Early Readers--Is this a normal phase of learning?

[nature girl]

My DD began sounding out words on her own before 3, and has gradually gotten more fluent over the years. Now, at 5, she reads reasonably well, but still often has issues with multi-letter phonemes. For example, she's known the "igh" sound for a year, but while reading will still sound out each letter "i Guh Huh" before correcting herself and making the long-i sound. (I think it's because she associates the correct sound with the actual SOUND of the letters separately, rather than by visually grouping the letters together.) It's the same with "ai" and several other multi-letter phonemes. I realize she's still very young, and I'm not worried at all, I'm just wondering how the process of seeing multiple letters as one sound typically works, whether this is because her brain just hasn't developed the ability to see multiple letters together at this point. (Although she doesn't have this issue with the h-digraphs (th, sh, wh, etc.) I'm guessing because she learned them first and now sees anything next to h as one sound.)

 

Another quirk, she'll break contractions into their separate components while reading. Don't she'll read as "do not," We'll she'll read as "we will," etc. Has anybody seen that before? I've just been gently correcting each time, but I'm wondering if I should have a whole lesson on conjunctions. (We've never really done formal reading lessons, just learning as she goes.)

 

And last, how long would you say younger readers should typically spend on reading? We don't read each day, maybe 3-4 dpw at this point, but she seems to get tired of reading, fidgety and distracted, after 5 minutes or so (although she's typically able to focus happily for quite awhile on other subjects), so I'm wondering if I should actually have reading time more days a week, or even multiple times a day. (At this point it takes her a couple of weeks to get through an ER book.)

 

Again, not worried about any of this, just wondering the best way to approach it.

[OneStepAtATime]

She may need a bit more explicit instruction with a reading and spelling program.  Some kids don't pick things up completely smoothly on their own.  In fact, a lot don't.  Extra instruction can certainly help.  Of course, with some, explicit instruction is the ONLY way they learn to read but it doesn't sound like that is what you are dealing with.

 

Do you do a lot of read alouds?  Let her listen to audio books while she works on an art project or building with legos or something? (I say this because many kids can't actually focus on the book if they have to sit still for an extended period.  Their brain is using all of its energy trying not to move around and the content of the book gets lost.)  The reading skills may take some time to smooth out but you don't want her to fall behind in her exposure to vocabulary, concepts, grammar, flow of material, etc.

[SKL]

I'd read every day at that age, since she is able to read.

 

To work on specific phonic patterns, I'd look for word play books, rhyming books, and songs.  For example, I think it's Dr. Seuss's Hop on Pop which uses a series of -ight words.  Review, be patient and she'll get it when she's ready.

[nature girl]

She may need a bit more explicit instruction with a reading and spelling program.  Some kids don't pick things up completely smoothly on their own.  In fact, a lot don't.  Extra instruction can certainly help.  Of course, with some, explicit instruction is the ONLY way they learn to read but it doesn't sound like that is what you are dealing with.

 

Do you do a lot of read alouds?  Let her listen to audio books while she works on an art project or building with legos or something? (I say this because many kids can't actually focus on the book if they have to sit still for an extended period.  Their brain is using all of its energy trying not to move around and the content of the book gets lost.)  The reading skills may take some time to smooth out but you don't want her to fall behind in her exposure to vocabulary, concepts, grammar, flow of material, etc.

 

Thanks! She loves stories so we do a ton of read alouds, have been doing an hour or more a day for years, so she does have a rich vocabulary. I hear you on starting a reading/spelling program, but I'm wondering what those lessons could do that we haven't already done just by talking about phonemes as we read. She's known many if not most of the multi-letter phonemes for awhile, and can recognize (most of) them if I write them out in isolation; if I write "igh" on a white board and ask her to sound it out, she'll sound it out correctly. The problem is reading the phoneme correctly within a word when she first sees it.

 

SKL, I like your idea of finding books that focus on certain word groups, to help ingrain them. Does anyone have an idea where to look for books that target various phonemes separately? (We have Hop on Pop, so I'll pull it out for her today!)

[EKS]

We liked the Phonics Pathways readers for working on specific phonemes.

[OneStepAtATime]

Thanks! She loves stories so we do a ton of read alouds, have been doing an hour or more a day for years, so she does have a rich vocabulary. I hear you on starting a reading/spelling program, but I'm wondering what those lessons could do that we haven't already done just by talking about phonemes as we read. She's known many if not most of the multi-letter phonemes for awhile, and can recognize (most of) them if I write them out in isolation; if I write "igh" on a white board and ask her to sound it out, she'll sound it out correctly. The problem is reading the phoneme correctly within a word when she first sees it.

 

SKL, I like your idea of finding books that focus on certain word groups, to help ingrain them. Does anyone have an idea where to look for books that target various phonemes separately? (We have Hop on Pop, so I'll pull it out for her today!)

Sometimes, certain skill areas just need more explicit instruction.  More than a parent may realize.  I learned to read so early I don't remember any explicit instruction.  But my kids and many of my nephews and my niece actually needed things broken down into more explicit, systematic components.  More so than just random exposure and discussion.  

 

Running your DD through a reading program just to fill in and solidify the gaps may leap her forward quickly since she is already picking up so much.  And SKL's idea sound like a good one for helping, too.

[Miss Tick]

Those issues are both normal. My almost-6 dd does them both. She is often fine with "th", but then will start sounding them out again. Also, she will read contractions as two separate words. The "th" she will self-correct, the contractions I just point out. My olders did this too and it gradually faded away.

