Experts in teaching Reading help!!!

This looks a little like something I have seen before.

The example you were giving, with the Great Spirit prayer, is *not* a simple book. First, there is a lot of background knowledge about who the Indians were and what they believed in and so on. Then, the language structure is ornate and poetic.

Just because the individual words are simple does not mean the book as a whole is simple. Hemingway is the usual example. I also once saw some dyslexic adults who had the Bible in Basic English. Simple words may express complex concepts.

I am dealing right now with an ESL class of Chinese people. They are all university graduates and professionals — extremely smart. But their English is stillterribly limited. Their reading is at a Grade 5 level and their speech perhaps Grade 2. We are working on some basic speech expressions, things like “Head out” and “Go for it” and “take on …” — all nice simple little words, but combined in special ways they change their meanings.

It is fairly normal for a young child to be lost and confused when meeting fanciful and poetic lnguage structures. I have seen this often before. Gifted children may be able to read aloud any book they take into their hands, but they choose to read content and form that is appropriate to their developmental level, and that is a good thing.

So far, so good (and that is another phrase I’ve been asked to explain to my ESL folks!) The pattern you’re describing is not off the wall, not that unusual.

Now we leave the realms of fact and move into the realms of conjecture. Age seven strikes me as fairly far along to be still having this difficulty, you’re right.
How long has she been an independent reader? If she started at age three and has had four years of reading experience (even if it’s kids’ books, it’s still immense experience with language) under her belt, then I would be very concerned that she is having this problem; if she just started reading last year and moved ahead quickly, then I wouldn’t worry much at all for another year.

Learning to read in the sense of learning to decode and to comprehend factually is fairly straightforward and mechanical. Learning literary language is like all language learning, complex, long, and not well understood. Literary language is really like a second language compared with day-to-day spoken English. This is made even worse when some schools provide a language-impoverished environment in a well-meaning but misguided attempt to make things “easy”. An impoverished environment includes, among other things, the use of only simple declarative sentences and avoidance of complex sentences and order changes, exactly the things your daughter is having difficulty with.

The most effective method of teaching a language is immersion — surround the child with meaningful language all day. For learning literary English, the most effective method known is to read a lot; the more you read, the better you get.

I am wondering if your daughter has been pushed or has pushed herself ahead in mechanical reading skill because she has been so successful at it, but has not read all the usual stuff of her age, the animal stories and fairy tales and so on. These are both entertainment and written records of oral culture, with vocabulary and language structure that is needed to be learned.

I would try to get her a bunch of books suitable for the six to seven year old in style and content, and a bunch of nursery rhymes (valuable oral culture). I would look for the old-fashioned, especially British, books that are not afraid of rich vocabulary and complex sentences, and encourage her to read both alone and with a parent, especially reading tales and rhymes aloud.

I’ll bet Victoria has already given a thorough answer. I would like to say that this book you referred to is not a “simple” book. It deals with a fundamentally different culture at some point in the past. The theme and the message in the book are quite sophisticated. It is packaged as a “picture book,” but it is much more. Most children need a good deal of background building to comprehend stories that take place in radically different times or cultures. Good teaching will set the background before the reading. This can include vocabulary development, drawing a parallel to our modern life, whatever will give the students a handle.

Now a biography is often linear, it tells the story of someone’s life in more or less sequential order. This form of writing is much easier to comprehend and easier for students to write. Child development specialists will tell us that children all progress from the concrete to the abstract gradually during their elementary school years. Some consider true abstract thought to emerge gradually, but typically by about 12.

Unless your child has a learning disability that specifically involves unusual difficulty with more abstract thought (NLD, Asperger’s syndrome), I might be inclined to expect that she will be more capable of comprehending that particular book in about 4th grade. Remember, reading the words above grade level is not equal to comprehending above grade level in all situations.

Gee, Anitya, I think we said pretty much the same thing in different words.

