Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Reading struggles

You're very kind. I think I'd still have made waves for her. That's EXTREMELY inappropriate behavior for a teacher. If she's that emotionally unstable, then perhaps she shouldn't be in a classroom with children, who tend to cause a lot more "problems" than a reasonable parent.

Wowsa!

Last year was her last year. I think that it became clear to her and the admin that she wasn't making it anymore.

I had the same concern when we started. My DD can memorize large passages with great ease -- this is how she fooled her kindergarten teacher into thinking that she could read. With guided reading, I found that when she tried to do it just from memory she made subtle mistakes that let me know that she wasn't reading word for word. I then tell her to go back and reread the sentence. I let her know that she missed/added a word/ending. Also, as we have done longer chapters, she can't keep it all in her head. She really has to practice reading the words on the page and not faking it.

As for the recorded books, we also tried this but my dd didn't like it. Maybe she likes the one-on-one time that comes with guided reading.

Thanks, knute974. I appreciate the help. I'm mulling this over.

Great question--I wondered that at first too. I think the key is to use it as a strategy for a child who doesn't struggle to decode, but lacks fluency/phrasing or becomes nervous reading aloud. I think there may be a stronger risk of memorization for a gifted child, but I'm not sure that's a bad thing. Some early reading involves exactly that, and allows the reader to start to connect what they know it sounds like with what they see on the page. The difference is that at this stage it goes beyond cracking the sound-symbol code and advances to cracking the fluency/phrasing code. But if memorization were an interfering factor (and it might be for a child who really dislikes making errors), maybe it would be a good idea to tap into the child's metacognitive skills. For instance, if a child was working from a taped model, you could point out some of the specifics ("did you notice how when it was written like this, the reader read it like..... Look, it's written like that on this page too. How do you think the reader will make it sound? Try it, then we can listen"). That decreases the motivation to rely on memory, because it becomes a study of something rather than a test to be passed. For a child who is interested in different careers and jobs, it could even be an activity that is part of a study of "voice jobs": cartoon characters are voiced by real people; books on tape; commercial voice overs, etc. In fact, it occurs to me that some children might enjoy critiqueing the voice work done by others. I've heard some books on tape that I thought completely missed the phrasing and tone. A highly gifted child might enjoy listening to books they know and love and comparing how the reader presents them to the way they want it to sound out loud.

That's very helpful. He is a perfectionist, on top of his other problems. (Perhaps in part because of his other problems.) But the voiceover stuff sounds like something that might appeal to him and work well.

Thanks!

Thanks everyone! I'm glad that this is turning into more than just a vent session for me .

I couldn't find this earlier, but am now posting a link to the type of reading windows I was talking about. They're cheap to try out (hooray!). As I think I mentioned earlier, I've had some success by cutting the length of the strip to about an inch. I've also cut off the top border when I do this so that the student is really just moving an unbordered highlighter across the page (the bottom border stays on and is where the the child's finger sits as they move it across the page).

http://www.reallygoodstuff.com/category/teacher+supplies/ezc+readers.do?nType=1

There are other sources for this--I just wanted to provide something with a picture.

Nothing wrong with a good vent session.

Still, I'm certainly appreciating the thread. We're just at the start of trying to figure this stuff out, so it's nice to know some things to try to help our DS. So far, I've mostly been researching how to figure out what's wrong (if anything). I haven't really paid much attention to how to help yet. He's just 6, so everyone thinks it's too early.

But I think it might be time to shift gears and try some non-invasive sorts of things to help him.