Teaching Reading...Helping a student attack longer words

[sweetpea3829]

My older three children were somewhat easy to teach how to read.  For the most part, once they got CVC, blends/digraphs and VCE words down pat, they readily picked up on the rest of conventional phonics with relatively little difficulty. 

 

For all three of them...there came a point, similar to the acquisition of language, where they just blossomed as readers and were able to easily decode most words they came across...whether the word was familiar or not.  

 

 

 

And then there's youngest DS.  He has been a bit more of a challenge.  He's probably right where your typical 1st grader would be at this point in the school year, but I notice that he rarely attempts to decode longer words that he is unfamiliar with.  He prefers to just read the first letter chunk and then guess what it is based on the shape.  He also skips shorter words, or replaces shorter words with other shorter words (usually a with the and vice versa).  And his tracking is a bit off.  Pretty sure there's SOME kind of dev. vision issue going on and I intend on addressing it with his eye doctor (a COVD physician) at his next eye appointment.  

 

 

When he does attempt to decode longer words, he almost always gets hung up on the vowels.  I mean...I get it...there are a lot of different ways a vowel may work in a word and that can be confusing!  

 

Any suggestions for helping him with these longer words?  Telling him to break the word apart, attack the word, etc hasn't helped much because he's unsure of where to chunk a word.  He'd take a work like "because" and be confused on whether or not to chunk the "be" or the "bec".  When he starts AAS2 next school year, he'll learn syllabication strategies which will help.  But we're still a bit off from that.  

[Rosie_0801]

See if these help. Some might be a bit too long for such a little fella, but the phonics police won't know if you only watch half a vid each day.  :Angel_anim:  The syllable work has done my dd the world of good and we're only up to lesson 24.

 

http://www.thephonicspage.org/Phonics%20Lsns/phonicslsnslinks.html

[rwilk]

For some reason, teaching compound words taught DD how to break down big words into little parts. If she seems overwhelmed by the word, I'll sometimes help by covering up a part of the word, and slowly revealing it.

 

 

[Um_2_4]

If you can find the program Master Reader by Hooked on phonics that has a software that teaches the breaking into chunks that I love. You might be able to buy just t he software on ebay or the like, you don't NEED the books/readers, but they are useful.

Here is what it looks like: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Master-Reader-Hooked-On-Phonics-Reading-Phonics-Skills-Complete-Set-/222114539798?hash=item33b70ee916:g:YAsAAOSwl-FXMrNF

 

Just FYI, if anyone buys it: When I upgraded to Win7, I had to email them to get the software that would work on my computer. They were very helpful and just sent me the links to download all 4 levels. The CDs would install but not run and no work arounds fixed it.

[Holly]

For some reason, teaching compound words taught DD how to break down big words into little parts. If she seems overwhelmed by the word, I'll sometimes help by covering up a part of the word, and slowly revealing it.

 

This is what I do as well. 

[ElizabethB]

http://www.thephonicspage.org/On%20Reading/WellTaughtPhonicsStudent.html

[OneStepAtATime]

http://www.thephonicspage.org/On%20Reading/WellTaughtPhonicsStudent.html

I agree.  Try this.

 

And I would seriously back off on his trying to decode on his own until you have run with him on very targeted phonics and syllable instruction.  He is picking up poor reading practices and the longer he does it the more ingrained they may become.  For some kids just telling them how to do something won't help.  They need consistent, long term, targeted reading instruction that breaks things down into much smaller pieces then helps them reassemble those pieces very, very carefully.  

 

In the meantime, let him listen to audio books and do read alouds so he is still getting exposure to vocabulary/grammar/concepts/stories but keep reading instruction phonics based and very targeted.  Don't have him do a lot of independent reading until you have addressed the poor reading practices very systematically.  Hopefully the eye appointment will give you some answers but he may also be mildly dyslexic.