7 yo son skipping little words/problems decoding multisyllab

Kathy,

I’d go through the Reading Reflex program with him. After that, when you have him read, just point to words he calls out incorrectly and make him look at the words he’s just skipping or guessing. He apparently doesn’t have the tools to decode, so he thinks he can just fill in the little words with whatever sounds good. His reading level won’t get much higher with a whole word approach. That’s why his level has remained the same for the last few months.

Janis

I think using whole word you are pretty well stuck at about a 4th grade reading level (plus or minus), depending on the kids memory (your kid obviously has an awesome memory). So you are stuck there because that’s about as far as memory for whole words will take you.

—des

I’d get out a pencil andusing it to track under the words and do a lot of “buddy reading” — trade off paragraphs. (“A lot” would mean, say, 15 minutes a day… but as often as you can — every day, or 4 days a week… ) Make it something within his grasp and a good story… and the point is to learn to read accurately and precisely. Model it by reading correclty, with good expression.
Often kids just develop bad habits — not really an LD thing. Learning that there’s a pretty precise connection between the sounds and symbols (which Reading Reflex or Sound Reading or Patterns for Success or SPIRE or… will do :)) and then unlearning the sloppy habits by carefully monitoring reading can go a long way to improving accuracy and comprehension.
With kids who skip or miss those tiny words, I’ll keep track of how many in a paragraph or page they missed and have them read the paragraph again, or at least ask ‘em to read the next paragraph mroe carefully and let ‘em know when they’ve done a better job.
Another thing I’ll do is keep track of the more interesting or necessary missed words in a notebook and practice them — and to keep it from perpetuating the “sight word” habits I’ll group it with other similar wrods. (So, if he misreads “famous” I’ll have a list with famous and fabulous and callous and courageous and hazardous).

I tutor using Phono-Graphix and end every lesson with reading text.

When the child has the kind of difficulty you describe, I use a mechanical pencil (with the lead retracted) above the line of print. This helps reinforce the need to decode each sound in a word in order. If the child reads just the beginning of a word and guesses the rest, my pencil point is circling the portion of the word that was guessed, providing a visual cue to go back and decode it.

If the child is missing a lot of the small words, I will often stop the pencil point on a missed word or circle it, again giving the child a visual cue to go back and self-correct. (If there are a lot of these, I’m not perfectionistic but rather try to point out at least half of them, so as not to frustrate or discourage.)

It’s easier for me to use a pencil above the line of text than below. The mechanical point is very specific (much more so than, say, a finger) and is very helpful if the child has missed just one sound in a word. In that case, I circle just the missed sound so the child can go back and correct himself.

The mechanical pencil is silent and encourages self-correction.

Nancy

Thank you everyone for your replies! The information you gave me is wonderful. I am printing it out to keep handy, and have developed my lesson “plans” from Reading Reflex. So I feel set to go.

I am sure i will be posting some great results very soon!
Once again Thank you so much!

Kathy mom to Brendan 7, Tara 5.5 (and diag. with Non-verbal learning disorder & language problems), and Katelyn 20 months

Oh, one more thing. Like others mentioned, error correcting is important once he learns to decode. But I was taught by my PG trainer to not worry about “a” and “the” being switched, for example. Only correct words that when misread effect the meaning of the sentence. And I do it like
Nancy mentioned with my pointer. I don’t have to say a word, usually. I just tap my pointer at the place the child needs to go back and reread the word rather than moving to the next word.

Janis

excellent suggestion with details added by nancy. Be SURE to use text that is relatively easy for the student/child.

I also pencil “above” the line whle the student pencils below it. If there’s a mistake, I just stop the pencil and that’s the signal to go back there (yes, first I have to say something but in no time it’s routine). It means there isn’at a whole bunch of talk and interruption.
I’ll use the pencil to point out where the mistake was sometimes too, or — if I’m using a pencil with a point — gently break the word into syllables (sort of ‘scooping’ out the syllables, not drawing a big line between them) or circle the beginning letter if that’s where things went wrong. I don’t spend more than a few seconds on any word, though; I’ll say it and then have the student say it and continue reading (starting with that word or at the beginning of the sentence if concentration has been broken).
THen I”ll look back over the day’s reading and I can see what we’ve been doing and can do a lot of diagnostics there.

A child with nonverbal learning problems may need some cognitive enhancement type work.

With a child who is 5.5 with these issues I would definitely try audiblox. www.audiblox.com This program works really well with young children because they think it is a game like checkers.

Also, skipping little words is one of the signs of a visual deficit that could require vision therapy.