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Tell me your encouraging stories about late readers Gentle please


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My five-year-old is just not getting blending sounds into words. She knows all the letter sounds, and can read them accurately in a word, but once she finishes the sounds, she totally guesses what the word is.  For example, yesterday the word sat was read as both at and snake, even after she has made the sss-aaa-t sounds. Tell me that if I just lay off for a few months it will be ok, tell me that I don't need to send her to public school where she would definitely be reading CVC words by this point in the year, tell me your kid couldn't blend words at age five but by six or seven he learned to love reading. You could also give me your tips and tricks for getting blending to be more understandable. 

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Keep in mind that in many other countries, formal academics do not begin until age 6 or 7. She may simply not be ready. Wait a few months and try again. In the mean time, work on pre-reading activities; nursery rhymes and songs are good for phonetic recognition, and reading aloud builds vocabulary.

Edited by regentrude
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Many perfectly normal kids are not ready to blend words and read at 5.  Even for kids with actual disabilities, late reading does not mean the end of the world.  My dyslexic ds who didn't read on grade level until 5th grade (and was reading Frog and Toad books with struggles in 2nd) is a college sr doubling in math and physics with a 4.0 GPA.   I have another child who was so hyper at age 5 that I didn't even attempt K with him.  We simply started 1st grade with letters.  By the end of 1st he was reading Charlotte's Web.  No long drawn out process in learning to read.

 

So, no, 5 yr old reading is not a necessity for future academic success.  

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I'm working with an 8 yr old now who is improving dramatically even from week to week with systematic phonics. I truly think that in his case, it was that he needed to mature enough to be able to focus and concentrate long enough to learn to read, and that now that he can, all it takes is giving him the tools to break the code, and he can use it quite efficiently. It won't surprise me if he's above grade level by the end of the year.

 

 

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I can tell you about my one late reader (my other three were early and strong readers).  He went to ps and we started him in kindergarten at age 6 (late summer bday and he had developmental delays).  In first grade, when he was 7, I was told by his teacher that he was behind in reading and was in the group for slower readers.  It made me so sad because reading is so important in every subject and I wanted him to succeed and enjoy school.  

 

Well, he caught up and became my strongest reader.  He can read the most complex research studies, articles, textbooks, etc. and understands/analyzes everything.  If there's something I don't understand, I send it to him and ask him to break it down for me.  

 

If he had been pushed to read well before he was ready, I believe he would have been very frustrated and it would have made him hate reading and learning.  I am very grateful that he was in school before reading was pushed so hard in kindergarten.  

 

I used to read Leo the Late Bloomer to him when he was little and I would get so weepy and emotional because it felt meaningful to our family!  

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:grouphug:  :grouphug:  :grouphug:  :grouphug:  :grouphug:  :grouphug: 

 

Don't panic.  Your child is VERY YOUNG.  We all develop at different rates in different areas and have spurts of growth and slower times and sometimes we seem to even go backwards for a bit.  THIS IS NORMAL. 

 

Sadly, brick and mortar schools are not really set up that way so anyone who has been through brick and mortar school (myself included) gets indoctrinated into the belief that all children should be doing x,y, and z by so and so age or they are "behind".  This is a falsehood.  Do most children develop certain abilities by a certain age?  Yes.  But there is no hard age for a child to take off in reading.  There are outliers across the spectrum.  Some read as early as 2 (very rarely).  Some don't really "get" reading until 8 or even later.  Many need time AND very targeted phonics based lessons for reading to gel.  In the end, the vast majority of people learn to read.  We just aren't all on the same time table.

 

FWIW, my children are both dyslexic.  DD didn't learn how to actually read on grade level and with fluency until she was in 7th grade.  Why?  Because she was in a brick and mortar school from 4k through 5th and they only taught sight word reading.  Their "phonics" lessons were a joke.  She couldn't learn with just sight words.  And I didn't know what was wrong.  I didn't understand enough to know how to help.  I trusted the teachers to guide me.  Unfortunately,  the teachers had no clue either.  Nor did my reading specialist mother who taught in the public school system for years and years.  Once I brought DD and DS home and switched them to a program designed specifically for dyslexics, boom, they both learned to read and they read very well now.

 

In other words, even IF your child might have some sort of underlying issue that is slowing down the process (and there could be many, such as dyslexia, stealth dyslexia, Auditory Processing Disorder (APD), Developmental vision issues, etc.) please don't stress out over your very, very young 5 year old not really getting blended sounds.  Take it slow, give her time, do lots of pre-reading activities and read TO her often, and above her decoding level so she is exposed to words and phrases and grammar and content at her intellectual level while her independent reading skills are worked on separately.  She has time.  If, at age 6 or so, she is still struggling, you might start to seek out some evaluations to see if there might be underlying issues tripping her up (they can take months to set up so don't expect a quick turnaround).  If so, again don't panic.  There are answers and resources to help.  Truly.  And a LOT of kids struggle with blends at that age.

 

Finally, while the physical act of reading printed material is important and very helpful, it is not the be all and end all of existence, especially at the age of 5.  It also doesn't indicate a lack of intelligence/capability if reading is not picked up early.  There are a lot of highly intelligent, even gifted individuals, that did not pick up all reading skills quickly.  They learned in other ways as reading skills developed a bit more slowly.

