Need suggestions...

Hi Beth,

My daughter did this too but PACE and MTC have improved much of this. She used to fatigue after reading one or two fair-sized paragraphs. The more reading fatigue she experienced, the more frequent the guessing occurred. Now that she has improved reading skills, she experiences more endurance and less fatigue. However, guessing can still be a problem if she is mentally or physically tired. I just witnessed this today following 2.5 hrs of testing at the public school. I gave her an hour free-time with lunch and then began working on MTC. She immediately made several guessing errors so I had her reread the passsage and she made even more guessing errors. (Like your son, it’s like she wants to tell the story in her own words rather than read it.) When I asked her what was wrong, she told me she was just so tired from the tests and getting up earlier than normal to do them. I know when I’m tired and reading orally to the kiddos, I make reading errors too. PACE/MTC have also improved her recognition and observation of grammar rules so she rarely ever runs sentences together anymore.

Blessings, momo

Guessing is a huge problem for us too. I am happy to say that we are seeing much improvement since Christmas. I also notice that fatigue plays a role. She had been doing so great when she was off track several weeks ago(even read a Magic Treehouse chapter book, which I think is close to 3rd grade level). Immediately when she started back to school, she went back to guessing and couldn’t get thru the books she was reading 3 weeks ago. I am suspecting it’s fatigue - I sure hope it’s not how they are teaching reading that’s influencing her? She is now kind of coming out of it, but still not quite back to same level - I am hopeful tho.

I also notice that the harder the words are to decode (if there are alot of them), she will resort to her look and guess tendencies, even on the words I know she can decode. I think she becomes overwhelmed. So if I can tell she is tired, we read/review easier books.

I think her biggest issue causing this is poor auditory memory/sequential processing and sound/symbol relationships and this is making her a very poor blender. The Word Analysis lesson in Reading Reflex has helped alot. We do LOTS of Word Analysis practice. The Scholastic Phonics Readers I get monthly, have key words in the back of them, so we do word analysis on them all before we read the book. It seems to get her into the practice of blending left to right vs. wanting to look at the word wholely (which her visual-spatial strengths want her to do). When reading, if she gets to a hard word to decode, we pull out the dry erase board and do word analysis on it - so if she is guessing alot, she has to do alot of word analysis. All the implicit practice on the different sound pictures is also starting to sink in better - her sound/symbol is still not automatic, but getting better.

Hi Beth,

Dd ignored punctuation also. About 6 weeks of PACE cured that. I think it has a lot to do with developing automaticity with visual processing, which then frees up the attention to notice those details.

Guessing has improved a lot, but we still have the problem. I think it gets to be a habit. Just today dd missed a math problem, so I had her go back and re-read it. She read it out loud about 5 times — every single time mis-reading “fifteen” as “fifty”. She would have no trouble decoding this word if she just took the time to look at the second part of it!!! She wasn’t even aware that she was looking at the first part and guessing the second. That’s just plain bad habit. The tutor at her PG intensive said she had developed a “global guessing strategy” and warned that we would need to work a lot on this. The way corrections are done can help enormously, but I have to admit I’ve been less than punctilious about doing them.

Mary

There are a couple of things that you can do to work on this. I find that with some kids, attending to the visual features in text is a resource allocation issue. Their energy is focused on individual words and they literally don’t even see thm as sentences with punctuation marks. (There are marks there?)

I generally do repeated readings with kids to work on this. Pick a short- 50-100 words- passage. Give him a chance to look it over and figure out all the words. First I model the passage. I like to do this with little guys like your son because he hears the prosody then- I will frequently do it with older kids too if I have upped the difficulty. Then read it with him, both of your reading aloud at the same time. It helps if you are working off the same copy so that you can drag your pencil under lines as yoou read. You can do this as many times as he is comfortable with. Some kids have a lot of tolerence and some very little- but at least one time. Then it is his turn. Sit across from him and do the pencil thing. If he misses a word, stop him and circle it lightly. Have him say the word- remember, he got to check all this out before he read- and make him start again. This is not pleasure reading- this is practice in reading fluently and accurately. I always tell kids that we are going for the perfect read. They like that. I usually score kids for accuracy and speed on a graph- it makes the practice much easier to take:) We take a pre and post score and graph them both. This is much the way Read Naturally works I think- only they have a tape. The whole thing shouldn’t take mote than fifteen minutes. If it does- the passage is too long or too hard. This is also an add on- it is not meaant to replace anything else- PG or whatever- that you are doing. It is important that the passage be readable- the child has the skills to decode ALL the words- and that it sound like real reading- sing song or stilted text sort of defeats the purpose. Victoria, whom I haven’t seen in a while, uses Ladybird books to do something similar. I usually wrote my own. Good luck!

Robin

Robin,

What reading is the pretest? Should I have him first read it out loud and time it, then do concurrent readings, then time him?

I have some old first grade readers (1940s) that I can use. I don’t have your originality!!

