I need some advice from teachers.
My daughter comes home from school and is reading her reading group book. She comes to a word - “chomped”. There is a picture of an animal eating grass. She looks at the word and says, “chewed”. I tell her to try again. She says, “crunched”. I tell her to sound out the word. She puts her head down on the table and starts to cry. I ask why she is crying. She said, “My teacher told me to look at the picture and the first letter and guess if I don’t know the word right away and YOU tell me to sound it out. I don’t know what to do.” I told her sound it out and she says “chomped” without a problem.
How do I stop the confusion between what she is doing at school, and what we are doing at home? I don’t want a child who’s first reaction to a difficult word is to guess. I already have one of them because of this reading program.
Re: Different programs
I am not a teacher, but recently had this exact problem.. I alos happen to have a meeting with the reg ed teacher who told her to guess at the words. I explained to her why this was not beneficial to my dyslexic daughter, and that she was receiving direct intructions through Exlpode the Code in the resource room and O-G twice a wk.. I told her that my daughter was becoming confused and that guessing was not appropriate for her. Period. She was learnig the skills to decode, why mess her up?
I felt this was important enough to clarifiy it immediately. :)
what the research says
Hi DR,
The teacher who is telling her to “guess from the first letter” may not be up on the current research, which wouldn’t be surprising actually. You can tell her, though, that imaging studies of the brain while reading show that good readers actually do “see” every letter on the page, they just process it into a sound and blend it into a word very quickly, we’re talking hundredths or thousandths of a second. What happens for dyslexic readers is that this process is “slowed down” maybe not by much, but enough that it creates a “logjam” of sorts when you are talking about all those letters and sounds on each page. So it really does not make sense to tell a child to “guess” at all, does it? What we want is for kids to get to the “automatic” level with the sounds, and then guessing is not necessary at all…
Teachers are very impressed if you quote research to them, so I thought this might help…
Sharon
Re: Different programs
Thank you all for the advice. I’ll try, once again, talking with the teacher armed with research information. I will also tell my daughter to sound out the word under he breath so the teacher doesn’t hear. Luckily, my daughter does not seem to have any blaring learning difficulties just some minor annoying difficulties which we are overcomming with various interventions. I’m looking forward to the summer where I can work with her with RR and get her to the point where she doesn’t need to be guessing at all.
Re: Different programs
I am a reading teacher and there will be many times when sounding a word out will not be effective so my advice is to teach your child a variety of strategies including sounding out, looking at the first letters and endings, checking the pictures, looking for familiar chunks or groupings of letters, etc. Not one of these can stand alone. The english language is not an easy one, borrowing words from many other languages. Even with your example chomped she needed to know what the letters CH said and that ED sometimes says a T sound. I commend you for your efforts to help your child.
Re: Different programs
When would ‘sounding out’ a word be not effective? Are you just referring to words that are not from the English language? Remember, whole language strategies haven’t worked for the majority of the kids whose parents and teachers frequent this board. Our kids depend too much on context cues and guessing. So saying that they should only know the beginning and ending sounds and guess is not an option for reading deficient kids that are deficient due to lack of phonemic awareness. They must be taught using a good phonics program or they won’t succeed in reading.
Re: Different programs
You have to inform your daughter that teachers are not all perfect. Her teacher is well-meaning and probably (we hope!) can teach some other things of value, but is misinformed about reading. Point out to your daughter that with your method she gets things right and understands the book, and with her teacher’s guessing method she gets things wrong and can’t follow the story. And if she complains that it’s slow, ask her what is the use of a fast mistake. Keep stressing this. In a few years she will be reading better than her teachers and correcting them (mine did).
Re: Different programs
Christina: you seem to have been introduced to the anti-phonics propaganda. And propaganda is the only word for it, because it is not based on science, not based on practical experience, not based on truth. It is based only on people repeating other people’s unfounded opinions, and is repeated over and over again as “fact” without foundation — and that is propaganda.
Yes, English spelling is difficult. It would certainly be easier if we had exactly 45 symbols to represent individually the 45 sounds of the language. Too bad, we’re stuck with a long literary historyu and a huge body of literature in the awkward but still phonetic system we now have. On the other hand, we have about 135 common spelling patterns and with these you can read over 95% of the words in the language straight off, and make a very close approximation of all the rest. By the upper elementary grades, a student is expected to read several thousand words. By high school graduation, he or she should read over fifty thousand words. Tell me, which is easier, simpler, and more sensible: to learn 135 common patterns and a few hundred exceptions, or to memorize fifty thousand words as each being a separate mystery?
Tell her to always try to sound out the word first. It would be good it she could sound it out silently so the teacher won’t be too alarmed.;-) If the teacher says something, tell her to tell the teacher that all books don’t have pictures and her mom says it smarter to try and sound out words. This kind of thing makes you crazy, doesn’t it???
Janis