 

In other words, children are hardwired to learn from many different types of input.  Reading is just one tiny component that SOME 5 year olds can use to gain understanding of their world.  Your child is learning every day.  Reading is just one helpful skill.  It will happen with time.  While that skill develops, she is still learning.  She is developing many important skills at this age.  Reading is just one of them.  Hang in there.

 

:grouphug:  :grouphug:  :grouphug:

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:grouphug:

 

Zero of my kids were reading anything at age 5.  Heck, zero of my kids are/were doing more than slowly blending a handful of CVC word families at age 6.  Learning to read hasn't come easily for any of my kids, but the two oldest have gotten it and now love reading, and I'm fairly confident my youngest and I will achieve the same.  Just takes us longer than some, is all.

 

My oldest knew all her letter sounds at age 2, but at age five still couldn't connect the individual sounds of the word (/c/ /a/ /t/) and the word (/cat/).  We did CVC words from age 5.5 to age 6.5.  I had a lot of angst with her, because she was very visual and would have learned to read so much faster via whole word teaching, but I stubbornly stuck out the phonics teaching.  But she had a breakthrough during blends when she was 6.5 and jumped to reading level 2/3 readers.  Her reading lessons started going much faster.  A few months later, at the end of her first grade year (when she was almost seven), she jumped again and could read pretty much anything she wanted.  And she did - she's an extremely prolific and voracious reader.  I did all our content subjects (literature, history, science) via independent reading and I'm so pleased with how much she's learned and retained.

 

I started again with my middle at 5.5, and again we spent a year working on blending and CVC words.  But unlike her older sister - who hated reading individual words but loved to read connected text (more context for guessing) - my middle preferred individual words to connected text (less to decode).  So after a year on CVC words, we moved to blends and spent about 4 months working on blending those.  During the spring of first grade (and she was an older first grader, turned seven in the fall of first grade), we got to consonant digraphs.  Over the summer I taught her the Dolch word list phonetically, so she could read more of what she came across in daily life.  At the beginning of second grade, she was reading level 1 readers.  We got through common vowel digraphs by Christmas, and somewhere in January she took off with reading - she could read level 2/3 readers.  She moved to easy chapter books fairly soon (around 8.5yo), and by the end of the year she started working through the Harry Potter books (starting with ones we'd read to her, but eventually she tackled Order of the Phoenix, which was all new to her).  She also read all the Narnia books (which I'd read loud to her first) and now is on her second time through Lord of the Rings (which we also read aloud to her first).  She can read most anything that crosses her path, and she loves reading.  It was harder on her, not being able to read at the beginning of second grade - she noticed that the other kids in her Sunday school class could - but she got there :thumbup:.

 

I'm teaching ds6 right now (red-shirt Kinder), and he knows two word families (-an and -ad) - we've carefully and repeatedly blended each and every word in each family - he's not generalizing any faster than the girls.  (Dd11 worked through probably 500 individual words before she could use that knowledge on new words; dd9 worked through 2000 individual words before she could use that knowledge on new words.)  To teach blending, I use homemade magnetic sound picture tiles and phonogram tiles with the Phonics Pathways "train" method of blending. 

Edited by forty-two
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My son couldn't read at age five either (he has dyslexia).  He is now an engineering major in college and doing great (and he can read well too!).

 

That said, have you tried modeling blending?  That is, have her say the letter sounds and then you blend them slowly.  Have her tell you when she knows what word it is.  I suspect that if you do this for a few reading sessions, she might catch on.  So (note that the t sound cannot be said slowly):

 

Her: s-a-t

 

You: ssssssssssaaaaaaaaaat

 

You: ssssssssaaaaaaaat

 

You: ssssssaaaaaat

 

You: ssssaaaat

 

You: ssaat

 

You: sat

 

This is a modified version of the "say it slow, say it fast" thing that is suggested in 100 Easy Lessons (and may be the only good thing about that book).

 

 

Edited by EKS
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Not reading at 5 is not late.  At least half of kids are not developmentally ready to read at that age  What you are describing is developmentally normal.  (What schools expect is something else.  Many of these kids are not "reading" but have memorized some sight words and struggle to apply sounding out to new words.  It makes me sad to see perfectly normal kids think that they are dumb because it hasn't clicked for them yet)

 

One of my kids taught himself to read before age 4.  The other two needed explicit phonics instruction, plus 2 years of practice before everything clicked.  We did lots of read alouds, played phonics games, did some short daily practice, and just kept it light.  They both had very minor tracking issues (perhaps developmentally normal?.)  We didn't do full vision therapy, but some basic tracking exercises for a few minutes several times a day.  Once things clicked, they went from struggling through readers to picking up longer novels (Eragon, Harry Potter) almost overnight.  That was the end of 2nd grade.  Both went on to be high achieving students.  

 

The biggest key was not to get frustrated and to not create an expectation that they "should be able to do this."  If they are not discouraged, then they will continue to persevere.  

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My youngest didn't click with reading f for a long time. We had several moves during his early school years and he just has his own pace with things. At 8 he had finished 100 Easy Lessons and a set if phonics readers, but was still using another beginning reader text and making slow progress.

