Teaching older student

Don’t know if this counts as “wonderful” or not — here are a couple of directions I’ve taken. I haven’t done it in a while so this isn’t going to sound right, but you’ll get the idea & if there’s something useful in it, go with it ;)

One is that your mind is like an airplane and teaching and learning new things is like flying in that airplane. For most kinds of minds, we know how to do it — we almost have a manual for those models. But some people have a different model and we don’t have the manual for it. The mind has lots of features — like an airplane that can do all kinds of tricks… but while you’retrying to learn how to fly it, well… you’re going to crash a lot. However, once you get it figured out, it can do amazing things.

More often, I’m working with older kids who’ve heard all kinds of nice stuff to “build their self esteem” already. Their eyes sort of glaze over as soon as you start anything like th at. So if I were in your shoes I would tell them something like “okay, you took a test that says you read at a second grade level. I’ve taught first and second graders. Let me tell you one thing, you *don’t* belong in second grade. You’re older and smarter and know an awful lot more. But the bottom line is you have only learned to read the words that most first and second graders know. So you have to learn to read the stuff third and fourth and fifth graders know. We don’t want to skip that stuff.” With my guys Ieven put them through the placement test again if they were “sure” that I was wrong, they really could read better— because it was SRA Corrective Reading’s placement test, it was set up to identify guessers… where one of those “predictable” books might have had tin, it would have thin… so even having seen it before they usually made the same mistakes. I wouldn’t have tried that with most things.

Don’t know what you’re doing with the kiddo… but peek over at my site at www.resourceroom.net and see if there’s anything useful over there. If you need examples of phonics patterns, they’re there.

I tend to be very sttraightforward with older students and say “Look, we have to review this basic stuff before we can handle the harder things. We’ll go over the beginning books quickly and then we’ll get to more exciting stories.” The key words are “review” and “quickly”. Review, so the kid doesn’t feel stuck in Grade 2 forever, and quickly, because an older student can usually progress quite fast once the basic foundations are filled in, and again doesn’t want to feel stuck forever.
I have right now a Grade 6 student, very bright, but never actually having been taught to read — a frantic guesser whose memorization bank filled up around Grade 4. We are battling our way through Harry Potter together (very motivating and too much vocabulary for guessing to be productive) and we are doing the Book 2 Phonics together. I discovered that she had never really learned the difference bnetween b and d (no, her perceptions are just fine, just lousy teaching) and that she know absolutely no short vowel sounds at all — shown the letter A, she will say “ay” but does not know “ah”. So I sent the Book 1, used in kindergarten and Grade 1, home with her for review and extra practice. She has learned to be confident that she is really moving forward with me and took it happily and willingly.
The key is to be low-key and make steady progress. Start at a level where the student needs the material but can succeed, and work quickly up from there. If you start at too high a level for fear of being too babyish, you stall again.

The reality is, as both Victoria and Sue have pointed out, that nothing succeeds like success. Older kids get VERY tired of messing up the easy stuff. Under all that adolescent bluster they really want someone to teach them whatever it is they don’t know in a way that makes sense. Then they can move on. They may grumble all the way- but that is the nature of the age too:)

Keep in mind that you can use fairly sophisticated vocabulary to teach and reinforce pretty basic knowledge. Check Sue Jone’s list for words composed of closed syllables- it doesn’t have to be Pat the Fat Cat- Wisconsin and edit and Atlantic all fit as do many others that are far more challenging. Just make sure you have taught him what he needs to decode the word before you spring it on him:) One of my favorite beginning open and closed syllable words for middle level is streptococcus- they have all had it and love to beat it- if only in reading. Have fun!

Robin

Gail:

When I work with any student past about the age of 8 I tell him or her that the skills I am going to teach them - namely segmenting, auditory processing and blending- are very hard so we will have to begin with easy words. I usually compare the process to learning how to ski. Anyone new to skiing starts on the smallest hill because the new skills they are about to learn are very hard. We want to be able to concentrate on the skills so easy words are used. I also tell the student that once these new skills are in place we will move very quickly through the code. I find this is enough. They understand where we are going and what needs to be done to get there. I never mention anything about grade level work. Just skills and code and then we will be reading. The faster you go through the code the quicker you can get to books appropriate for his age. Simple.

