Hi everyone, My daughter is in 3rd grade and reads on a 2nd grade level. When she reads out loud to me I notice she will interchange words such as in-an, that-what, when-then, saw-was, if-of, the-a, etc. Sometimes she gets them right and often she uses the wrong word. She does know the word if she is reading a word list or the index card. She rarely corrects herself when she does this. Does anyone know different exercises I could have my tutors work on with her?? What is this called? Thank you for any help.
Re: teacher/tutor question - what-that--- when then, etc
I have, though, had stuedents who were being taught the phonics, who had a good handle on the phonics — but needed a bit of extra drill on those words, especially since they usually *are* interchangeable. Most places you say “what,” you could say “that” and the same with “then” and “when.” So — ***after*** lots of emphasis on the th and wh digraphs, I will sometimes make a little deck for drilling them to automaticity… always with teh “and why is it “wh?” (I bet they don’t read “thy” for “why”…)
Re: teacher/tutor question - what-that--- when then, etc
Sue — I think they don’t read “thy” for “why” simply because (most kids not being exposed to the King James version) they don’t know that “thy” is a real word.
I have real trouble with some of my students that they try to force everything they read to be a word in their spoken vocabulary, something they have also been taught in a bad “whole-language” program. This is an interesting concept in that it implies that you can never ever learn a new word from reading, so if it goes on for a few generations the vocabulary of English will disappear 90% or more. They have huge trouble when they read any real book with more than a minimal vocabulary because the refuse to admit the new words exist. They force everything to be a vaguely similar word they already know, whether it makes any sense or not. But I digress.
I find there is knowing and then there is *knowing* phonics.
I have one student right now, age 11 Grade 5, started with Grade 1 reading level although I think we have now dragged up to high 2 or 3 (slogging through Boxcar Children 1 with a lot of work). When I started doing phonics work with him, his mother said he had already done that, silent e and all that stuff. Well, he had done some papers in some way, but it was still all Greek to him, couldn’t consistently give the sounds of ten or more letters of the alphabet. After doing my favourite highly repetitive program he is doing much better, remembering rules and patterns from one session to the next over four or five days, so there is a light at the end of the tunnel here.
So then for extra practice I started him practicing the word lists at the back of “Why Johnny Can’t Read.” Oh, my. This is a bright eleven-year-old in Grade 5 who can discuss a wide range of topics intelligently, who is *apparently* reading three- and four-syllable words in books — and it is a real battle for him to read “cat, fan, pad, man, lad, hat, Sam,…” He goes slowly, stalls a lot, and makes a large number of errors on these simple CVC lists. It seems that this is the first time in his life he has ever *read* something, as opposed to guessing from context and general appearance. This is the kid who recognizes words from the back end so he always mixes “and” and “said”, of course “what” and “that” and many more. He makes far mor eerrors on “sight words” that he is supposed to have memorized (but has all mixed up; lost “have” the other day) than he does on more advanced words that he is learning to sound out - so much for memorization by sight.
Yet he *did* phonics and supposedly passed whatever they did.
After several kids like this, I simply don’t believe a student knows phonics until he demonstrates it in a practical way.
Re: teacher/tutor question - what-that--- when then, etc
We’ve had a lot of this discussion before (but for the benefit of a new reader) but I believe there is a place (a very small weeny little space) for sight words. The trouble is, that 1. there aren’t nearly as many sight words (ie words that are not entirely decodable as Dolch, etc. would let you believe). 2. Most sight words are introduced entirely too early. The emphasis should be on phonics with sight words added as necessary. 3. Most semi-nondecodable (there is that a word) aren’t *entirely* non-decodable, but are often treated as such. Mostly you shoud get the child to point out what “doesn’t play by the rules”, it is usually one letter. But Dolch etc pretends that it is most of the word. Here you have all this info about the word that is pretty much thrown away, for the sake of one letter, or so.
There is a time and place to work on automaticity, I totally agree. But while the kid is still guessing like crazy is not the time and place.
—des
This is called guessing.
The problem is the rote memorization of sight words.
Kids learn to identify words in non-standard ways — since they are told to memorize the whole thing by sight and they are not told there is a standard left-to-right systematic decoding system, they invent their own systems which are almost always inefficient and often stall their reading completely.
I have a student right now who makes exactly these errors; he identlfies words mostly by the ends rather than the beginnings — well, nobody ever told him any different, at least not for the first five years of his education … He is in Grade 5 and was stalled on a grade 2 level for several years; we are making advances but it comes slowly after so much wasted time and practicing bad habits, so yes, please, work on this now.
For example, if the child is left with purely visual guessing as a clue, “what” and “that” both have “hat” in them. No, you do not *say* “hat”, but you see, the kids have not been told there is a relationship between the letter patterns and sounds — in fact they have often been badly misled by being falsely told these words can’t be sounded out — so they don’t see how misleading this is.
If the child is told to guess by context, “the” and “a” are both articles that go before nouns and you can cheat a long way by just mumbling “uh” for both of them.
It is a lot easier and faster to teach this right at the beginning.
Now that you are stuck with the situation, it can be fixed, but recognize that you will need a fair amount of unteaching the bad habits as well as teaching effective methods.
When the child is reading aloud, you need to insist on accuracy. Stop each and every time she miscalls ta word, have her re-read the word, and have her re-read the sentence so that it makes sense. This is fatiguing and frustrating for both of you, but you have to stick to it. As long as errors are acceptable 90% of the time, they will continue and become more and more entrenched as habits. After a few sessions of really correcting herself she will start to avoid the errors and you will have less correcting to do, but you have to keep it up for some time, preferably several months, until the new habit sticks.
In order to make corrections effectively, she needs to know *why* these words are different. Teach the digraphs wh, th, sh, ch, etc. and have her say the beginning sound of the miscalled word. (or both sounds in “an”, or all three sounds *left to right* in “was” or “saw” — both of these include the third sound of a as in father, so this needs to be taught.) Sometimes when a child has drilled the error for a long time, you have to insist that she say it right three or more times for every time she says it wrong. After all, if she says “what” and you say “no, dear” she than says “that” and you treat it as correct and reward her— what she is really doing is flipping a coin and will always be ‘correct’ on the second guess, so she is not really reading the word, just reading you.
Further lessons in intermediate and advanced phonics — phonics beyond the kindergarten level of single consonants and short vowels — and insisting consistently that she sound out words left to right — will gradually clear up these problems. Writing words out while saying *sounds* (NOT letter names) is a good connecting activity as well, especially if you keep up a consistency of forming letters and writing words left to right.