Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Need help teaching reading to precocious K student

While my daughter scores highly on tests, I'm pretty happy with where her placement in school. Between what we do at home and what she does in school, I think she's fine and doesn't need any extreme differentiation in all areas except for reading.

Reading is a different story. She is in kindergarten but reads on about a fourth grade level. At the beginning of the year the teacher sent home guided reading packets that gave tips for reading at home that involved everything from asking questions to techniques to sound out words. Obviously, this does not work for my daughter unless she's reading books with words that she hasn't seen before. To solve the problem, my daughter doesn't have a guided reading group. Instead she picks out her own books and fills out a reader's report after each one that the teacher grades.

The same thing happened to me. Basically, the sent me to the library for three years to read on my own. And in that three years there was a lot of learning that I lost--things I really needed to be in the classroom for. I'm determined to not have that happen to her.

I have her read the books out loud to me. We use the reading strategies on any words she mispronounces (sometimes they work, sometimes they don't). We work on punctuation--she still frequently runs over periods. We stop so I can ask her questions to check comprehension. And she tends to read very quietly, like mumbling. I make her stop and read with feeling, which helps with punctuation and volume, but is endlessly annoying to her. Note: this process is for this guided reading thing. She can read whatever she wants on her own for pleasure.

I'm hoping for tips on how to teach the same things they're learning in kindergarten at this different level.

Problems I'm running into:

1) It makes sense that she wants to mumble quietly instead of reading entire novels out loud, but I need to hear the words. Are there better ways to accomplish this? There are some words she misses, and while they don't affect comprehension, she is learning to skip words if we don't do this. Also, she reads too fast if she isn't reading out loud at a slow pace.

2) I stop to check comprehension. There are concepts which she needs to be introduced to. For instance yesterday, the characters were talking about something being "on the nose." One book made references to Sherlock Holmes. But she gets annoyed when we stop because she wants the story. Am I doing right by stopping? Even if we wait until the end of the chapter, she doesn't want to sit around talking, she wants to read the next chapter.

3) Punctuation: she runs over it. Are there techniques to help them with punctuation that doesn't involve stopping so frequently?

Thanks for any advice you can give. I really want her to get the benefit of learning the same things that the kids that don't read at her level are getting, but I need more clues as to what I should be doing differently. Books to read, warnings, things for me to consider are all welcome.

Hi! I am a reading specialist so I will try and answer your questions.
1) The only was for you to make sure that your child is able to read phonetically is to have her read out loud OR to make a list of particularly difficult words (for her level) and let her read them to you. I would not worry about fluency and punctuation as much. Teach her the rules when it is convenient to do so but remember no matter how bright she is there are some things (with reading especially) that just come with fluency and time.
2)Keep doing this. You are teaching her concepts and reading skills (top down learning is often best for bright children).

Also, remember to make sure that she learns phonics. Just because you are an early reader (and even a good reader)does not mean that you do not need to learn sound structure. Most people eventually get to a place where they need these skills even if it is in college, if you do not have phonics skills you have no way to dissect an unfamiliar word.

Hope this helps some!

My son is similar but now in gr 2. I think that the best way to 'teach' punctuation is to model it yourself. DS loves it if we read a page each and he still loves being read to, as well as reading himself. I don't want to make something he loves a chore so if he wants to read silently that is ok. You can always get her to read other things to you, shopping lists, recipes, instructions etc to practice reading out loud. Our biggest challenge has been finding age appropriate books to read...!

One thing that encouraged my DD to read aloud (which she despised) was to have her read dialogue.

Read things with a lot of dialogue aloud, and you find yourself putting emotion into the quotation marks almost involuntarily as you read. You can also make it a game to try on "different voices" for the different characters. Encourage her to make a reading selection exciting for YOU as well as for her.

Can't say for sure that this will encourage her to be happy about it, but it might make it more like a game and improve compliance.

HTH.

Maybe read a play taking parts each for punctuation. I despise questions too. Just be careful not to use stuff she may actually like for lessons. Maybe this is where readers have their place - the eclectic vintage ones.

I have a non-compliant early reader so I share your concerns. Luckily, DD loves drama so she happily reads her lines to me.

DD also insists on having subtitles on for everything including Disney music video. Watching science DVD with subtitles on was very helpful in sharpening her decoding skills.