I like this idea. I actually have been following what Victoria suggested with exposing him to tons of similar difficulty material to build fluency. We actually have moved up difficulty level which has helped keep his interest, although I suppose we have sacrified some fluency in the process. He is willing to work harder to read more complicated text and now can actually enjoy a story he reads. In the process, he has managed to acquire a pretty grade appropriate vocabulary. (He was able to read all the second grade dolsch words). So I think we may not be to a point that some sort of drill like this wouldn’t be a bad idea. I would have been reluctant before since he disliked reading already.

I do what Dea does with a white board and it helps. I don’t (I hope) think my son yet has a global guessing strategy like Mary’s. This is a relatively new phenomena for him. He has visual spatial weaknesses and found learning sight words an even greater difficulty than decoding. In fact, one of the school’s testers critisized him for “exclusively relying on decoding” a few months ago. Seems like she thought he ought to use “context clues” which to me was nothing but a fancy way of saying “guessing”.

I would like to nip this in the bud because as Mary’s example shows, these strategies can persist long after there is any skill (or fatigue) reason for them.

Beth

I would let him examine it and do the concurrent readings first, before I timed it, generally. This is a practice exercise. I have, however, had kids who want to do it first on their own- and I usually let them- it really isn’t all that big a deal when you get right down to it and they desrve a chance to challenge themselves. If they can meet the criteria- 90+% accuracy and reasonable speed and prosody- then halleluia and they need a harder passage:) They always know this and after they have struggled a little they almost always practice first. Old basals are fine and whoever that tester was needs to go back and do her homework. Kids with visual/spatial or processing speed difficulties almost invariably have difficult with high frequency words and the context clue thing is probably the least well suited to their learning style. Grr…:)

Robin

with somewhat mixed results. I let him read the passage first. He read it outloud, although not to me. We then read it together three times. He read it by himself perfectly but I forgot to set the timer so I asked him to do it again. He then was much worse. I kept having him read it again (about four times) because he kept making errors, which may have been a mistake???) He finally got really upset with me and told me I was giving him a headache and he would do anything but this….. We then read the rest of the story and he only missed a few words.

Should I go back tomorrow and do the same passage (and remember to time it!!)

Are there any suggestions you would have that are helpful in reading for kids with visual spatial problems? He used to not recognize words until he had seen them maybe 50-100 times. He is much better now which has helped increase his vocabulary. I know when his sp. ed teacher was using dolsch words he could learn them on cards but not in context. I finally figured out he had learned which ones were in the pile. For this reason, I don’t use this strategy with him at all but rather just read a lot.

The tester was not great. She also tried to convince me that he had very serious long term memory problems. He does not–that is not something you don’t realize, living with a child. In fact, he remembers the funniest things (like a TV show on the Pope visiting Cuba and our discussion about why Americans couldn’t visit Cuba—a year later) The test was visual—filling in parts—but she couldn’t be convinced that this could be the problem instead of his memory, even though he has documented visual processing problems.

Beth

My son misreads words also. I’d be interested in the correction strategies that you mentioned

Beth:

Well- I wouldn’t go back and read the same passage again:) There is no point in annoying him. As long as he read it without error- that’s enough for now- you are just beginning to do this. You and he will get better at it with time. That is what practice is all about. He will see results too- and that will help.

If your tester was giving the Woodcock Johnson- there is a cluster called Long Term Retrieval which asks kids to associate an abstract visual image with a word and then put them together into a story. It is a test of associative learning. The WJR had another test in the cluster called Memory for Names that asked the same sort of thing without the story part- it was just names of Space creatures. That test has been eliminated from the WJIII because it measures such a narrow factor that it wasn’t particularly useful. Many people felt that long term retrieval is synonomous with long term memory- it is not. There is a huge difference between retreiving information that you have stored on your own and the sort of information you have to store for a relatively short time on a test. Your evaluator needs to go back and read her manual.

The bridge for recognizing high frequency word on cards and in text is to put them in text- phrases first and then sentences and then paragraphs. It isn’t a bad thing to learn them on the cards but it is innappropriate to assume automatic transfer from one setting to another (isolation to text) especially with kiddoes with Visual/Spatial issues.

Sounds like you are doing wonderfully- you are sensitive and aware of your child’s needs and responses and good at making discriminatory judgements about where he is messing up. Relax a bit and don’t worry about details- keep asking questions and work with the rhythm of your child- it will come.

Robin

Thanks Robin.

Today he wanted to read the easier basal text so that’s what we did. Maybe he is just tired from working so hard and thus has taken to guessing. He has some trouble with tracking, even though he has been through vision therapy (I think it isn’t automatic enough with his auditory processing problems—we are going to do PACE this summer which I understand helps). With the easier text, I was able to discard the book mark. He still skipped a few lines but it was less pronounced. I didn’t time him or anything but I can see he doesn’t really guess with an easier text. He did skip some words but that too is tracking related I think. So maybe we’ll just do this for awhile. We actually read this whole book back in Feb. but it is much easier for him now. It also has relatively interesting stories (all about animals get tricked) which some of the easier texts I have don’t. He had wanted to read the more difficult stories both I think for self esteem and because of more interesting text but seems like it is time to cycle back.

