5 yr old can spell a word, but struggles to read it

[Mommie_Jen]

I've put OPG up for now and we've been working through Progressive Phonics from the beginning, very slowly. We are doing the Alphabetti books right now and usually do 2 books a week. He struggles to blend sounds to form a simple CVC word, which is the stage he's been at for months. However, I've figured out he can spell those words to me if I ask him, and he rarely will mis-spell one.

 

So, what do I do from here? Just keep slowly plugging away at progressive phonics? Work on orally spelling the words to me and figure that will help the blending that he struggles with so much?

 

I would love to buy AAS, but I've hit my spending limit. The well is dry!

[LillyMama]

My son is like that! I don't know the Alphabagetti books, but have you tried the BOB books? These, and, yes, AAS, are what did it for my son.

 

You can replicate the beginnings of AAS in your home super easy. Just get pieces of paper, cut into little squares, and write the letters on it. The beginning of AAS is just segmenting. He pulls down a C while saying the C sound then pulls down the A while saying the A sound and then he pulls down the T saying the T sound. Then he says the whole word. You could always work on just doing these activities for a while until you can see if you can get the whole program.

 

And I know you don't want to hear this, but it might just be where he is for now. I've decided that kids' progress through reading is not linear or consistent. Especially boys, who are more prone for plateaus followed by A-Ha moments. He may just need to keep doing the same thing over and over for months. Then he'll wake up one day and read you a sentence. That's how my son was. And he was almost 6 before he could actually read through the whole first BOB book even though we'd been doing phonics for almost 2 years at that point. Although we want to think our help is what makes early readers, some kids just aren't going to be. I know that's not what I wanted to hear about my oldest, but it's how it turned out for me.

[Mommie_Jen]

You can replicate the beginnings of AAS in your home super easy. Just get pieces of paper, cut into little squares, and write the letters on it. The beginning of AAS is just segmenting. He pulls down a C while saying the C sound then pulls down the A while saying the A sound and then he pulls down the T saying the T sound. Then he says the whole word. You could always work on just doing these activities for a while until you can see if you can get the whole program.

 

This is great to know! I think we will start doing activities like this. And yes, I do realize that he just may be at a platau for now. Slow and steady, I suppose. Just interesting to me that he can spell them.

[LillyMama]

I know, that was so weird to me about my son, too. Does your son have any speech issues? Not necessarily serious ones, but some basic L-W mix ups or anything? I found that made it harder for my son to blend the sounds. But I always thought of him as a "top-down" learner, so it seemed weird that spelling would come first.

 

Boys, they keep us on our toes! Of course, my daughter pretty much taught herself to read before she turned 4...

[FO4UR]

Keep having him spell #1.

 

 

Take your phonics lessons, (Hide the OPGTR book from sight, but use the actual meat of the lesson.) and put them up on a white board.

 

Write one sound at a time. C A T He says each sound as you write it. /c/ /a/ /t/ If he doesn't hear the word, you say the sounds separated /c/ /a/ /t/. If he still doesn't hear it, say the sounds a little less separated, but he'll probably hear it when you say it. Do this over and over and over again. 10min/day until he's blending. Repeat words until he groans b/c they are too easy. I would go exactly in the order that OPGTR teaches the different phonograms and blends for these lessons.

 

I called this game playing "Word Whammer" b/c my dc liked the Leap Frog DVDs.:001_smile:

 

 

 

The main thing is training him to think a sound when he sees a letter...and seeing each individual sound in the word. Learning to spell first is a legitimately great way to teach a child to read (If he's enjoying those lessons don't fix what ain't broke!!!), but some need an extra nudge into seeing first/hearing second and blending to read.

 

Be careful about pushing reading out of a book too soon. Failure can lead to an aversion. Gain some success on the white board and start with books with only words that he can easily read from the white board.

[didadeewiththree]

My son struggles with actually reading also. the kids can spell over 100 words including river, house, etc but cannot figure out how to read it. He knows all the first 45 phonograms, but cannot blend them together, even though he knows lots of English rules, like silent final e, and why the e is silent in some words(thank you Phonics Road) But he cannot read unless its a word he has seen over and over again, like me or go, and does not have a desire to read either. He turned 6 in Feb and Im hoping to figure this all out this summer. Im going to try and work with blends, which is something they do not go over in Phonics road, like bl, sp, etc.

[blondeviolin]

This is how my older two were before they began blending/reading. I'd be inclined to say it's a developmental thing, but there are some games you can play to help it along. We play one we call Say It Fast where I segment a word into its separate sounds and the child tells me it fast. Rhyming games can also help. If you google "phonemic awareness games" there are more ideas out there.

 

Because my older two started out with spelling being easier like this, I am intrigued with the Spalding method, but can't get over the big book that is the WRTR and how I would implement it in day-to-day life... Well, that, and my older two have begged me to teach them to read well before 6ish.