 

When it did finally gel for him, he progressed by leaps and bounds. He went from using Level 2 readers to chapter books to novels in about 2 years. He is still a bit slower than my other kids (who are amazingly fast readers) but he reads several novels a month now as a high schoolers.

 

You could stick with it as a slow and steady low pressure thing or shift to lots of side by side read alouds for a bit. 5 is too early for despair. If you suspect issues like dyslexia then investigate, but I don't think he sounds atypical for a 5 year old.

Edited by Sebastian (a lady)
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Here's my encouraging story. My firstborn read naturally and easily at 4.5-and soared. 

 

My second son was a different story. We started the same reading program (AAR) at the exact same time. He didn't get it. He could NOT blend to save his soul. He couldn't segment either. I could see he just wasn't ready. What we did do is just sit together on the couch with the ipad and an app and just put 3 letters together over and over again. C-A-T, what is that word? Blending is a crucial skill, but it can't be rushed. So then I got the program back out, nope...shelved it again.

 

Finally, after the 3rd time, he got it! And then he took off. It just took TIME. No need to rush things-he just isn't ready! What's more important is to keep reading to him and just gently work on the blending thing. He will get it!

 

For what it's worth, that same kid of mine is now a 4th grader and scored 95 on the reading portion of the standardized test. And he LOVES to read :-)

 

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First, welcome! I can see by your post count that you are new. :)

 

As previous posters have said, 5yo is not late for reading. Still not clicking with pre-reading skills at age 9-10 would be a red flag that there is an issue of some kind. So you are fine. :)

 

My encouraging story with a later-to-read child: DS#2 did not really click with pre-reading skills until about age 7, and was 8yo before he cleared the hurdle and was able to read early step-reader books. At age 9 he tackled The Hobbit on his own, by his own choice. ;)

Edited by Lori D.
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Only my oldest was reading before five. My six year old is just starting to get the hang of blending things. My nine year old is pretty fluent but wasnĂ¢â‚¬â„¢t reading at five or six.

 

My oldest son was totally not ready for reading or any formal academics at five. Not at six. Barely at seven. But when it clicked, it clicked, and he was ready. He needed time to mature, academically and emotionally, and the best parenting decision IĂ¢â‚¬â„¢ve ever made was to not push him and to let him develop at his own pace. HeĂ¢â‚¬â„¢s a happy scholar who is very independent in his work and who enjoys reading and learning. His third grade test scores were adequate and on grade level; his fifth grade scores on the same test were excellent and above grade level. For many children, time is the only remedy needed.

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I think it is encouraging that she is getting the initial sound "s" and the ending sound "at."  At 5yo I think this is pretty normal, especially if you are not teaching sight words.

 

You might want to work on some words that have all soft/humming consonants so that the entire word can be sounded in one hum.  Example, man, sun, fan, Sal, etc.

 

Do you ever build words with wooden letters or fridge magnets?  Sometimes involving additional senses helps.  There are also some books with raised or textured letters that might help make the concept more concrete.

 

But in general, it sounds like she is on the right track and things may just click suddenly.  So additional props may not be needed.

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Five is so little.

 

My ds has always been a late bloomer.  He was 6.5 when we started him in K, and is only just really reading beginning readers without real frustration at 7.5.  

 

He is moving along really fast now, though, and things like blending are coming almost effortlessly.

 

Before, he had a lot of difficulty dealing with frustration (this is still a problem at times,) he could not hear some of the sounds that well, he didn't tract well, and most of all, he didn't care.  All of these things came with just a little more time.

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I haven't read all the replies, but I just want to encourage you that a 5 year old not reading is not "late."  When I taught in the 90's before the current craze, at my school kids learned any time from 5-7.  In my own home it is the same.  3 of my 4 children haven't really clicked with reading until 7 (although they were reading somewhat at 6).  My second is now in high school, has been 99% in reading on standardized scores since 3rd grade (a year after learning to read), reads books like Jane Eyre and Charles' Dickens and Mark Twain books with no problem and aces her SAT prep reading questions.  The second child is doing above 90% on reading tests, too.  My youngest hasn't been tested and she struggles more (and is less motivated) but I am confident she will get there.

 

Reading is like learning to walk.  It clicks at different times.  Keep at it (but at 5, I'd stop for 6 months and try again), slow and steady, no stress.  If there is no progress by 7, though, consider testing.

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Five is not a "late reader". They're not late until they're seven or eight and have had at least one full year of instruction with little to no effect.

tell me that I don't need to send her to public school where she would definitely be reading CVC words by this point in the year,

 

Schools that have that sort of success with five year olds usually do it by skipping phonics and teaching whole words. For some kids, this works. For most kids, this works for a little bit until their memory gives out, and then it fails.

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Blending takes a lot of practice. A lot. One benefit of public school would be that the teacher could reassure you that what she is doing is totally normal, but absent that, you've got us, and I laughed when I read your example because...yep. The wild guess after a perfectly sounded out word is a classic at my house. And my kids aren't dyslexic.

