7 year old son and reading-help - Page 2

[BellinghamCrunchie]

Originally Posted by katy1844 

  Even as a toddler he hated reading time, I have spent hours cuddling on the couch with his sisters reading books and he has NEVER enjoyed it, always wants to be moving.  He does like puzzles and blocks but for the most part is not crazy about sedately activities-he's not too interested in the TV either not that were a big TV family either.  I have taken him to the library and chosen books I thought he would enjoy (star wars etc) to read to him and unless its bedtime he's not really interested.  

He sounds a lot like my DD, who is 8. She also had a mild speech delay when she was little (but tested at age level by age 3).

My DD is also very active and does not like sedentary activities.

At age 7, I wouldn't worry about his reading. It sounds like he's just not interested because it requires sitting still and focusing on something that is horribly boring to him right now. I'd try to find as much time to read to him as possible. For DD, I read to her while she was swinging on the swing, in the bathtub, books on CD in the car, and before bed when she was tired enough to hold still. I had to be open to times when it would work for her.

DD responded well to acting out scripts, acting out a part of the book I was reading to her while she was on the trampoline... anything that could make it active for her. If you can modify some of his reading activities so that they are more active - such as having to jump from the letter that makes the "puh" sound to the letter that makes the "buh" sound on a chalked grid on the sidewalk - that would help. When we are doing sight words, DD likes a game where I hold up two sight word cards and she has to touch her toe to the right one while swinging forward on the swing, and I make it playful by pulling it ouf of her reach at the last minute or moving it to the side suddenly. She'll ask, "can we do sight words now?" I was ecstatic to find a reading activity that she actually wanted to do.

DD requires one-on-one attention to develop her reading skills. Its not really possible to get around that for her. I don't think its unusual that he would also need this.

DD is just past 8 and is now reading at low second grade level. She started making huge progess when she turned 8. She was barely reading at kindergarten level when she was 7.

[SundayCrepes]

Finland doesn't even start school until age 7 and within three years they have the highest literacy rate in Europe. I think pushing kids does more trauma.

Try the game I mentioned and read to him. Most of the unschooling moms said their kids taught themselves to read around 7 or 8 (sometimes later.) I understand we have a cultural push to want our kids to read earlier, but I hear so many stories of kids who had the love of reading drained out of them because of that.

[pek64]

Take a deep breath! First, the CAT doesn't have to be done all in one day. Do only one section of reading each day, with a couple of days in between. And all of you should keep in mind that this is a baseline test. Also, until you get the results back, you don't know how he compares with his peers, which is what it's all about. Have you sent the test back to be scored? If no, consider retesting breaking up the test. Also, I've read a suggestion where a boy got to take the test while sitting on the stairs, and moved up a step after each question. It helped him be able to focus.

It seems to me that phonics are confusing your son, and you didn't give him any time to get back into sight mode before unfairly throwing a test at him. Why was there such a rush? You have plenty of time before the school needs either a test or evaluation.

I hope you are not going to make any rash decisions as a result of this *one* test experience. Your son deserves a chance, and hasn't really gotten one, yet.

[Fillyjonk]

"Most of the unschooling moms said their kids taught themselves to read around 7 or 8 (sometimes later.)"]

FWIW, I think for boys the average seems to be actually later. Among the kids I know, I think 9-11 would be normal. By which I mean, normal. These kids are then functionally literate.

[lmk1]

What kinds of books are you reading with your son?  I think boys prefer more adventure and scary stories.  My son loves loves Captain Underpants, Ricky and his Mighty Robot, and various scary books.  He definitely sits for longer to listen to those books.  Some other things we've done to encourage reading:

- my dh made a book together with ds about monster bugs...dh wrote the story spread over many pages, and ds drew pictures on every page.  Ds loves to read this "book" over and over.  And this is a special activity for them to do together, also.  If your dh wants to work on reading with your ds, he can do something like this.

- ds got a "letter" from a pirate (dh) with instructions on finding treasure (a few m&m's) in the house.  This is also a good way to practice map reading skills.  

- I ask him to teach letters to his younger brother and he will read to his younger brother.  I've leave books I want ds1 to read by ds2's bed.  He's more likely to pick those up there than by his own bed.

- I used to write all kinds of "secret" messages on notecards - mostly very silly things that when he figured out what they said, he'd laugh - like "don't read this note or I will tickle you".  He loved these little notes he'd get, and he still likes to make his own cards and play mailman.  

FWIW, my son learned to read by sight.  I really feel that learning phonics first is so hard, as there are more exceptions than rules in English.  Like "read" present tense and "read" past tense.  I think a lot of "phonics" can be picked up by reading lots and lots...you begin to see patterns.  But everything depends on the kid...some kids love memorizing rules, and some don't.  I started out showing my son 2 letter words like "go" and telling him that would be his word to read in whatever story we were reading.  He progressed pretty rapidly that way.  I do tell him sometimes rules like that "ph" makes an "f" sound, if he gets a new word wrong.  

[SweetSilver]

Originally Posted by lmk1 

FWIW, my son learned to read by sight.  I really feel that learning phonics first is so hard, as there are more exceptions than rules in English.  Like "read" present tense and "read" past tense.  I think a lot of "phonics" can be picked up by reading lots and lots...you begin to see patterns.  But everything depends on the kid...some kids love memorizing rules, and some don't.  I started out showing my son 2 letter words like "go" and telling him that would be his word to read in whatever story we were reading.  He progressed pretty rapidly that way.  I do tell him sometimes rules like that "ph" makes an "f" sound, if he gets a new word wrong.  

