Hi,
I have a question that I hope an expert will answer!!
I have an 8-year-old daughter w/CAPD. I have been using ABeCeDarian for her and I recently went to Auburn U (thank you, Sue!!!) to pick up more methods and ideas. She is really struggling with reading. Forgets sound/symbol association and will drift into guessing, so oral reading is poor. We are working on that but I noticed something odd. When she is doing her spelling practice (words dictated and hidden), she does very well. She will even write whole sentences, i.e. Sam and Tom must sit on the rug., with no problem. I seldom have to repeat the sentence—she can hold it in her head until it is all written down. I find that remarkable b/c she also has dygraphia issues.
What does this discrepancy mean? Does this mean that she can read silently but it doesn’t translate into oral reading? I have no idea of what to make of this…if anything.
Thanks for the help and sorry if this is garbled—it’s very late!!
Re: Good Spelling/Poor Oral Reading--What does it mean??
First, let me say thank you for such detailed information. It helps me make a 3-D picture of what I need to know.
She is sounding out the words. I had to ask her to be sure but I was pretty sure that I heard her muttering /h/, etc., under her breath as she was writing.
She is reading the same material that she is writing. Mainly CVC, CCVC, and CVCC words. No long vowel sounds or irregular words. I will admit that I need to give her a lot more opportunity to read. I have been concentrating to hard to get her to understand the sound/symbol relationship that I have neglected the fact that she needs to be [b]reading[/b] decodable books as well.
Should should be reading material with long vowel sounds and irregular words? If so, how can I teach this?
Yes to the sight words—I have a list of Dolch words. Some of them she already knew.
What sort of limited vocabulary books do you use? I have a few of the ones from Scholastic. I also have a few sets of the Bob books (I wish my husband still worked for Scholastic!!!!)
I know this is going to sound ignorant but can you define modeling a bit more for me? I am assuming it means for her to watch my mouth shape the word? Or is it a run-the-finger under the words as I say them?
Re: Good Spelling/Poor Oral Reading--What does it mean??
OK, in theory I like the idea of decodable books, very much. In practice I have never met a set I can stand. They are so so artificial and awkward and usually amateurish. I include the much-praised RALP books in that, sorry folks. Also they tend to go too fast.
For limited-vocabulary books I use the OLD Ladybird Key Word readers from England, numbers 1a and 1b to 6a and 6b, at which point a student can move into any developmentally-planned vocabulary First Reader.
These books have recently been reprinted by popular demand. They are available through penguin,uk (Note the uk, NOT .com) Mailing prices from Britain are atrocious but I and many other people find these are worth their weight in gold, so we grit our teeth and pay up.Recently on anohter board a poster told me she had trouble getting these sent to the US; check that you have the right site and if you still have trouble, talk to me about reselling a set of mine from Canada.
Yes, unfortunately these do include long vowels and irregular words. I just show how to decode these left to right and keep modelling and it does come together.
Yes, modelling means running your pencil under the word - actually, I stop at each letter or group and say the sounds, then redo running a bit faster. It means saying the sound and having the child say them after you and then with you. You do everything you can to demonstrate good reading thought processes and actively show your student these and have her imitate them until they become poart of her own repertoire. Patience is a virtue; it takes months or years for this to work but it does.
I never ever present words to be memorized just by staring at them. This is how the students I have get into the mess they are in, and I stop it. Many of them have an ingrained right to left tracking pattern and this comes back if they are not required to track properly every single word. I go over, track, sound out, and have students trace every new word until they can do this by themselves. A year or two and you have a real reader so hang in there.
Re: Good Spelling/Poor Oral Reading--What does it mean??
Is modeling taught in combination with teaching seperate sounds or alone? I am still working with CVC, CVCC, CCVC words—teaching seperate sounds and then blending them together. It is going VERY slow. One moment she can read ‘bat’ and then a few minutes later, she is guessing at the same word. She is also looks at me to confirm that she read the word correctly. I am stumped with this—that’s why I had the original question of why she was able to spell these words and not read them as well. Can’t figure out why this is happening—we have gone over this material for several months.
She does CAPD—unusual case of it. She is left ear dominant. The audiologist told me that it meant her language was in the right hemisphere and not in the left where it should be. Another told me that it would be very difficult for her to understand the sound/symbol relationship.
Even after reading about the process of learning to read, I am still amazed at how complex it is. No wonder in times past ‘common folk’ thought that clergy were doing something miraculous because they could read. They were right….
My first question is HOW does she spell? Does she recite letter names, eg ess - ay - em, or does she actually sound oud, eg sss — aaaaa — mmmmm?
If she recites letter names, this is in fact a counterproductive habit because it attaches the word to yet another non-logical symbol system, as if visual symbols aren’t enough we have another sound system that is not the spoken sounds. I have some students that I have to *stop* doing this so that they can actually write. Some kids can go a few hundred words this way and then stall out when the memory banks get full, so they remain primary spellers for life. I have worked with adults like this, very frustrating. If this is what she is doing, she is using a corner of her memory for spelling but it is totally detached from the memory that she is using for reading and that is why she is not connecting the skills.
If she is spelling by sound, this is a very positive and hopeful sign. Sometimes kids get the encoding sound to symbol part working before the decoding symbol to sound part. I see that you are having her write decodable short-vowel words; do you have her reading the same thing, or is she trying to read material with long vowel sounds and irregular words? Have you tried the usual complex method of having her sound out some words and memorize others by sight (a system I find very illogical and inefficient; I refuse to teach sight memorization, period, for exactly this reason.) If the reading material you are giving her is more complex than the spelling, then it could be that she just hasn’t learned all the rules yet and is swamped.
Anyway, if you give her decodable material to read OR as I do use limited-vocabulary books and model how to sound out the new words until they are learned, she should start to pick up on reading. Make sure to model sounding out and have her practice with you as you model; it is the oral practice that does it.