reading strategies documentation needed

This website, LD In Depth page (click on the top bar); start with the National Reading Panel Teaching Children to Read, a vital resource; then a dozen and more others.

I can understand trouble with “beautiful” (although except for that messy first vowel it makes sense and should be taught); but she should be able to figure out “borrow” — or is she still in the most basic one-letter level of sounding? She really needs to work on those variant vowel patterns so she can read a variety of books. I hope someone is continuing the RR, if necessary after school.

Well parts of “beautiful” and maybe? “borrow” don’t follow all the rules (or as they say in LMB “play fair”), but if she can sound many words out and is progressing normally with the RR I would continue this at home. I see no point in messsing around with picture cues or things like that.

There are a certain no. of words (I think rather a small percent of them— much smaller than her teacher thinks that she will need to remember part of.) I would have her study words her teacher thinks she should know and ask her things like “what part of this word doesn’t play by the rules?” Then she only has to remember the part that doesn’t work and can use her phonics skills to figure out the rest.

(BTW, I see Victoria’s re: borrow, but I see why it is confusing. “bar row”. If she tries to sound it out, does she say “boar” “row”? Some phonics programs place these odd soundings of vowels way later. Not sure re: RR. )

I am not exactly sure about what route RR uses to handle this kind of issue but I would look at what they have to say about it. As Victoria says, i don’t know how far along she is in RR either, so that may be an issue. The suggestion I have (if you can’t find an appropriate one in RR) is more meaningful than having her try and remember the whole word visually.

Unfortunately, you are fighting kind of an uphill battle on this. The research is definitely on your side, but most schools are not. She is also likely to gets lists of words to spell that are unrelated to one another, etc.
And asked to “memorize” sight words that end up to be largely highly decodable words or to look at pictures and guess the words.

—des

Thanks so much! Where can I get access to the research to back this up?

Sara Jane wrote: “The teachers want her to use picuture clues on the words she does not know. I have always thought this was not a solid way to teach kids to approach unfamiliar words.”

I agree with your conclusion. The most neutral comment I have heard on this topic was at a reading seminar: “Teaching words with picture clues is controversial.”

Your best hope before and after teaching letter recognition and an excellent phonics program is to hope your niece has a superb immediate and a long term memory. Phonics will provide valuable assistance in helping her to learn to pronounce phonetically regular words in text (approximately 85 words out of 100). Phonics will also help with irregular words.

Guessing is a no-no. Your niece needs to attempt high frequency irregular words in the presence of a tutor followed by corrections where necessary. She should benefit from considerable practice. Independent decoding of some highly irregular words can be a challenge even for experienced readers.

sarajane — again, the research is right here. Go to the bar at the top of this page and click “LD In Depth”. Then click Reading. Then look for the National Reading Panel Teaching Children to Read. That is *the* research backup. There are also many other informative articles there.

Thank you for the responses. It is greatly appreciated.
IAfter further visiting, I found out my niece had gotten through p. 235 and was working on oo. How does that equate to grade level?

I’m not familiar with RR in person, so can’t tell you about specific pages.

Matching material to grade level is tricky.

You say she is working on oo. Well, many words with oo are introduced in the beginning of Grade 1 — look, good, book (“short” sound) and too, moon (“long” sound). Some people teach these by memorization, which I reject, so I introduce the oo sounds for recognition quite early (recognition - use in reading, not expected to be used in spelling for a while). However the student can’t master everything at once so I help sound out oo words for some time.

In the literary readers I use after about 1.5 to 1.8 reading level, the workbooks have lessons on the oo sound from first reader level up. The oo sounds are also formally introduced in level 2 of the phonics series I use; this may be the end of Grade 1 for a student working quickly, some time in Grade 2 for the average. Then the sounds are reviewed several times in levels 3 and 4 and are also taught in spelling; I would hope to see the common vowel patterns like this mastered by the end of Grade 2, although often they still need to be taught in Grade 3.

In other words, she sounds like she is doing appropriate phonics work.

I also work with students reading books with high-frequency words, which as above I *help* the students sound out until they have mastered the patterns on their own. I do *not* just tell them the words to memorize, just help with vowel patterns and irregularities. You need these high-frequency words to read any ordinary book, and this is what her teacher is trying to get her to do. I disagree most strongly with the guessing and picture clues approach, but I do agree with wide-ranging reading. You can get old readers and work with her on developing vocabulary.

Sara Jane,

You have the same good fortunate many posters at this site have received—a response from Victoria. Her comments are sound, practical, and comprehensible. She gives generously of her valuable time. She has provided you with concise information of greater value than could be written by most, if not all, university reading professors. Some people are disappointed when they get a response that does not “promise the world.” You can rest assured that Victoria will only offer assistance that is doable.