Next step in reading?

[FO4UR]

I am considering my options for ds9. If you haven't read any of my posts on him, he's a VSL, has had some vision therapy, and I strongly suspect that he's dyslexic as The Gift of Dyslexia describes.

 

He spent K-2nd doing SWR. He was reading barely at a kindergarten level March of his 2nd grade year so I dropped SWR completely and switched to Dancing Bears Fast Track. He has finished Dancing Bears Fast Track reading.:party: We've been reading through the 1st McGuffey Reader, and he's going at the pace of 1 lesson per day. I have him read across the list of words, down the list of words and then the story. The words are easy for him, but he still has some minor trouble tracking the lines through the story. A sentence will often have words flip-flopped ("It is here." instead of "Is it here?"). He's feeling good and confident with the readings though...and corrects his own mistakes with a 2nd reading of the sentence.

 

 

SO...he's going to finish the McGuffey reader in June. He still needs something to push him along in fluency. I have the 2nd Reader on the shelf (but I think it's kind of dry...and he would like something with content a little more like Percy Jackson:tongue_smilie:) I also have Dancing Bears Book C on the shelf. We live next door to a small library (and have one just a bit smaller in our basement;)) so we have access to lots of books.

 

 

What should we read?

[merry gardens]

Your ds is around the age when I really restricted my ds' reading to only controlled texts. Those books may not have been greatly exciting, but he's now reading and de-coding at grade level without guessing. (A lot of dyslexics develop the bad habit of guessing instead of reading, and the habit can be hard to undo.)

 

Since you suspect dyslexia, until (or unless) he can de-code bigger words you might try for controlled texts so that he reads the word successfully at least 90% of the time without resorting to guessing. I haven't used the readers and programs you used, so I'm not familiar with exactly where his reading skills would be after them. Is your ds able to de-code multi-sylable words easily yet? When he reads outloud to you, do you see any signs that he's guessing (based on the first letter or pictures or prior knowledge...) rather than really reading?

 

Maybe with what you've already done, he's past that point and you can move onto letting him pick the books he wants to read. I don't know. But since you asked, I thought I'd mention that when a child is an emerging reader who shows a tendency towards dyslexia, I favor an approach that establishes them as solid readers rather than letting them think they can get by simply by being good guessers.

[FO4UR]

Your ds is around the age when I really restricted my ds' reading to only controlled texts. Those books may not have been greatly exciting, but he's now reading and de-coding at grade level without guessing. (A lot of dyslexics develop the bad habit of guessing instead of reading, and the habit can be hard to undo.)

 

Since you suspect dyslexia, until (or unless) he can de-code bigger words you might try for controlled texts so that he reads the word successfully at least 90% of the time without resorting to guessing. I haven't used the readers and programs you used, so I'm not familiar with exactly where his reading skills would be after them. Is your ds able to de-code multi-sylable words easily yet? When he reads outloud to you, do you see any signs that he's guessing (based on the first letter or pictures or prior knowledge...) rather than really reading?

 

Maybe with what you've already done, he's past that point and you can move onto letting him pick the books he wants to read. I don't know. But since you asked, I thought I'd mention that when a child is an emerging reader who shows a tendency towards dyslexia, I favor an approach that establishes them as solid readers rather than letting them think they can get by simply by being good guessers.

 

 

 

He does decently well with multi-syllable words. (Dancing Bears has exercises where the student builds words with affixes, and he rocked those.) He is more likely to guess on little words. (The lists of prepositions, pronouns, and helping verbs ...those kinds of words.) Often times he sees them and reads them, but just mixes up the order of the words. He gulps in an entire line in one glance and it comes out jumbled.

 

Dancing Bears worked very well to prevent guessing with words. With the McGuffey reader, I have him reading the lists of words first so doesn't even have context cues - forcing him to decode. He's doing quite well with that. He's fumbling when we put those words into sentences and on a page full of text. This has always been *the* hang-up for him. (He used to be able to spell SWR sections A-I, but was not able to read the first few Bob Books.) He is reading *so* much more fluently than before. I think he's probably on grade level even. (Haven't tested him, but I'm judging by other 3rd graders that I've heard read.)

 

 

I think he really needs practice reading at this point. I don't want to just let him pick whatever books b/c he would choose something really hard and get discouraged. (He wants to read what he listens to...), I think the incremental steps in the McGuffey readers are a benefit...maybe I should just stick with those...but they are boring.

