How do I stop word guessing?

[theYoungerMrsWarde]

Over the summer I have been helping a friend's daughter with reading. She went to public school for kindergarten and will be moving on to first grade this fall. Her school taught her some phonics, but focused more on sight words and whole word memorization. She has a list of words she can read, but still struggles with cvc words. I have been using HOP with her for 5 weeks now and she has made some progress. But she has a habit of guessing words based on what they look like and not what the actual letters are. This is with individual words as well as words in sentences. Also, when I am reading a book to the kids she tries to "read" along with me (these books are not at their level) and guesses what I'm going to say instead of actually listening.

 

What can I do to get her to actually look at the word instead of guessing? She starts guessing words before I've even finished writing them on the white board! I'm trying to be kind but firm, but I feel like we're not making very much progress. What can I do? Should I even try to break the habit? Would she be better off still guessing words at her school? Please help!

[stripe]

You could try having her write the word. This is what I did with Reading Reflex, which has small paper squares with letters on them. In early lessons, the adult says "cat" and the child writes or uses the c, a, and t cards in proper order to make the word. I think the other advantage of this is that it covers spelling at the same time.

 

I think All About Spelling uses magentized letter tiles, but I've never seen it in person.

 

Mona McNee's program has lots of games. I haven't used them either, but maybe this would avoid the guessing aspect.

http://www.phonics4free.org/home

[serendipitous journey]

I think the child would benefit from being helped out of her guessing/anticipating :). Certainly she can always go back to it later if she wants, but she won't lose the habit easily without help! and I have a sister whose guessing caused all sorts of troubles in middle and high school, with her reading comprehension.

 

One resource that has been helpful here is the Reading Pathways book: the pyramids make guessing useless, essentially. I've used it with Button, who is accelerated and temperamental; and my MIL has used it with the ESL struggling readers she tutors for a local public school, with much success.

[MrSmith]

Since the PS has her trained to recognize words I would go all the way back to the beginning: insist that she say every sound of the first few words of each phoneme as you are going over it with her.

 

The idea is to show that words are not pictures or shapes, but rather a sequence of sounds strung together. However do keep in mind that as fluency improves, all words ultimately become sight words, so I would not push the issue of memorizing the word as such, but rather focus on her understanding of the sounds and how they come together to mean something.

 

Before you write the word, remind her gently not to say the word or otherwise interrupt you until you have finished writing. Alternatively you could get a tablet or a magnetic writing thingy (Lakeshore has them fairly cheap).

[LittleIzumi]

Dancing Bears uses a cursor--a card with the top left corner cut off and moved along the line of text. That way she only sees the letters appearing in order and can't see the first and last to just guess.

[theYoungerMrsWarde]

You could try having her write the word. This is what I did with Reading Reflex, which has small paper squares with letters on them. In early lessons, the adult says "cat" and the child writes or uses the c, a, and t cards in proper order to make the word. I think the other advantage of this is that it covers spelling at the same time.

 

I think All About Spelling uses magentized letter tiles, but I've never seen it in person.

 

Mona McNee's program has lots of games. I haven't used them either, but maybe this would avoid the guessing aspect.

http://www.phonics4free.org/home

 

I use letter tiles and letter magnets, though I could probably use them more. I'm planning on buying AAS, but that won't happen until probably after she's back in school. She probably would do well writing them. I'd been avoiding having her write because I don't know how she's been taught how to write the letters and I didn't know if she was doing them "wrong" (according to how she'd been taught) and I didn't want to help re-enforce "wrong" writing. But she likes to write, so I'll have her try that.

 

I looked at the link and I really like the boggle-type game. I'll try that today!

[theYoungerMrsWarde]

Since the PS has her trained to recognize words I would go all the way back to the beginning: insist that she say every sound of the first few words of each phoneme as you are going over it with her.

 

The idea is to show that words are not pictures or shapes, but rather a sequence of sounds strung together. However do keep in mind that as fluency improves, all words ultimately become sight words, so I would not push the issue of memorizing the word as such, but rather focus on her understanding of the sounds and how they come together to mean something.

 

Before you write the word, remind her gently not to say the word or otherwise interrupt you until you have finished writing. Alternatively you could get a tablet or a magnetic writing thingy (Lakeshore has them fairly cheap).