[Kerileanne99]

Alex did the contraction thing for a while:)

When I finally asked her about it she was convinced that the expanded form 'sounded' better in her head. That being said, contractions later were absolutely intuitive for her so I actually think it was a good thing, lol.

 

As for what a spelling program can do when based upon phonetics, maybe I can answer a bit there. Take it with a grain of salt, because Alex adores spelling and the rules-based nature of AAS. It has never been 'work' for her, and I definitely would never have pushed it if she didn't thoroughly enjoy it.

There is a big difference between being able to identify a phoneme in isolation, then in context of a word, then in a situation where you are focusing on so many things at once:the story, the individual word/syllables, the tone, even prosody. Automaticity takes time and experience. Just reading I think Will do it, and did for Alex...but something like AAS covers all the bases and ensures it translates to spelling.

One example: AAS also uses 'sound cards'. We haven't found the need to review these but occasionally, but they give a sound and ask the child to recall all the ways to spell that sound. So it might give a long a sound and she will write out a, ai, ay, eigh, etc., and Alex likes to add a game where she gives an example word. So it becomes active recall versus passive recall. The dictation sentences work in this as well, and the writing stations pull it all together.

I will say that if you have only seen AAS level 1, you might not see the point:) I didn't fall in love until we hit about level3, but the kid enjoyed it so we kept going.

Anyway, I absolutely don't think you NEED to do anything other than give her time to read, hear and absorb good books right now:). But I just wanted to assure you that we didn't/don't find AAS pointless or redundant. Even though dd doesn't truly need it for spelling or reading, it has still been great for her. I love that she loves it and confidently applies/reiterates WHY words sound/are spelled the way they are. Over the holiday she picked up one of her dad's college chem books and it was fun to see her use the segmenting and rules she internalized to read about organic chemistry and compound names:)

[hauntedzeppelin]

When my son was having that same trouble with igh, I had him read Splat the Cat: Good Night Sleep Tight. It had lots of igh practice for him and was a cute story. I imagine there are other igh intensive books out there, this was just the one I found, and that approach seemed to help him.

[MotherGoose]

My oldest also read early, but I went through OPGTR with her. The lessons are very short and all oral, and you can make sure you explicitly teach everything that way.

[SeaConquest]

Those issues were normal for us. For phonogram practice, we used and liked Progressive Phonics (free) and the Nora Gaydos readers.

[Jackie]

My DD did the same with phonemes until she went from "reading pretty well" to "reading fluently". Once she was just able to read the words on the page without needing to sound out individual letters, she was able to see the entire word and break it down quickly. Until then, she read from left to right, one letter at a time, and only when that didn't result in an actual word would she look again to how the letters might be combined.

 

DD sometimes breaks the contractions into individual words. We talked about it briefly, but I don't worry about it. In order to break it apart like that, she must be reading the word and understanding its meaning, so I'm fine. When she starts reading more poetry aloud, I'll come back around to this one because the individual words make more of an impact to the rhythm.

[Tanikit]

My younger DD is doing the same with contractions and I actually have no problem with it (especially since she has a speech issue with W and other sounds and saying "He will" instead of he'll helps some with that :). She has asked about them and can sound them out, but it just seems more natural to her to say both words.

 

Maybe get her to point out some of the phonemes she is sounding out finding them as a unit in books you are reading. You may find that she is tiring because of print size too - my youngest can read a lot if the print size is bigger, but make it smaller and even though she can read it easily you will see her tiring faster. She is younger than your DD so I send her to run or do headstands or whatever activity she wants to do in between short paragraphs and she is quite happy.

 

With my elder daughter if I knew she was having issues then I would do the part she struggled with for her - so I had a blank piece of paper in the book and two coloured pens and would write out how to sound out the word much bigger than it was written with the phonemes that were double or triple in a different colour only expecting her to say them when I had written them for her - the same with multi syllable words - I split the syllables for her and let her read one syllable at a time. Its fine to help like this - seeing and hearing it done correctly means they will become independent at some point and do it correctly when this happen. My eldest is fluent now at a high school level and still if she gets stuck on a word (usually now foreign words) then I write it out for her, give her other examples and teach the general rule.

 

I used very short sessions for my children and my eldest had 2 sessions a day at your child's age. My youngest is still on one a day, but she is very little - she does read a few words out of read alouds to me too if that counts as another session.

[rimk3]

In Reading Lessons Through Liturature, the phonograms are underlined in the Elson Reader Primer. The underling allows my girls to see the phonogram as a unit. So, sometimes I underlined (in pencil) phonograms in other readers we own before giving my girls the reader. This has worked well for us.

[boscopup]

I have a 5 year old who reads well. If he tries to sound out a phonogram like that, I just say, "What does 'igh' say?" (actually he doesn't usually have this problem anymore, but my 8 year old who is more at the emerging reader stage definitely does!).

 

For reading time, I have my 5 year old read one story from Free & Treadwell readers each day. This doesn't take very long. Any other reading he does is completely on his own. He's on the Second Reader, so some of those stories get a bit long, but he started with the Primer and worked his way up, so his stamina has been gradually built up.

[pitterpatter]

My DD still does the contraction thing both ways.

[Korrale]

My son did the contraction thing too! I thought it was odd but apparently it is pretty common with early readers. I don't know when he stopped. But I just now realized he no longer says it.

 

My son reads for at least an hour a day. It is one of his favourite things. I read to him about 30 minutes. We buddy read chapters for part of that time. When he is alone he will read anything from a very very basic picture books to text books.

 

We often have an issue with print size of books. We use an e reader (iPad) to enlarge print so that he doesn't fatigue with smaller more clustered print.