" I read the words but think of something else" w

Have your tried the “high interest, low level” books? This worked wonders toward getting my son interested in Reading during and after 6 months of Vision Therapy. Rather than focusing on the books being on “his level” I bounght the Magic Tree House series and he read the entire 25 bok series in a matter of weeks and that was enough to do it. He was in 4th grade when we did this last year and the series is written on a mid-second grade reading level.

As far as the doasge of medication. My son is 65 pounds and going into 5th grade in a few weeks. He takes 30 mgs of Adderall XR. I know children who are bigger than him who are on lower doses but that is the dose that works for him.

I am not a huge believer in relying on assistive technology but we were at the breaking point with this issue too. So we decided to try this instead of his normal techniques of skipping or “wild” guessing.

There is a catalog (and you can access it online: www.donjohnston.com) that has all kinds of stuff and you can try anything out for 30 days before you buy it.

We got the Reading Pen II. It is a scanning device with an earpiece. You scan over a word you do not know (or in our case would normally skip over, cuz he refuses to sound it out). It tells you the word and also hase a button you can press to give you the meaning. With the earpiece in, it doesn’t bother others who are silent reading. He also uses it as sort of a reading pacer (like when you would use a book marker under each line) he drags it under every word to keep his place while reading then when he comes to a word he doesn’t know, he scans it with the pen. I think it helps him concentrate on reading as well.

Now, we’ve only been test piloting it over the summer. We’ll see how it goes in school, but so far, so good and he really likes it.

It is expensive ($249) but I think it is well worth it vs. the option of skipping over words and becoming easily frustrated. We’re still working on the decoding and comprehension skills, but this has been a great find.

It is also a little difficult to operate at first, but it comes with thorough instructions and practice books. The trick is just holding and scanning properly.

We also tried books on tape to use while following along in the text. This helps with concentration too but is definitely more passive than active reading. My son also finds that just wearing a pair of headphones (no music or text tape) while reading helps him focus. (Don’t know how, but he says it works).

Hope there is something here you find helpful. Check out the website though, cool stuff.

This is a very good idea. My son went absolutely crazy for the Nate the Great series. It is below his reading level but he enjoys reading them because it is easy. Also Nate is alot like my son so I see him relating to the character.

He also likes Bailey mysteries.

We go back and forth between buddy reading harder books and letting him pick easy books to read.
My son is not one who likes to read, but he does seem to enjoy reading the easier books.

Little Lulu probably has the more in depth answer that you have in mind, but our twelve year old had great success with the “Wayside School” books by Louis Sachar. It helped that every kid in the class was unusual in a goofy and endearing, but nor necessarily brilliant, kind of way.

Regarding reading too fast, the book [I just know I’m going to get this flipped] “Right-Brained Child in a Left-Brained World” actually mentions that some some [right-brained?] children actually comprehend better when they read faster. Seems a bit counter-intuitive but if that’s the way he likes to read I’d just go with it.

I would not associate any punishment with learning (homework is punishment enough). You want learning to be positive, enriching experience. Perhaps you can come up with a graphic organizer to collect his thoughts. He verbalizes, you write. (Don’t make him complete the graphic organizer himself —he won’t want to do this if he has to write it himself) Besides having your standard title, author, main characters, setting at the top, include sections to record the “rising action.”

When you get to the end of chapter (or whatever amount you two can manage in one sitting) ask him, what was the most important thing that just happened? Who was involved? Who did it impact and why? You might ask the child to make a prediction about what is going to happen next. If he reads a whole chapter and can’t remember what was significant, stop right after you read something significant and ask him then. Or let him tell you when it’s time to stop because something significant just happened.

When you are done with the book, your graphic organizer becomes a distilled version of the book that they can use to complete their book report.

He’s thinking of other things and not really reading… his face is pointed at the words, but it’s as if they were heiroglyphics. He skims over them, a few of ‘em sink in but it’s like the way you look at the scenery while you’re driving. Unless it’s going to hit you, you keep most of your mind on other things.

