Going beyond blending to reading?

Take your time and let her work into it. Why does everything have to be instant? The child is six — if she can read fluently in a year by the time she is seven, she will be way ahead of the curve. So look at developing fluency and speed (two different things!!) as a full year’s project, relax, and work into it a bit at a time. Have her read aloud every day. Let her read things that she can handle faily easily — don’t keep pushing and pushing her into more difficult material, don’t turn reading into a battle and a contest. Let her re-read favourite stories at least some of the time if she likes to do that — it’s a natural way some kids have of reinforcing their learning. If she reads every day and gets in lots and lots of practice, and if you keep introducing books that are appropriate to her reading level with just a bit of new vocabulary for gradual development, she will become confident and will blend faster and faster until it becomes automatic.

If she really does seem to be stalled, you can make word cards and have her practice sounding out, spelling, copying, and writing from memory each new word until she is more comfortable with it. As she develops a memory bank and has sounded out and spelled each word in it, she will get better at sounding out new words.

I agree. Better to blend each word as it comes now than to be doing a lot of sight reading. It might be faster (sight reading) but she will never be able to read every word she sees. If she has a solid foundation of decoding then she will be able to eventually learn these words and read them fluently. That comes later. Relax as she is only 6. If she were older and had more time on this I’d start thinking she needed something else.

—des

Yes, it’s normal :)

Does she do it if she reads the same sentence twice in a row? THat’s not as normal and I’d do that (with short, easy sentences :-)) in case she really is ready for faster recognition but just hasn’t “clicked” on the idea.

And… how is her oral language comprehension?

Yes, she will blend each word when rereading a sentence; unless the sentence is only 3 words. She reblends each word no matter how many times she has seen it before. She is in the first grade and turns 7 next month. Her oral comprehension is good.

Blending even on re-reading says that she is not certain or confident of her reading yet. Do lots of work with limited vocabulary booklets where the same words come up over and over and over again *but* in different contexts (so she is learning the words, not memorizing and reciting). Also make word cards as above — *NOT* flashcards, the point is not to rush, exactly the opposite. Take the time and go over and over the limited base vocabulary, blending and re-blending, until she is sure that the yes, this set of symbols does stand for this word. Have her make up sentences with the cards and read them to you — kids enjoy this and it gets them involved and they gain confidence.
Some kids get this in a week or two, some take months. If you keep working on it, the light does flash. Hurrying her just loses the little confidence she has and is counter-productive, so bite your tongue and grit your teeth and keep smiling. If she can blend and sound out, she will get there in the end.

Another idea, if she is segmenting and blending each sound, try to teach her to chunk.

So if she reads “sip” as s/i/p, try getting her to blend “s/i” into “si” then add on the “p”, like this “si/p.”

Use words and nonsense words to practice this chunk:

sip
sit
sim
sib
sis
sid
sif

I have even had the child highlight the common chunk.