 

A lot of blending and segmenting games when you're not reading can help. "I'm thinking of an animal that sounds like d-o-g [segmented]." And so forth. Just for hammering that connection between words and their individual sounds. I know that in our schools, too, most of the kindergarten blending and segmenting is done as a class and a LOT of class time is spent on it. Hours. So my expectation at this point is that I am blending and segmenting along with my kids-- they really need to hear someone else doing it, and have someone else do it with them, many times, many days and months in a row, before they are ready to do it on their own. I am not willing to spend hours of my kids' time in kindergarten trying to come up with creative ways to make them learn to read six months earlier than they might otherwise, and it's certainly not what my own K teacher was doing (we learned to read starting in Grade 1), and it's one of the reasons one of my good friends quit teaching. Just because it's possible to teach something to a bunch of little kids early doesn't mean it's beneficial or superior. I bet you're doing just fine.

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One of my kids could spell before she could read.  She picked up a few words from the environment, e.g. "fox" and "ice."  From that and knowing individual letter sounds, she could write ice, nice, rice ... fox, box, pox.  I'm not sure, but maybe that was helpful in her eventually reading phonetically.

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You say she would definitely be reading CVC words in public school kindergarten but you really can't say that for sure. Many kids are just really good guessers or can pull enough from context to "fake it until they make it" which to me, looks impressive on the surface but is that really reading? I don't think so and lots of reading specialists would agree. Not to mention plenty of kids struggle with blending at 5 - 6 years old but you aren't going to find people gushing about how their kid is developmentally normal, are you? Most people like to talk about precocious success stories much more than stories about average or late successes.

 

So far, I have taught 6 kids how to read. One was reading at age 3, one at age 4, two at age 6, one at age 9 and I'm currently teaching my 4yo (he will be 5yo on January 2). The ones that learned at 3 and 4 were just voracious learners in general and I didn't teach much, they just picked up reading on their own. The two that learned at 6yo couldn't blend at 5yo but just needed time and patience to learn how to blend. It isn't an innate skill for everyone and it takes longer for some kids than others. The 4 year old I'm teaching right now is slowly catching on and I believe he will be reading within a year or so.

 

But the one I want to tell the most about is my oldest who didn't learn to read until he was 9 year old. I'm not one of those who just waited until he asked me and he just happened to be 9yo before he asked. I had been trying everything to teach him to read since he was 4.5yo. He just simply wasn't read at 4, or 5, or 6.... I worried, I fretted, I tried every kind of approach to teaching reading, I tried rewards, I tried consequences, I tried everything! When both his next youngest brother and sister were reading but he was not, I had him tested. He tested fine, no learning disabilities could be identified and he had perfect vision. And while wondering what to try next, he just finally started reading. Within a year he was reading at grade level. Within 2 years (he had just turned 12) he was reading above grade level and loved to read big thick novels like you would expect a 12 year old to be able to read. He is 19 years old now and nobody knows that he was an extremely late reader.

 

I'm not saying that being unable to blend at 5yo means your child will be a late reader, quite the contrary, she is still within the realm of normal right now and will more than likely be reading within a year to year and half but even if she does become a late bloomer, all is not lost. She will not be doomed or unable to learn, it will just take a little more on your part to make sure she still has lots of opportunities to learn by reading to her for longer.

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When I worked in Montessori it wasn't until age 8 when we would become even a little concerned if a child wasn't catching on to reading. My brother did not, could not get reading at all until 3rd grade. Teachers told my parents he was dyslexic and a myriad of other things. My mom refused to listen since my dad didn't read until 10 years old due to a similar profile. Sure enough he took off in 3rd and is not only ridiculously brilliant but reads a ton as an adult and has no issues at all. My was right, he wasn't dyslexic :)

 

Funny aside though...due to not being able to read or write, in 2nd grade there was an assignment about what your wanted for the holidays. My brother copied the girl next to him and his list said "a doll, a make up set, and a sparkle dress like She-ra" that put him on the teacher's radar :)

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My oldest went to private school for K. He had a class of 17 kids. At the start of K, I think my son was the only one reading yet (and that wasn't my doing - he just picked it up from starfall). Gradually, other kids's parents started posting on FB that their child finally read their first "cat sat on the mat" type book successfully. I remember one mom posted such a thing about her son fairly late in the K year (like February or March). The next year in first grade? That kid was in the highest reading group when the class was split by ability into 3 different groups.

 

Your child is not a late reader yet. :)

 

Now I have had a late reader. After my first son taught himself at 4.5, my second son could barely learn his letter sounds at 4. He has a November birthday, so he didn't do "K" until closer to age 6, and even then he was barely doing CVC words. I will say that Phonics Pathways' method of blending really helped him. About 3 weeks in, his blending suddenly took a jump. At the same time, my then 3 year old (who could already blend a little bit) had been asking to do those lessons too and I humored him... he was in a different part of the book and his blending took a jump as well! So that book might be one to take a look at. We eventually switched my middle son to R&S Phonics and Reading grade 2 in 3rd grade (when he was 8, turning 9 early in the school year), and then reading finally clicked and he took off. He is reading at grade level now, though he is very slow. He does not have dyslexia (was tested for that earlier this year), but he has other challenges that affect his reading and give him some symptoms of dyslexia.