In a way it’s a “discipline” issue — he doesn’t have the mental discipline to zero in on the story. Sometimes a very easy reading catchy story (Nate the Great is a good example, though they’re easy-looking, too) will grab the mind from the distractions of more interesting thoughts. I assume you’ve tried reading to him and leaving him hanging, and turning the book over to him? Switching off with the reading is another good idea (trade paragraphs —some people trade pages but IMHO that’s too long and he’ll be off in his own thoughts by then) —encouraging him to read as if entertaining somebody.
Another general strategy for getting discipline is to start in small bites — you’re just going to do X # of pages… have him read one (another trick is to encourage him to “read it to yourself as if you were reading it aloud to yourself”) and summarize it, then the second. (I have to do this to get any housecleaning done…)

Other posters have some good ideas, but I wanted to mention something that might be helpful. Does he retain when you read aloud to him? If so, have you tried ‘assisted reading’? This is a term I learned as an adult literacy tutor. In that setting the technique is partly used for diagnosis, but also for confidence building and helping someone ‘read for meaning’. Most people who end up at a ‘community literacy’ program as adults have a HUGE mental block, and we were told that making someone ‘sound it out’ might just ‘send them out’ — the door, never to return.

When he stumbles on a word, you take a beat — ideally, have a small signal he gives to you — to give him a chance to try it, then supply the word and keep on going. This removes the danger of losing the ‘thread’ while stopping to sound out, which is obviously his most UN-favourite strategy. It might help, if you can find the time, especially if you have assigned books that cannot be bypassed, or if he balks at turning in reports on ‘easy’ books. You do need to make sure the material is not so difficult that he must be ‘asssisted’ more than is comfortable…but with my son, this technique worked so well that he soon saw his own improvement and became eager to try.

Another technique that often works for ‘Left Brained Children’ is the Davis technique of ‘Sweep, Sweep, Spell’. Try telling him to use his finger to ‘sweep’ across the word from left to right, as he tries to get it. For some reason…THIS works, at least for my son.
Best wishes to you and your son!

Well, if I look at a page but the words don’t go into my brain I don’t call it reading. Yes, he is trying to read, and yes, he is doing what he thinks he is supposed to be doing so it isn’t exactly a discipline problem. But he is not succeeding at reading so continuing this approach is counterproductive.

I’m going to make a suggestion, and before you give up on it …
I had a German exchange student who was above-average academically but whose English was (quite understandably) on a Grade 4 or 5 level. He was also the only case of math anxiety I’ve ever heard of from East Germany. He took Advanced Placement Biology and Pre-Calculus as well as the rest of the Grade 11 program. For the first two months of school I read every single page of his biology textbook aloud and taught him the vocabulary and structures, and for the entire year I tutored him in math at least three times a week. I also read a lot of his English texts with him over the year, including all of The Scarlet Letter. He finished the year with a 4 in AP Biology (maximum is 5 which is A+, 4 is A) and a B in Pre-Cal and I think a C in English. At the same time I was holding three part-time college teaching jobs. So yes, what I’m suggesting is possible and it does work.

What you need to do to break the habit of running the eyes over the words without the brain in gear is to read *everything* aloud for a fairly long period of time, and discuss it after each natural break — paragraph or section or page. He can read all of it, or you can alternate pages. But when you are reading to him, follow along with a pen point and glance over to see his eyes every couple of sentences. If you are sitting side-by-side at a table you can see his eyes from the side and it is highly visible when he wanders. Since he *doesn’t realize* how much he is wandering, at first you’ll have to call him back every thirty seconds, but after a while he should catch on and just dropping silent for a second should key him in. Encourage slow but steady and give him clues to help sound out until it comes to him more easily.

Try to get across to him the fact that there is no value in a fast mistake. If he “reads” forty pages in half an hour but retains nothing, he is going to have to go back and do the whole darned thing over anyway and take even *more* time; but if he seriously reads twenty pages in that time he is done with that part of the work and won’t have to go back over and over.