Reading Help needed for 3rd grader

Well first of all as one writer says: There are no easy answers. LMB programs can work but they are not really quick and fast they are intensive and really hard work. I would guess that not every child does well in that intensive an environment. It can take a good long time to really teach reading so I wouldn’t really be looking for a quick fix, I’d be looking for an effective treatment that would make her a good reader in the long haul.

A reading teacher in the public schools, how to say this but they don’t know that much about reading in most cases. They know what they were taught in school which was mostly incorrect.

Sight word reading like Dolch only teaches high frequency words. It sounds like hey that’s what most of the words are. And yes, most of the words are things like ‘is, of, the, etc.” if you count the actual words, but the words that actually add the meaning, well those will likely be multisyllablic. You just can’t teach those by looking at them. I don’t really agree with the recommendation to increase her sight word vocabulary. A sight word approach will only get her to about a third grade level if that, and with poor visual memory I doubt it would be that high. Explode the Code is an excellent program in some ways but for kids who do not “get it” it just goes by way too fast. What she needs is something more intensive.

You need to look for a tutor who will really remediate her reading and not try to do quick and dirty reading tutoring. You want someone who will build up her skills from the ground up painstakingly teaching each sound and teaching her to blend those sounds together. Then by rereading and other means she will gradually build up speed. It isn’t necessarily fun or easy but it does really work. Someone who is trained in Orton Gillingham (or an Orton based system) is a good start.

BTW, until she can read you might explore Talking Books for the Blind and Disabled, as well as other kinds of books on tape.

—des

Most of what you are doing sounds very good. Sometimes it takes time and hard work and practice to reach a goal. I find stress on speed to be very counterproductive.

It often helps to take a student like your daughter and practice lots of reading at a lower level that they have already mastered pretty well, and then work *gradually* up to more and more vocabulary and structures. You read with her and make sure she corrects every error — you do not want to teach rushing and guessing.
Staying always at the top limit of what she can barely do, yes, that is of course too fatiguing and how can she enjoy it?
I find old basal readers from used book stores to be very useful for massed practice. You would start with a 2-1 reader (grade 2 first semester), then a 2-2, and then work into her present grade level of 3-1.
Sometimes I even use two series of readers in parallel to get even more practice. No, storybooks will not do; the vocabulary is too random and there is often far too little text and far too many pictures; you want something with big blocks of print, pages and pages of story, *but* with a limited vocabulary and style so she isn’t constantly having to stretch for it. Your present tutor could do this with her, or you could do the practice reading part yourself and leave the tutors to teach new stuff.

Your psychologist may know psychology but he isn’t an expert on teaching reading (this question comes up a lot.) The advice to avoid fatigue and stress is good, but that doens’t mean to avoid LMB; there are several teachers on this board who use LMB in shorter doses. The two-week intensive LMB appears to me to be more for the convenience of the parents (let’s fix this reading problem RIGHT NOW, pay for it and forget it) than for the learning style of the child; most children learn better with short but very frequent and repeated lessons. Look for a private tutor in your area who has LMB training and will do perhaps three times a week for 30 minutes to an hour.

The advice on “sight words” — well, there are two approaches to this. One is to forget all the hard work you have put into phonics and go back to speed drills and pure brute memorization from flash cards. This is generally a very bad idea, confusing to the child who now has two conflicting reading systems being taught, limited by visual memory, error-prone, and stressful. OR, you can do as I suggest above and get developmental readers which carefully introduce new vocabulary gradually and in the order of highest frequency of usage first; then the “sight words” get learned by constant practice within a meaningful context. Please, even with these words, make sure she is scanning left to right and sounding out (even if the vowels are irregular, the consonants are a good guide).

Good luck and please let us know how it goes.

My son has both visual and auditory weaknesses that have impacted his reading. It has been a long road. As others have said, there is no quick fix.

My son is 11 and now reads at grade level. He still reads slower than he should and does not like to read. I honestly am not sure he ever will like to read. But he is able to do his school work.