 

But really, learning to read anywhere between ages 4-6 is normal. If you're still struggling next year, it might be worth checking things out. I wouldn't fret quite yet though. That private school K class of 17? 3 of the students were not reading at the end of the year. That's 17.6% of the class. Those 3 were the lower reading group in the first grade class. I believe one turned out to be severely dyslexic. I think the others learned to read during the first grade year and were fine.

 

Take a break when needed, then pick it up again and keep plugging along. She'll get there. :)

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I had 2 that were reading chapter books at 5, then one who wasn't.

He just needed more time. He hit fluency around age 7. Just, keep it low key but consistent, and really try to keep the love of reading - don't let it become a stressful activity for him.

You're doing fine mama, don't panic yet!

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My daughter didn't read (or write) until after her 7th birthday. She was really motivated and we tried a lot of things but she just wasn't ready. We even had notebooks filled with pretend writing but no letters. The letters she did make were often upside down or backward. I feared the worst and I have no idea what would have happened to her in school. Now, she is a twin and had torticollis that took us a long time to resolve so we were also doing a developmental movement program, vision exercises, and her head wasn't sitting on her spine straight so we had also started taking her to a specialist for manipulation to correct that during that timeframe so I'm sure those problems interfered with learning. These aren't normal things, but I just want to throw it all out there in case it is interesting/useful to anyone reading. I learned how to do the developmental program and vision on my own as it was too expensive to go to someone. She still needed glasses for farsightedness. I wouldn't have been able to connect so many dots for her without reading tons of stories on threads like this.

 

I read to her or we listened to audio books as much as she wanted to during this time and we went to the library weekly.

 

Once she did start reading we pulled out the phonics and zoomed through it. In a year and a half she went from not reading to having an assessment done (at 8 y.o.) where she hit the ceiling on reading comprehension and we were told to provide instructional materials written at the 6th to 8th grade level. She reads 500 to 1000 pages a week now for pleasure (she's completed several series including Wings of Fire, Redwall, and Narnia). I hadn't hoped for more than getting to grade level this quickly, but starting reading later and having huge leaps is not unheard of. She sat down a couple weeks ago and wrote a 9 page story with dialog and very few spelling errors. She wants to be a writer when she grows up and asked to do NaNoWriMo, but I convinced her to work on typing this year and consider it again next year. A late start hasn't gotten her down!

 

My heart breaks for all the kids that get written off or left behind because they don't read early and for the moms that lose confidence. Some kids just start later naturally and there are other kids that have some other hurdles before they're ready. It isn't a failure on the kid's part or the mom's (unless mom willfully ignores red flags, which I have seen happen to people bewitched by certain homeschool philosophies). In fact, I think these kids are best served at home where a loving family can provide lots that they can do and learn from and provide individualized help in the right way and time.

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One of my kids was more of a late bloomer too.  He's now reading Narnia type chapter books at age 8.  My current kindergartener loves the idea of school and writing letters and learning their sounds and coloring.  But when I try to get him to sound out things, I can tell he's not ready yet either.  He has an August birthday, and we are likely going to do two years for kindergarten.  Not stressing it at all.  It's not a race...it's a marathon.  If your child is struggling with blending, back up and do some fun activities with the letter sounds some more and try again in a few weeks with the blending.  I know these are a love/hate, but my kids liked phonics ladders like sa, se, si, so, and su.  Then you add an ending sound and make sat, sap, sag, etc.  But keep it low key in kindergarten.  Don't make it stressful and just go at their pace.  That is the beauty of homeschooling vs. public school.  Your child doesn't have to be forced to stress and move at the pace the school district decided all kids should do, but at their own pace.

 

What I see and discussed with my oldest son's K teacher, is that many kids practice and practice, and they all have a spurt of maturity at different times where it clicks, and they take off.  Just like with baby milestones or potty training or other things in childhood development.  They'll get it in time.

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I'm sorry people in your life are giving you trouble about this! Goodness, "late" wouldn't even be on my radar yet at her age. (I had a child who sounded out 3-letter words until age 8! You'd never know it today though.)

 

Sounding words out is a difficult skill and involves more thought than it might appear at first--here's a blog article with a video and some tips that can help. She may just not be ready to start a reading program yet though--I agree with the comments to work on phonological awareness skills first. Here are some additional phonological awareness activities you can download for free. Play with words and language and have fun--she is not late at all!

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Neither of mine were reading at 5 or at 6. My oldest "knew" how to read in theory at 6ish, but hated getting things wrong, so just didn't bother trying. She started simple chapter books (Boxcar Children) at 7, when she suddenly decided that she could read. Until then, she devoured read alouds and audio books. She is now 9 and a voracious reader.

 

My second is almost 8 and has more or less learned to read in the past year, but is still working on fluency. It's only been the past few months that she is comfortable enough that I've seen her choose to read on her own and it is still sporadic.

 

With my first, I was concerned about timing. I will be much less so with the next two. Five is so young.

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I also wanted to mention that my niece didn't really start reading until past 6yo, but now at 7yo she has been identified as an advanced learner and is in accelerated classes.  It seems within a month she went from KG controlled vocab readers to chapter books.  Funny how that happens.

