Everywhere I read that HG+ children read with little or no assistance at all...
Except DD! Reminder: she is 5.4 and in the equivalent of Grade 1. This is the year when Dutch children are taught to read and write and (very very) basic maths.
For reading, they are taught groups of letters+sounds and words that use those letters. They use phonetics and visual clues. Once they know pretty well those words/letter, they get another set, until they go through the entire alphabet. The words they learn and 3-4 letter words - all very easy.
At the beginning DD had trouble with the phonetics - I wrote a post about it some time ago. Now she seems to get it and can spell phonetically almost any word in both Dutch and Spanish.
She can as well 'read' many words by sounding them. If the word is long it is better to break it into chunks for her.
So far so good, right?
But, at the school she is now asked for speed. She has to read very fast a series of short words, like 'tom - dom- pom -rom...' and other series that have similar phonetics or rimes. And she seems not capable of reading with speed. She still says 'd-o-m... dom, etc.
So she is ask to read again and again the same series of words and DD is getting no where with this method.
Then, she is asked to read an easy readers book, but of course if she sounds every word it takes her for ever... so she does not read but instead invents a story herself... Mrs Teacher says that she can bring any book from home that motivates her to try to read.
She has some visual issues - tracking and accommodation- but they are improving and I think that the problem is the method itself.
What would you recommend as teaching method? I am looking at audiobooks that have the text AND the CD, but up to now I find only CD books.
But I think something different has to be done at the classroom.
I was thinking of giving DD lots and lot of different list of words on topics that she likes and go for accuracy but not for speed at this moment. I am going to try this in Spanish. Any other ideas?
