needing help with student

I’m no reading specialist but I’d ask first if this child knows the sounds that associate with the alphabet? How’s his sound/symbol association? Then move on to blends. Does he know what sound b+r makes? Can he do simple blends?

I believe there are some people who are not “programmed” to read phonetically. Second grade is too early to know for sure if he’s one or not.

How involved are his parents? I’d suggest to them that he be read out loud to as much as possible.

Good luck.

This student sounds a great deal like my daughter in 2nd grade. Turned out my daughter had severe developmental vision delays.

I would suggest using the book Reading Reflex by McGuiness. This is what I used, and my daughter was able to learn basic decoding skills quickly this way (from preschool to 2nd/3rd grade decoding in 15 hours of one-on-one tutoring with me).

If, like my daughter, this child picks up decoding skills (able to decode words given unlimited time) but displays significant problems with reading fluency, then her parents really should take her to a developmental optometrist for a vision evaluation. My daughter had seen an opthalmologist regularly for years, but regular opthalmologists and optometrists are not trained in developmental vision issues, and it wasn’t until the developmental optometrist was able to show me the kinds of problems my daughter was having that I realized how serious this is. My daughter did vision therapy for 6 months and then PACE in order to bring her visual processing skills up to where they should be.

My daughter also had absolutely no visual memory for sight words, but a terrific auditory memory.

Mary

Meg wrote:
>
> I am regular 2nd classroom teacher and I use a variety of
> reading strategies to my whole class: decoding, looking at
> pictures, context clues, whole word etc… I have a student
> who was tested and did not qualify and am trying to figure
> out the best strategy to help him. He has a poor visual
> memory but good auditory memory. He can recite sentences read
> due to his good auditory memory, but when I show him even a
> basic sight word I showed him a few minutes prior, he has no
> idea. I plan to work with him after school, but don’t want
> to confuse him. How does an LD teacher know which strategy
> is the best, decoding vs whole word? How do you know when a
> child is not a phonetic learner? Any suggestions are welcomed!

A good structured, sequential, multisensory reading program is probably what he needs, such as Orton-Gillingham. If he’s dyslexic, it’ll probably take that kind of program to make reading click for him.

Yours truly,
Kathy G.