 

And I also wanted to say - in public KG, they probably would not have treated your dd as a problem, but they might have referred her for additional practice in reading if she was behind the class.  They recognize that some normal kids aren't "ready" until about 7yo.

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I wouldn't call her a late reader, at 5.  :)

 

My 6 year old sounded similar, at 5.  She's reading like a champ now, and is past other 1st graders.  It will click, just give it time.  Back off, focus on something else, and maybe watch some Word World episodes for fun, no pressure.  Then start again in a bit.

 

DS was a true late reader.  On seeing your thread title, I thought I'd be sharing his very encouraging story, but ... not necessary.  FWIW, though, he didn't really take off with reading till we addressed some vision therapy issues - and we didn't figure out that was the problem until the beginning of 4th grade.  Once those were done, after a year of vision therapy, his reading just flew, and he's a voracious reader now, at 13.

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I used to read Leo the Late Bloomer to him when he was little and I would get so weepy and emotional because it felt meaningful to our family!  

 

We have done this too, and the book does make you cry.

 

My daughter had major difficulty in learning to read, and at age 9/10 was reading on a second grade level, despite LOTS of phonics/ taking breaks ect..  Today she tested in 10th grade reading level for "word recognition" on Diane Crafts website at age 12, so it was very encouraging.   She has a lot of difficulty in memorization of anything, reading, and she consistently flipped numbers around when doing math, so despite understanding how to do math, she would inevitably get the answer wrong.  Fast forward to this school year and she is making unbelievably fast gains in EVERYTHING!  She is memorizing Bible verses, grammar cards, spelling rules, and states/capitals.  She is no longer mixing up her numbers, and is progressing quickly through math.  She is reading voraciously, and understanding and can narrate what she reads. She is understanding proper sentence structure, and is finally consistently capitalizing proper nouns-lol.  I really believe puberty opened her brain- seriously.  She was always intelligent, but couldn't remember anything readaloud to her or that she read to herself (it was isolating and frustrating for her).  A year ago her spelling was about a 2nd grade level, and now she has flown through Rod and Staff Spelling 4/5 this semester, and is just starting 6!  Everything literally clicked at once. 

 

So to answer the question, children can begin slowly and still soar;).

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I won't write the details but just suffice it to say that I'd thought I'd blown it with one of mine who wasn't reading well at a developmental age but by 3rd grade, caught the bug and would read for hours. Loved and loves reading, 100% scholarshipped into our flagship university in a difficult major and doing great. Keep teaching. Modify the curriculum or method if necessary. Read aloud lots. Audible and books on CD. Notice letters and signs in the normal course of your daily stuff. Provide a language rich environment for your child until s/he can read well on her/his own. 

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Five isn't late! 

 

I didn't start until 6 I think, and then one had a lot of issues initially. To the point that I stopped and sought some expert help. He had markers for dsylexia (no ability to rhyme and some other stuff). Blending is complex and has to click. I think we sort of held out the sounds and moved them together sssssss   (with a card even)    aaaatttttt, ssss.....aaat, ssaat, sat. I think It's been so long, and he had to be ready developmentally. I think he made some improvement by 7, and got clicking around 8. But he struggled and developed phonemic awareness as he read. We used I See Sam with the cursor to start..

 

Both my kids read equally well, the more avid reader has a better vocabulary though, and that has nothing to do with how they started. Both read a lot.  

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I don't think 5 is late, but I also think that if you are worried, there are things you can do. The number one marker for reading ability is phonological awareness skills. The book Road to the Code has 15 minute a day activities that are researched based and should help with those. I just ordered it to use with my own 5 year old who is definitely not reading...he still doesn't know his letters and sounds, and his big sister is dyslexic. 

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If you scroll down this page has a chart of phonological skills and what ages they should appear. If these seem delayed I'd start there, but blending phonemes together to make  word is listed at 6 years old, not 5. Can your child blend onset and rime? So if you say (orally) "p-art" can she put it together to say "part"?  That would be more the level to expect.

 

http://readingrockets.org/article/development-phonological-skills

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My five-year-old is just not getting blending sounds into words. She knows all the letter sounds, and can read them accurately in a word, but once she finishes the sounds, she totally guesses what the word is.  For example, yesterday the word sat was read as both at and snake, even after she has made the sss-aaa-t sounds. Tell me that if I just lay off for a few months it will be ok, tell me that I don't need to send her to public school where she would definitely be reading CVC words by this point in the year, tell me your kid couldn't blend words at age five but by six or seven he learned to love reading. You could also give me your tips and tricks for getting blending to be more understandable. 

 

Well my dd was kind of a pain in the butt on learning to read, and she got about perfect scores on the reading portions of the ACT. Actually I think her highest was science, but it's all reading, lol. 

 

Like the others, I'd suggest you sort out whether the issue is phonological processing (things like rhyming, being able to change the sound at the beginning or end of a word and form a new word, etc.) vs. just blending words to read. For my dd, it was just time, maybe some working memory (she has ADHD), etc. Her phonological processing was intact, so that wasn't the cause. She could rhyme, play word games with ease, etc. For my ds, however, totally different. It was very obvious his phonological processing was the problem. We got him DIAGNOSED with dyslexia at newly 6, and it was accurate. 