Beth

I saw my name being taken in vain here a few times … been off with a broken ankle, divorce, too much work, and computer problems. Whee.

As far as the reading question:
(1) I am very very leery of repeated reading because of the problem that you had, namely the kid getting fed up, which is certainly not our goal. As far as possible I like every reading experience to be a discovery of new things — even if the new thing is only being able to read the word “going” or the fact that flamingoes are big birds, it’s a step ahead.

Also there is the large danger that the student is memorizing instead of reading, and thus getting bogged down in yet another counterproductive strategy.

I avoid this by using lots and lots of varied reading at the *same* level — Ladybird *Key Words* readers 1 to 6 (now re-issued by Penguin!! Get them!!) for beginners to grade level 1.5, then multiple basal readers of good literary quality.

(2) Please don’t get hung up on timing and reading speed. Every single kid I get referred to me has a “hurry and guess” problem. Just got another referral this week — Grade 6, bright, cooperative, reading orally almost on grade level (doing Harry Potter with me) — phonics and spelling skills down around Grade 2, and failed middle school entry tests disastrously (thus starting on a career of middle/high school dumping ground classes) because of the inability to deal with detail and accuracy. Like almost every student I see, this kid can figure out a number of words given time — but won’t take the time, because speed is more important than accuracy.

I suggest doing the exact opposite of waht the system has done that has failed so badly: slow down. Read every word carefully and accurately. Take as much time as it takes. Don’t let any sloppy errors go past. I follow with the pencil (altrhough I don’t circle — the page gets messy and discouraging). If the student misses a word, I make a little warning sound, pull the pencil back, and we do it again. Relax, no rush, no strress; speed *will* come **after** accuracy; but if you rush speed, *both* accuracy and speed will collapse.

(3) To make this more interesting, model the desired behaviour, and reduce stress even more, I alternate pages with the student. The student reads the right page slowly and carefully, doing the best they can, and I help sound out when they stall (This is not a test to fail, it’s good literature to share and enjoy.). Then we discuss the story and the new or difficult words on the page. Then I read the left page as slowly as possible, with exaggerated expression, pointing at each word with the pencil, and the student follows with me. Then we discuss any words or ideas I find interesting. (Hey, I bought Harry Potter for myself first.) This does the same thing suggested for taped reading and computer programs, but with the huge advantages of instantaneous feedback, instant adaptation to students;’ needs, and human interaction. Low-tech, high success rate.

always with respect! Glad you’re back- missed you:)

Robin

always with respect! Glad you’re back- missed you:)

Robin

Victoria,

Since my son got so grumpy at my rather botched attempt at repeated readings, we’ve gone back to what we were doing—which was to try lots of reading at same reading level. We’ve backed up some because I can see that “guessing” got much worse the longer we read the harder books. Moving back to the easier books to do the repeated readings made me see that. I think he just got tired of working so hard after the initial charm wore off. But we together (every other page) read over 125 pages of the Box Car Children. (Do you have this book? It was a garage sale special from my childhood with a vocab. of about 600 words. Kids love the story. It is a second grade reading level.)

I’m not really too concerned for speed per se but rather fluency. He sometimes reads really fast but without proper expression. It sounds like he is racing instead of reading. Still, as we reread the first grader primer last week, there were times when he sounded like any other kid. It was amazing. Some of that has been lost as we moved to the second grade primer (which we also had read a few months ago). Some of that is his tracking problems—more text on the page and thus harder for him. I probably ought to have him read some more first grade primers but the other three I have, he doesn’t like. He thinks they are stupid or babyish. I figure interest is more important than anything else. We’ll get there—there are just so many things going on with him that it is like baby steps all the time.

Thanks, as always, for your ideas.

Beth

Oddly enough, the Boxcar Children book is sitting on the easy chair next to the computer, along with the Scientific American, the old mouse, the toy penguin, the tax printout….(daughter’s computer and dump, er, room). I was starting tutoring two twelve-year-olds last week and mentioned to my daughter that I was collecting books at all levels to try with them. She donated five or six old favourites, and then her boyfriend chipped in another four or five including this one. So a nineteen-year-old young man holds this as a fond childhood memory — must be a good one.
Actually both kids came in at a higher level — not something you can count on no matter what the grade, whew — and one chose Harry Potter and the other chose Lloyd Alexander, levels they can struggle through one page at a time with help. Lloyd Alexander got a vote from both of my teens.

Victoria,

It is a good one. We spent many hours as children being the “box car children”. Always made my mom a bit nervous when we killed the parents off. There is something about children surviving on their own that appeals to kids.

Beth