Advice/ Wisdom needed long rambling dd8

[Aludlam]

I don't even know where to begin. There are so many things with my dd8. We have homeschooled since halfway through K5. I started hsing b/c she wasn't getting anywhere in school, even in K. I will admit that I had no idea how to teach in the beginning. We have learned together. So, I guess part of this is my insecurity/insanity. Anyway, in random order: We went through HOP K-2, Bob books and ETC (on book 5 now) for phonics. We just found AAS and are halfway through book 1. She still has such trouble reading. Sometimes I think it's just the material/interest. I have trouble reading some Dr. Suess books, so when she reads them just like they are a string of words with no story, I get it. I don't like them either. She can read Little Bear and books like that with a gentle story very well. But just then she was reading a book about the planets and she read the word Venus with no problem. She got to the next page and could not read the word Venus. She does this often, read it on this page, but can't on another. She just read "from" for the word "for". I pointed to the word (universal sign for you missed it) and she reread it "from" again. I pointed again. She read "from" again. I said something like read that word again. This time she got it. I realize that she sees small "f" word = from. How normal is this at her age? Sometimes when she is sounding out the word, she will miss the first sound of the word (like that letter wasn't even there). Not as much as it once was, but one of the things I say when she reads is "first sound first". She will then add that sound to the beginning and voila --- it makes a word that actually makes sense! Another thing is with numbers, not all numbers. We've stalled out half way through MUS Beta. (me, b/c I felt that I wasn't getting enough instruction - her, b/c a felt like she was just going through the motions and not really getting it) She is very good with addition and subtraction facts. (We don't do timed drills.) I was thinking of changing to Singapore, so yesterday we did the placement test. I was expecting her to be lacking on some things b/c MUS follows a different sequence. She was having trouble with a lot of basic things. The same things we have worked on over and over again. Things like writing 12 for 20 and vice versa. She does that a lot. (I wish there were no teens in the number system). When she skip counts by 10, she starts off strong " 10, 20, 30,40,50,60,17,18,19,100 --- everytime! The bright point of my day yesterday was reading in the Miquon Annotations p13. "Gary is a good thinker. It was not his fault that our language and our numerals do not match!" (If you are reading Spycar - thanks for suggesting it.) She is such a smart, loving, caring girl. She will sit all day and talk to you about Jesus if you want to. She loves to be read to. She loves art. She is a good thinker. It just seems like there are some stumbling blocks to the basics. I just don't know how to get over them. I realize that this has been a very long and very rambling, poor written post. I just don't know how to put it into words. I know there is something wrong, but I don't know what it could be, or what to do if I figured it out. Am I using the wrong things to teach her with? We did a short quiz this morning regarding learning styles. According to that she is mainly a visual learner. ?????

 

Point me in a direction

 

Angela

[Aludlam]

To complicate matters more, we just did the reading test for Sonlight. According to that she test at 3rd grade.

 

Angela

[MerryAtHope]

Hi Angela,

 

It's possible that sometimes she is using context clues to help her figure out what a word is. I didn't realize just how much my son was doing that until I started having him read random lists of words, and saw how much he struggled with doing that. It's amazing to think that a child can take a few letters and some context, and brew up the right word!

 

You might look into things like dyslexia, and vision processing issues. Some links:

 

Dyslexia Symptoms

What is Dyslexia

Vision Processing

 

We've got some of each here & the types of things you mention sound familiar. At 8 years old, I think it's worth a little investigating to see what might be going on.

 

I don't know if you've tried the readers from AAS. One thing that's really nice about it is that it uses phrasing--each line is a phrase, instead of writing out part of a sentence and just putting a line break whenever there's no more room for words. This helps with comprehension. Also there is a subtle underlining that helps kids who have tracking issues. Here's a link to a video the Author did about some of the ways the Beehive Reader helps young readers. You might see if she'd like that. They have a couple of other books coming out in April that go with Level 2.

 

My son has convergence insufficiency. What happens for him is that his eyes will focus in on a word, quickly dart out and then in again. It's so subtle and quick that I didn't notice until we had an evaluation done & I knew to look for it. This causes him to miss letters, or to put part of the word in the wrong place (like putting the ending 2-3 letters in the middle of a word), and led to a lot of guessing when he was younger. The segmenting and other exercises in AAS really helped both of my kids improve their reading, and I'm hoping now that my son is also doing Vision Therapy that reading will become easier for him.

 

I hope you figure out what's going on with your dd, I know it takes lots of patience to teach kids who struggle, and that it's heart-wrenching to see them struggle too. Hang in there! Merry :-)

[Mandamom]

Sounds like she has dyslexic tendencies to me: Reversals, word substitutions (from/for, etc.), knowing a word on one page but not the next, difficulty learning numbers, etc.

 

My suggestion is to keep working on phonics rules and continuing to have her read outloud daily and gently correcting her on her mistakes. Those with reading difficulties need a lot of repetition. It sounds as if you are doing what you should be doing.

 

Regarding math -- Keep up with the repetition -- counting, etc. and make sure that she has a solid understanding of what she's doing. I do like mathusee for especially those who have learning issues but many people have done well with Singapore. (I used Singapore for my own child and really liked it).

