My daughter is very bright but has problems

Check and see if she can read and comprehend the instructions on the work sheet. Let her read it and tell you what needs to be done on the work sheet. This will allow independence she craves and you don’t have to correct her will she is working on them.

It is possible that she is strong in her auditory skills and therefore prefers you to read her the books instead of reading herself. I personally love Narnia books; however they are very advanced for a 6 year old to read. It is likely that she is bored with the age appropriate books. Try shared reading on Junie B Jones Series. Let her read a passage and then you take a turn. Try not to correct her to much as your goal firstly is to develop an interest in reading books. Start small and increase as she feels confidences in herself. As a reward for reading herself, you can read her a book of her choice in your leisure time.

Liza, you need to help her discover the ‘joy of reading’. Where being given a book to read, with all of its pages, can be overwhelming!
Rather than books, you could let her choose and buy some childrens magazines that cover topics that are interesting to her. Whilst the whole magazine might be equivalent to a book. The Articles vary from a quarter of a page, up to perhaps 1 or 2 pages.
So it makes for much more relaxed reading. As she can just select what short article to read next.
This could help her discover the enjoyment of reading!

But importantly you also wrote that she works much better when you are not hovering over her shoulder, correcting her.
Making mistakes is an essential part of the learning process, where we learn to self-correct.
But we need to learn to self-correct for ourselves and not rely on someone hovering over our shoulder?
A ‘hovering person’, also disrupts our thinking processes.
Just imagine as you perhaps write a reply to this, where you have someone standing over you, watching every word you type?
I doubt whether you would finish writing it?
So rather than hovering, you could just step back and let her know that she call out for your help whenever she needs it.
Part of the problem might be sitting on her shoulder?
Geoff.

I let her work completely on her own now. She likes me to sit next to her, but not to look at her paper. If she asks, I will read the instructions. Sometimes she whips through a paper without noticing the purpose of the drill. Or something won’t click. Rather than correcting her or me taking her paper, I write everything on the board and I let her use a marker to go over and make notes and corrections. She says she likes when I write on the board so that is going well for us. When reading, I encourage her to stop looking at me each time she reads a word. I want her to figure it out. If she tries a word a couple times I will give her either the sound that is giving her a hard time, or I’ll give the word. She does much better with me than she does when my husband tries to “help.” He truly [u]does[/u] hover and he pushes too hard. But we swear he’s special needs and he just can’t learn how to do it better.

Is difficulty reading typical of ADD? It seems like it would fit in there, because of difficulty sustaining attention on a task. And during this stage, reading can be tedious. I have tried to motivate her to read either alone or to me. I have allowed her to read bedtime stories to her brothers. I’ve offered stars for each book read, and so many stars translates to us buying books of her choice. I also give a gold coin for each book read. Gold coins are saved up and cashed in for set rewards. I focus on the positive. (I’m not saying I’m perfect, occasionally I do get frustrated.)

Well, I have to go. It’s proving to be a rough autism day today.
[Modified by: Liza on October 30, 2006 11:07 AM]

Liza, it seems to me that most of her reading,is done ‘reading aloud’? When reading books.
Which is something that I have been looking into recently. That could be related to her being bored with reading? Also with things not ‘clicking’ sometimes.
I appreciate that at your daughters age, reading aloud is used to check word recognition.
Though it can turn a page of text into a ‘list of words’?
Liza, you might consider the difference between ‘Reading Aloud’ and ‘Reading Silently’.
When we Read Silently, we read in ‘blocks of words’, where as you read this, you will probably pause 3 or 4 times as you read across each line. Also most likely you will reproduce the sound of the words in your mind. Though many words will be abbreviated, with the keywords in each ‘block’ fully sounded.
Many words surrounding the ‘keywords’, only need to be ‘seen to be there’. Where they provide a background context. This is an important part of comprehension, where we need to trim down what we read to keywords, so that we dont overload our Working Memory.
But my point is that ‘Reading Aloud’ contradicts this reading in ‘blocks of words’.
As we need to pause and pronounce every single word fully, and then move onto the next one.
So for example, the last sentence becomes:
‘As we need to pause and pronounce every single word fully, and then move onto the next one.’
Where this ‘staggered’ approach makes comprehension difficult.
Though related to this, is the transition from Reading Aloud to Reading Silently. Where this ‘reading word by word’, actually needs to be unlearned?
So Liza, this could be related to why your daughter finds reading ‘boring’?

No, NOT reading silently at this stage.
I see a lot of kids who are silent, but what they are doing is NOT reading. Having her work silently at this stage is setting her and you up for huge problems later.

From what you write, I get the picture that she is very much a beginning reader, still very slow and uncertain, with slow decoding skills. Well, this is a perfectly normal stage and one that has to be worked through. If you try to short-circuit it by having her memorize and guess, you set up for great difficulties down the road.

What I do is (1) Teach phonics skills specifically and directly. If she is bright she can work through the first phonics book in a few months and have a huge start. After the second phonics book she would be fluent. (2) Have the child practice with limited vocabulary readers. Your efforts to have her read interesting material and suggestions to get magazines to pique her interest are noble goals, but they are a route to frustration and difficulty. You have a situation where she is supposed to jump from not reading to being a teen-level fluent reader overnight and of course she cannot, which makes her feel like a failure. Instead, get restricted-vocabulary books which do not throw ten new multisyllable words per page at her. Rather, she should meet one or two new words per page and see each new word repeated five to ten times in short order. (3) I teach *all* words by the same logical approach, tracking left to right, sounding out, and simply noting irregular sounds. Having some words to sound out and some to guess by sight and a secret unknown rule of which are on which list is a sure-fire way to poor decoding and fluency problems.

If you do this, you tell her honestly that the first books are just practice books to help her learn to read for herself as she wants to. You tell her that at first they may not be exciting but soon she will be reading anything at all she wants to.

You do correct, but this is different from hanging over her shoulder. I sit bside students and track with a pen and point at sounds they missed etc and call them back to re-read words they need help with. I rarely give the student a word, only as a last resort. They know help is there but they are doing it on their own (and are proud of their independence.) They develop fluency very quickly given this good start.