 

This is exactly what I have been trying to do. Maybe I just need to give it more time. She can say the sound of a letter by itself, but has trouble when it is part of a word. Especially vowels, as she knows vowels also say their name, but she doesn't know when it is suppose to or not. We've worked on just one short vowel cvc word groups at a time, but she still puts in the long vowel sound sometimes. It makes me really glad I didn't let my kids know about long vowel sounds until after they learned all the short vowel cvc words!

[theYoungerMrsWarde]

Dancing Bears uses a cursor--a card with the top left corner cut off and moved along the line of text. That way she only sees the letters appearing in order and can't see the first and last to just guess.

 

Would you mind giving me the link? Just searching "Dancing Bears" on yahoo gave me a lot of random links that I don't think is what you're talking about.

[stripe]

I think the dancing bears site you want is this one

http://www.soundfoundationsbooks.co.uk/

[Stellalarella]

My daughter had the same trouble coming from from her PS reading experience. Phonics Pathways and AAS has helped her tremendously. I love PP because there are NO pictures. In school, they use lots of readers that use picture clues to help the kids guess/infer the words. NO pictures in either PP or AAS.

 

I thought surely that if my 7yo never learned sight word reading, that he would not guess at words like she does, but NO!!! He is having the same issue, though he has only been exposed to phonics reading!

I think it is just hard work for him to sound out words and when he gets tired, he starts guessing and making things up. And he is a boy. Sitting still to read seems like torture, I think.

 

When he resorts to guessing, I've been having him stop, tell me the name of each letter in the word AND THEN read it to me.

 

I know that eventually he will get better, but right now, it is just a lot of work for him to read and it is a lot of work for me to go back on the times he is "guessing." I am trying, gently, to make it more work for him to guess than to just make the effort to read it.

Edited July 6, 2012 by Andrea Lowry
better thought

[crazyforlatin]

What about creating nonsense words, something like what Alpha-Phonics does?

[Tracy]

I would try a spelling first approach--SWR, Spalding, PR, LOE, etc.

[Writerdaddy]

Hey you've come to the right place! I have cured an 8-yr old word guesser who was "ruined" in PS.

 

First, yes, Dancing Bears. It combines simple phonics drills with a phonics based (crappy) stories to read. Key to success with Dancing Bears-- follow the instructions to keep it 10 min a day, lively and snappy. Then the crappy stories won't matter.

 

The other key is getting a "feel" for using the cursor, not revealing too much too fast to train the eyes to see left to right, one letter at a time, but not too slow as to ruin the snappy pace. The cursor is just a card with a corner cut out-- you can make your own cursor and do the same thing with any phonics based text.

 

Second: after some work with that, get in on nonsense reading, or old english which is nonsense to us. Some samples are on a site made by one of our posters here. If you look up "syllabary" I know you will see her chiming in and then find a link to her site.

 

Another fun source for nonsense words are little card games produced by Teachers Pay Teachers, where you can download cheap PDFs made by teachers all over the country. Some searching may turn up these cards, which can be incorporated into many board games or other games if you use some logic (the suggested game rules are kind of lame).

 

As words become longer and more complicated, this sight guessing becomes a HUGE problem, so I commend you on your quest to cure it. Very doable!

 

Oh, I forgot to add that it also helped to explain to my son why we were doing it. I guess it depends on the kid how to explain it but it helped that he also consciously understood that he shouldn't be guessing and that we were practicing to help him read in the "right" way (although of course, we all sight read eventually-- I think-- or perhaps that is for neuroscience and further research to determine).

Edited July 6, 2012 by Writerdaddy

[babysparkler]

What about creating nonsense words, something like what Alpha-Phonics does?

:iagree:

 

Check out Elizabeth's concentration game using real and made up words... http://www.thephonicspage.org/On%20Phonics/concentrationgam.html (and look around on her website for lots of awesome stuff! I love her site!)

[ElizabethB]

:iagree:

 

Check out Elizabeth's concentration game using real and made up words... http://www.thephonicspage.org/On%20Phonics/concentrationgam.html (and look around on her website for lots of awesome stuff! I love her site!)