Reviewing this advice, I find it right on the money. My 4th grader asks very similar questions as we study a research paper on Chief Micanopy - I’m not at all worried about his reading. Ken

She does read mostly 2nd grade books at school. At home I do
a mixture of 2-4.5 books…but she always becomes upset over
inferences, and abstract idea’s, she has problems with reading
between the lines even on the 2nd grade level.
She started reading in Kindergarden and it was overnight and
she advanced very fast in the decodeing. She tried to explain
her problem to me in 1st grade, but I didn’t understand what
she was talking about. She became upset one night over a
sentence in a book that said….” Not to hurt the world.” It was
quite a meltdown. She wanted answers to this problem. She wanted
to know when she would understand sentences like this.” 3rd grade?
4th grade? How could someone hurt the world? Could they shoot it?
You can’t stab the world. This book is stupid.” She started bringing
me other books we had read. All on 1 grade level. Telling me she
she didn’t understand this part or that part. As I look back on these
books. It has to do with inferences.
This year I have done alot of reading on the process of reading.
And have just come to understand what she is trying to tell me.
This year she just gives up and say’s she doesn’t want to read
these books. Some are on 2nd grade level. I have suggested I
read them to her and she doesn’t want to because she does
not understand. Just a few month ago she told me she didn’t
think she could read well because she could read any word
but that is not reading.”Reading is when you can read the word
and understand what you are reading and I can’t do this.”
If she was not so upset about it maybe I wouldn’t worry.
So should I only let her read concrete books on 2 gr level.
To help her gain confidence again? Just back off for awhile.
I have tried to tell her that even grown ups must read and reread
some parts of thier books. And may not understand every part
of a book but they still enjoy reading it. But to her if you do not
understand it all… how can you enjoy it?

I would work with those ideas in oral language. Does she feel like she understands conversation? Practice sliding in a few of those “bring the rain” phrases when you’re talking about the weather… do you have a recycling day? Tossing that newspaper out the car window instead of recycling it “hurts the world.”

Thank you for the time referrence to abstract thought and how it
does develop. I can not tell you how many times I have tried to
find this information out. Maybe my dd and I are more alike in
needing concrete answers. And I will pass this information on
to her. Maybe then she will not become so upset about this.
Knowing is half the battle.. I think? Thank you.

Sue
She has alot of problems in conversations.(reading them to) I have just discovered this. She is literal. But she does not speak up if she does
not understand. I have just started watching her face when I am speaking
about something. You can see she is lost on certian pharses. ( Abtracts, Idioms)
I now ask if she understand what I am talking about and she will tell me, no. But she never asks me. She can’t read between the lines very good. You must tell her exactly what it is you want. Example: If the teacher tells them to use the
words First, Last, and Then in there story writing. She will do it
that night. But the next week’s homework (story writing) I ask her where are the key words in her story? And she will say the teacher didn’t say to use them.
I have to explain that the teacher wants you to do this each time you
write a story. She will always say “then why didn’t she say that”
Yes I did explain recycling. And I must say once I explain each and
every thing. She does seem to understand but I must explain EVERYTHING
It is a though she does not infer at all sometimes. Thanks

Your description of your daughter reminds me of one of my sons. He could solve words too but put them together and he didn’t understand the meaning.

Your understanding of your daughter’s learning style is impressive. So is your daughter as despite the gaps she may have, she is clearly impressively bright.

Over the years, she may solve more than words. With a caring and intuitive parent who offers her such wonderful support, I think she’ll fill in those gaps and solve her problems.

The challenge will be enduring the struggle while she does this. Once school and the sometimes narrow paths it asks us to walk is behind her, she’ll find her far horizons.

Good luck.

I f you look through the catalogue of an educational store — I like Scholar’s Choice, available online, and you can also try eps which is allied to the IDA (International Dyslexia Association) — you will see texts and workbooks with exercises on making inferences, higher-level thinking skills, and so on. You have to choose carefully and buy wisely, but there are things out there that you can use. Most of them would be aimed at a higher grade level than your daughter’s so you would have to judge which exercises were appropriate and what speed to go. This would be material to work on *with* her, probably mostly orally; I wouldn’t expect her to be able to do anything like this on her own for a few years yet.

you might want to check out NLD at http://www.nldline.com and http://www.nldontheweb.org. NLD often goes undiagnosed, especially in the lower grades.