 

 

:bigear:

[merry gardens]

...I think he really needs practice reading at this point. I don't want to just let him pick whatever books b/c he would choose something really hard and get discouraged. (He wants to read what he listens to...), I think the incremental steps in the McGuffey readers are a benefit...maybe I should just stick with those...but they are boring.

 

 

:bigear:

I hear you on the boring.

 

If he wants to read what he listens to, maybe try letting him take turns for a paragraph sometimes. I sometimes let ds read all the words he could, and I'd read the hard ones.

[Pen]

I am considering my options for ds9. If you haven't read any of my posts on him, he's a VSL, has had some vision therapy, and I strongly suspect that he's dyslexic as The Gift of Dyslexia describes.

 

He spent K-2nd doing SWR. He was reading barely at a kindergarten level March of his 2nd grade year so I dropped SWR completely and switched to Dancing Bears Fast Track. He has finished Dancing Bears Fast Track reading.:party: We've been reading through the 1st McGuffey Reader, and he's going at the pace of 1 lesson per day. I have him read across the list of words, down the list of words and then the story. The words are easy for him, but he still has some minor trouble tracking the lines through the story. A sentence will often have words flip-flopped ("It is here." instead of "Is it here?"). He's feeling good and confident with the readings though...and corrects his own mistakes with a 2nd reading of the sentence.

 

 

SO...he's going to finish the McGuffey reader in June. He still needs something to push him along in fluency. I have the 2nd Reader on the shelf (but I think it's kind of dry...and he would like something with content a little more like Percy Jackson:tongue_smilie:) I also have Dancing Bears Book C on the shelf. We live next door to a small library (and have one just a bit smaller in our basement;)) so we have access to lots of books.

 

 

What should we read?

I cannot tell you what you should read, but can tell you what worked for my son at similar age/stage.

I went with www.highnoonbooks.com which has as its specialty high interest/low level readers. It is NOT as interesting as Percy Jackson, but more so than early levels of McGuffy IMO and most beginning readers, they have "sound out chapter books" at the early levels and then other books for grade 1 and grade 2 level reading, but higher interest. The second grade level "what on earth" sets were pretty good --the only 2nd grade ones I actually got--if that is the level your son is at, also they had ones on explorers and people who changed history like Gutenberg and so on that looked interesting.).

 

My son progressed from there, when he was ready (which is before he was done with what I had gotten for him), to the Buddy Files series, then to Magic Tree House series, thence to a few individual books--mostly with dog main characters, and now is hooked on Rick Riordan, though he is on the Carter and Sadie Kane books rather than on the Percy Jackson ones. HTH.

 

ETA: We also have McGuffy's and still use those from time to time, but the above was the main progression, but I forgot that there was some use of Little Critter books which have a lot of high frequency words and some are funny even though they are for younger age group. He also had some extra work at school where often he just did more of what he was doing at home (Magic Tree House, for example, but they also started into a series called Hank the Cowdog, which he enjoyed bec. it is funny. And they had had a program called "Triumphs" which was a leveled readers series, but he outgrew that along with HN, and in general it was at a somewhat lower interest level as compared to reading level than is HN.

Edited May 26, 2012 by Pen

[FO4UR]

If he wants to read what he listens to, maybe try letting him take turns for a paragraph sometimes. I sometimes let ds read all the words he could, and I'd read the hard ones.

 

That might be what I need to do.

 

 

I cannot tell you what you should read, but can tell you what worked for my son at similar age/stage.

I went with www.highnoonbooks.com which has as its specialty high interest/low level readers. It is NOT as interesting as Percy Jackson, but more so than early levels of McGuffy IMO and most beginning readers, they have "sound out chapter books" at the early levels and then other books for grade 1 and grade 2 level reading, but higher interest. The second grade level "what on earth" sets were pretty good --the only 2nd grade ones I actually got--if that is the level your son is at, also they had ones on explorers and people who changed history like Gutenberg and so on that looked interesting.).

 

 

 

 

Those look good. Thanks for the link.:001_smile:

[Shellers]

I also recommend HighNoonBooks, my son loves these books! I also have my son reading Pathway Readers and doing the workbooks. Climbing to Good English has been a big hit with my son too. It's not a reading program but it goes with Pathway Readers and reinforces what my son has been reading.

[FO4UR]

I'm going to check the library for the HighNoon books today.

 

 

I think we will continue on with Dancing Bears book C, taking my own advice of "Don't fix it if it ain't broke."