 

:blush:

 

But yes, my concentration game is great for breaking the guessing habit--that's why I made it.

 

You can also make your students sound out every sound before saying every word for a bit, but the game is more fun and just as effective at breaking the guessing habit. Determined guessers may need a bit of both.

 

I also like to use all uppercase for my remedial students, that hides the word shape and makes it hard to guess.

 

Syllables are also good for guessing problems, they are like nonsense words, but nonsense syllables! While some of the things on my how to tutor page are for a bit older of a student, I would read through the things on remedial tutoring basics page and work through some of the lower level things on my how to tutor page.

 

Also, after finding out if she knows which letters are vowels and which are consonants and teaching that if she doesn't, I would do the following:

 

1. Teach that if a word or syllable ends with a consonant, it is short.

 

2. Teach that if a word or a syllable ends with a vowel or has a silent e, it is long. (Except short words with a like ma or pa, but don't cover those or mention that for now, it sounds like she is confused with enough things without adding in extra complexity.)

 

Then, go back and forth between the types. mat/mate on/no not/note/no

 

Then, in the future, when she says a short/long vowel substitution, you can show her how to make it short (or long) and why it is actually short (or long.)

 

For example, she reads "mat" as mate, you write on the white board:

 

MAT

MATE

 

and show the difference between the two. "MAT ends in a consonant so it is short." "MATE ends in a silent e so it is long, the vowel says its name." (Also, sound out each sound by sound at first, then later you can just stick to the explanation when she starts to get it.)

 

You do want to break the guessing habit, that is key to progress and good reading. While you may want to scream "stop guessing," I've found that that is not as effective as saying something like, "sound it out from left to right," or sound out each sound or something along those lines. (Although screaming "stop guessing" might be initially satisfying for you, it does not help the student!)

 

With my remedial students, I work on words in isolation for a few weeks until they have broken the guessing habit, only then do I add back in sentences and stories. And, if they start guessing with sentences too much, I go back to words and/or have them sound out every letter in every word in the sentences for a bit.

Edited July 6, 2012 by ElizabethB

[Writerdaddy]

ElizabethB, above, is who I was referring to in my previous post. Thanks for coming!

[Tanikit]

I would actually not suggest that she keep reading the sounds in words as individual sounds but rather that she blend while uncovering a word. Instead of c-a-t cat, she should uncover c and say "c", then uncover the a but say "ca" and finally the t and say "cat" and obviously phonemes are uncovered together so boat is b-boa-boat. If she guesses then cover the word up and slowly uncover it making her blend as you go - this will teach her what she needs to know without preventing her from reading and will also enable her to use the sight words she knows - this knowledge is not bad knowledge and will increase her fluency as long as she still has an understanding that words can be decoded with phonics.

[MommyK]

Reading this thread is like a peek into what we'll encounter when we start homeschooling this fall (for the first time). My youngest HSer will be 1st grade, and has a whole pile of picture books that just repeat the same sentence, with a last word given away by a picture clue..

 

"I like cats". (Picture of a couple cats)

"I like ice cream". (Picture of ice cream)

 

 

I just never understood how that was helping her read. At the end of the year, I could point to the word like, and she still didn't know it..

[myfatherslily]

:iagree:

 

Check out Elizabeth's concentration game using real and made up words... http://www.thephonicspage.org/On%20Phonics/concentrationgam.html (and look around on her website for lots of awesome stuff! I love her site!)

 

Reading this thread with interest, as my rising 1st grader has been doing the same. Thanks for posting about this game - I have it printed out somewhere around here from when my older child was in K.

[theYoungerMrsWarde]

Reading this thread is like a peek into what we'll encounter when we start homeschooling this fall (for the first time). My youngest HSer will be 1st grade, and has a whole pile of picture books that just repeat the same sentence, with a last word given away by a picture clue..

 

"I like cats". (Picture of a couple cats)

"I like ice cream". (Picture of ice cream)

 

 

I just never understood how that was helping her read. At the end of the year, I could point to the word like, and she still didn't know it..

 

:iagree: This is exactly what they gave her. They also sent some paper books home and some workbooks that I found out isn't required, they just send them home and if the parent does it then that's extra. I can not imagine how much money the state is spending on these full-color workbooks that aren't even being used!