frustrated parent

Take him for a ride in the car and have him read signs.

Take him shopping and have him read lables.

Let him know it is ok for things to take longer.

I think Phonics is ok but he needs to be able to recognize words at a glance.

Don’t make reading a chore he will dread.

Have him read a few new words everyday.

Teach him how to do creative lettering with different words that way he will learn to read by aciddent.

Praise him and be patient.

Since he does not seem to remember the word after sounding it out before, I personally would not recommennd Hooked on Phonics. I bought it for my son and it requires that the child remember the word he has seen and heard. It may be good for some students. You could see if someone has a set to lend you. What progress is you son making toward his IEP goals? What method is his LD teacher using to teach him to read? Wanting and enjoying reading is not enough. It is of course necessary, but the child needs skills to decode and comprehend.

hey Diane: PLEASE tell your son everyday ho SMART he IS-that’s he’s not good at reading doesn’t mean otherwise (which i think is a very natural conclusion to come to)
READ Why our children can’t read by diane McGuiness- she has some rather scathinng things to say about hookedon phonics.
JOIN the International Dyslexia Association
RESEARCH Lindamood-Bell (I think those folks hung the moon and stars- despite the $$$$$ price tag and ongoing wrangling with our ueless school district to reciver some of this, PHONOGRAPHIX, and ORTON-GILLINGHAM- I’m sure your son can be a super reader- it’s just that the no-account “instruction” he’s received for several years- actualy, well apparently didn’t instruc him in how to read. You need to do this before middle school
good luck and God bless

p.s. mabe the sp ed teach isn’t that great.
also check out Reidmartin.com and wrightslw.com

cheers

He may have a vision issue so you might need to consider seeing a developmental optometrist.

It sounds like he has the sounds of words but perhaps has trouble blending.

I would highly recommend you buy the book reading reflex (this is phonographix Sandy mentioned above) and teach him yourself. It is a very clear cut method that isn’t hard to teach.

If you would rather do it through a clinic go to a lindamood bell clinic also as sandy suggested. I think LMB seeing stars especially would really help him.

He needs to read fluently before he can comprehend. If he is expending all his energy on the decoding part he has nothing left for comprehension.

I teach students who sound out every word, every time. If your child has been taught phonics or to sound out words, then he does not need MORE of this. He needs to learn to automatically recognize words.

He may have a vision issue, so have an optometrist evaluate if you have insurance. He may have memory deficits and a rapid naming deficits (almost surely). If he has the latter two, he may never read truly rapidly, however he will read faster with appropriate teaching.

You would like him to recognize chunks and patterns in words. So, after teaching them, he needs to practice with recognizing them quickly. I like Great Leaps by Kenneth Campbell. I also like the Programmed Readers for the beginners. The student is exposed to each decodable word many, many more times than in any other program.

My students who sound like your son have improved with continued explicit teaching in decoding and daily practice with programs like Great Leaps and Programmed Reading. I also introduce Read Naturally eventually into the mix to improve speed, fluency and comprehension.

My son did the same thing. He had memory issues and RAN and difficulty with visual patterns. He couldn’t learn sight vocabulary and he wasn’t good at sounding out words either!

He still has trouble with generalizing visual patterns but the rest is dramatically improved. We have remediated a lot of his underlying deficits. We also used controlled vocabulary books for reading. I found old readers and used them. We also read the same books over and over again. It just took him a lot longer to get the automaticity of words.

Betj

I think another part of reading is understanding the word you read. I felt my child did better once pictures were hooked with words. “Explode the Code ” workbook has lots of pictures for words and makes it easier for her to remember after she sounds out the word. My child usually doesn’t do well with people names in books but once I say it is the same name as your Uncle’s name ,she then has it and doesn’t have to resound it out like we do when I can’t hook it with something.It’s amazing how clapping out syllables helps the child to say a word. Hamburger was a difficult one until we started clapping it out and it was amazing how she actually said it correctly without too many tries.

He does need that phonics. Just when it is starting to work, don’t quit now.

Email me if you want a few long notes on how I teach reading, along with a number of relatively inexpensive materials sources.

Some children read later than others and not all of us were intended by nature to be natural, fluent readers. That your son struggles with remembering sight words now doesn’t mean he always will. I’m not a fan of hooked on phonics or any of the packaged programs they readily sell.

The best advice I was given was to have my own dyslexic son read 2 grade levels below the level he was comfortable reading at for 15-20 minutes a day. Reading two grade levels below meant he recognized all the words and could just read - no struggle involved. That also meant in the 4th grade he was reading 1st grade books and it was a bit of a struggle to find 1st grade books that could interest a 4th grader.

I also read out loud to him every day from books he enjoyed listening to. Now 18, he is not the world’s best reader by any means but he can read. It took time. We don’t all learn to walk in the same month of our lives and we don’t all learn to read in the same year of our lives no matter how many teachers say we have to.

Good luck to you and your son.

Diane, look at IdeaChain at http://www.understandmore.com