part-word reading. If he does poorly on these tests, buy the book and take the time to work through material in it with him this summer.

Second suggestion (based on my experience with a lot of poor readers): If he says words swim on the page, double up, become fuzzy, etc., OR if he always gets headaches when he reads for too long OR if he’s always in a reading posture that enables him to read mostly with only one eye (hand over face, head severely cocked, etc.) OR if either you or your husband or a lot of your immediate relatives (siblings, parents) also had trouble learning to read, THEN see if you can find a developmental optometrist in your area with a vision therapy dept, because the underlying reason for your son’s reading problem is probably a vision problem. This will cost a lot more than the book, but my guess is that it will turn out to be the route you end up going. See how he does on the tests in the book first though.

Good luck and keep trying….Rod

we tried a dev optometrist the summer after 2nd grade. As usual, my son presented with a pattern that flummoxed the examiner.

Somehow the little computerized goggles measured his eye movements and she said he was ‘taking in chunks’ and tracking at the grade level equivalent of a 6th grader. Yet the testing showed him comprehending at a first grade level

She said he was borderline on needing vision therapy(there were some very mild teaming issues) and it was up to me-we chose not to pursue it. I dont know if it was a good decision or not :( ,but it reinforces that ‘need for speed’ set of beliefs (which Im also not sure about-I am finding he cannot retain phonics w/o constant review-and I do mean CONSTANT)

We may give speed reading a try this summer or over our three week spring break(year round school)

I thinnk it is the word by word decoding that is slow; I do not decode each word at all and I read quite rapidly. I would like to take the pragmatic approach here, and make him as functional as possible while knowing he has to live with his LDs. He is an A student in reg. ed.

Why is he LD?

Rapid picture naming and word id WJIII scores of 90, cognitive ability in superior range; processing score on WISC is 106, far below FSIQ. Yes, he’s come a long way from being a non-reader in 2nd grade; he does well with huge effort, great organization skills and an engaging personality that teachers like.

SAR,
Do you know if your son is slowed down by certain orthographic patterns? I just started using something called “Speed Drills for Decoding Automaticity” by Dr. Phyllis Fischer (published by Oxton House) with my son. I don’t know yet how helpful this will be, but I know my son has difficulty automatically recognizing certain patterns quickly.

We did PG and my son made great progress, but even when he *knows* the patterns, he has had difficulty memorizing and automatically recognizing them as quickly as he needs to for fluency.

Your son may be beyond this stage and speed reading might be more appropriate, but this may be something to consider if your son still stumbles with orthographic patterns.

I would suggest that you have him look at the charts in Reading Reflex and notice the similarities of the digraphs that represents a sound. For example, if he sees the letter ‘o’ in the word with another vowel, ugh or w, the sound will be the long vowel sound more than not. I know that this sounds like a rule but it really isn’t, if the word doesn’t sound right, then he would try the other sound of ‘o’, the short vowel sound. You have to notice when looking at the charts, the long vowel sounds are the sounds that other programs have the rules for, but rarely give the other sounds that they could represent. this is the problem with rule based programs, automaticity, because the child is trying to remember the rule that goes with the digraphs that he sees in the words. All of the students that I have remediated that had other rule based programs, had problems with fluency due to the rules, how the digraphs were taught. Have him look more at the chart in RR, copy it and just go over it. This will increase his visual memory.

Mary

I have found that I too need to reinforce phonics with my son. Not really for reading but more for spelling.

Have you looked at seeing stars? The lindamood bell people talk about symbol imagery. Some kids can not hold symbols in their head as a picture. I know this is a problem for my son. I think you can have this problem without actual ocular motor problems like my son. I think in my son’s case it is tied to his vision issues. I tried doing seeing stars with him but it was very difficult and although he could do it he was not transfering it. I decided to do vision therapy before we try it again because until he gets that input working he isn’t going to visualize symbols.
Check out the lindamood bell website and give them a call. I found them extremely helpful. They pretty much diagnosed my son over the phone.