 

Around here, a reading tutor will do a CTOPP (test of phonological processing) for $75, which would clear up the question entirely. But if the dc is rhyming and playing the normal preschool kind of word games, really I wouldn't sweat it. 

 

Btw, you could see if your library has the Peggy Kaye Games for Reading book. My ds really enjoys her games. She has many books and they're all a hit here. Or play games that build working memory. Target has Ticket to Ride Junior. It would be fun for a 5 yo and build working memory. Working memory will help her hold the sounds in her head and then convert them to a word. If she drops sounds and can't remember and loses it all, that can be low working memory. And of course it's just fun games! Even playing Memory is good. Walmart will have all kinds of cute memory games for $5 this time of year. 

 

Play games, lots of games. If she needs time to grow, play games. If she needs to work on skills, play games. If she's stressed, play games. 

Edited by OhElizabeth
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My encouraging story.

 

Removed children from public school when oldest was in grade 5. He could not write and could only read the simplest beginning reader type books. He has profound dyslexia but gifted in math. He started aerospace engineering at one of Australia's top universities at 17 , got on the Dean's list and graduated with honours

 

 

Third ds profound dyslexia, completed a Deplom of Conservation and Land Management just before turning 18 the youngest person in this state to get that qualification. He has been in full time employment ever since

 

 

Ds14 profound dyslexia, has only within the last 8 months been able to comprehend what he reads. We are still working on writing.

 

The absolutely best advice I ever received from here Is to remember it is a marathon, not a sprint.

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My five-year-old is just not getting blending sounds into words. She knows all the letter sounds, and can read them accurately in a word, but once she finishes the sounds, she totally guesses what the word is.  For example, yesterday the word sat was read as both at and snake, even after she has made the sss-aaa-t sounds. Tell me that if I just lay off for a few months it will be ok, tell me that I don't need to send her to public school where she would definitely be reading CVC words by this point in the year, tell me your kid couldn't blend words at age five but by six or seven he learned to love reading. You could also give me your tips and tricks for getting blending to be more understandable. 

 

I would not expect a five-year-old to "get" blending sounds into words. In fact, not all reading methods emphasize "blending."

 

I would definitely NOT even consider sending a five-year-old to school because she cannot "blend."

 

I do not believe that five-year-old children in most schools are "blending." There may be some who have memorized words, but that doesn't mean they have a good understanding of phonics, and that's what they need.

 

My younger dd was not reading at her age level until she was 9 1/2. We did Spalding (which doesn't do "blending") for a few weeks when she was five...and for a few weeks when she was six...and a few weeks when she was seven...The fall when she was nine, I did Spalding every.single.day with her from August to November, when we put everything away at Thanksgiving. That was the year I lost my mind: I did every day just like school with both children, something which we had never, ever done, and we were burned out by then. I didn't open the books again until the next fall. Somewhere around February, I noticed that dd was just...reading.

 

I started a little school at my church when dd was 14. Had she been in another school, she would have been a freshman, but I had allowed her to "skip" a "grade" when she was 10, so that she could be in the youth group at church a year earlier, and we just continued with that, so in my school she was a sophomore, a year younger than other sophomores. At the end of the year we did standardized testing; she took the 10th-grade-level test, which you remember was a year older than she ordinarily would have been, and she tested post-high school in everything except spelling, and in that she only tested at grade level. :-) The following year she tested post high school in everything. And she also began taking classes at the community college when she was 14. She graduated with a 3.95 GPA (we didn't push her to graduate in two years).

 

You don't say what you are using to teach your child to read, so I can't recommend anything, because I might recommend what you're using. :-)

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My encouraging story.

 

Removed children from public school when oldest was in grade 5. He could not write and could only read the simplest beginning reader type books. He has profound dyslexia but gifted in math. He started aerospace engineering at one of Australia's top universities at 17 , got on the Dean's list and graduated with honours

 

 

Third ds profound dyslexia, completed a Deplom of Conservation and Land Management just before turning 18 the youngest person in this state to get that qualification. He has been in full time employment ever since

 

 

Ds14 profound dyslexia, has only within the last 8 months been able to comprehend what he reads. We are still working on writing.

 

The absolutely best advice I ever received from here Is to remember it is a marathon, not a sprint.

 

What did you do about the not writing? My ds has the triple SLDs (math, reading, writing) on top of his autism, and he just has no cognizance, no interest, no sense of yes I want to write. Occasionally he will. I scribe and scribe. We're working on language stuff to make sure it's there, and we do a lot of oral composition (putting words to our play, creating stories with figures, creating narratives for sequences of pictures, etc.). However just that whole wow your kid really doesn't functionally write ANYTHING is kind of flabbergasting.

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What did you do about the not writing? My ds has the triple SLDs (math, reading, writing) on top of his autism, and he just has no cognizance, no interest, no sense of yes I want to write. Occasionally he will. I scribe and scribe. We're working on language stuff to make sure it's there, and we do a lot of oral composition (putting words to our play, creating stories with figures, creating narratives for sequences of pictures, etc.). However just that whole wow your kid really doesn't functionally write ANYTHING is kind of flabbergasting.

