I work as a speech-language pathologist with a student who has great difficulty reading. He is almost 9 years old and is currently unable to read at the pre-primer level without becoming frustrated. His mother is homeschooling him but needs direction with curriculum. They don't have much money to spend. Does anyone have any suggestions for a very explicit phonics curriculum that is relatively easy to use and inexpensive?
Besides needing to really start at a low level of letter sounds and such - which can be done for free. B says "b" (ok hard to write the sound but...you know what I mean.) Stay away from vowels and then only do short vowels after he has all the other letter sounds down. This will get him to CVC words. Does he just have trouble sounding them out, hearing how he sounds them out? www.starfall.com is a neat little website that might help some but...I'm not sure if he is to that level or not. Look at it ahead of time before allowing him to try. Does the mother read to him? He really needs to be read to A LOT - if he is having trouble learning to read and is only asked to read....yep he's going to hate books. :cry: I know that's not much but...without knowing exactly the level he is at it's tough to say "try this".
I just found this one online a few days ago, my older boys learned to read with Hooked on Phonics, but since then, I've learned that the same concepts are available much less expensively if you dig around. I'm saving this one for my youngest (who is only two right now). http://www.studydog.com/default.asp Let us know what you finally try and whether or not she likes it.
I'll repeat what Tina says...read to him constantly!!! There is one movement in homeschooling that advocates no formal education until a child is nine. Some children, especially boys, simply aren't ready to read until then, and in schools by that time they've been labeled for three or four years and have been told again and again that they "can't". Then they just kind of "take off" with reading and more than catch up with the "early readers". A friend of mine had a daughter who didn't start reading until she was almost ten, and then read through "The Hobbit" at age 12. The biggest thing is to develop a LOVE for reading, a desire to do it.
I agree with everyone here, READ AND READ AND MORE READ to him is the best thing you can do for them. My youngest learned to read with hook on phonics and it was wonderful we still have it use it once in a great while, thinking of selling it. :lol:
I agree with Jackie, if it's made into a big deal, he'll think it's a big deal, and that he's a failure, and he'll hate reading! The mom might want to just relax more, and back off from making him read for awhile. Let him pick out some topics or books that he's interested in, then just spend the time reading to him and making it fun and interesting! She could do skits or "readers theaters" with him---kind of dramatize the story they're reading to help him get the pronunciation and emphasis and help him with word recognition. But, whatever she does, if she's excited about it and exclaims over what she's reading, and shares that with him, it could help get him excited about it also! Usually the late readers are no further behind than anyone else within a couple of years, in fact, many times they're ahead! So, unless he has other major problems, I wouldn't think it's a problem for him to be where he's at now.
My daughter was past 10 before she learned to read. At 12 1/2 she's still not a strong reader. But she LOVES to read and in my mind thats the important part. She is immersed in a book a lot so I think the rest will come with time. To push her would have most likely taught her to hate reading and I think that is the biggest mistake many kids suffer from. I have to repeat what others have said, read read read aloud. Make it fun. Read with expression, changing voices, whatever it takes to make it fun for him. jmho Glenda
Well I can't say enough about a book that I like and have used. Its called Reading Reflex. It is written by Carmen McGuiness and Geoffrey McGuiness, the founders of Read America. I felt like my middle child had not picked up reading as easily as my oldest, even though I feel that he had twice as much oral reading time as my oldest had (he sat in with the oldest and we had 1:1 reading time).. The book teaches reading through phono graphix. It is for teaching a younger child to reador an older one who is struggling. They even teach adults with this book. The book has received rave reviews (MINE TOO) across the US and is gaining more and more popularity of because its guaranteed results.. What is does is takes what the child knows, sounds of the language and teaches him the various SOUND PICTURES. Basically what the premise of the book is saying (without going into a lot of educationalese jargon :roll: ) is that we teach kids that these particular letters represent this sound, EXCEPT for, here and here!.. so they become frusterated (as my middle child, no patience with all the exceptions) So by teaching him directly ea stands for the sound in meat and bread we teach him both sounds and his able to determine in the context which is appopriate. INSTEAD of saying that there are exceptions. - So the difference is that they teach the group of letters as a SOUND within the context of a word and not in isolation. This is where my son was not doing as well with explicit phonics. Too much isolation for him and not enough in CONTEXT application, make sense? :lol: What I more particulary like about the book is the built in test you can give on chapter 2. It diagnoses with very good accuracy the exact problem and direct you to which chapter to start on. It tests 4 different parts of the reading process For example, my son was/is having trouble with what Reading Reflex calls the advanced code. (groups like *ight, eigh, ou, ei,*,etc.) So the lessons group all of those words together and uses them in context.. So teh book can help her to diagnose what his problem is. The four basic tests are testing his auditory processing, his blending, his segmenting phonemes and his knowledge of the advanced code. My son tested above grade in 3 of the test and one below. It PINPOINTED my problem so I can direct my attention to it the rest of this year. I could not put my *finger* on my middle son's problem until I did this test. It helped me to see that he just need more advanced code help. It helped narrow down what I didn't need to spend time on. Anyway, the books is wonderful, it comes highly recommended in The Well Trained Mind as a beginner reading program or remedial for older students or adults who never learned to read. It is easy to follow, much more easier to test and easier for me to implement that I had previously thought. We love it! Does that help any? Blessings TinaTx
