Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Age or Ability Specific Forums "I'm too tiny to read"

We're going thru the "too many words on a page" stage. Miss 4 is easily reading early reader books (1 sentence per page). She's a whole word reader and has a large memory bank of words. She doesn't like coming across words she doesn't know *groan* so I'm going to have to go back to some phonetics to rectify this. But how do I get over the "too many words on a page" problem? She previously made the leap to simple chapter books, but has now regressed. I think she did this because of her perfectionism issues - perhaps the book had too many words she didn't recognise (?) But how do I get her going again, or is it a case of simply wait and see... jojo

I think I'd let her read some easier books and not think too much about it for a while. She'll get bored and move on. Just keep some more interesting (and challenging!) stuff around, too. There's nothing wrong with mixing it up. Pleasure reading IS supposed to be fun, after all.

Someone mentioned here --maybe even in this very post, but i'm too lazy to go back and read it - that the beautiful picture books that are written for parents to read to children are often written at a higher level, but they only have a sentence or two on them. These are much more interesting than the Bob books, etc. My DS4almost5 has this same issue, and lately he's been picking books for himself to read by dr seuss (the bigger ones) and books like The Little Engine That Could. I plan to go digging through the book piles to find some more picture books. Also, loads of little golden books are fairly short but have interesting stories (lately for us: saggy baggy elephant, hansel and gretel, etc). Good luck!

I keep reading the title of this thread and think my reaction would be to scoop her up and say, "That's OK, soon you'll be reading but right now I want to read to you." Get some of the books recommended above, let her enjoy the pictures and the melody of your voice as you read the words. Read them several times, sometimes concentrating on reading with expression and fluency, other times slowing down and using your finger to follow along. She'll pick it up soon enough.

OHGrandma, I am so with you on this one. My dd is now 8 1/2 and she still loves it when I read to her.

oneisenough,

I read somewhere that the phonic method is not necessarily the right path to take with the gifted. If you consider that the phonic teaching style is used for the masses and the gifted are hardwired differently you might find that your daughter is just not coded for phonics. We are in the same boat with my DD. She reads words through memorization and can 'read' a lot of story books to us such as 3 little pigs and the little red hen. It is really cute b/c we know she has it memorized but she recites it verbatim. I have tried the sound out game with her and if I ask her what letter makes the 'dddd' sound she will tell us 'D' and maybe the next letter that she hears, but tends to be bored with the game and doesn't want to finish it. We have purchased some I can read books recently and for the most part she is learning through memorization and I think the phonics will have to come at a later date when she gets to a word that is not so easily memorized.

My advice is just be patient b/c if your DD is anything like mine she is probably a perfectionist and telling you she is too tiny is her way of showing her frustration with not just getting it. We just continue to read to her and let her chime in on words we know she knows and using the finger to underline the text as we read. We also try to stay ahead of her memorization game by providing new books she hasn't seen.

You are all great! Thank you so much for all of the ideas!! I love the idea of making our own books, and I think I will try that. I definitely love reading to her and she knows that even when she can read on her own we will still have a lot of special reading time together. I would love to solve the problem by scooping her up and saying, "don't worry about it, you will read soon enough and right now I want to read to you" but the fact is that she wants to read on her own. I can not tell you how many times a day I hear, "Mama, I want read. Mama my turn."
Anyhow...I hear what you are all saying that phonetics might not be the best way for her to learn. I suppose I will just try my best to keep it fun and let my daughter lead the way, I just hope that she doesn't become too frustrated in the mean time.

THank you all again. I am going to reread all of your posts again!

Wow! I am so relieved to hear that "reading" is not necessarily being able to phonetically sound out the words! And I agree that I too do not sound out each word as I am reading. My DD5 has been able to memorize, recognize, and repeat words on a page for a few years now, but since she was not sounding out each word, I did not classify her as a early reader. I was beginning to wonder why she demonstrated all the other characteristics of GTness EXCEPT early reading! She is just now (at 5) learning to sound out the words. I value this info because I now know that I should probably alter my teaching style (or at least research a little more). Thanks!

One, I'm so glad you started this thread. Great insights, as always.

I agree with the suggestions here not to push phonics, but I want to suggest two things that you might want to have around in case they take your DD's fancy:
- first, http://www.starfall.com , which my DS loved around the same age. (The ABCs section was a favourite for a long time; he used other sections too, but not so much.)
- second, if you have the budget (I say this because DS went through them like a house on fire and buying a new level every week or two gets pricey!), some of the Oxford Reading Tree Songbird Phonics readers. I chose these for DS-then-2 because he was clearly learning phonically to some extent (to my surprise - he was obsessed with spelling at 2.5!) but I think they'd work for a whole-word learner too in fact. I decided to get reading books for him because he was getting frustrated with story books which would have a few words he could decode/recognise followed by one he couldn't. We had a rule that nobody ever read the reading books *to* him, they were just for him to read. We'd tell him a word if he had trouble with it, but actually it seldom happened: they are very carefully graded. We never explicitly encouraged reading - there was no need to! - but we did have a rule that at bed time he got two stories read to him, and then could go on reading to himself as long as he liked, so reading was the only acceptable bedtime postponement ruse.