 

As you do more research you might find it helpful to get an educational evaluation to get you more information.

[Jenny in GA]

My daughter is the same age, and I had similar concerns a few months ago.

 

I actually contacted a local tutor and was about to spend $100 having her do a "running record" to analyze exactly what was going on. After about my third e-mail with the tutor, she said, "Hmm ... I'd be happy to do it, but it doesn't sound like there is a problem. It sounds like she just needs to find more books that interest her."

 

Anyway, you might want to get some sort of evaluation from somebody. If nothing else, it might re-assure you that things aren't that bad.

 

What helped with my daughter was:

- Setting aside 15 minutes every day to read, at the same time every day. Before that, she hated to read. Once she could "get into" a book, she started loving it.

 

- Going to the library and pointing to different sections and telling her to pick out one biography, one picture book, one magazine, etc. (I think I got that idea from Jessie Wise.) That gave her more choice and range and ownership with what she is reading.

 

I would recommend NOT being quick to switch to another math curriculum, unless you really really can't stand the one you have now. (We use MUS also, and sometimes it does get really boring. When that happens, I switch gears and break out math games or math puzzle worksheets for a while.)

 

Good luck!

Jenny

http://beanmommyandthethreebeans.blogspot.com/

[Aludlam]

Well, another piece of the puzzle that I somehow forgot to mention (my brain is fuzzy today) ... she does have convergence insufficiency. It was "moderate." Her doctor has been very much "let's wait and see" about this. She is the only ped ophthalmologist around here. We have done prescribed computer exercises and now I hardly notice it. Her reading did improve after completing the exercises (about 6 months ago). It is time now for her yearly check-up though.

 

I know more confusion!

 

Thank you all so much for taking you time to have adult conversations with me about this.

 

Angela

[EKS]

I recommend that you read Overcoming Dyslexia by Sally Shaywitz. It has lists of symptoms of dyslexia. What you're describing sounds like my (dyslexic) son at age 8. This is more than a learning style thing.

 

As for your teen trouble, I would rename the teens like Mr Demme suggests ("onety one, onety two, onety three) or you could simply have her say one ten one, one ten two, etc. And I would do a new way of skip counting--"one ten, two tens, three tens, four tens, five tens, etc--for a while and then try switching back. The writing 12 for 20 sounds to me like she doesn't have a firm grasp of place value partly because she is getting mixed up with the number words.

[Aludlam]

I recommend that you read Overcoming Dyslexia by Sally Shaywitz. It has lists of symptoms of dyslexia. What you're describing sounds like my (dyslexic) son at age 8. This is more than a learning style thing.

 

As for your teen trouble, I would rename the teens like Mr Demme suggests ("onety one, onety two, onety three) or you could simply have her say one ten one, one ten two, etc. And I would do a new way of skip counting--"one ten, two tens, three tens, four tens, five tens, etc--for a while and then try switching back. The writing 12 for 20 sounds to me like she doesn't have a firm grasp of place value partly because she is getting mixed up with the number words.

 

You know I have tried every way I can think of to teach place value. She can take the decimal street and teach place value to you. She knows where everybody lives and has no trouble writing it in that context. We have done this excercise many, many times over the last two years. When it comes to applying it in other context, well that's a different story. I am VERY open to suggestions on this one. This week we had, what I thought was a break through, but she does still reverse her numbers (not when adding them, just when writing them random - like "write the number twelve", etc kwim). The thing is she knows what she is talking about when talking about the number. Clear as mud, I know. She can count something. She will know that it is twelve (seems to be the one that she has the most trouble with), but she will write 20 and argue that it is twelve. I agree with the theory of renaming the numbers, but it just didn't work for us. She thought that it didn't make any sense and it was hard for me to get into it too.

 

HELP!!!!

 

Angela

 

p.s.

Do you know of a place value video? or other fun math videos?

[robsiew]

Sorry, I don't have any advice, but I found this short little video on youtube for you... not a lot, but it's something... maybe he has more videos to check into?

 

 

 

ETA... if you do a search for "place value" on youtube there are other videos that pop up....

[Aludlam]

Sorry, I don't have any advice, but I found this short little video on youtube for you... not a lot, but it's something... maybe he has more videos to check into?

 

 

ETA... if you do a search for "place value" on youtube there are other videos that pop up....

 

 

That is so sweet of you. I don't know why I never think of youtube for educational stuff.

 

thanks

Angela

[HeatherM2]

Sounds like she has dyslexic tendencies to me: Reversals, word substitutions (from/for, etc.), knowing a word on one page but not the next, difficulty learning numbers, etc..

 

:iagree: My son did the same things at age 8 and he was diagnosed dyslexic at age 10. This site was very helpful to us.

 

http://www.avko.org/index.htm

[Aludlam]

Well, it's 6:15 in the morning and I just had time to read the link pages. It's scary. She has absolutely perfect handwriting, but other than that ..... I've got tears in my eyes. I've reserved the book from the library. But now what? Who does the testing? Who do I call? What are the first steps?

 

Thank you so much

 

Angela

 

p.s.

Please pray that we get this all figured out and that this is just a small speed bump in our journey.