I am planning on putting her through a solid "spelling" program like Logic of English when she is 5 or so. Right now, I'm trying to keep everything fun but your DD might be ready?

All of my kids had this experience and they are all very different learners, readers etc. In my experience mumbling and punctuation issues are very common with the precocious readers as they want the higher interest content but may not quite there with the complexity of words, syntax etc. I will defer to a reading specialist for the appropriate intervention, but what worked for us in this situation was as follows:
1. The books they read to themselves were of their choosing and on their level
2. The books they read aloud to me were a level or two down--I found the mumbling was related to decoding harder words. This allowed for the mumbling to stop as they weren't stuck in decoding words the whole time, and rather could focus on comprehension.
3. Also during these books they had to stop at the punctuation for a count of 1 or 2 depending on the mark. Initially they spoke it out loud, then moved to silence with finger counting, then in their head. Again, the trouble with punctuation seemed more to do with decoding than anything else.
4. Mine also hated the stop to discuss the context, so I had them do a comprehension on-line program like Headsprout, Raz-kids or K5 Learning which supplemented their comprehension.

All in all this was less than an academic year intervention and it put them on the path to solid reading and comprehension. Hope this helps!

Here are some ideas I've seen work for some kids...

- Hearing others read fluently and with expression usually helps the listener build fuency and comprehension. When you read to her, model fluency and expression. Also pause to say what you're thinking aloud (e.g., connections, sayings, looking back for info, etc.) Most kids like to be read to, even if it's an audiobook. There are some great audiobooks with wonderful actors modeling wonderful expression.

- Make use of highlighters. If you're going to work on pausing for punctuation, go through the passage and highlight it all first. If you want to talk about sayings you come across, highlight them as you read and then go back at the end of the chapter to discuss. Focus on one thing at a time.... Different passages lend themselves to different focuses.

- Read plays or excerpts of dialogue with her, especially ones you can have fun with by using silly voices or accents. The fun of being silly and the interaction with you may help her slow down because she's enjoying more than just the story.

Hope this helps! Good luck!

Definitely model what you want her to do. A good way to accomplish that is to take turns reading to each other. It'll likely help with compliance, too, because I have yet to meet a young child who doesn't LOVE being read to, and I've met a lot of them. You have to bring your A-game, though... expression, voices, the works.

As for comprehension, there are different ways to go about that. When I was reading with my DD at that age, I made sure to steer clear of any quiz-style questions, because that just turns the activity into a chore. The questions I would ask were more analytical: "What do you think about Character X?" "What do you think is going to happen next?" "Is that a good idea?" "What would you do in this character's place?"

In this way, it became more of a conversation about a good book, and as we did this more, DD was more apt to interrupt to share her own analysis.

Thanks for so many helpful suggestions! I'll try lots of them.

I hear the response about not asking quiz style questions. The part she was reading yesterday was pretty funny. We laughed a lot and for some reason the "that is so funny" let the conversation break naturally, and we could talk about aspects of the book without her feeling like I was interrupting.

Psychland: I am concerned about her getting the phonics because I'm not sure how she learned to read but it wasn't that way. I think it was a combination of just being good at memorizing words and deduction. If I say a word once, she generally gets it forever. But when she does mispronounce a word, I see why she chose that incorrect pronunciation so I'm not sure how to phonetically teach.

The school has a computer program that the kids use to learn to read, and they are tested on it every month. It tests overall reading, letter knowledge, phonemic awareness, alphabetic decoding and vocabulary. The only area she's consistently moved up in is vocabulary, but I have no idea how to read the results because it gives normed percentiles (against other K students) and there is a very early reading ceiling to the work involved. Her scores were lower in letter knowledge this month than they were in the first month of school. Letter knowledge? How can that be?

Can I trust that if she knows all of the words in the phonemic awareness section by sight that she's actually learning phonics by doing the program or should I be looking at something else for her? Her phonemic awareness score the first month of school was higher than it was this month. I don't know if that means she's running into blends she doesn't know or if she just couldn't hit the little asteroid in the test game or whatever. I've got to admit, the lower results on the letter awareness score really thow me off.

I could ask the teacher, but I really want to pick battles carefully and am hoping to figure out this stuff on my own.

Thanks again!