Reading fluency problems-dyslexia?
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Reading fluency problems-dyslexia?
I need some ideas for what to do increase my 5th grader's reading fluency. she is in a reading intervention course in school and they do a cold reading of a story every week and use the wpm for that story as their fluency rate. Cassie has scores that are generally around 100 wpm (district average is 120-140) but this week she dipped all the way down to 82 and we have been doing a lot more practicing at home the school said would help. She has been in the class the entire school year and has only progressed about 10 wpm since the beginning. The school insists that if we just have her read more then her fluency will increase. I listen to her read and there just seems to be some sort of disconnect between her brain and her mouth. I don't really know how to describe it but you would know what I meant if you listened to it. She does well in all other areas--very good a math but she does struggle with spelling. I have done some online research about Dyslexia and to me she does show some of the warning signs...specifically
1)She does word substitution when she is reading...ie. says car instead of automobile. Her reading teacher had mentioned that she seems to expect certain words to come next and then "reads" them even if the actual word is something else.
2)This is the one that I have seen a lot of and her reading teacher just mentioned that she did a lot of this week --"Misreads, omits, or even adds small function words, such as an, a, from, the, to, were, are, of.
Dh's younger sister has dyslexia so I wonder if that could be dd's problem but I am inclined to think that the school must not think that it is because they have outlined her problems and they match many of the signs of dyslexia but they have never mentioned it to me. They just keep insisting that more practice at home will cure the problem. We have been doing the same thing since September and really havne't gotten any substantial results so I just don't think that continuing to do the same thing is going to yield different results.
Does anyone have any experience with reading fluecncy problems or dyslexia?
My 4th grader is mildly dyslexic and has fluency issues. For us we knew what the issue was when he was reading and still sounding out stuff, "ppp..oh bus". I don't know his WPM, but painfully slow. He is in a special class once a week where this is what they work on. Really specifically, he reads out loud and we listen and correct words. Really they say the only way to increase fluency is to keep working on it. But we also know that he may never be able to read out loud in class and not be slower than most.
However, his weekly work is sent home, he reads a passage and answers questions. They all come from a book called "week by week homework for building reading comprehension and fluency", put out by scholastic professional books.
My daughter is dyslexic. Repeition has been the most helpful. Hooked on phonics increased her reading level by 3 grades.
She reads everything out loud in school (homeschool) and it has become less of a problem with each passing year. Our big intervention was using Dolch words and from there vocabulary words.You cannot just give her a list. We sit down together and read the words, she writes the words three times, and then we discuss what it means and how to use it. By building her sight words, she has more fluecy and has just started sounding out words she doesn't know. She never could sound words out before.
Despite her difficulties she loves reading Magna books. We are at the book store weekly.
I actually think her substituting words with a like-meaning is a good sign that she's comprehending and processing what she's reading. Maybe with the school's focus on speed she feels the need to read faster, so she's not as careful?
Ask her to slow down a little and "read the words that are there" - I do this with my son all the time. Eventually, as she keeps reading aloud, and getting more sight words, her speed sill increase naturally.
Ame
It is common with dyslexics to replace similar words because they "see" words differently.
car/automobile
You know, Albert Einstein once said that insanity, is "doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." That what this repetition approach to reading problems is. Reading more and more (i.e., repetition) using the same reading strategies, that obviously aren't working, will not improve reading fluency. This aggravates me so much! So many schools don't teach reading or spelling. They just give out spelling and vocab lists, want kids to memorize them, and keep moving on. This subject really gets my ire up--sorry! I just have to say also though---what the heck does how many wpm someone can read matter? Why is that important? How often in our daily lives as adults do we have to read out loud other than to our children? Reading aloud fluently just isn't an important skill to have. Reading fluently silently is a different thing altogether though.
Sorry to digress. Anyway, I work a lot with kids with dyslexia. Given the issues that you describe with your DD, I would demand to have her evaluated. Skipping over the function words is very common, but those function words are crucial for meaning. I always use the example that it didn't matter if Snow White ate AN apple, it was the fact that she ate THE apple that caused her to fall asleep. Kids who substitute words typically do so because they have trouble decoding. They "know" the word, but they can't figure out how to string the letters into sounds that they can say, so they say a synonym, called a semantic miscue like car/automobile or lake/pond. Phonemic miscues occur when kids substitute words with similar letters and/or sounds like fish/finish or kite/kitten. I usually describe phonemic miscues as a child has a filing cabinet in the brain with things filled alphabetically. When he comes to a word he doesn't know, instead of trying to sound it out or use the context to figure it out, he goes to his filing cabinet and just starts pulling out words with those letters in them just hoping that he'll eventually pick the right one. These are kids who will look into the air as if thinking instead of looking at the page and decoding, when they come to an unfamiliar word.
Bottom line is that your DD needs some better reading tools in her toolbox. How about some homework for both of you? Give her a little spelling pop quiz with these words and see how she does: shup, plid, chust, caz, bok, fet, cobbing, juded, pimmed, sabe, jume, klibe. You will note that these are all nonsense words. If you can post or email me (pamela dot terrell at gmail.com) how she spells these I can likely (no guarantees) give you some insight into how to help her. I also have some great reading strategies to share, but they are at work. Email me your email address and I will try to email them to you later this week. You may have to remind me because it is the last week of classes so I have a lot on my plate right now.
Pam you described my daughter completely.
What do you mean by "Reading aloud fluently just isn't an important skill to have. Reading fluently silently is a different thing altogether though"
By having her read aloud we are better able to monitor her progress (knowing if she is reading it correctly).
She does read on her own, also.
Basically, both kids take turns reading the daily work out loud.
Pam--- Thanks for offering to help! It was a relief to read your post and finally have someone agree with me that we can't keep doing ONLY what we have been doing and expect to see improvement. I have eMailed you Cassie's spelling test.
Thanks again!!
Tammie
I got the emails and I will have time to respond this weekend some time. I haven't been ignoring you...just swamped!
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