Building Confidence in an Early Reader

[Shoes+Ships+SealingWax]

My son is working his way through Logic of English Foundations. We began in May & are currently halfway through Book C. He has all of the phonograms down pat & is able to read the material, but he does not have much confidence.

 

Getting him to reading to me, either from the LOE Readers & MyFirst! style, is like pulling teeth: "I caaaaan't!!" or "It's too many pages / words / letters!"

 

He is perfectly capable. Once he quits whining & tries, he reads beautifully. I praise, praise, praise when he does. I just can't seem to convince him that he is able to! Even after the fact, if we buddy-read for example, he will say "Well, I couldn't have done it all by myself. I can't read the whole book."

 

Any tips? Should I go back to something SUPER easy to show him how easy they are now? Is this a normal part of the learning to read process?

[HomeAgain]

We used 100 EZ Lessons.  After a certain point we'd take Thursdays and do a lesson that was 10-20 behind what he was currently doing.  Every week.  It was a great, low key exercise that built fluency and confidence.

 

There are books out there like the We Both Read series that have the parent and the child take turns. Those were enjoyed here, too.  Same with just simple library books.  If reading was always a courageous exercise in the early time it would not have had the same impact as learning to read for fun also.

[fralala]

Will he read to pets/stuffed animals/a voice recorder?

 

For my kids, I've found there is no correlation between reading fluency and willingness to read aloud to me. They just don't want to do it, even when it comes easily.

 

So they read aloud to the dog, to their favorite stuffed animals, and-- their favorite-- I give them my phone and allow them to make their own "podcast" by reading a book and then doing and talking about whatever they want.

 

And I try to do things, like write notes to them or "letters" that I slip under the bedroom door with invitations to play or bake with me or have a snack or whatever...ways for me to check that they can indeed read and are getting some practice.

 

Because trying to get them to read aloud to me is like pulling teeth, even when it's below level.

[Shoes+Ships+SealingWax]

Will he read to pets/stuffed animals/a voice recorder?

 

For my kids, I've found there is no correlation between reading fluency and willingness to read aloud to me. They just don't want to do it, even when it comes easily.

 

UGGHHH... don't tell me that! 😣

I haven't tried having him read to a stuffed animal. We'll try that. If nothing else, maybe we can just make it a part of the daily routine so it's expected, if not particularly enjoyed.

[displace]

For my DS, all the words on a page was overwhelming and made him feel like he couldn't read, when he could. I would hide one page of the two, and cover all but a line or two at a time. It helps with the mental feeling of being overwhelmed.

 

DS eventually stopped feeling that way. It took a while, at least months, though.

[OneStepAtATime]

What helped me gain a life long love of reading?  No pressure.  No one was forcing me to read out loud extended passages of anything.  Mom read TO me, with me sitting near her or in her lap.  Also, I saw Mom and Dad reading for pleasure and wanted to be like them.  When I asked if I could read with them, they would help me read until I wanted to stop and we stopped.  Mom would leave very simple notes around that I would enjoy decoding.  My grandparents would write to me very short letters in very simple print so I could decode them as I felt like it.  Mom would leave books around for me to pick up and try reading on my own.  I associated reading with cuddle time and being loved and with something that big people do that I wanted to do too.

 

But once in a while Mom would include something more structured.  It would not last long.  Just a little bit of instruction and a bit of practice.  She didn't make it seem like a big deal, just something to try out, something to do together.  By the time I hit public school I was an avid silent reader.  I was not as wild about reading out loud but I would do it if the passage was very short and isolated, not part of a larger page of text.  As I got older and reading silently became easier, so did reading out loud.  And the pages of words were not so overwhelming so reading more than a sentence or two out loud was also not so overwhelming or intimidating.  And I came to love reading so much.  And I still do.

 

ETA:  Full discolsure, reading came easily to me and I was reading early, but I read mostly silently.  Mom read with me, and would point out the words and sometimes I would volunteer to read them but the emphasis was never on out loud reading as the main way to learn to read. I was rarely expected to read out loud until I went to Kindergarten but even then they rarely asked us to read out loud as individuals.  We mainly read silently or were read to or read words out loud as a group.

 

YMMV

Edited December 10, 2016 by OneStepAtATime

[MerryAtHope]

How old is he?

[Guest]

I'd just skip the reader portion of the lessons and work on shorter blurbs or simple sentences you make up on the whiteboard for a few months. Then try again later.

[KarenNC]

Honestly, Dick and Jane books did the most for building confidence in reading aloud for my daughter.

[ReadingMama1214]

I agree with no pressure. And find books he loves. My daughter just turned 5 and we're a little over half way through Ordinary Parents Guide to reading (goes to a 4th grade level).

 

What I've found that helps is finding books that she wants to read. Once she read one confidently, that helped a lot. I also have books below her level. These she can read with ease and they boost her confidence.

 

For my daughter it was a confidence thing. And while she knew the phonograms, it was sometimes harder applying them in a book. In our lessons she works on one phonogram at a time. Then she'll read a story which does contain several phonograms, but still a higher % of the one covered in the lesson.

 

In books, she's required to read words with multiple phonograms and phonics rules. It took confidence which took time and had to come naturally.

 

She also LOVES the game Teach Your Monster to Read. It has tons of fun games, but requires them to read. There's no skipping the reading to play the games. It's helped a lot.

 

Also, I do require reading daily. Usually she reads to me 1x a day outside of the lesson. I let her pick the book. Sometimes I make a suggestion or discourage a book that we've read every single day and isn't challenging her. But it is expected daily and I do tell her "reading is like drawing/scooter/etc. and we need to practice to get better"

 

Next year she'll go to a 100% Spanish immersion program. They don't teach English language arts until 3rd grade. They teach reading and writing in Spanish. She'll be required to read to me daily in English and Spanish from them on. Well also continue spelling and phonics in English at home.

[mathmarm]

We got our little guy to read by writing him notes, putting words on whiteboards and pinning pages of large print text to the walls at his eye level. Sometimes we have reading scavenger hunts, those are huge hits with him.

 

We made reading-games a part of our routine and we got him tons and tons and tons of books that are below or on his level and we make reading together a big part of our day. My son can read skillfully on an upper-elementary level, but we don't require he read up to the max of his abilities very regularly. He loves books, but not always reading too me so I don't require that. He loves reading to daddy though.

 

He has a whole library of easy readers and we keep a rotating supply from the library as well. We got him 100s of decodable booklets of his own and he loves reading them and getting a sticker for his chart. We very quietly dispose of the easier books that he's read dozens of times and he naturally reads whats around.

 

We also purchased some school book student anthologies and he likes reading from those--we know all of the selections in the books are graded, they gradually increase in difficulty and they have comprehension questions that he likes to answer orally.