Reading speed/comprehension

[foxbridgeacademy]

I'm looking for specific programs that increase reading speed and comprehension/retention of passages.  DS, mild-moderately dyslexic, reads well just slow and has trouble remembering what he just read, needs to up his reading for ACT (with time limit he got a 15, with out time he got a 24).

[PeterPan]

There's software to target RAN/RAS or you can print pages and do it yourself with paper exercises. 

 

Sounds like you definitely want to be working on getting him accommodations for his testing, wow. 

[foxbridgeacademy]

I want to add that I don't want to rely on accommodations when testing.  It is unlikely that future employers will be okay with him taking forever to read and write (also mildly dysgraphic).  We need to do our best to improve his reading without a crutch.  

[ElizabethB]

I have found nonsense words and syllables helpful for improving my students' oral reading speed, and I assume their silent reading speed as well but have never directly measured that. Do the entire program here, 3 to 7 hours to complete, and 50 timed nonsense words per day, goal is 100% accuracy and 100 WPM orally. Accuracy first, speed will come with time and practice. 

Do all the tests before and after, I will be interested to see if silent reading speed improves afterwards, and if it is correlated to  oral reading speed of nonsense words or not. It may also take a few months of nonsense words to help and see results. You can reuse the words after you complete the 10 pages, and I am working on another one with more words. (The optional nonsense words #6 from the teacher folder.)

I would also have him improve his speed on sounds for the vowel chart, 2 letter vowel teams. Even a microsecond of improvement per letter or letter team adds up over the long run, these are typically the things my students have the longest delay with, but any other letters where the sound recognition is slow should be studied. I teach them in color first with the key, then without the key, then in black and white.  I do not require AE or UY to be memorized, there are only a few words with those patterns, and only teach the ou/ow as in out sound of ou.  I go in color order with pairs, native words don't end in i, ai/ay long a, ea, ee long e, igh long i, oa/oe long o, native english words don't end in a, ui/ue.  Then, blue pairs, then au/aw and ou/ow, native english words don't end in u, then oi/oy.   I teach both sounds of oo.  Also, ei/ey long a as in vein and they.  I also have them memorize the short e sound of ea, a lot of words have that pattern.  You may need to teach the 2nd sound of ou for a high schooler. (soup)

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

Here is an ESL comprehension resource from a friend/mentor of Don Potter, he also used it for non ESL students who needed explicit help in that area, it is in both English and Spanish, keep scrolling through if it switches to Spanish:

http://www.donpotter.net/pdf/gonzalez_materials.pdf

I found these helpful for my daughter who struggled with inference, we skipped to level 2 and some of the early exercises even in the level 2 book, but they all looked good, she just didn't need the first few books or the first bit of book 2:

https://classicalacademicpress.com/subject/reasoning-reading/

Also, try to figure out what the challenge is--underlying specific vocabulary of the subject, problem with inference, problem with long sentences where you have to figure out the use of "but" or "and" or things like that, then isolate and work on problem area.

I had a dyslexic student whose father read so slowly he had to take notes while he was reading to keep from forgetting what he had just read, but he read accurately, he had had good phonics training. After I fixed the son's guessing problems and taught him the phonics he had not yet learned, he was still reading slowly, but more accurately and not quite as slow, he went from 8 WPM to 14 WPM oral reading speed. Once he could read accurately and had learned all his phonics, he could read anything slowly, but he had a great memory, he did not need to take notes and did well with reading comprehension.

Edited February 13, 2017 by ElizabethB

[ElizabethB]

I would also try to figure out different strategies and see what works best--reading the questions first or not, taking notes or not, don't just give up on them, they may need to be practiced a few times to be helpful, for example, notes could be improved with a good shorthand system or shorter words or phrases, and it may take a while for reading the questions first to help. Also, see if the notes can be directly written on the passage or not if that is allowed and best note placement, you could also underline or star wars, sentences, or phrases.

 

You may also want to compare the SAT and see how its timing compares, I think it used to have a better time limit for the amount of reading but don't know about the new one.

Edited February 13, 2017 by ElizabethB

[hsmom08]

Thank you so much for all the info and links.  I am going to try this on my DD.  I knew I had to do some thing for my DD but haven't...but with these recommendations, I am ready to start. :thumbup1:

I have found nonsense words and syllables helpful for improving my students' oral reading speed, and I assume their silent reading speed as well but have never directly measured that. Do the entire program here, 3 to 7 hours to complete, and 50 timed nonsense words per day, goal is 100% accuracy and 100 WPM orally. Accuracy first, speed will come with time and practice. 

Do all the tests before and after, I will be interested to see if silent reading speed improves afterwards, and if it is correlated to  oral reading speed of nonsense words or not. It may also take a few months of nonsense words to help and see results. You can reuse the words after you complete the 10 pages, and I am working on another one with more words. (The optional nonsense words #6 from the teacher folder.)

I would also have him improve his speed on sounds for the vowel chart, 2 letter vowel teams. Even a microsecond of improvement per letter or letter team adds up over the long run, these are typically the things my students have the longest delay with, but any other letters where the sound recognition is slow should be studied. I teach them in color first with the key, then without the key, then in black and white.  I do not require AE or UY to be memorized, there are only a few words with those patterns, and only teach the ou/ow as in out sound of ou.  I go in color order with pairs, native words don't end in i, ai/ay long a, ea, ee long e, igh long i, oa/oe long o, native english words don't end in a, ui/ue.  Then, blue pairs, then au/aw and ou/ow, native english words don't end in u, then oi/oy.   I teach both sounds of oo.  Also, ei/ey long a as in vein and they.  I also have them memorize the short e sound of ea, a lot of words have that pattern.  You may need to teach the 2nd sound of ou for a high schooler. (soup)

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

Here is an ESL comprehension resource from a friend/mentor of Don Potter, he also used it for non ESL students who needed explicit help in that area, it is in both English and Spanish, keep scrolling through if it switches to Spanish:

http://www.donpotter.net/pdf/gonzalez_materials.pdf

I found these helpful for my daughter who struggled with inference, we skipped to level 2 and some of the early exercises even in the level 2 book, but they all looked good, she just didn't need the first few books or the first bit of book 2:

https://classicalacademicpress.com/subject/reasoning-reading/

Also, try to figure out what the challenge is--underlying specific vocabulary of the subject, problem with inference, problem with long sentences where you have to figure out the use of "but" or "and" or things like that, then isolate and work on problem area.

I had a dyslexic student whose father read so slowly he had to take notes while he was reading to keep from forgetting what he had just read, but he read accurately, he had had good phonics training. After I fixed the son's guessing problems and taught him the phonics he had not yet learned, he was still reading slowly, but more accurately and not quite as slow, he went from 8 WPM to 14 WPM oral reading speed. Once he could read accurately and had learned all his phonics, he could read anything slowly, but he had a great memory, he did not need to take notes and did well with reading comprehension.