Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments Teaching a HG+ to read - how do you do that?

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?

What a strange teaching method? Got to admit though that the whole process of learning how to read is a bit of a mystery to me. But a teacher/gifted specialist recently suggested that I use word families (similar to the exercises you seem to be talking about) with my Miss 4 too as a way of developing her reading. I also use the dolch words from time to time to develop her vocab. But the thing that has worked for us is just immersion. Read, read, read. It's been difficult at times to find books at an appropriate level and I've been known to scour libraries and book stores all over town. Thankfully I had a friend whose daughter was reading at a similar level so we were always swapping books and readers. I love audio books, on the pc or in the car. And big beautiful picture books that the kids can fall in love with. I think if reading becomes too overwhelming or too technical or too much like hard work... it can really deflate kids. If she has a favourite series, read them over and over and over again - and let her use her finger to keep track of where you're up to. But speed? I have no idea why that would be important. Beats me... jojo

In the u.s., reading small words with speed is referred to as having a large base of 'sight words': 'the','and' & 'it' are the usual focus, things that you read millions of times and just would not want to sound out after even a few months of reading. It sounds very much like visual issues would affect this skill from firming up quickly - entirely non-expert opinion here!
On the other hand, I don't know that ds ever had to practice less common words or what look more like parts of words - pom, dom, etc. Sort of scratching my head there...

I think you are on a good path in looking for alternate methods of developing this skill. I would focus on words which make sense as beginning sight words, as noted above, hopefully others will be able to chime in with some good advice - very best of luck!

Hugs Isa - Sweetie!

It is just not true - particularly if the child has vision difficuties - and a multilingual backround. She will be stronger in the end for it - this isn't a race!

Since you can't exactly say to the teacher: Your method of teaching reading stinks! you might try to ask for a different method based on your daughter's documented vision difficulties.

What happens verbally when you spell words out to her? Can she put them together?
Is the tutor still coming?

Keep looking for the Audio + Text books, I know that they exist!

Look at the Leapfrog system and see if any of their toys might help.

My favorite reading trick is for you and her to make books together using short words she knows. She might even be willing to write down for you all the words that she does know how to read so that you can make them into a story, or she may want to write the story herself and you type it into the computer.

You are NOT alone!
Grinity

Isa,

My friend's DD sounds very similar to your DD. All I can say is that it took until 3rd grade (age 8 here) until it clicked and she took off. And she is definitely HG+.

Dazey

My DS is 5 years 10 months now and read just like your DD for over a year! It was annoying, ridiculous and so time consuming. He'd sound out t-h-e every single time. He knew it was "the" out of a sentence, but in a sentence? He would get stuck.

However, it was like a magic light bulb turned on in his brain about 4 months ago. Suddenly he had a base of about 300 sight words and just took off. We started a "Word Wall" of words he could read without sounding out. I don't know if it helped the problem, or gave him a motivation to get over it himself. But if we'd come across a word that he read without sounding out, we put it on the wall. He started asking "is that one going on the wall!!"

Now our wall has crazy words like last night's additions: migration, species, ecosystem and Sahara Desert.

I don't know for sure, but I believe a large part of it was his strong tendency to perfectionism. If you sound it out to make sure you're right, you're less likely to make a mistake.

Oh Isa!

Based on our vision experiences I'd say it's definately the vision issue that's causing the slower speed. I'm thinking they're checking for fluency, which is great, but I wouldn't worry too much about it.

If you see improvements with vision therapy I would definately continue. I wouldn't focus on this one assessment for fluency because things can improve so rapidly for an HG child, as you know!

Most importantly, she shouldn't feel any *pressure* for reading at her age. I wouldn't let the school pressure her or pressure you into making it an issue.

Just nod smile, tell them she's working on it and that's about as much time I'd spend on it for now.

For DD8, the way I encouraged her to keep working on reading skills was to allow her to pick out her own paperback books from the bookstore. That was a huge treat for her because we are mostly a library family!

She felt like a little princess being whisked off to the huge bookstore to pick out a few of her very own books. Also, I never sat her down and *made* her read them, I just kept asking her how they were and what was happening.

I like Susan Wise Bauer's approach in The Well Trained Mind. Here are some of the author's notes under The Good Reader: Teaching Reading From Birth On
http://www.welltrainedmind.com/

I also like the book on CD approach. I give DD's the book to follow along with the CD and see rapid growth in fluency and speed.

Jim Trelease describes an interesting approach in the Read Aloud Handbook. Basically it's using the closed caption feature on the TV. I prefer almost zero TV for DD's so I haven't tried this, but it's intriguing.

http://www.trelease-on-reading.com/rah-ch9-pg4.html

I think the Word Wall is an excellent idea! My ds (he *was* an early reader) started with sight words. It can be a great motivator to keep reading if you don't have to sound out every single time -- and it sounds like that method just isn't clicking with your dd. I don't think sounding out would have worked for my ds.

I don't have much experience with teaching/learning to read, but it seems like sounding out would be like trying to ride a bike in slow motion -- how are you meant to follow along if it takes so long to get the whole word out?

Have you tried a list of high frequency words out of context, just two or three a day, and adding to that? Might boost her confidence. Have her sound the two or three words out, then have her go back to them 5 minutes later and see if she remembers the words based on the *look* of the word. And then do it again 10 minutes later, and a few times through the night. Sure, it's memorization, but heck -- I don't sound a word out every time I read it! And then go back to those two or three words the next day, and add a few more.

And then ... on the word wall! My ds had a "word book" -- same idea, different format -- when he was learning to read; he loved to add words he knew, and we'd add words we thought he *could* know.

So yeah -- since the phonics method isn't working for her, I'd go with something else, starting with sight words, and focus more on the look of the word than the sound the letters make.

Good luck!

You mentioned looking for audiobooks with text. In case this helps: www.librivox.org has audiobooks for free, recorded by volunteers. Almost all of the books are read from online texts which you can also download for free. Most books are in English, but there are lots of other languages. There are lots of children's books too, all older because everything's in the public domain. (Think Heidi [in English and German!].) The volunteers often take suggestions, if you want to hear something that hasn't yet been recorded. (I ought to know; I volunteer there myself.)

Children's books in Dutch (text links are on each book's page): Librivox catalog - Children - Dutch
In Spanish: Librivox catalog - Children - Spanish

Just to give you an idea.