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

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 throw 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!

I am not sure what your school system does in terms of phonics. It is often taught as a separate subject in first grade. I would check that first and see if it is even something that you will have to do at home. Even if she is a good reader already she will be able to learn the rules of phonics.

I wouldn't worry too much about the scores if you're confident in her abilities. She may be sick of taking these tests. Maybe you could give her a brief reading test yourself if you have any concerns and then not focus on this so much during your time with her. She certainly sounds way ahead of the curve. If she is reading at that level, she can't really have any issues with K reading expectations, IMO.

I don't really quiz older kids when reading with them. (I did this more with my toddlers.) I may sometimes ask them questions like what Dude suggests, but I am very light on this. I correct mispronunciations, but don't ask them about them again or anything. I may ask "Do you know what X word means?" but I probably wouldn't explain an expression like "on the nose" unless it seemed very crucial. I don't like to interrupt stories either!

Our library has a Paws for Reading program. They are therapy dogs (though your own pooch might do!) that are trained to basically lay there and listen to your child read. The therapy dog's handler is there to help them with words they get stuck on. If you have a pet (or stuffed animal) she can read to, then maybe she'd be open to that.

I'm pretty sure my son didn't learn to read based on phonics. He is more of a memorizing a new word kind of kid. He spells like you would write if you spelled it like it sounded. For instance, "success" is spelled "sukses".

I'm hoping this is a rare and extreme case, and isn't at all related to what you're seeing... but my DD's K teacher would PUNISH my teacher-pleaser DD unless she pretended not to know things.

I had a high school chem teacher like that.

{hiding}

Also, I know my opinion is unpopular with some people, but in the absence of issues, I don't think self-taught readers who can read at 4th grade+ in K need to explicitly be taught phonics. I happen to have a very, very clear memory of going through the phonics curriculum, as a child who learned to read on her own at 4. It is not a positive memory. My kids did not need this either, and my DS's current teachers acknowledge it. (DS has been excused from a computer-based phonics program that the rest of class does, for instance.)

I tutored reading and there were some kids who read w/ no expression. One thing I did with them is to have them read like "newscasters". I would practice this separately from the other reading skills. Take a short passage, maybe just 3-4 sentences and explain what a newscaster is, and how they speak with a lot of expression to get people to listen. Read the passage like a newscaster while she follows along. Then have her read with you, telling her to match her voice to yours. Then have her try it alone.
I think it would be "normal" for a kid to not read with expression if they are reading for a long time. If she is able to read silently to herself let her do that unless you are specifically trying to teach her to read certain words and to read with expression. I find that even with myself if I read aloud too long I start reading in a kind of monotone after a while. It's too hard to to read with expression for a long period of time.
I also think passages with a lot of dialogue work well. My DS in first grade actually speaks in a kind of monotone and since he reads fluently, his speech therapists have used books with a lot of dialogue and reading aloud to try to teach him to speak with proper expression and prosody.

Seems a simple answer on the lowering scores when it is normed data with ceilings. The other kids are learning things; so, her finitely measurable knowledge of letters (26? check) would get very close to average through the year.

Your daughter is doing great. I think it would be better if they identified the other gifted readers. Then, I would let that group read together, but, of course, each with reading materials at their actual reading level. For gifted students who are very young, letting them choose the topic is probably easiest. When they are older, they should probably read the classics as a basic foundation for their frame of reference among other well educated people. Those classics become shared information that people discuss. If you never read the book, then you are left out of the conversation. I would never slow down a fast reader. In fact, I keep wondering why all schools don't offer speed reading 101 (which I have not been to yet either come to think of it). All of the very smartest people that I know are actually speeding up as they get older and have more responsibility. Think about the U.S. President after a long day of meetings. I bet he speed reads every night on his own just so that he can get some information direct from certain sources without an advisor's perspective, just him, his thoughts, his instincts. You are doing such a great job. Keep up the good work.