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Hello everyone. I am in a quandry over my dd8. She is a very advanced reader and has good comprehension but I am noticing as we move onto more difficult books she lacks skills in decoding. She taught herself to read at a young age while I was busy with her older sister. So my question is do I go back and teach her phonics or ????? I'm not really sure what my other options are. I don't want to insult her with anything too remedial . TIA for any ideas. Gina

I don't have an answer but I am really curious as my 5 1/2 year old taught herself naturally and she reads/comprehends on at least a 5th-grade level. I don't want her to miss out on phonics, but I don't know if it is worth actually "teaching" now.

I know there are tools out there for helping struggling readers who are already pretty fluent readers. As you watch her with the things she is having trouble decoding, what kinds of things are they? Are they phonetic? Are they rules she just hasn't really learned completely yet? Or do you think she is mostly a sight word/memorizer and is pretty weak in phonics skills? This would tell you where you might need to go from here, and would help you probably as you look at different tools to try and help her learn what she might be missing. Are they longer words that she struggles with most? Maybe she needs some help with breaking down words into more managable parts.

The Ordinary Parents Guide to Reading is set up a lot like Reading Made Easy, with the student reading and the teacher's guide in one for about $20. Anyway, it has a particularly thorough coverage of advanced phonics and syllabication. You could skip the beginning parts that they already know and do some coverage of advanced long vowels, silent letters and other unusual or rare phonics patterns. The only possible issue with that is that some of the vocabulary can get challenging towards the end of the book, especially for a young reader. It would give them very advanced decoding skills, and you could tell them that they are skipping all of the "baby" or easy parts at the beginning to get to the big kid phonics at the end.

Lena

dd3 - LHTH
ds1

Thanks for the responses. I wouldn't consider her a struggling reader she actually reads quite well. Some words she has had trouble with within the last month or so are, machinery, orangutan, phenomenal, malicious, biological, appreciative and others. I am not really sure where to start so I have just been telling her the word and letting her move on. I have TRL and RME but there isn't anything in either of those that she struggles with. Are these just words that she will know after coming across them a few times? She reads just about everything she can get her hands on even though I try to steer her toward things that she will feel successful (mostly) reading. Thanks again.

Maybe she will start getting those with practice, I am not sure. Just so you know, the Ordinary Parents Guide that I mentioned goes well beyond RME. It ends with chapters on topics like DI as G sounds (cordial), homophones (ate/eight) and breaking up multi-syllable words (repetitious information.) I think of it as high level finishing phonics. There are sort of two schools of thought on this. Some people believe that with a good start in phonics, kids catch on and the harder words come eventually. Some people believe that you should cover phonics pretty thoroughly to help your children know how to get the really complex words, so that they don't struggle with reading at higher levels. I guess whether you need to do something at this point depends whether you are in that cover all of your bases school of thought or not!

Lena
dd3 - LHTH
ds1

You could always get her to go through the Explode the Code series of workbooks - my DD was/is a fantastic reader, but also lacked a little in the phonics area (especially when it came to spelling the words she could read so well!) and so I had her go through ETC to book 6 and she loved them

I remembered this thread, and maybe something within it would help...

Carrie’s suggestions for older dc still needing phonics:
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=7429&p=54276#p54276

In Christ,
Julie

Gina,

I'm thinking through this as I read the thread, and still wanting a bit of clarity on whether or not your daughter can decode at all? Or, is she decoding some and just struggling with longer words or certain sound combinations? When she comes to a word she doesn't know, is she able to sound it out at all?

In order to check this, pick some longer words within something she is reading and point to them one at a time and have her sound each word out in isolation (without letting her read the whole sentence in which the word is contained). In this way, you'll be able to see whether she can decode (or sound out the word or parts of the word) without the context of the story to help her guess what it is. Do this with about 5 words or so, and pay attention to what she is able to sound out. Then, if you get a chance to pop back and share whether she was able to decode at all, and where she stumbled that would help us advise you better.