good luck

kathy

I teach or tutor mostly older students. The first thing that I do is take the guilt away from my students. I accept the responsibility of them not being taught to read in the way that they can learn. I tell them that they didn’t learn how to read not because there is anything wrong with their brain but with our methods or lack of them, (whole language). This helps considerably. I can immediately see the students relax. I compare teaching them how to read with learning a new sport, no matter what the age. No matter how old you are, when learning for example tennis, you still have to start at the beginning. I also tell them that the program that I use, PG, will teach them how to read and it does end. By this I mean, the decoding part. I also use my daughter as an example of leaning how to read at an older age. She was successful in learning how to read when she was 19, through PG. Finally, “The letters weren’t a jumble of letters anymore, but made sense!” Reading, in my school, was an elective and I had to give my students a grade. I don’t believe in grading a student while remediating a basic skill. What I told them was that as long as they worked with me in PG, they would receive an A. They only way that they wouldn’t is if they refused to try the program. In that case, they would get an F. There was no middle ground. I also enlisted the help of their parents from the very beginning. I was fortunate, particularly this year, in having total support of all of my parents. If a student wasn’t performing in school, he or she would receive consequences at home. I had 12 students in my reading class. Three came at semesters due to IEP decisions. At the end of the year, I gave all of them a basic reading inventory and all of them except one was reading at a seventh grade instructional level except one who was at the 5th/6th grade level. This was okay because in Sept, he was reading at a pre-primer level. I am so sorry that this is a long post but I hope that this has helped. Please email me personally if you have more questions.

Shay, you said the student who read at the 5th/6th grade level was reading at the pre-primer level when you started working with him. Could you give examples of words and sentences a child who reads at that level would be able to read? (I’m engaged in some research on the subject, and I’m keeping my eye out for any samples that can help me there.)

Yours truly,
Kathy G.

Shay wrote:
>
> I teach or tutor mostly older students. The first thing that
> I do is take the guilt away from my students. I accept the
> responsibility of them not being taught to read in the way
> that they can learn. I tell them that they didn’t learn how
> to read not because there is anything wrong with their brain
> but with our methods or lack of them, (whole language). This
> helps considerably. I can immediately see the students
> relax. I compare teaching them how to read with learning a
> new sport, no matter what the age. No matter how old you
> are, when learning for example tennis, you still have to
> start at the beginning. I also tell them that the program
> that I use, PG, will teach them how to read and it does end.
> By this I mean, the decoding part. I also use my daughter as
> an example of leaning how to read at an older age. She was
> successful in learning how to read when she was 19, through
> PG. Finally, “The letters weren’t a jumble of letters
> anymore, but made sense!” Reading, in my school, was an
> elective and I had to give my students a grade. I don’t
> believe in grading a student while remediating a basic
> skill. What I told them was that as long as they worked with
> me in PG, they would receive an A. They only way that they
> wouldn’t is if they refused to try the program. In that
> case, they would get an F. There was no middle ground. I
> also enlisted the help of their parents from the very
> beginning. I was fortunate, particularly this year, in
> having total support of all of my parents. If a student
> wasn’t performing in school, he or she would receive
> consequences at home. I had 12 students in my reading
> class. Three came at semesters due to IEP decisions. At the
> end of the year, I gave all of them a basic reading inventory
> and all of them except one was reading at a seventh grade
> instructional level except one who was at the 5th/6th grade
> level. This was okay because in Sept, he was reading at a
> pre-primer level. I am so sorry that this is a long post but
> I hope that this has helped. Please email me personally if
> you have more questions.

Hi Kathy, The interesting thing about this boy is that he was ESL- Hispanic and noone had told him that in most words, particularly 3and 4 letter words, ‘A’ is the symbol for the short a sound. In Spanish, ‘A’ represents the ‘u’ sound and ‘u’ represents the short ‘u’ sound. As a matter of fact, Fairfax doesn’t have a decoding program for it’s ESL students, they are still entrenched in whole language. He was very shy about his inability to read but he had developed really good strategies and is a smart boy. The main problem is that he won’t read aloud and when he read to me, he spoke very low. His reading problem, I’m afraid has left a lasting self-esteem problem. The words he could read were mostly sight words. He could read me-get-home-not-he tree-girl-book- then he could read those words that were involved with his the subjects math and science. He had a lot of problems with US History words. He was doing quite good and was finally proud of his achievement but I don’t know what he will do next year. I have him in a reading class where the teacher uses Success Maker. I am hoping that he does OK but I’m not teaching there this year so who knows. He also knew a lot of the Dolche words by sight. He did have a pretty good auditory memory and a work ethic. I hope this helps.