Beginning reader struggles--would this worry you, or is it normal?

[melissel]

DD5 went through a year of preschool where they spent the bulk of their time learning their letters. At the end of the year, her handwriting was still terrible, and she still hadn't memorized most of her letter sounds (as in, she could remember if prompted, but didn't know them cold). We've been working our way gently through the Get Ready for the Code books, done a bit in Phonics Pathways, done some basic preschool workbook stuff, watched the Leapfrog videos, read some Dr. Seuss books, etc. I'm not pushing it hard because DD5 will push back even harder, but I will ask what sound this letter or that letter makes throughout the day, and so on.

 

However, she doesn't seem to be retaining even the letter sounds, which concerns me at this stage. For example, we were working on a page in a workbook yesterday where she was writing some Ws and then filling in the missing Ws in the words. We went through the instructions and the sound, and she wrote the Ws. Then when it came time to fill in the missing one, she couldn't figure out where the W would go in the word, which was something like "Water." I asked what sound W made and she said, "Duh-, Duh-..." It had only been 3-4 minutes since we went over what sound W makes.

 

She still has trouble remembering even simpler letter sounds as well--like, she'll tell me F makes a "guh" sound. We'll go through the short vowel sounds, and by the time we get through them and come back around to the beginning, she has forgotten what E and I say. Sometime she gets letter sounds right, but she gets them wrong just as often. This, combined with her very messy and shaky handwriting, is making me nervous. She IS a young five (September birthday), but I still feel like we should be further along than this.

 

Does it sound like there's more going on here than just late reading? Or is she still within the normal range (albeit at one end)? My only real experience thus far is with early readers, so I don't know what the other range of the range should look like, and I don't know how to gauge whether we're off it or not!

 

TIA for any advice you have.

[nukeswife]

If she's only 5 I'd give it a bit more time. My dd is a very late reader. She will be 9 in a month and we still haven't made it to simple chapter books. I did the McRuffy K curriculum last year with her and am using the 1st grade one this year. For her, letter sounds just didn't click until she was 7. She also goes in bursts, so we'll make great progress for a few weeks then she'll stall out for a couple weeks. Unless you have other reasons to believe there are underlying vision or hearing problems I'd just give it more time. I know that the leapfrog videos helped quite a bit as did playing around on starfall.com

 

My dd is very artistic so she's always had beautiful handwriting, but that's because to her writing is like drawing a picture. My youngest son, who just turned 5 the end of July, has the handwriting of a serial killer at this point. It's almost painful to watch him write anything.

[ElizabethB]

Talking letter factory!

 

Starfall is also good, the first section, but nothing beats the amount of repetition in talking letter factory.

 

That is in the normal range for that age.

[melissel]

Thank you both for your thoughts :001_smile:

 

Talking letter factory!

 

Starfall is also good, the first section, but nothing beats the amount of repetition in talking letter factory.

 

That is in the normal range for that age.

 

She has no further interest in Talking Letter Factory. We watched it twice, and when I pulled it out the third time, she was like, "This again? No." She's always been that way--never wanted to hear the same books over and over like most kids do. She's the same way with Starfall--my DD8 LOVED Starfall. This one was bored with it after the first few tries. Gah! :banghead:

 

I'm encouraged to hear that you both think it's normal though. This is my very, very challenging child, and she has me going every which way on a daily basis. I don't want to be the parent who waited too long to pay attention to something that was an indicator of a problem all along.

[skueppers]

I don't have any specific advice, but not reading at just-turned-five isn't late reading. :)

 

Do you feel that she wants to learn, and is trying? Or do you feel like she just doesn't care much about reading right now? Lots of kids her age don't really care about reading. It's only in the last 30 years that we've started expecting kids under 6 to learn to read in this country.

[ElizabethB]

She has no further interest in Talking Letter Factory. We watched it twice, and when I pulled it out the third time, she was like, "This again? No." She's always been that way--never wanted to hear the same books over and over like most kids do. She's the same way with Starfall--my DD8 LOVED Starfall. This one was bored with it after the first few tries. Gah! :banghead:

 

.

