When have your reached your goal of having a reader?

[Minerva]

When do you feel like you have reached your goal of having a reader?

 

My dd(10) is reading chapter books now.  :hurray: She is reading with pleasure and comprehension. However, when she reads out loud to me she still misses a lot of words, almost all linking words, and her phrasing is still awkward. The way she misses words does not affect the meaning of the story at all and she says the phrasing is normal when she is reading to herself. She says that when she reads aloud she does not understand what she is reading but when she reads silently her comprehension is phenomenal. 

 

I still have her read aloud to me sometimes, but I am sort of wondering why. Will we get to a point in her education and life where her lack of perfect reading skills will affect her negatively? I want to know if I need to keep remediating with her or should we just accept that she will never be a perfect reader. 

 

BTW my dh is dyslexic and still reads poorly out loud. He does say that reading out loud to the kids has really helped his reading, but his phrasing is still weird and he still misses words. Interestingly, when he reads silently, he remembers everything he reads. I think because he reads slowly and carefully and because he has strong mental pictures (as does my daughter).

 

Anyway, any thoughts on this would be helpful. 

 

[Storygirl]

Has she been diagnosed with dyslexia?

 

It makes sense to me that her comprehension would be better with silent reading, because when reading aloud, she has the extra component of sounding out each word, whereas with silent reading, she can glide past words, absorbing their meaning without decoding them completely.

 

DD10 does this. She can read a chapter book to herself but still struggle to read a paragraph correctly out loud. She has a phonological disability (dyslexia) that is being remediated through work with a private tutor this year and enrollment at a dyslexia school in the fall. We don't plan to stop remediating. The dyslexia school remediates with OG but also teaches students how to advocate for themselves, use technology, and use accommodations.

 

At age 10, I would not stop the remediation. Are you using a particular reading program?

[Heathermomster]

We quit reading remediation when DS tested out of Wilson book 12.  We then moved over to a Greek/Latin roots study, and he continues to actively study vocabulary.  

 

I would not stop reading remediation if my child were missing words in a sentence.   

 

 

[Lecka]

Honestly I would still work on reading out loud, but I would go back to much easier books.

 

Are you going to count on your future SIL to read to his kids?

 

Now, at the same time, my husband tells stories, and I think story-telling is every bit as good as reading, for little kids. I think stories and talking together are just as good.

 

But at the same time, I would want that.

 

But it is easy for me, I have got easy excuses to have my older son read little story books to his little brother and sister, and practice phrasing and stuff.

 

He does not sound as good reading out loud at the level of his free reading, but I don't mind if he doesn't read that out loud.

 

I think it depends on how stilted it is, how lack-of-phrasing it is. Like ----- is it really not good, or is it just "well, it is not the best."

 

My son has phrasing and he doesn't skip words, but he doesn't *sound good.* He doesn't read like he is reading to someone. (For books at the level he chooses to read.)

 

But I want him to have that for little-kid books. I would like him to read those with expression. And then, it doesn't have to be amazing -- but I can see that my little kids are listening, or that he is reading with so little expression or choppiness, that they are just not listening.

 

My husband is the same, he seems like he reads better since he had kids. But it has been frustrating to me that he doesn't feel like he can read a little kid book out loud. I think practice and confidence go a long way, but I don't think they just magically happen.

 

But it is a pet peeve of mine, like I kind-of wish my husband had had more opportunities in this area when he was a child. While at the same time ----- it was a different time and a different situation. But I would have appreciated it, and it would have benefited my kids, imo.

 

Edit: Once in a while now, my husband does read, and he does voices and everything! He does stumble over some words here and there. But I think so much of it is confidence, and feeling like his kids are a very forgiving (if not adoring) audience.

 

But it is still not really his thing.

Edited June 4, 2016 by Lecka

[Lecka]

Also, I did spend time on fluency with my son. A lot of time. It helped.

 

But ----- in his case, I think he needed to work on the phrasing to help his comprehension. It wasn't a situation where his comprehension was unaffected.

 

But we did the whole repeated reading thing (in fun ways) and short passages, etc. It did seem to help.

 

So I think now ---- I know my son spent time working specifically on fluency, and I know he improved.

 

I feel like he worked on fluency, and saw improvement in his fluency, and then got to a point where it was diminishing returns.

 

But if we were at church and he needed to read out loud -- he would be okay. He can read with expression for picture books. He can read aloud a lot better than he used to for chapter books (etc).

 

So that is more to my feeling that it is enough.

 

I was doubtful that working on fluency (with reading out loud, repeated reading, short passages, working with much easier books, etc.) would be much help, but I think it did help. I am pretty positive about it.

[OneStepAtATime]

I can't remember, what are you using for remediation?  

 

I agree with others, I wouldn't stop right now.  Actually, DD didn't even start reading remediation until she was 11.  Barton Reading and Spelling has helped her tremendously with a whole host of things but one of the things Barton specifically targets is phrasing.  That has helped DD sooooo much with reading comprehension while reading aloud.  Before, when she would read out loud, there was virtually no comprehension at all, she skipped the little words, there was little to no phrasing, she sounded wooden, etc.

Edited June 4, 2016 by OneStepAtATime

[PeterPan]

Well on the phrasing, does she have normal prosody (intonation, phrasing, melody) in *speech* just not when reading aloud?  Barton has exercises where they practice phrasing.  It's definitely an issue.  Does she listen to a lot of audiobooks?  I think, but am not sure, that what really happens is strong readers read ahead and anticipate where things are going, allowing them to add phrasing on the fly.  Weaker readers are so stuck in the moment, there's nothing left for that.  