We have done a broad range of therapy to improve his ability to learn but for reading we have used Phonographix (Reading Reflex) and LMB. I tutored my son in Reading Reflex, supplemented by two different trips to Orlando where he received intensive therapy for a week. We did Seeing Stars last summer (age 11) for four weeks when I felt we had gone as far as we could with RR. Seeing Stars has the very best visual component of programs available, in my opinion.

LIPS is a great program but I did not think it was ever going to be ideal for my son (he has some small motor issues and feeling the sounds in his mouth did not give him additional information). Most people also say that LIPS is more intense than a lot of children need. So what we did was get him decoding using RR and then do Seeing STars. Seeing stars improved his accuracy but actually slowed him down.

Earlier we tried a school tutor who was trained by LMB and used the program in the schools. It was a disaster frankly. My son has major integration issues and found the tutoring very tiring. I don’t think she was used to working one on one with a child like mine. So I would be careful with school based tutors—they are often used to working in a different format. We used a clinic for LMB last summer.

Beth

It is so tough that she doesn’t like being read to! IMO, it is essential to read aloud (and listen aloud) for reading to become fluent.

Along with all the good advice given so far, I’d be looking at WHY she doesn’t like to be read to…so you can work to correct the underlying problem. I guess maybe something to do with the auditory processing, but can’t advise you there — a specific post for Patti M, an SLP and parent on this site, might give you some ideas if she doesn’t join in soon.

Others around here are well-versed in vision therapy — my son’s difficulties (transpositions, copying, reversals of letters and symbols) seemed to resolve naturally by mid-fifth grade, but we had the reading going well by late 3rd and so the writing was less urgent — with her reading being impacted, you have more difficulties, and maybe more is going on than just slow development of the visual system, which is what my optometrist initially suggested, back in 1st grade, and which I believe was probably accurate. However, just because one child’s problems resolve ‘naturally’, doesn’t mean YOU can afford to wait. Nancy posts about vision therapy so maybe a search of archives or a thread asking for her help would also be useful to you.

I tend to side with Victoria in that material needs to be ‘easy reader’ type…she is the teaching expert, but I am a FIRM believer that kids who struggle need MORE reading aloud/being read to, not less, and maybe if you can find a level more comfortable for her, you will get her more ‘on your side’. ONce my son began to see improvement, it really helped — and rewards didn’t hurt either. (Lucky for us, though, I could reward 1/2 hour of him reading to me with 1 hour of me reading something like Harry Potter to him — win win!)

For reading ‘for pleasure’, you may need to search out materials used in adult literacy programs if she balks at books that seem ‘babyish’ to her. My son was in 2nd grade, and LOVED to be read to, making it much easier for me. He hated to read aloud though – I simply had to threaten and reward, but as it became easier (and rewards greater!) it was less of a struggle.

It is still no shame to find someone else to read with her — you want to protect your relationship at all costs, but the reading itself has to be a no-arguments issue. There IS only one way to learn — that is to do! You can give her sympathy, support and praise for her efforts — but she must learn that there is no magic reading pill, nor can she say ‘I just can’t learn’ — that’s crap, but a very understandable reaction to initial reading failure. You must believe for her, and communicate that belief, before she will believe it. But there is no quick, magic program — another regular on this site is Angela, whose HS senior son is just in the last year seeing some real gains in fluency through an over-the-phone read aloud tutor.

The right material is key — you need the type of books Victoria mentioned, ‘high frequency’ readers. For that reason, in his ‘pleasure reading’ aloud to me, my son and I used alot of the ‘old’ stuff, anything by Arnold Lobel, etc., Amelia Bedilia, other authors in the ‘Easy Reader’ line (sorry, can’t think of any but I bet a librarian could help you — that’s where we found most of ours, and they are still out there to buy.). The ‘Magic Treehouse’ series was big too…and ‘Captain Underpants’ by Dav Pilkey was a GODSEND…but again, I think she is a bright child who ‘can’t’, surrounded by others who CAN…and you may require material that is ‘not babyish’ to a sensitive 3rd grader. The material itself must ‘pull her in’ — as you know, the reading itself is torture for her, and she is going to work hard to avoid it. You simply must keep at her until she can understand that it is NOT easy — WORK will be involved — but her learning style CAN be addressed, and you WILL help her find the resources she needs to do that.