 

My son is actually the same way, if it makes you feel better. He has his consonant sounds down but could stand to watch leapfrog a few more times to learn his vowels. I cannot find it after the move and he told me he is too old for it and does not need it. :confused: If I had it laying around, I would probably make him watch it a few more times, but I am not going to buy it again for 5 sounds, so we are just struggling through the repetition. I sure wish I had a frog around to do it for me, and that he wanted to be taught by a frog. That is the one part of teaching phonics I do not enjoy, repeating letter sounds a billion times.

[MrsMe]

I don't have any specific advice, but not reading at just-turned-five isn't late reading. :)

 

 

 

I agree!

[melissel]

I don't have any specific advice, but not reading at just-turned-five isn't late reading. :)

 

Do you feel that she wants to learn, and is trying? Or do you feel like she just doesn't care much about reading right now? Lots of kids her age don't really care about reading. It's only in the last 30 years that we've started expecting kids under 6 to learn to read in this country.

 

No, of course not. Maybe I should have said "delayed skills" or something. But IMO it IS kind of late for not being able to hang onto letter sounds that you spent the last year learning and that someone told you not five minutes before. And at the rate that she seems to be learning, I don't expect to see her reading until 6 or later. In my experience, that's somewhat late. The majority of the kids in her class were reading at the end of her preschool year, and her teacher told me that she was one of two who couldn't yet (in a "But please don't freak out about any of this" way). And it is definitely NOT an academic preschool. So I guess I'm coming at it from the perspective of, now, six months later, we've made no progress whatsoever, and that's what's worrying me (probably needlessly, which is why I'm here stressing over it :D).

 

Yes, I do feel she wants to learn and that she is trying. She's definitely frustrated that she can't remember the sounds. She "reads" all the time by looking at the pictures in a million books (her bedroom floor is covered with them), and she asks me when she'll be able to read, and she asks me to do schoolwork. But of course she also skips the harder parts of her workbooks and moans when I ask her to see if she can sound out a word in book or if she recognizes any letters on a page we're looking at. I know that's all normal, because my DD8 did all the same things.

 

I'm more than willing to believe that my DD's fine, and I'm perfectly fine with having a kid who doesn't learn how to read until she's 6 or 7 or later. I just know that she's eager to learn and the lack of retention bothered me in the face of active attempts on her part to learn her letters, but if that's all normal in others' experience, then I feel much better! :D

[Guest mrsjamiesouth]

Thank you both for your thoughts :001_smile:

 

 

 

She has no further interest in Talking Letter Factory. We watched it twice, and when I pulled it out the third time, she was like, "This again? No." She's always been that way--never wanted to hear the same books over and over like most kids do. She's the same way with Starfall--my DD8 LOVED Starfall. This one was bored with it after the first few tries. Gah! :banghead:

 

I'm encouraged to hear that you both think it's normal though. This is my very, very challenging child, and she has me going every which way on a daily basis. I don't want to be the parent who waited too long to pay attention to something that was an indicator of a problem all along.

 

My ds6 is just now learning to read. We did the Get ready for the Code set for K and reviewed letter sounds but he wasn't ready to connect the sound to actual words. This year we are using PP and LTR.

He really likes LTR. I am adding PP for help in sounding out letters. LTR moves super fast, you are supposed to complete it in half a year.

[MrsMe]

I don't agree. I hate when people say that "most kids." And who's to say they are still retaining as well? The biggest problem is hurry up, learn it and forget it, because it was memorized, not learned.

 

She'll get it in her time. My dd couldn't blend letters until 7, but in all the frustration when I thought we were "behind", she's in the same place everyone else is (if that matters). She's not in other areas.

 

Your child will learn it when she is ready. No hurries, no worries.

