How to stop a child from guessing while sounding out word?

[ExcitedMama]

DS is really just starting to sound out and put together CVC words. He's really enjoying AAR1 but even though he can sound out sometimes he just starts guessing. Is there anything I should be doing to help? I've told him guessing doesn't work and that you just have to sound it out to see what the word is going to be in order to read it. I think he does it more with words he doesn't know, like he doesn't know that Jan is a girls name but he knows a boy named Sam. I did order the Memoria Press First Start Reading program to use as well because I think from the materials I saw online the printing component of their blends might help him. Anything else I should be doing to discourage him from guessing?

[TKDmom]

You could cover up the word with a piece of paper and make him sound out one letter at a time. Once he's read each sound, have him read the whole word together to cement it. Obviously this won't work for words that are much more complex than CVC, but it might get him in the habit of actually looking at the letters from left to right.

[mommysanders]

I cover the word up with my finger and reveal one letter at a time. I will sound it out myself then ask him to.

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[mommysanders]

I cover the word up with my finger and reveal one letter at a time. I will sound it out myself then ask him to.

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Alice]

My kids all did this. I would play a game with them from time to time to discourage guessing. I put out 10 M&Ms and told them that they could have all the M&Ms if they did the reading without guessing. But every time they guessed I would eat an M&M. The rules were that they could get it wrong and be ok, they could ask for help and be ok or they could sound it out correctly but they couldn't just guess. This worked well for all my kids. They especially liked it when I would pretend to be mad that I didn't get any M&Ms. :) 

[hornblower]

Elizabeth's phonic lessons & especially reading the nonsense words ... can't guess nonsense words :)

[Guest]

Elizabeth's phonic lessons & especially reading the nonsense words ... can't guess nonsense words :)

Yes, the nonsense words are great.

 

I am pretty militant about making them follow along with their finger and sound out each phonogram in order. We have had some guessers around here and really try to nip that in the bud.

[luuknam]

I need to try the thing with the M&Ms. My 7.5yo is a sight word reader/guesser to a large extent. Any additional advice for kids reading that way who are already reading chapter books? It's a bit late to nip it in the bud, so to speak. I tried pushing phonics in the summer following K, at which point he was already at a 1st grade reading level (but a sight word reader/guesser) and it helped for a while, but the moment I don't make him read out loud to me he reverts (the school doesn't make him sound stuff out). One reason I want to homeschool him next year. I don't want to do the sound-it-out battle in the evenings when he's tired from school all day. Also, he's just started to voluntarily read more than he has to, so I don't want to discourage that (again, limited hours that he's not in school).

[MerryAtHope]

Go back to the letter tiles and have him go through the blending procedure each time. For some kids, "guessing" seems more intuitive than "sounding out." They need lots of practice in order to become fluent in sounding words out--before that strategy or approach seems natural to them. Do lots of modeling and tile demonstrations and practice it on a couple of words daily for awhile to really solidify that approach. Here's an article on how to Break the Word-Guessing Habit that has more info. 

[ErinE]

I used an index card with a corner cut out and uncover one phonogram at a time. It covered up the word completely and served as a bookmark.

[ElizabethB]

Elizabeth's phonic lessons & especially reading the nonsense words ... can't guess nonsense words :)

You would be surprised, I used to think that, too.

 

I had one remedial 3rd grader who had such a guessing habit from whole word practices in school that he would try to guess the nonsense words, too, even though I told him the odds of him guessing one correctly were about a billion to one.

 

So far, though, no one else has tried to guess the nonsense words. I had to make him sound out every single sound in every single word he read before saying the word, after doing that for a few weeks his guessing slowed down to within the normal range and the nonsense words started working for him. Every once in a while his guessing would ramp back up and we would have to have him sound out every sound in every word for a bit again.

[ElizabethB]

I need to try the thing with the M&Ms. My 7.5yo is a sight word reader/guesser to a large extent. Any additional advice for kids reading that way who are already reading chapter books? It's a bit late to nip it in the bud, so to speak. I tried pushing phonics in the summer following K, at which point he was already at a 1st grade reading level (but a sight word reader/guesser) and it helped for a while, but the moment I don't make him read out loud to me he reverts (the school doesn't make him sound stuff out). One reason I want to homeschool him next year. I don't want to do the sound-it-out battle in the evenings when he's tired from school all day. Also, he's just started to voluntarily read more than he has to, so I don't want to discourage that (again, limited hours that he's not in school).

5 to 10 minutes of my game a night. It is fun and makes both real and nonsense words.

 

This summer or next school year, take a month to remediate where you limit outside reading and just focus on words and word lists until the guessing habit is broken, working through the things in my how to tutor page. Sentences and stories are about 50% sight words so they trigger the guessing habit, also they are predictable which can also encourage guessing.

[luuknam]

5 to 10 minutes of my game a night. It is fun and makes both real and nonsense words.

 

This summer or next school year, take a month to remediate where you limit outside reading and just focus on words and word lists until the guessing habit is broken, working through the things in my how to tutor page. Sentences and stories are about 50% sight words so they trigger the guessing habit, also they are predictable which can also encourage guessing.