I have had one of each-- a sight reader and another that was naturally drawn to sounding words out.  Both ways have their disadvantages and both are working on balancing their reading skills.  I am talking with them about the inconsistencies of English quite a lot, and I try to treat it lightly.  It is a living history-- invaders, conquerors, fashion, class differences, and regional dialects, migrations, standardization (somewhat-- it was never standardized the way German was).....  I also like to point out that the language evolved centuries before most people were able to write it, and so that can make for funny spellings as well.  Throw in bucketloads of foreign words from a once-French-speaking ruling class, Spanish from the New World, a countless other foreign influences, and English is something of a mess-- but they can and will understand it every bit as much as they learned to speak it.

I am reminded that my job in a minute is to look up why "knee" has a "k" in it.  It can be a lot of fun if you can get past the frustration.

[Fillyjonk]

yes the history of English is fascinating. Even prior to Norman rule, English was not a standardised language but in fact many local languages were still spoken. We have a few of those left-Welsh, Scottish Gaelic, Irish, Cornish-and they influenced and lent words to English too. As well as French, Latin also influenced English a lot, mainly during Roman rule (while French is a Latinate language there are some differences). There were strong Germanic/Scandinavian influences from the Vikings. This is something my kids find fascinating too-you can have a lot of great conversations about history, politics, geography arising from why we use certain words.

English really is an incredibly old mish-mash of languages, and it does make it hard to learn to read for our kids, I guess. I live in a bilingual area with Welsh, a Celtic-Latinate language, being the other official language and my understanding is that Welsh, which has been fairly recently standardised and is a religiously phonetic language as a result is straightforward to learn to read, and that the question of sight words vs phonetic readers does not really occur to the same extent. Even though Welsh has these famously long and unpronounceable words, which change spelling according to what other word is in the sentence, its actually straightforward if you understand the simple rules. As an adult I had no serious problems learning to read or speak Welsh, because its straightforward. You could not say that of English!

[k x s]

Originally Posted by SundayCrepes 

Finland doesn't even start school until age 7 and within three years they have the highest literacy rate in Europe. I think pushing kids does more trauma.

Try the game I mentioned and read to him. Most of the unschooling moms said their kids taught themselves to read around 7 or 8 (sometimes later.) I understand we have a cultural push to want our kids to read earlier, but I hear so many stories of kids who had the love of reading drained out of them because of that.

Actually that's a popular misconception.

Most Finnish children already have some literacy skills before attending school and the Finnish language is a relatively straightforward language and not as complicated like English.

[Fillyjonk]

"Most Finnish children already have some literacy skills before attending school and the Finnish language is a relatively straightforward language and not as complicated like English."

Yes, I'd agree with that. I'm not so familiar with Finnish but based on what I know of Swedish and German, two other countries where they don't teach til later, the languages tend to be extremely phonetic with easy to follow rules. Which means that if you can speak the language you can generally write it. I've taught English as a Foreign Language and writing English is a whole other ballgame. Students from countries I've always thought of as having hard languages to read and write (eg Arabic, with its complex grammar/syntax, or Chinese where intonation is so important) just thought English ridiculously hard. Spelling problems just don't crop up in other languages in the same way. 

HOWEVER the strong, albeit anecdotal (I believe), evidence is that even when English speaking children learn to read English late, they do absolutely fine so long as they were not previously in a situation where not reading/writing put them at a disadvantage. So in a Waldorf/not-pushing early academics homeschooling or Waldorf setting there is no negative outcome, only positives, because no instruction at all is being given in a way that the child can't access it. At the same time the child is building skills that they are in a much better developmental situation to assimilate-listening, story progression, grammar and syntax. And because they are then taught later, there is less likely to be a sense of incompetancy relating to reading.

My only hesitation is where there might be dyslexia. I'm still on the fence about whether early intervention is beneficial for dyslexia. I'd love to decide that it wasn't necessary to intervene for dyslexia but I also know that it wasn't something I was prepared to take any risks with, (to my own ex-unschooling surprise and chagrin)

[SundayCrepes]

Originally Posted by Fillyjonk 

Yes, I'd agree with that. I'm not so familiar with Finnish but based on what I know of Swedish and German, two other countries where they don't teach til later, the languages tend to be extremely phonetic with easy to follow rules. Which means that if you can speak the language you can generally write it. 

My only hesitation is where there might be dyslexia. I'm still on the fence about whether early intervention is beneficial for dyslexia. I'd love to decide that it wasn't necessary to intervene for dyslexia but I also know that it wasn't something I was prepared to take any risks with, (to my own ex-unschooling surprise and chagrin)

Interesting about the phonetic qualities of language.

Regarding the dyslexia, our 4 year old has a speech delay. I was very concerned about her having dyslexia. When she was three she started asking to play a game that we ultimately do in a way to connect letters with phonetic sounds. Pretty basic but she loves it. She is now playing the Ooka Island game I mentioned. She loves to watch her brother play. Her scores when she plays by herself our in the 50% to 70% range. My guess is that's standard for many 4 year olds. I'm in no hurry for her to read, but I think her early exposure to phonics, at her own direction, is benefiting her. I'd think a child with possible dyslexia might do well playing these types of games. No pressure, just fun, and they get early exposure in a no pressure way. I know very little about dyslexia so perhaps I'm totally off-base there, but intuitively that makes a lot of sense to me.

Another thing that is helping us when she plays these games is her comprehension scores. Because of her speech delay it's sometimes hard to tell which dots she connects, so to speak. However, she is scoring around 100% on comprehension when she plays by herself. When there is a lot of activity in the room her score drops dramatically. It is encouraging to see how well she comprehends stuff even if her discussions about it are limited.