Trouble distinguishing letters, concerned?

[natashaccat]

My poor dd (2nd grade) is having a hard time with reading! She started out very strong and learned individual letter sounds prior to K but now 1/2 way through second grade she's really struggling to put it all together.

For example, she's likely to read "glad" as "grab". Last year I blamed myself thinking that I'd not spent enough time in direct phonics instruction but this year after changing strategies to include more phonics and more time time on reading instruction in general it seems that she's still behind grade level.

[kathymuggle]

I think you need to listen to your gut.

My two older children were easily reading by grade 2, but my youngest is not (she just turned 7). I have decided to take a break on reading instruction (although up the amount I read to her), and hope a break will do her good, and that it will click when she is older.

I do not necessarily want to advise you to take a break, however, if you think something is wrong. Do you think dyslexia might be at play? One strategy is to look into where and how long it takes to get tested. If there is a wait time for testing you might want to book it now, and cancel later if she has really advanced in this area.

I am sure there are fantastic resources for learning to read, but I do not know them, lol. I do like "Teach your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lesson" but some people hate it. Get it from the library if you can and see if it works for you.

[lach]

You only gave one example, but based on it I would say that this is more an issue of her being careless than underlying issues. The carelessness could come from a few different sources... while just plain not caring can be the issue, it's probably not that or you'd notice that she was completely ambivalent about reading. If anything, caring a whole lot (about wanting to be a great reader, about wanting to please you, about keeping up with an older sibling/friend) is more likely to lead to the sort of anxiety that would make her be unable to judge whole words clearly. Either overconfidence "(I don't really need to read the word, I can guess it") and underconfidence ("egads another word I don't recognize immediately: I'm just going to pop out with my first guess") could also be at play.

I would take a look at the book "Teach a Child to Read Using Children's Books." You can find a whole-text copy of an older edition at ERIC. It's based on a reading intervention program that was designed for older, at-risk students. The author kind of tweaked it for homeschooled kids just learning how to read. I think it's a pretty flexible program that works well at a range of ages and abilities. It also really emphasizes reading (and writing) slowly and carefully.

[LauraLoo]

My ds did what you are describing. It was more pronounced when reading books. In isolation, he seemed to see the differences more clearly.

After exploring possible dyslexia, we had his eyes checked by a developmental optometrist. This is not your typical 20/20 vision exam. It turns out that ds had significant vision issues even though he could pass a straightforward eye sight exam (reading eye charts.) Vision problems are not uncommon, but they are not always detected early on. Typically, the child has no idea that they don't see the same way as others because they have no point of reference - it's always been like that for them. Because vision issues are so common, it might be a good step for you to either confirm or rule out this possibility.

Here are some websites that will give you additional information:

http://www.covd.org/Home/AboutVision...2/Default.aspx

http://www.childrensvision.com/

*one of my favorites to give you an idea of what a child with various vision issues "sees."
http://www.visionandlearning.org/

[Lillian J]

Originally Posted by LauraLoo

My ds did what you are describing. It was more pronounced when reading books. In isolation, he seemed to see the differences more clearly.

After exploring possible dyslexia, we had his eyes checked by a developmental optometrist. This is not your typical 20/20 vision exam. It turns out that ds had significant vision issues even though he could pass a straightforward eye sight exam (reading eye charts.) Vision problems are not uncommon, but they are not always detected early on. Typically, the child has no idea that they don't see the same way as others because they have no point of reference - it's always been like that for them. Because vision issues are so common, it might be a good step for you to either confirm or rule out this possibility.

And children with these issues, like children with dyslexia and other problems, have often just assumed to be lazy or uncaring, because these things are so hard to detect without testing. My son's vision problems were obvious to a dyslexia specialist he was working with because his eyes were jumping around when he was reading a line of text, so she sent us to a developmental optometrist for testing (here's an article I wrote about our experience) - but obvious signs like that are often not there. When I joined a new group of volunteers for Parents Active for Vision Education, we sat in a circle and shared our experiences. There were lots of tears as people related the struggles their children had been through in schools before finding out they had easily corrected vision skill problems. The sites LauraLoo linked to will be a big help (I'd try to make sure any optometrist you get tested by is a member of COVD) and here's the Parents Active for Vision Education website - it has some good reading too and is a good introduction.

I'd also make sure she has reading material she's especially drawn to, because it might be easier for her to grasp the words when they're referring to things that relate to her imagination or special interest. Not that it would cure problems, but just that it might give her more confidence while the rest is being worked out. - Lillian

[Aeress]

I am so glad someone posted this because while my dd is reading she makes many mistakes like not recognizing letters within words she knows, guessing at words even when she knows the sound combos, having trouble following lines and getting lost. She has been wearing glasses since she was 4/5 and we get her vision tested, so always assumed she was fine but when I asked her abou words jumping around or letters moving she said that they do.
We are getting an eval.

[natashaccat]

ack! vision problem yet another possibility to worry about. She has a had a recent routine eye exam by an optometrist. Are you guys saying that it's possible that there could be issues that he may have missed?

Teach a Child to Read Using Children's Books

oddly enough we started reading instruction using this method (assuming we are talking about the same book?) but it was a very poor fit. DD is very much a perfectionist and this method forces children to take a lot of risks in guessing words. Also, this method encourages sight memorization w/o incorporating explicit phonics decoding. DD'd memorize a book and then be completely clueless when she saw the same word in another story. We had to do a whole lot of backtracking to undo the poor habits that she developed in my attempt at using the whole language approach recommended by this book.

I wonder what I should do next? DD's not super duper behind and she is progressing really well with the phonics curriculum that we started using this year (Phonics Pathways), she just hasn't caught up to grade level. Ack, there she goes again, she just read "shiny" as "tiny"! (dd working on homework while I type.)

Is it reasonable to keep going with our current approach until next fall (beginning of 3rd grade) and then reevaluate. We are part of a school district home school extension program so I do have access to some services but I'm not really sure how to work the system to determine if we even need those services.

[meetoo]

My DD(6) was doing a lot of that at the beginning of the year. Personally i think it is from the sight word approach she was taught in kindy. They really stressed guess, picture clues, and the "whole word" approach. It has taking a while to actually get her reading vs guess. She is doing soo much better now though, The guessing/inserting random letters has gone way down. So personally i think direct phonics instruction along with practice at reading has helped a ton.

[LauraLoo]

Originally Posted by natashaccat

ack! vision problem yet another possibility to worry about. She has a had a recent routine eye exam by an optometrist. Are you guys saying that it's possible that there could be issues that he may have missed?

Yes. A regular optometrist will not do the same type of in depth exam that a developmental optometrist does. Again, my son had perfect 20/20 vision - and a slew of vision problems that were not caught by the regular optometrist.

But, it may not be that she has vision problems. If you go on the covd.org site, it gives a list of symptoms to check it out.