reading help

[mo2]

Dd is almost 6. She can sound words out but can't blend it together to figure out what the word is. How do I know if this is something that she developmentally is not ready for yet, or if I should be teaching it another way to make it click.

 

We have been using PP and ETC. Does anyone have any suggestions on anything else I could be doing to help her?

[Ellie]

as if it's just a developmental thing.

 

Dd is almost 6. She can sound words out but can't blend it together to figure out what the word is. How do I know if this is something that she developmentally is not ready for yet, or if I should be teaching it another way to make it click.

 

We have been using PP and ETC. Does anyone have any suggestions on anything else I could be doing to help her?

 

My usual recommendation is to be sure that you are following the program that you've chosen as exactly as you can. People often get into trouble when they pick something and then tweak it all over the place, lol.

[Tonia]

I agree - it sounds like a developmental thing. She probably just needs time. Also, you can do some simple exercises with her. She might just need practice "hearing" the sounds being blended into words. Here are a couple exercises I've used -

 

Play blending games: Start with a three letter world (CVC) and say it one sound at a time in a segmented fashion “r . . e. . d”, very slowly. Have your child try to guess the word. If they have difficulty with this, say the words a bit faster, until they are able to guess the word. Practice this with lots of words, it will help her figure out what she needs to do when she is learning to blend.

 

Another game that helps with learning to blend - you'll need some magnet letters for this. Put three letters (that make a short vowel word) on the board in random order (c, a, t). Ask her, “What is the first sound you hear in cat?” Then, "what is the next sound you hear?" Help her to listen for each sound and spell out the word. Practice this with other short vowel, CVC words.

[AngieW in Texas]

You said that she can sound out words, but then doesn't know what she sounded out.

 

If you sound out a word, can she figure out what it is?

 

My dd had visual efficiency issues. She had to work so hard to retrieve the sound of each letter or letter combination, that by the time she finished sounding out the word, she had no clue what she had sounded out. However, if I sounded out a word for her, she ALWAYS got it right.

 

She could even take any 3 or 4 sound word that I said to her and break it down into its sounds. If the word was phonetic (like cat) she could even spell it.

 

So my 6yo dd could take a simple word like cat or log and spell it. She could sound out the letters in cat or log perfectly. After sounding out the word, she had no clue what she had sounded out. If I had her spell a word for like cat or log, she could do that without any problem. If I came back to her 5 minutes later and asked her what the word that she spelled for me said, she had to sound it out and then didn't have any clue what she had sounded.

 

Vision therapy fixed her visual efficiency issues. Afterwards, she actually knew what she had sounded out. She still couldn't read any words on sight though - not even her own name.

 

She wasn't able to read any words on sight until we did Headsprout. Some of the exercises in Headsprout work specifically on visual procesing. After that, she was finally able to start recognizing some words on sight.

 

My dd had both visual efficiency problems and dyseidetic dyslexia. The dyslexia will never go away, but it had been mostly remediated at this point. My dd is reading at grade level now, but she can't read as quickly as she should be able to. Reading is an effort for her, not something that comes as naturally as breathing.