Mary

I looked into the NLD website, as a lot of the NLD description fits most of the members of my family, particularly myself and daughter.

I found the site very negative and depressing; a lot of talk about things that don’t go wrong, problems, and depression, but almost nothing about positive help that could be given and good outcomes that could be looked for.

Since I may look like NLD — visual problems, no spatial or time orientation, lousy social interaction — but I’m *also* a very successful student in both advanced mathematics and languages — and I’m pretty cheerful and resilient and manage to have a few close friends — I decided to give this site a miss and look for positive and practical ideas elsewhere. I also try to spread positive and practical suggestions here and elsewhere.

So unless the site has changed a heck of a lot, I’d say give it a miss; better to do something productive with your time than to wallow in despair and share moans about how it’s not your fault.

You sound alot like my daughter, visual, spatial, time orientation,
and problem with social areas. She does algebra in her gifted class and is taking
spainish with a tutor.. I started her with spanish because she too is very interested in laungages.(she begged me in 1 grade) To tell you the truth I have read nvld books. And to me she does fit this profile. But it is her Wisc scores that do not line up. Also when I mentioned this to the Psycholigist, she started in the area of Asperger or Adhd. Her next testing is with a neuro-child phychitrist.(spelling?) But no matter what they find it is her reading that
seems amiss, she has no since of time at all, and I believe the confusion
she has with understanding is what stops her just shy of making a bond
with friends. Although she is very friendly. After they are with her she
seem not to know what to do with them. I think there is something amiss
in her understanding of language. But it is so hard to explain when you
are not sure what it is you are looking at.So you look for labels to help
you understand. Thank you for you help

For the social stuff, some of us have to be directly taught what is expected for most people to figure out by themselves. Teach her how to start a casual conversation, what to say and what not to say in groups, how to take turns in a conversation, how to look someone in the eye, how to greet and say goodbye, how to change the subject — all those things that make social relations possible. It’s a big help to have the rules explained instead of being left to flounder.

Kelly,
Interesting - your daughter sound much like my son. Behavior seems to fit the NVLD profile in most ways but the WISC verbal and performance scores are only a few points apart (actually the performance scores were higher!) Despite this, the psych agreed to a specific test for nonverbal learning skills which was not done with original (12hrs worth) testing last spring. So we’ll see. The original examiner seemed to take a “shotgun” approach and listed all sorts of R/O diagnosis including things like Aspergers, autism, adhd, static encephalopathy, etc, etc,etc. His current psych says he is none of the above- while he does have a definate problem recalling previously learned information without cueing (“cold recall” - problems with retrieval fluency) he believes that his behaviors stem from several incidents of rejection by a few peers at an early age and attempts to find new ways to be noticed by or accepted by a group. I have learned that social skills can (and probably should) be TAUGHT to children and there are lots of books out there to help. We’re talking acceptable social skills here - remember the old “charm schools”. I find that many of the kids my son is having difficulty with are not the kind I’d choose for his friend and because he is trying so hard with them he was losing out with the really nice kids. (the difficulty I’m refering to is that he thinks they are “cool”? and wants to be in with them but they call him a “loser” - he then acts “goofy” (my mother’s term) and the nice kids think he is odd, the teachers get upset and the “cool” think he is even more of a loser.) Once we figured this out, we have been more able to help him socially and he has made a lot of progress. As parents, we were very naive - we thought he would just naturally stay the outgoing, nice , friendly, funny little boy he had always been. We were unaware of the negative impact repeated incidents of peer rejection without parent/teacher intervention could have on his apparently fragile 5yr old ego. It was insidious. He is now 9+ and it has been a struggle for all of us. I suggest www.thinkingcenter.com for books on social sucess. Good Luck. Susan