For reading aloud, I used a combination of ‘reading practice’ — where he had to sound out any words, with my help — and ‘assisted reading’, where I would supply the word after his inital stumble. If he guessed, I made him start again — but the assisted reading was ‘for pleasure’. This is done with adults as many have such poor skills that the highest priority is getting them to return — so the program is much slower and based on success. Victoria may disagree, but i think there is room for both types of ‘reading aloud’ — I always told my son WHICH it was. One was small bits and strictly at his ‘can do’ level with a few new words — like the ladybird series Victoria recommends. Pleasure reading was chosen as much for interest, and to be a slight bit ahead of his level — hence, my ‘assisting’ to prevent frustration and model fluency.

Reading problems are a vicious cycle she must understand — finding reading harder than it is for most people (since one requires more inventive methods to learn) leads to deciding one is ‘bad’ at reading, which makes one avoid it — giving one less practice, making one fall further behind…making one hate reading, avoid reading…falling further and further behind…failure leads to blaming self as all the others forge ahead…and possibly giving up. This cycle must be broken!

It helped me that I was an adult literacy tutor before I was a Mom — adult literacy centres get people reading after DECADES of failure, — so I had no trouble communicating my belief. (convincing the school took much longer…sigh!) I also communicated to my son about other dyslexics and their struggles/success — it is important that your girl stop feeling that SHE is the problem. Her learning style may not be usual — she may have physical visual/auditory problems that are impacting it in a negative way, also — but if she will be willing to do what it takes, she WILL learn to read.

Best wishes to you!

I agree with most of what has already been said here. There isn’t a quick and easy fix, and avoiding the hard work will only make it harder and longer.

You may need to look into remediating any underlying sensory/motor/visual /auditory deficits. Has she been evaluated by an OT?

My son is an extremely slow processor, but we have found that vision therapy improved his tracking, and therefore his reading speed. Reducing his anxiety about reading has also allowed him to make progress.

But the single thing that has turned him from a non-reader into a reader is getting OG instruction, 3 times a day, 5 days a week in a school for dyslexic children.. Its less intense than Lindamood, but its still very focused and frequent. (By the way, we did see improvement from lindamood bell after a 4 week program, but that level of intensity is hard to maintain. I would have done LMB for a 12 week summer program had he not been admitted to his current school.)

It took a year of this type of schedule (3 hours a day/ 5 days a week) before we saw any change. Then something clicked and his reading was at a new level. This is consistent with what Dr. Sally Shaywitz recommends in her book “overcoming dyslexia”.

The good news is that the proper instruction works.

I agree with Karen on the OG instruction. Orton Gillingham, given on a daily basis, will, in all likelihood, be your daughter’s best bet. You will simply have to require her to do it, seeing as if you wait till she herself wants to, she might never become an efficient reader. Since she doesn’t find reading to be intrinsically motivating, you may need to give her some external motivations (i.e., rewards, behavior modification).

You’ve received some good suggestions here. I wish you success in helping your daughter learn to read better!

Kathy G.

I think the suggestions are all good.

Someone doing LiPS might be good, not in their center. I have had success teaching it an hour three times a week. I have the parents come in, of course I have to teach them— which takes doing. But it is worthwhile. Some kids do not really need the intensity of LiPS. If your child really knows the sounds very well I wouldn’t do it. If she has trouble remembering the sounds, and esp. if she has trouble reproducing them, esp ch, j, th, f, v, sh LiPs would be very beneficial.

Has she had phonemic awareness testing. IF it is extremely low that would be another indicator that LiPS would be beneficial. But if she knows the sounds already, they will spend weeks and weeks on this and it may not be necessary.

Also I don’t think that OG has to be daily, it would be ideal. Don’t even think about it for less than twice a week, and if you can do it for three or more times a week, so much the better.

Victoria’s comment on the psychologist is appropros.

—des