 

Not Melissa, but I scribed for years for my ds (way beyond age 8). We worked on handwriting and copywork and spelling (we eventually used AAS which also has dictation--and the dictations and Writing Stations really helped the eventual transition--I like their gradual writing progression). I remember when he was 8, my goal was just to get him to be able to copy 4 very short sentences in one sitting by the end of the school year (there was no independent writing at that point). In upper elementary, I sometimes had him copy what I had scribed (and this often took him more than a day) so that he could see his words in his own handwriting. We did lots of partnership writing and scaffolding as he got older. We had some starts and stops with various writing curricula as I continued to try to scaffold him towards more independent writing. It was definitely a gradual process all through school. For a time I really stressed about whether I was doing the right thing--helping as much as I did--but you have to teach the child in front of you, not an outside expectation of what "should" be. I finally relaxed in the high school years when I thought, well, if he ends up needing remedial writing instruction in college, that's why they have those classes. He didn't (though he had some rough times with writing that first year in college--and then he just took off). 

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Merry, right now he's not even doing copywork. He was having such terrible problems, the worker (college student studying to be an intervention specialist) suggested we just stop. It used to take 45 minutes for him to unscramble and copy the sentence in the correct order. I've been thinking we might try copywork, but I don't know. He needs to do a thank you note, so maybe I can try it and we can just see what happens. Writing by hand is really, really glitchy in his brain. 

 

I guess I need to up-prioritize thinking about it, hmm.

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Merry, right now he's not even doing copywork. He was having such terrible problems, the worker (college student studying to be an intervention specialist) suggested we just stop. It used to take 45 minutes for him to unscramble and copy the sentence in the correct order. I've been thinking we might try copywork, but I don't know. He needs to do a thank you note, so maybe I can try it and we can just see what happens. Writing by hand is really, really glitchy in his brain. 

 

I guess I need to up-prioritize thinking about it, hmm.

 

Poor kid! Were they sentences he could easily read & would he have the skills to spell most of the words before trying it? (I did find that copywork backfired and reinforced bad habits if there were too many words he didn't already know. I also found I needed to pre-teach it first). How does he do with dictation of simple words? 

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Poor kid! Were they sentences he could easily read & would he have the skills to spell most of the words before trying it? (I did find that copywork backfired and reinforced bad habits if there were too many words he didn't already know. I also found I needed to pre-teach it first). How does he do with dictation of simple words? 

What MerryAtHope said...

 

OhE, when you say unscramble the sentence, do you mean he was unable to linearly decode the sentence he was attempting to copy?  Was he capable of spelling most of the words already?  Were they familiar to him?

 

FWIW, DS could not come up with his own sentences and write at the same time at that age.  I had to scribe for him (and still do for many things).  Copywork had to be mainly filled with words he was already VERY familiar with spelling and reading-wise.  Independent writing?  At that age it was just sooooooo haaaarrrrrdddddd.

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What did you do about the not writing? My ds has the triple SLDs (math, reading, writing) on top of his autism, and he just has no cognizance, no interest, no sense of yes I want to write. Occasionally he will. I scribe and scribe. We're working on language stuff to make sure it's there, and we do a lot of oral composition (putting words to our play, creating stories with figures, creating narratives for sequences of pictures, etc.). However just that whole wow your kid really doesn't functionally write ANYTHING is kind of flabbergasting.

I scribe. For oldest ds, I would scribe and then he would copy it into his workbook. It worked for him. He wrote his very first essay at 16 for his English rich university unit and got 73% for it. That was his very first independent essay. I did proofread it for him ( spelling).

 

For third ds he couldn't come up with original content. I would go over lesson with him, discuss it with him, then with his input I would write a couple of paragraphs. He would copy them down In His book. For his tertiary deploma he had to do many reports. I bought him a spellchecker. He found the writing challenging, but as it was mostly writing proposed regeneration of native vegetation reports he was ok. For his work now he has to write reports all the time. He has a smart phone. He talks to it and it changes it to text, he then writes it down. Also he uses it to scan unknown words and the phone reads it to him and tells him the definition.

 

For ds 14 we are struggling. He is terrific at dictation and even gets most of the words spelt correctly. Sometimes when he is meant to be doing dictation he changes the sentences to make them amusing, this shows to me that he can at times come up with some original ideas and convey them to writing. But he really struggles to write a sentence of original work. We are currently doing writing strands. He likes the idea of it, but it is very slow going. He does just about all his writing either on a whiteboard or on the computer. We have just recently started doing spelling on the computer as well.we use word, and he finds it very useful to get the red line under the misspelt words. He then realises the word is spelt incorrectly and fixes it, thus hopefully reinforcing the picture of the correct look of the word.

For him the absolute biggest help for his writing is that he plays computer games online with another homeschooled child. And they only communicate by message. The other boy sends ds a row of ???? When he cannot read what ds has written, so he tries again. All around the computer, hidden everywhere are mini scraps of paper with words on them. Prompts that ds has put there to help himself to spell and write. I pretend I do not know about them.

Edited by Melissa in Australia
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