[momto3innc]

My son struggled to retain sounds/letters although he did eventually get it. When we moved onto CVC words, he could sound them out...and then forget them if he saw them one sentence later. Same thing now with blends and silent e. I ended up having him tested and found out he has dyslexia and well as some auditory/visual processing trouble.

I'm not at all saying that is what is going on with your daughter...just letting you know what happened to me.

[coffeegal]

It may be nothing, but I have a friend who has a son who sounds very much like that. Despite his mother working on letter sounds and letters for literally years leading up into Kindergarten (and he did 3 years of preschool) he wasn't getting it. It turned out he has dyslexia. I'm not saying that is your case, but I thought I'd mention it.

 

The only child I had who struggled to remember letter sounds turned out to be farsighted. We worked on phonics, and worked on phonics for years. I could not understand why he could read at a 5th grade level at times, and other times he was struggling with beginning material. It finally occurred to me that the difference was font size. So I tested him. He could read at a 7th grade level if the font was 26 point +. :001_huh: Apparently babies are born far-sighted, and some children don't grow out of it until 8 or 9. She might have trouble seeing the letters, and be guessing which letter it is because the letters are too small. My recommendation is to see if using larger letters helps, and just keeping an eye on the situation because many kids learn to read at 6 or 7. Your dd isn't a late reader at this point. :001_smile:

[MeganW]

She has no further interest in Talking Letter Factory. We watched it twice, and when I pulled it out the third time, she was like, "This again? No." She's always been that way--never wanted to hear the same books over and over like most kids do. She's the same way with Starfall--my DD8 LOVED Starfall. This one was bored with it after the first few tries. Gah! :banghead:

 

 

Do you have a DVD player in your car? We have a few videos I want my kids to watch that they aren't very interested in, but they will watch in the car b/c it is that or sit in silence. Captive audience...

[kmacnchs]

Don't know what it's called but the refrigerator leapfrog magnets, where you put the letter in and it says "B says b, B says b, every letter makes a sound; B says b" is how (probably) my kids solidified their sounds.

 

We would also do ABC (melissa & doug) puzzles together and I would just say something like, "That is a B. Where does the B go? Yes! B says b like b,b,boy (there is a pic of a boy where the B goes)". To 'test' dd2 before we moved on to OPG, we did Starfall.com towards the end (I am not in love w/technology at early ages though so I did hold this off until the end of her learning...).

[Shay]

I'd be concerned, too, and I "get" that you aren't expecting your dd to be reading, but are concerned about the skills developing that lead to reading. I work with kindergarten kids and honestly, the ones who present as your dd does are the "red flags." I'm not saying that to scare you in any way at all, but to encourage you to not blow this off. My mode of operation has to be to get at the situation quickly and effectively. I/we cannot afford to wait and see if it just gets better because the child will fall more and more behind his peers.

 

From your post, you seem to me to be the kind of mother who is very in-tune to your dc and would really kick yourself if you found out later there was a problem and you didn't get on top of it.

 

Here's a thought: some kids get hit with too much info at once. Even watching the Talking Letter DVD can be overwhelming and put too much info out there at once. Some kids need to learn one bit, master it, and only then move on. If some kids I know watched that video, they'd get even more confused.

 

What I would do:

 

Don't mix letter name and letter sound instruction. Do sounds first. I have a 2nd grade and 4th grade tutee that still reflexively say a U makes /y/ sound. And a Y makes a /w/ sound. They got confused early on.

 

Consider buying the first set of the I See Sam books and proceed from there. Your dd is at the perfect age to enjoy these. The introduction of the sounds is methodical (confusing ones are separated widely , such as /b/ /d/ OR ones that sound alike /f/ and /v/ are also separated. ) and there is abundant practice till mastery. These books were recommended materials in a graduate course I took on direct instruction reading.

 

I also had good luck with Reading Reflex and recommend it.

