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I listened to SWB's "How to Get Ready for High School" audio over the weekend. Fast reading was one of the goals and she suggested an hour daily of reading easy books. She said to find the point where the child can read fast - Dr. Seuss if needed - and build from there.

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I listened to SWB's "How to Get Ready for High School" audio over the weekend. Fast reading was one of the goals and she suggested an hour daily of reading easy books. She said to find the point where the child can read fast - Dr. Seuss if needed - and build from there.

I also listened to that lecture recently!  She also mentioned that an incomplete understanding of phonics would slow a reader down as well.  I'm not sure if was in the "HOw to Get Ready for HIgh School" lecture or not because I listened to several lectures recently.  

 

SWB explained that prior to 4th or 5th grade the reader could easily skip words they didn't know how to decipher and still understand the story.  But once the reading level goes up it becomes harder and more frustrating for the reader.  A good way to see if this is the case is to have the reader read aloud and note if they have trouble pronouncing the words or if they don't read the passage word for word.  If this is the case then the student might need to do phonics again.  Obviously you don't want to do it like you would with a 5 year old but she made the suggestion of going through the phonics rules such as "ea" says the long e sound and then say "I want you to write the following words that have the long e sound. . . ."

 

I hope I explained that well enough!  Of course, the best ting to do would be to actually listen to the lecture because it would be better to hear it in her words than mine.  If I remember correctly, she spent a good deal of time on this in the lecture and explained the process in more detail than I did.  I just wish I could remember which lecture that was in. . .maybe it was "The Great Books as History" or maybe "Writing without Fear"?  She has a lot to good points to make in all her lectures so you might not mind listening to a few anyways.

 

 

ETA:  SWB spoke about using a phonic program with older students in the "Great Books Lecture". 

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I also listened to that lecture recently!  She also mentioned that an incomplete understanding of phonics would slow a reader down as well.  I'm not sure if was in the "HOw to Get Ready for HIgh School" lecture or not because I listened to several lectures recently.  

 

....

 

Good point. That suggestion was assuming no ld, phonics, or eye tracking issues. The more in-depth discussion that you mention later in your post was not in this lecture - just to narrow it down for the OP.

 

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My current 8th grader was a late reader with no learning disabilities. He was also very slow up until this year. Through testing, we learned that his silent reading skills far surpassed his oral reading skills, so oral reading was not a good measure of his fluency. I used the One Minute Reader from Read Naturally to work on fluency with him, but what really made him take off was finding his "spark."

 

He first discovered the Rick Riordan books because his friends were reading them. He slowly read through those, but then found my old Dragonlance novels. There are something like 200+ Dragonlance books, many of which I could get used or as ebooks from the library. He found a "recommended reading order" for the books and just worked his way through that, finding as many as we could. The more interested he became, the more he read and eventually his speed started to improve pretty dramatically. From the Dragonlance books, I threw other book series at him (Brandon Sanderson, Robert Jordan, etc.). I think that in his case, he just need a whole lot of practice to become more fluent, and the best way to keep him practicing was to find books that motivated him.

 

We bought him a Kindle Paperwhite for Christmas, and he carries it everywhere. It is absolutely one of my best purchases ever. My delayed and struggling reader is now my most avid reader.

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  • 3 weeks later...

I have a couple of slow readers. This is what has worked here. I have them take 10 mins a day to work on speed reading. At first they read for 1min fors as fast as they can. Then they Stop and tell what they read to ensure comprehension. Repeat 10 times. After their speed has increased to a consistent rate, increase reading passages to 3 mins 3x. Then move on to 5 mins 2x. Then 10 mins.

 

It might take months to get to the 10 mins, but their reading speed and stamina should improve.

 

Fwiw, my kids read online bc it is easy to get a word count that way.

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