Blessings,
Carrie

Thanks everyone for the responses. She can decode to a point. Just to be sure I had her "sound out" some words that she already knows and working to more difficult words(in a list not in text). So here it is. Words she sounded out: day, they, duck, lake, watch, noise, doctor, brush, harbor, underwater, skater, rainfall, observation etc. I did notice that many of the bigger words that gave her no trouble were compound words like zookeeper. Two words she already knows put together. Words that she stumbled on were as follows: expectation said more like expection, declined said deck lined, bifocals said BIF o cals, desperation said DISpershun. It seems like she says what she expects to see or says a word (familiar to her) that looks similar to what is actually written. Also she seems not to know where to put the emphasis. Puzzled. FYI She read through the ERs last school term and had no trouble. I still have her read aloud to me daily. We are reading many of the alternate ERs (for school reading) and these are no trouble for her. My oldest dd will not read a word unless she is CERTAIN (doesn't want to be wrong) and she has really strong phonics skills while dd8 will just guess willy nilly if she isn't sure so this is new to me. The strange thing to me is dd8 is at a higher reading level although I do know that she will max out somewhere without strong phonics skills.

Gina,

Thanks so much for taking the time to test your daughter with some decoding and to take the time to share the results. As I'm looking at what you've shared, it seems to me that your daughter has pretty solid decoding skills. I notice that she is able to decode many of the sound combinations that we often look for as being red flags for poor decoding skills. It would appear from what you've shared that she is missing some of the syllables in longer words when decoding, and the syllables she's missing look like sounds she could decode (based on the smaller words you shared that she was able to decode).

It isn't odd for kiddos to not know where to stress the syllables in a longer word, because they aren't sure what the word is (and likely haven't heard it before). I don't think I would go back and do any phonics work with her. While you can teach phonics rules until you've exhausted them all, typically phonics instruction is not needed that long as it actually turns into more of a "teaching all the rules for the purpose of spelling" instead. At HOD, we shift to studied dictation in place of teaching all of the complex phonics rules. We agree with CM that the skills that go with studied dictation far outweigh the need to teach complex phonics rules which often have more exceptions than standard applications!

With your daughter, I would instead run off the list of reading strategies found in the back of the DITHR Teacher's Guide and have your child have that handy when she is reading. Show her on the list that "guessing a word" is not really a strategy when you come to a word you do not know. Teach her to use the other strategies instead (one of which is sounding the word out and another which is breaking the word into smaller chunks and another which is breaking the word into smaller words that you know). You can see that she is doing some of this already.

Also, when you come to a situation where she is skipping a syllable in the word, place your finger over the word, sliding your finger to the right showing a syllable at a time (while she reads each syllable you are showing her). If she still misses a middle syllable, when you come to that part of the word, place a finger on either side so that only that syllable is showing, so she reads it when she comes to it. Then, have her repeat the whole word at the end. If she stresses the wrong syllable when she reads the word at the end, pronounce the whole word for her, so she can hear you stress the correct syllable. Then, have her repeat the pronunciation. This whole exercise takes a very short time. We don't want to draw the decoding out and make her frustrated. You can say and do the exercise for her to model what you want her to do. This will help her pay attention to the missing syllables.

For many kiddos, missing syllables in longer words is just another stage in reading. They are moving onto longer texts with words with more syllables and are used to reading shorter, more vocabulary controlled words. So, it takes time to adjust to paying attention to every sound combination and use the decoding skills again! She will do fine. You can also pay attention to see if she is missing a certain sound combination repeatedly. Make sure to point out the correct sound the combination makes. This will help just in case she missed some phonics that she needed. It provides an on-the-spot mini-lesson for the sound with immediate practice. This is often all that is needed for a good reader to make a mental note of the sound, even if she has missed some phonics instruction she may have needed.

Blesssings,
Carrie

Carrie, Thank you for taking the time to share your expertise. I feel relieved that I now know what to do to help her. We are doing dictation together which she enjoys and does well with. I haven't started DITHOR yet and I'm thinking that is the next step for her because I need some guidance . Thanks again to everyone for taking the time to read this and share ideas.