Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Age or Ability Specific Forums Elementary School gifted kids who do not read early

I am curious if any of you have similar experiences to us. I was identified HG and learned to read just before age 6 (between k and 1st). I am pretty sure I had some undiagnosed dyslexia, and still spell poorly. But I read well, and was reading several grades ahead by age 7. My strengths are more verbal than by husband, who is highly mathematically gifted, but started reading at 3.

DD10 learned to read around 5.5 to 6. She followed the same pattern as I did. No evidence of dyslexia, but we are going a formal neurocog evil this fall. She is bored (but also feels buried in HW) in what purports to be a full time gifted class.

Enter DD5. She is a young 5. When people listen to her talk, they make comments about early college programs, etc. Until a month ago, she loved stories but had zero interest in decoding words. Now she's interested, but is a very early reader and wants to do it all her own way. I don't have any personal inclination to push after my own and DD10s experience.

But the problem is that our district tests for gifted enrichment in K. I think in a year or so, she'd really benefit, but I see no way she is going to even complete, much less score well on a first grade level IOWA in a few months.

I find this assumption about early reading really frustrating. I just want to meet her needs.

Can you clarify? Specifically, I don't quite understand "very early reader and and wants to do it all her own way." By early, do you mean that she's only starting to sound out very basic words like cat or dog? Or are you referring to her age?

I recommend Bob books, which are a series of little books for children who are just starting to read. Also, there's an online system called Starfall that people here used to rave about. Here's an example question.

Have you offered to help her learn? If so, and if she's receptive, I'd work with her to see how it goes. If you have an wanting to do it her way means that she's not interested in help, it's a tough call. On the one hand, she's little and pushing little kids where they don't want to go doesn't always work out (maybe you could push a little and back off if she's really resistant?). On the other hand, you have a legitimate wish to help her in school, and gifted programming is a reasonable part of that.

I'd also look at some sample first grade Iowa tests. They may not be too hard.

My apologies. By early reader, I meant emergent reader. She is slowly working her way through the Bob books. This is new as she had zero interest a month or so ago. She was more receptive to her Montessori teacher asking her to do it than us. But while she is now proud of reading them, she gets very upset that she can't read bigger words. On one day, she asked me how to spell something. I don't recall the word but it was 7-8 letters long. I did not realize she had already tried to write it, and when I spelled it for her (I was cooking at the time), she burst into tears because she had "got it wrong." At that time she wasn't writing any words other than her name so there really was no way she could have done any better. I told her she had made a great guess at the word from the letters she had written, and was doing fine.


Her general pattern in most skills (from toddlerhood) is to be cautious and hesitant (and presumably practice on her own). So that suddenly we turn around one day and she's walking, skipping, singing on pitch, drawing intricate pictures, etc). The practice and lead up, is either internal, or surreptitious). It looks like she is or was trying to do that with reading, and hit an unexpected wall. At that point she maintained for a while that she no longer liked books. And no, we were not applying outside pressure about reading.

I will say one thing - we had some BOB books and both of my kids hate(d) them with a passion, to our surprise (although at school, DS6 seemed okay with them), so based on some recommendations here, we got a bunch of Brand New Readers which are very popular. DD4 has not shown any interest right now in decoding words, but she loves these books right now - she seems to be trying to figure it out (but won't let me "help" her so I leave her alone).

Since DS seemed to frustrate easily - he wanted to read but was cautious, DH tried to make silly word games (like using freezer magnets and then spell out "mess" and DS would come to me and say "Mommy, there is a mess in the kitchen!" - p00p was popular for this one) and flashlight in dark with sight words on the walls which seemed to help - although he was reading already apparently before we realized he was reading.

DS6 used to get extremely frustrated when he had to read to us so a while back, we started getting him to read the same favourites over and over again to build up fluency and confidence at the same time. With new books, we would take turns reading so that he would get to read the easier words and we read the rest. Actually in the beginning, we would only ask him to read one word per page and we always made it an easy one.

As for choice of books, the Elephant and Piggie books by Mo Willems were a huge hit. Kevin Bolger also has a few really funny learn to read books that our boys love.

I love this idea!. I suspect she would get a kick out of it ( at least until DD10 makes a bit to take over the activity, but that's another issue.)

I will also look in to the other reader serries. DD10 likes Miss Rhonda's readers, but DD5 isn't quite there yet.

I would also urge that decoding level might progress quickly, and maintaining interest will become the bigger challenge.

This - DD6 went from nothing to HS level in 12 months, finding books at her level with appropriate content that are also interesting to a 6 year old is tricky. We went through a stage where she barely picked up a book for lack of interest.

All three of my children have been "late" readers, relative to level of giftedness, not national averages for age necessarily.

My eldest had significant dyslexia and a major delay for any child, let alone a gifted child. And in fact we were told more than once "Children this delayed don't ever recover to age norms, they fall further and further behind, the recovery is the clearest sign of her ability at the moment". She's now reading well in advance of her age, has been for some years, and is in fact 15k words into writing her first attempt at a novel.

The middle child learned the alphabet at 2 but didn't progress to reading until it occurred to me to put her in front of readingeggs.com at 4.5yrs, where upon she ripped through 60 levels in a weekend and progressed rapidly from there. I guess she was my "most advanced" reader for age.

My youngest child learned the alphabet in and out of order and started pointing out letters out in public by 18 months old, and also did not progress to reading. She looked perfectly average with her progress to reading through K (which she started at 4y10mths) and finished the year just barely at the national benchmark for end of K. I am quite sure she's not dyslexic, but she does probably have a relative weakness in phonemic awareness. By Mid yr 1 she was reading independently, three quarters of the way through yr1 I had her do the DORA test online and she came up with a mid gr6 reading level.

I have concluded that none of my kids take to decoding naturally, they're all quite dreadful at learning times tables too. Their learning to read is entirely comprehension driven, they can read words in context that they could never read from a list, and they struggle most horribly with words like "it" "and" and "the". As soon as they reach critical mass they improve at an exceptional rate.

Ds9 started school at 5 knowing the alphabet and sounds plus 20 to 30 sight words. By 5.5 he could read quite well and by 6 was several years ahead. Ds7 (who does not like to be taught or quizzed) knew the same number of sight word but not all the alphabet and sounds. He had a slightly slower start but was at roughly the same place on his sixth birthday (after one year at school).
I thought ds7 was going to read at 3 but he had a change in interest.