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I've noticed we go through periods with DS where we don't have him read out loud to us and when we do his accuracy drops like CRAZY!

What's up with this? I assume at some age he won't be so sensitive to that?

He's 6 years old and easily reads 3-4 chapter books a day on the weekend... Boxcar Children, etc. His comprehension is perfect. But I guess he must be reading quickly and guessing some as he reads.

When he reads the books to us he'll sometimes mumble words or he'll skip words or he'll read "he's" and say "he is"... really just silly mistakes.

I'm guessing this is common, but curious to hear from others...

We notice it and then focus on it for a week or two and he gets better. But he gets annoyed when we correct him over and over again and it does make bedtime a little less fun because we can't really get into the story.

I have a six year old who does the same thing. I think this is why it's good to still to have kids read aloud, even if they are independently reading at a high level.

I often notice my son paraphrasing what he is reading, which leads me to think that he is reading ahead silently and his speaking isn't keeping up with his reading. He often substitutes words or makes silly mistakes like you described.

I've read that it destroys the flow/pleasure if you keep stopping the child. I wait and see if my son self-corrects. Most of the time he does once he gets to the end of the sentence and notices that it doesn't sound right. Where he doesn't, I silently put my finger under the word that he got wrong and he comes back and corrects himself.

I sometimes wonder if this skipping and paraphrasing causes my son's teachers to assign him to a lower reading level. While the books they give to him for independent reading are almost two years ahead of grade level, they are still far below the books that he reads independently at home. Have you run into this?

I should also note that my son reads much more quickly when he reads silently. He told me that reading aloud slows him down and gets in the way. Nevertheless, we still do it because I think it's valuable.

Making mistakes when reading aloud is common in young kids. My kids' elementary school principal had a little poster about it on her wall a few years ago. FWIW, I used to get very frustrated with myself in first grade for making mistakes when reading aloud.

I definitely wouldn't worry about turning "he is" into "he's". I agree with Lepa that he could be doing that deliberately. I do that; "he's" might sound more natural to him, and it's not changing the meaning.

I also agree that too much correcting could make the problem worse by stressing him.

I never had my kids read aloud when they were younger, except when they were first learning basic phonics in preschool. They are now proficient readers at age 9 and 10. If a child is struggling with fluency, it is worth working on at home, but I would probably separate out the fluency practice from reading stories for pleasure, and just do 10 min. per day at the most. When I tutored kids reading for fluency in a school, I pointed to the error when they were done with a sentence, and said "that word is "clear", and had them re-read the sentence saying the correct word. This would be extremely annoying to the child if you were doing it with pleasure reading.

@Spaghetti. That makes sense to me! I notice that this started to happen more as my son became fluent.

Like @blackcat, we just do a bit of reading aloud every evening. My son also does a fair amount of independent reading and for our bedtime stories, my husband or I read aloud. We also have a four year old so we read a whole range of books aloud- everything from picture books to chapter books to graphic novels. I want that time to be purely about pleasure.

Angie, he may be reading from context when he reads to himself. I've been told by reading professionals that reading aloud is slower and more prone to error for everyone (even adults ).


I think this is really common for young readers, and wouldn't worry about this unless he's doing things like having difficulty with simple words that you know he knows, or not seeming to recognize letters and sound correspondences that you know he knows.


I wouldn't worry about having him read out loud at all if he doesn't want to at home. He'll most likely have practice at school. Our teachers always recommended that the most important thing parents can do at home for their children in elementary school was to read *to* them - no matter how well their children read or how old their children were.

Best wishes,

polarbear

Ahh, thanks everyone. Many good points here.

On the point about paraphrasing and reading ahead and the speaking not keeping up -- YES. He is definitely doing this. I always thought he went back and reread in chunks but maybe he is also doing some of it from memory. I do this too and it gets confusing. It is very cumbersome reading whole chapters out loud, even I get tired.

I do worry about reading out loud at school since that seems to be a skill they get evaluated on. For us it's a little different though because he does all of that in Spanish -- his school is immersion. He doesn't make the same mistakes in Spanish, I'd guess because he has to concentrate more on the task of reading and is less able to get lost in the story/read ahead.

I think I'll keep reading aloud with him (we alternate chapters at bedtime just for fun) but make sure I'm less disruptive if I have any corrections. We enjoy it a lot minus the rereading a sentence 3 times to get all the little details right. I guess that's overkill. :P

My DS5 does this too, including with books way below his level, and I do think it is related to reading quickly and scanning ahead. When my dad read with him over the summer, he kept testing DS by turning the page while DS was reading out loud to see how far ahead he was scanning. I was annoyed to see him testing my kid instead of just reading together, but then saw that it didn't phase DS at all, as he already had the next sentence committed to memory.

I happened to read this whole thread last night, just before I went to read to my son. He still loves a couple chapters of read-aloud from mom or dad at bedtime (though he then reads ahed, so mom and dad never quite know what's going on in the stories).

Here's the thing - I do all these things. I re-word sentences, substitute synonyms, paraphrase. I can't tell you the number of times I grabbed an adjective from the next sentence and popped it into the sentence I was saying out loud. I've done this my entire life. FWIW, though, I also have a job where accurate reading comprehension is critical (lawyer), and I've been pretty darned successful in my career. Is there a patting yourself on the back emoticon?

I think the big deal here is: is he reading words inaccurately so that he does not comprehend what he's reading? Or is he reading and modifying on the fly, but nevertheless fully comprehending. There is a world of difference - and I think you need to suss that out before you decide whether there's an issue that needs to be addressed.

Keep on reading - in whatever form!
Sue