 

Thanks. I just read the rules for the game and I'm wondering if there's some way to change it to do longer words. He actually does tend to sound out shorter words correctly, even if he doesn't know them. It's when they're multiple syllables that he gives up and guesses based on word shape (beginning and ending letters). For instance, when reading some book about volcanoes he read Mount Merapi as Mount Mississippi. I'd be okay if he'd mispronounced Merapi (I'm not even a 100% sure how it *is* supposed to be pronounced)... I'm just not happy about not even trying and saying Mississippi instead (for the record, he doesn't only do this with weird names... he also does it with words that clearly follow phonetic rules but are multiple syllables long and which he can pronounce correctly if I can get him to slow down and sound them out). My plan for this summer was to go back to Toe and Toe, review what we'd already done (about 2/3 of the book), and continue working on it.

 

He also has issues with speech. He's improved a lot, but in 1st grade he'd consistently say muse-kit instead of music for example, and this morning I taught him the word 'vocabulary' and even though I'd said it a several times before he said it he still said 'vobaculary' or something along those lines (while reading the definition in the dictionary). I could think of a lot more examples (most simpler than 'vocabulary', which admittedly is a long word). His speech therapist sometimes does Earobics with him.

 

It's affecting his spelling too - he prefers to use a visual memory of a word to write it down, which means he makes really nonsensical mistakes. E.g. 'nidners' for 'numbers'. He does not reverse letters, fwiw, despite the example I just gave. When he realizes he needs to write a b or a /b/ sound, he'll write a b correctly, no problem. But getting him to break a word up into sounds and then writing down the sounds in the correct order so his spelling at least makes phonetic sense is like pulling teeth, and he'll make odd mistakes even when he's trying hard to think of the sounds in a word (especially with letters he still struggles to pronounce correctly, such as /r/ and /l/ ).

 

It just sort of feels like he's so good at sight words that phonics is never going to be as easy and as appealing to him. Which is fine - if he wants to sight read everything except unknown words, fine by me. I just want him to recognize when a word is unknown and to sound it out. At least he's still young... maybe I'm prematurily frustrated.

 

ETA: random factoid: His speech took off when we bought a TV and had the subtitles on whenever the TV was on. Also, around the same time I discovered that while it was extremely hard to get him to repeat something I said, I could get him to repeat me much more easily if I wrote it down and pointed at the word. E.g. pointing at a cake and saying cake - no response. Writing down cake and saying cake, and he'd read/say it, whether there was cake or not. He has an educational autism diagnosis for his IEP (but he's never been assessed by a medical specialist, although his pediatricians over the years have agreed he probably does qualify as HFA.

[Guest ojahunzhe]

I cover the word up with my finger and reveal one letter at a time.

 

[FO4UR]

I cover and reveal one sound at a time.  I use a 3x5 index card with a notch cut out of the corner.

 

 

Also, use a whiteboard/chalkboard to play word games.  Write one sound at a time, and then change one sound at a time.  (hat, fat, fan, fun, sun, sunk, bunk, ......)  Keep moving the position of the sound that changes so he gets in the habit of looking at every single sound.

[sweetpea3829]

You would be surprised, I used to think that, too.

 

I had one remedial 3rd grader who had such a guessing habit from whole word practices in school that he would try to guess the nonsense words, too, even though I told him the odds of him guessing one correctly were about a billion to one.

 

So far, though, no one else has tried to guess the nonsense words. I had to make him sound out every single sound in every single word he read before saying the word, after doing that for a few weeks his guessing slowed down to within the normal range and the nonsense words started working for him. Every once in a while his guessing would ramp back up and we would have to have him sound out every sound in every word for a bit again.

 

 

Yes, lol.  With DD, she would look at the first letter, look at the last letter, and guess a word that seemed to make the most sense.  DD does have some LDs, including some visual perception issues as well as the possibility of dyslexia.  Hubby...who is dyslexic, tends to do the same guessing thing.  

 

We have used the M&M trick (or heart candies, or candy corn, or whatever) with great success.  Mostly...it is just a lot of practice practice practice.  

 

To the person who's son is older and still guessing...I would read outloud with him every day, if possible.  Choose books a bit lower than his reading level, and explain to him that you are using those books to help him with not guessing words.  

 

I had to do this with DS6 (almost 7), because after I let him start reading chapter books, I realized that he wasn't reading all of the words, was guessing on many of the words even though he COULD read them, and he wasn't able to retell any of what he was reading.

 

I told him he could go back to chapter books when he stopped guessing words while reading (as well as a few other issues, such as skipping punctuation and reading for meaning).  He has stopped guessing, but is still working on paying attention to punctuation.  

[imagine.more]

A combo of things:

 

- multi-sensory instruction (take the letters out of context and put them on tiles and such to make it harder to guess shape) which you're already doing with AAR. 

- practicing with nonsense words like ElizabethB mentioned

- make it more work to guess than to slow down and get it right ;)  For us, this looks like me making Ana re-read the word correctly 3x if she guesses. Now if I can tell she was just struggling to say it correct or if it's a word above her reading level I don't do this. But, for words within the phonics program that I know she knows and she's just guessing because she thinks it's quicker...absolutely! 

 

Also, be sure that if he's a chronic guesser you hold him only to reading words he's been phonetically taught. Just do other things as read-alouds until he's doing better. Any new words that have a phonetic component he doesn't know "like -ght in eight" will just make it so tempting to guess.