 

If you had said your dd was just recently exposed to the sounds and is having trouble, that is one thing. You state that is not the case. She could have gotten majorly confused with too much at once and needs to tackle this one sound at a time. At any rate, early is best to do something.

 

HTH,

Shay

[Papillon Mom]

I know a late reader (8yo) who was helped by sandpaper letters. He would trace them while his mother would say the sound. He reads beautifully and voraciously now. He didn't have any learning difficulties. His brain just wasn't ready until he was 8-9 and he is very, very smart.

[RootAnn]

Could there be a problem? Sure.

 

Is your child in the normal range of not remembering sounds just said 15 seconds before? Yes.

 

If you think something is wrong, by all means get her tested. I will tell you that my oldest at age 5 would work hard to sound out a word and not know it one line down. She could also not repeat the word 15 seconds later after sounding it out (and lots of angst) with no words in between. Her visual memory got better, but was still not great at the age of not-quite-7 when we had her tested for possible vision therapy. (They flagged her for below-normal "trouble" vision memory.)

 

Within two months of the testing (but no therapy), she was reading on grade level. I had a tough time keeping up with the level of books she was capable & wanted to read from that point on. She still reads at least a grade level above what I have her doing and two grade levels above her PS peers who are her age.

 

My second child still struggles in reading at a young 7 and is working through ETC book 3 right now as a supplement to our normal curriculum.

 

I was just going over number recognition with my (almost 5 yr old) preschooler and she has the same issues you have with your 5 year old. I would continue doing gentle work - one sound at a time.

 

Good luck. :grouphug:

[Ellie]

But IMO it IS kind of late for not being able to hang onto letter sounds that you spent the last year learning and that someone told you not five minutes before.

Do you know what the school used to teach "letter sounds"? Because if they didn't use a good phonics method, it will take more time than you might imagine to undo what was done during that year.

 

So, no, *I* wouldn't worry.

[melissel]

Thank you, everyone, for the discussion and the good advice. Dyslexia is at the top of my list of concerns since that's the most obvious reading-related issue. I did a little searching and informally quizzed her this afternoon. Some of the markers scared me a bit--when asked what rhymes with "eat," she said "seat, pete...leap, freak..." When asked what the ending sound of "map" was, she said "tuh." But when asked what words rhyme with "cat," she was able to list at least five. When asked if "pipe" and "pit" started with the same sound and what it was, she said yes, and P. So not exactly definitive :lol: No one in either of our families has dyslexia, which makes me think it's not the issue. However, because of the ways in which this particular kid is challenging to me, I would not be surprised if she is diagnosed with ADD sometime down the road. Maybe that's what triggering my gut reaction here?

 

As for the vision thing, her vision was just tested by a regular optometrist and was fine, but I know they don't always do the tests that are needed for the less-recognized vision issues, like tracking problems. Who does that? A developmental ped? Pediatric ophthalmologist?

 

Do you know what the school used to teach "letter sounds"? Because if they didn't use a good phonics method, it will take more time than you might imagine to undo what was done during that year.

 

So, no, *I* wouldn't worry.

 

Ellie, you're not the first person to ask this. I am intrigued! They did a "letter of the week" sort of program, where they filled in letters on paper with various things (pasted buttons on a big B or cotton balls on a C, for example), played games and read books using that letter during the week, and so on. How would a phonics program teach the letter sounds specifically? I wasn't aware that there was a way to teach letter sounds other than "This is B. B says 'buh" like buh-bird and buh-birthday..." Is there another method? At home, we're doing Explode the Code, and she LOVES those workbooks.

 

Thank you again, everyone. I'm :bigear: to every word.

[Ellie]

Ellie, you're not the first person to ask this. I am intrigued! They did a "letter of the week" sort of program, where they filled in letters on paper with various things (pasted buttons on a big B or cotton balls on a C, for example), played games and read books using that letter during the week, and so on. How would a phonics program teach the letter sounds specifically? I wasn't aware that there was a way to teach letter sounds other than "This is B. B says 'buh" like buh-bird and buh-birthday..." Is there another method? At home, we're doing Explode the Code, and she LOVES those workbooks.

