Hava, my first grader, tends to put in letter sounds that aren't there. When I tell her to look at the letters in a word, or to break down a word into smaller parts to make sounding out easier, she inevitably adds letter sounds that she doesn't see in the word. She is smart enough to "get it", so I just don't understand why she can't look at a simple--and often they really are simple--word and say what she sees. Like today, the word was "bake". She knows about silent "e" and how it makes the vowel long. But for some reason she stumbled over this simple word. When I went through the sounds of each letter "b" (long) "a" and "k" she proclaims, "blake"! ????!!!????!!!. To make matters worse, she is mischievous enough to sometimes give me every possible WRONG way of sounding something out just to get my goat. So between not knowing if she's goofing off or truly not getting simple sounding out of words, I'm really losing my patience. It's one thing for her to make a mistake reading a word, but after it is explained letter-by-letter, don't you think she should get it?? Is this just a stage in reading development?? Another example, in reviewing the consonant blend "tr" with her, I wrote "treat". She quickly exclaims "tiger!!" When I asked her how on earth she gets tiger out of that word, she said, "Well, there's an "r" there"!!! I can't stand it when kids guess at words, which is why I've always emphasized the importance of being able to sound out words, but in addition to adding extra letter sounds, she also seems to guess alot at words. HELP!! (Adding to my frustration, I know that if she were in PS, she would try much harder to please the teacher than to please "ole mom". Certainly wouldn't be playing games with mispronouncing words!! Have any of you had to deal with such "mom-resistent" tactics and how did you deal with it?)
Ohh right there with you somedays! Madison does this too. I made a sight word wall and will leave the words up for a week, we recite them everyday, on Wednesday or Thursday she copys them on to paper either 2 or 3 times depending on the word. For my sight words I took a piece of poster board and glued 9 baseball card holders to it, I cut paper to fit and put new words in it. the holders/words sit horizontal on the poster board. GL! I wish I had an answer for you on the adding letters, I'll keep tabs of this post thou.
My son does this too. Only he gets frustrated when he realizes he's wrong and then is stuck on the word. So, what I do is haven him break down the word slowly into the individual sounds and then put them back together slowly. This helps him see/hear that the sound is or isn't there, depending on the case. I hope this helps! Blessings, Jenny
I made flash cards of missed words and we had a game with them. If you get the word right you keep the card. If you miss the word. I get the card. Then we count the cards up to see who has the most. After that hand we go again until I am left the "loser". The next day we go over the whole deck of words we have done over the week and I get back any not remembered and we start again. I have to say we get a lot of fun out of it.
In my Writing For Criminal Justice class, we went over written criminal reports over and over and over. We had to go over old cases and write our own reports over and over again. The reason is because even as adults, when we see a word, the brain does not always see the whole word, only some letters. As we rewrote the reports again, we found many mispelled words. The reason is because we do not pick up every letter. We assume what we see is correct. We can even mentally see letters that are not there because when we read, automatically we say the word or write it out, even if it is wrong. Children do the same especially when they are young. They see parts of a word and automatically assume it is something else. The point of the class was to teach us to look at every letter, of every word, especially when we write something. We can read it over and over and over and if we do not examine it, it can be wrong each time and look correct to the eye because the brain has already been told it is something else. Since we as adults still had to work on this, your child being a youngster, still might be doing the same thing. I know Ems does and I am sure she knows a word, but once she reads it wrong, she continues to want to read it wrong until I make her stop, take a breath, look at each letter, sound it out letter for letter, then usually she gets it correct because the brain is refreshed so to speak. I do not know if this helps but this could be possible. Just a thought. To this very day I can read a word wrong and assume I am correct. Patty
I don't have much help, but my 1st grader is doing this, too. When he adds a sound I usually point out the extra sound and have him sound the word out again. If he still has trouble I'll sound it out with him. I've noticed that as he gets better at reading, he is guessing more on words. We just go back and sound them out again. It can be frustrating, especially when they are simple words.
Must be a bit of a first grade thing. I have also had trouble with a word guessing first grader and posted about it here if I recall correctly. I usually find that taking a couple days off of the normal reading work pages etc, and using computer games, and playing games with letter cards or some other reinforcement activities seems to clear the air, then we push ahead on the usual activities. Note, I do not usually make such a change that day or the next as I do not want to reinforce bad bahavior.
My eldest did this too, still does some days (2nd grade). I know when she does it now that she is doing it to be funny. My son (kinder) is starting to do it too b/c he sees his sister doing it. BUT he wants so much to learn how to read that he doesn't do it as much. For me, when they get silly and out of control I stop them and say "if you went to public school you would not do this because you would get in trouble with your teachers". And then go on to that mom should receive even MORE respect than a teacher, as teacher. When my eldest was just starting, I used to wear an apron when we did school. I kept pens, pencils, and such in the pockets. But she knew when I put that apron on that certain behaviors would not be tolerated. I think I need to get back to wearing the apron. My biggest issue is my kinder doesn't liek seatwork, so getting him to get thru one page is just really tough!!! Hope things get better.
I'm just reinforcing what Patty said. My name is Deena. If you look at my name, it is very clear what it is, because it has a d sound, to e's make the long e sound, n and a are obvious.....so to me, if you read my name it should be obvious how to say it---Dee-nuh! You should hear all the names people have used though! I've had people call me Deanna, Diana, Denna, Dana, Donna, Darla, Dean (huh?!), et cetera! If someone is busy, they really do just glance at the first and last letter and guess what's in the middle! :lol:
Here's what I think it might help. Since you're done with sounding letters.MOVE ON, get level 1 reader books from the library, get at least 5/week. and every day, have her read HER book as she reads correct her if needed without explaining what she did wrong and go on, I think eventually how the words look will stick in her head and you'll be proud when she scan through them fast I hope that would help