 

I think she could probably get better than where she *is* with intervention.  You're probably not even close to hitting the ceiling.  Have you thought about hiring a tutor, just for a summer or a school year, to get her through this hump?

[Lecka]

Fluency by itself is not too hard to find out about, with reading a book about fluency or googling.

 

There are two sides to fluency. One is more about speed. One is more about phrasing and expression.

 

We worked on phrasing and expression, mainly.

 

There are strategies where you practice reading a passage where you have marked up the text to show when you will pause, stop, etc.

 

Reader's Theater is popular for this, you have repeated reading and want to read with expression and phrasing.

 

It is not too hard to find stuff about it. It is a lot more straightforward compared to other things in teaching reading ime.

 

That is for my son who was in a lot of speech therapy for articulation, but his prosody is fine apart from reading out loud.

 

If prosody is a concern, maybe look into more speech therapy-ish stuff.

 

The basic stuff I used does assume fine prosody in everyday speech I think.

 

My son did have "talking too fast" as an issue in speech therapy, but I don't think it was particularly connected to his reading fluency. And he exited speech before we got to fluency, so by then he was a lot better about not talking too fast.

[Lecka]

I think another measure is whether she would actively avoid reading out loud around peers.

 

My husband did.

 

So I think that contributes to a real lack of practice, plus a possibility of avoiding doing things where maybe sometimes people read out loud.

 

I think a lot of this is about confidence, and so I think it depends a lot on personality. For my son's personality, it can take a little more for him to feel confident.

 

Edit: now my husband and son both have trouble with proper names. (Harder names.). They don't want to just guess a pronunciation like I feel pretty free to do.

 

I told my son recently that I thought Hermione was pronounced Her my own' until I saw the movie, and he was pretty surprised by that.

Edited June 4, 2016 by Lecka

[geodob]

2 studies of fluent readers and their comprehension when reading out loud?

Showed that a majority had difficulty with comprehension, when they read out loud.

Which is basically because, fluent silent reading is a very different process to reading out loud.

 

With fluent reading, their are 2 basic factors?

The first one, is the 'movement of the eyes'?

Where the eyes don't move from 'one word to the next word'?

Rather the eyes move in 'blocks of words'.  From one word block to the next word block.

 

The other factor, is the use of 'inner voice', to sound out words in my as we read?

But with fluent readers, they don't sound what you termed as 'linking words'?

As these linking words, only need to be seen in the background of a 'word block', to be cognized.

 

So that only the keywords in a word block and sentence are sounded out.

Which serves to highlight the keywords in a sentence, and is what forms comprehension.

 

But with 'reading out loud', every word has to be sounded out.

Also the movement of the eyes is affected, and can be reduced to moving from word to word?

 

So given that your daughter has 'phenomenal comprehension' when reading silently?

She is having the typical problems that a fluent reader has, when forced to read out loud.

 

Though this highlights a deficiency in reading instruction?

Where children are taught to read words.

But are never taught how to read, and read in different ways ?  So that they can choose how they read, to suit what they are reading.

[Minerva]

Fluency by itself is not too hard to find out about, with reading a book about fluency or googling.

 

There are two sides to fluency. One is more about speed. One is more about phrasing and expression.

 

We worked on phrasing and expression, mainly.

 

There are strategies where you practice reading a passage where you have marked up the text to show when you will pause, stop, etc.

 

Reader's Theater is popular for this, you have repeated reading and want to read with expression and phrasing.

 

It is not too hard to find stuff about it. It is a lot more straightforward compared to other things in teaching reading ime.

 

That is for my son who was in a lot of speech therapy for articulation, but his prosody is fine apart from reading out loud.

 

If prosody is a concern, maybe look into more speech therapy-ish stuff.

 

The basic stuff I used does assume fine prosody in everyday speech I think.

 

My son did have "talking too fast" as an issue in speech therapy, but I don't think it was particularly connected to his reading fluency. And he exited speech before we got to fluency, so by then he was a lot better about not talking too fast.

 

Hmmm...this is interesting. My dd has unusual prosody. It is not terrible or hard to understand her, but her cadence is definitely not the norm. I don't know why I never thought of this before you mentioned it here. 

 

I have done some readers theater type activities with her in the past. Thanks for reminding me of this useful and fun practice. 

[Minerva]

Thanks everyone your responses were very helpful. 

 

For now, we will continue to read out loud a little every day and practice phrasing with rereading and reader's theater. 

 

We have not been doing a specific dyslexia program for about six months, just reading. Letting go of reading "instruction" has really helped with reading enjoyment, so I think we will stick with this for now. 

[Lecka]

It sounds good! I hope it goes well :)

[PeterPan]

I've found things for prosody on google, paid materials on Linguisystems, etc.  In ds' case, he couldn't make his voice go up and down at all, so I ended up getting him music therapy, which was a FABULOUS move.  You might try singing together daily or even just playing fun musical games with your voices (talking like animals, etc.).  The materials I had looked at on Linguisystems use songs as well.

[Minerva]

I've found things for prosody on google, paid materials on Linguisystems, etc.  In ds' case, he couldn't make his voice go up and down at all, so I ended up getting him music therapy, which was a FABULOUS move.  You might try singing together daily or even just playing fun musical games with your voices (talking like animals, etc.).  The materials I had looked at on Linguisystems use songs as well.

 

This is a great idea!