Since no one has suggested it, the first thing I’d do after ruling out visual difficulties as Rod suggested, is to use the high school Great Leaps in Reading Program. It is designed specifically to increase reading speed and accuracy, improving reading fluency. It sounds as if your son is bright, has learned to read (although I’d want to know if he is decoding well also, especially multi-syllable words), and is motivated. He would enjoy the challenge of doing Great Leaps, it’s not so terribly expensive, and you could go ahead and do it for the remainder of this year since it only takes a few minutes a day. It’s certainly not going to hurt him! If you decide that decoding the long words is a major problem, look at the REWARDS program from Sopris West. Again, its something you can do at home and is relatively inexpensive. I’d probably do REWARDS in the summer when you had more time. Both of these programs are time efficient, which you need when working with bright high schoolers, deal with fluency issues and are validated by published research. They are also designed for older students. You can find Great Leaps through www.greatleaps.com and REWARDS through www.sopriswest.com. Good luck and best wishes to your son!
Ann

Whoops! Somehow, after reading the thread I forgot you were talking about a 6th grader. In that case, you would need the Middle School version of Great Leaps, the REWARDS program would still be just as appropriate. It’s written for students from 4th —12th grade that need help in decoding longer words (three to five syllable words) and for fluency in subject matter material.
Sorry, had a brain lapse there!
Ann

Hi SAR,

Maybe you don’t decode words anymore…neither do I. The reason we don’t is that we have huge sight word vocabs, as does anyone else who reads normally. However, if we couldn’t decode, our sight word vocabs would be pathetic, our reading speed would be much slower, and for most people, comprehension would also suffer. All decoding does is build a phonic base for every word we encounter. Once the base is built, we don’t need to rely upon it….until the next strange word comes along….Rod

Just to add to the collection of great ideas — I remember being amazed at the idea that while you were reading you peeked ahead at the next words (especially if you were reading aloud). Eye tracking issues would make this more difficult — but could be helped along using a pencil to guide his eyes along, or an index card. (Kinesthetic kiddos really benefit from the pencil thing).
I would agree that speed reading isn’t going to address the issues. I read fast … but yes, I generally read every word unless I need to skim. or it’s cheesy writing that isn’t worth the attention. I figure if the author picked those words, I wanted to read them — what if I skip the wrong one?
Practice reading easy stuff is the most reliable speed enhancer… but it’s going to depend on the individual. If the single word fluency is fine, then see my post about phrasing not too long ago (http://www.resourceroom.net/beyond_decoding/phrasing_dec2001.asp )

Rod, I appreciate and enjoy your posts; my son really truly is burned out on decoding remediation and actually does very well, in fact many would say why bother since he’s more than getting by , but I wondered if there was a way to “cash in” on his great strength in learning sight words and remembering them in reading and increasing his rate. Yes I will probably do Great Leaps again this summer, but I was trying to understand how one develops speed in reading. His weakness is orthographic processing, and in fact he can’t read cursive at all; he has no idea what all those curves are all about. Not surprisingly his spelling is very bad in essay writing and A+ on spelling tests! Thanks for your thoughts.

You’re welcome.

But let me ask one last question. Did either you or his father experience similar problems when learning to read? Or possibly your siblings or his father’s siblings? Does your son ever complain about double vision, headaches after reading, words moving on the page?

He sounds to me like a very smart kid with a vision problem holding him back, especially if he’s had good phonics instruction already. If you answer yes to any of the above, I would bet that he has a vision problem, given the other things you’ve told us about him….Rod

Hi Shay,
My son has looked at the charts and *knows* all the rules but cannot retrieve them with enough automaticity for adequate fluency. I’m hoping a combination of timed fluency drills along with plenty of reading practice will help with this.

My son has a severe RAN deficit and also word retrieval difficulties so building automaticity is particularly difficult. However, he has made a great deal of progress.