 

Thank you again, everyone. I'm :bigear: to every word.

Well, see, b does not say /buh/. A true phonics method would teach the sound as a very short /b/. And doing all those crafty things will not necessarily help children learn actual letter sounds.

 

I taught a little boy in my private school who was a very young 2nd grader (November birthday; cut-off in California is December 2. In many other states he would have been in first grade). I taught him to read using Spalding, with a little bit of Victory Drill Book thrown in for good measure. His parents had already had him tested for reading disabilities, because his older two brothers had been diagnosed....but there wasn't a thing wrong with this child, other than the fact that his public school had used sight reading instead of phonics, and I'll bet it was the same with his older brothers.

 

I spent all year teaching him the three sounds of y (two vowel sounds, on consonant sound, as when it is used at the beginning of a word like "yellow"). When I would drill him with the Spalding phonograms as flash cards, he consistently said that y said /w/. I'd go back and remediate: Cody, what letter does "yellow" start with? What letter does your name end with? I could see his mind working frantically, because he *knew* that y never said /w/, even though that's the first sound he thought of when he saw it in isolation.

 

I did have him tested by Dr. Paul Cates, the only doctor I trust for testing, and he said that Cody was working on a solid first-grade level and there were no signs of any reading disability. He had no idea why Cody was so confused at the sight of a y.

 

I'm convinced that Cody had glommed on to the way we actually say the "name" of y, which is /w/. It one reason that I'm convinced of the importance of teaching letter sounds before letter names.

 

All this to say that just because your dd's school said they were doing "phonics" does not mean that they actually were, and that it might take you a long time to remediate errors that your dd picked up.

[Guest TheBugsMom]

DD5 went through a year of preschool where they spent the bulk of their time learning their letters. At the end of the year, her handwriting was still terrible, and she still hadn't memorized most of her letter sounds (as in, she could remember if prompted, but didn't know them cold). We've been working our way gently through the Get Ready for the Code books, done a bit in Phonics Pathways, done some basic preschool workbook stuff, watched the Leapfrog videos, read some Dr. Seuss books, etc. I'm not pushing it hard because DD5 will push back even harder, but I will ask what sound this letter or that letter makes throughout the day, and so on.

 

However, she doesn't seem to be retaining even the letter sounds, which concerns me at this stage. For example, we were working on a page in a workbook yesterday where she was writing some Ws and then filling in the missing Ws in the words. We went through the instructions and the sound, and she wrote the Ws. Then when it came time to fill in the missing one, she couldn't figure out where the W would go in the word, which was something like "Water." I asked what sound W made and she said, "Duh-, Duh-..." It had only been 3-4 minutes since we went over what sound W makes.

 

She still has trouble remembering even simpler letter sounds as well--like, she'll tell me F makes a "guh" sound. We'll go through the short vowel sounds, and by the time we get through them and come back around to the beginning, she has forgotten what E and I say. Sometime she gets letter sounds right, but she gets them wrong just as often. This, combined with her very messy and shaky handwriting, is making me nervous. She IS a young five (September birthday), but I still feel like we should be further along than this.

 

Does it sound like there's more going on here than just late reading? Or is she still within the normal range (albeit at one end)? My only real experience thus far is with early readers, so I don't know what the other range of the range should look like, and I don't know how to gauge whether we're off it or not!

 

TIA for any advice you have.

I would shelve everything for now and just let her play. Sounds like she has no interest in school right now. I did this with my oldest, he was 6 and had no interest in reading. He would forget everything each day. I put every thing up for a month and then tried again...with in days he was reading. As for her handwriting, get a Kuman Cutting Book. This is the best way I know to build the muscles needed to write. Also play dough, have her squish it and squeeze it.

 

I haven't read the other posts so if I am repeating anything, think of it as agreeing with that poster.