[Mommie_Jen]

Write one sound at a time. C A T He says each sound as you write it. /c/ /a/ /t/ If he doesn't hear the word, you say the sounds separated /c/ /a/ /t/. If he still doesn't hear it, say the sounds a little less separated, but he'll probably hear it when you say it. Do this over and over and over again. 10min/day until he's blending. Repeat words until he groans b/c they are too easy. I would go exactly in the order that OPGTR teaches the different phonograms and blends for these lessons.

 

I called this game playing "Word Whammer" b/c my dc liked the Leap Frog DVDs.:001_smile:

 

 

 

The main thing is training him to think a sound when he sees a letter...and seeing each individual sound in the word. Learning to spell first is a legitimately great way to teach a child to read (If he's enjoying those lessons don't fix what ain't broke!!!), but some need an extra nudge into seeing first/hearing second and blending to read.

 

Be careful about pushing reading out of a book too soon. Failure can lead to an aversion. Gain some success on the white board and start with books with only words that he can easily read from the white board.

 

I like this. Progressive phonics is reading a book with a parent, but the kid only reads a word or two over and per as it appears in the story, the adult reads their est of the story. I could easily do this with our words we are working on learning!

 

 

Lots of good little tips!

[boscopup]

My 5.5 year old was like that also, and still is to some extent. He can blend just fine (strangely, he could blend when he just turned 4, yet didn't know all his letter sounds :001_huh:), but actually reading the words without having to sound each and every one out (even if it's repeated in the sentence 3 times) has taken a LONG time. We are getting there, and I have full confidence that he will read very well when reading really "clicks" for him.

 

Interestingly, my son did have hearing/speech issues, and he's still in speech therapy. I don't know if that has anything to do with his reading issues or not, but I thought I'd mention it since the PP asked about that. :) He does get m/n confused in reading, and those were the main sounds he got confused in speech for a long time (though they've been corrected in speech as of about a year ago).

 

What we did early on was to use Webster's Speller to learn about open and closed syllables and get a lot of practice with those. He did great with them (me writing them on the white board), to the point that when I taught him about silent 'e' one day, he took the word "make" and said, "make, meke, mike, moke, muke, myke". :lol: But with the syllabary, he was able to read those basic 2-3 letter so-called "sight words" (which are really just frequently used words). Then we went on from there with all the CVC stuff and blends and all that.

 

It's just taking a lot of practice and REPETITION. I've pawned the latter part off onto Reading Eggs mostly. ;) We're using Dancing Bears now as our main "learn to read" program, and we just do 5-10 minutes a day of that. When he's better able to write, I could see Spalding working well for him, since he does spell better than he reads. It would make sense that a spell to read program would probably work for him. But that requires writing. I will be working on writing this year in K, and probably teach the phonograms with the handwriting, then possibly jump into Spalding... or not. I can never predict what I'll do 6 months from now. :tongue_smilie:

 

We aren't to the point of reading books yet, except I See Sam readers (which he LOVES). Oh, and I use a cursor whenever we read. Dancing Bears recommends this, as it helps them focus on each phonogram - left to right. The cursor is just a notched card. You can make it yourself with an index card or even a piece of paper.

 

And be sure to demonstrate blending. In Dancing Bears, they start out with having the parent say: "/c/-/a/-/t/ ... cat" Then the child traces and says the letter sounds, then the child sounds it out and says what word. But it has already been demonstrated to the child beforehand. They aren't having to figure it out in the very beginning. You're training them to blend. So try some oral blending games, do the blending for the child for a while, and then see if they can figure out a word that you've already demonstrated multiple times.

[ElizabethB]

Both my children could spell before they could blend. Keep working on spelling and model blending, eventually the blending will come.

[kalanamak]

Kiddo was the same way.

 

I did SWR at that age because it was SO rewarding for kiddo to be able to spell so much, memorize so many rules/sounds etc.

Also, at 5, kiddo needed readers (magnifying glasses) to see anything that wasn't in littlekid-big print. He outgrew them by 6 and 1/2.

I used Phonic Pathways and Reading Pathways to help him with tracking line by line.

 

But SWR was such a shot in the arm for both of us.

[PeterPan]

Well a dc who is still 5 at this time of year is an awfully young K5er. States have different cutoffs. It might be that your dc is right on that line where a little bit of time, either calling him 1st semester K5 or K4 or what have you, could make a big difference. When the dc is that young, usually the 3rd phonics program works because the dc is finally old enough. ;) Especially with boys. And especially especially with any additional problems (speech, vision, etc.).

 

Like a couple of others in this thread I taught my dd to read with SWR, which has them spell their way into reading instead of sounding out. However there's still no rushing it. Despite all that good teaching, my dd was just a couple months shy of 6 when she started reading. And that's a GIRL. Girls tend to be 6 months ahead on many parameters from boys. So it might be if you pocket your remaining money, restart K5 or the program you've been doing, or just do nothing at all and kill time all summer, in the fall it will click. Seriously. :)

[SonshineLearner]

My son went around spelling simple words after sounding them out around 6... He started reading fine at 8. I didn't do more than just review phonics.... I made him start reading a bit at 7... but really this year is the first year I hear him and think, "He reads well." :)