| Commonly Asked Question About How to Help Children Become Skillful Readers
How to Help Children Become Skillful Readers: Solutions for Common
Reading Problems
- Q. How can parents prevent reading difficulties before they start?
- A.
All parents should do everything they can to prevent reading difficulties before they begin by
doing the following:
- Read aloud to children every day for at least 10-15 minutes or longer if attention span and
interest permit.
- Expose preschool-age children to phonemic awareness activities on a daily basis. Poetry
and nursery rhymes are extremely important to build these skills. For parents who are
interested in specific activities to use with older preschool children, purchase Phonemic
Awareness in Young Children by Marilyn Adams, Barbara Foorman, Ingvar Lundberg, and
Terri Beeler. Brookes Publishing. 800-638-3775 or www.brookespublishing.com.
- Investigate the reading methodology that will be used in the school to which you will send
your children. Use the Rate Your School's Reading Quotient
instrument found on this Web site
to do the evaluation. Do all that you can to ensure that your child will have the privilege of the
finest in reading instruction.
- Supplement school instruction with continued reading aloud at home to build knowledge and
comprehension.
- Encourage your children to read aloud to you once they begin learning how to read.
- Q. What are the signs that a child is developing a "reading problem"?
- A. Signs that a child has reading problems include 1) guessing at words rather than decoding
(sounding them out) with automaticity and fluency; 2) memorizing printed text after hearing it
read aloud many times and then "pretending to read" ; 3) attempting to memorize every word
with frequent seeming lapses in memory; 4) reading (both silently and orally) in a slow and
labored style which interferes with comprehension; 5) avoidance of any task which requires
reading; 6) poor or non-existent understanding (comprehension) of written material; and/or 7)
referral to Reading Recovery, Title 1, or special education. Children whose reading instruction
has occurred in a classroom where the "whole language" philosophy has been used will
demonstrate many or all of the above problems consistent with the lack of systematic, explicit
instruction in phonemic awareness (the ability to hear and manipulate the sounds of the
English language) and phonics (the ability to use the forty-plus sound-spelling
correspondences to independently decode (sound out words). Even children who have been
exposed to phonics using an ineffective or incomplete program will exhibit these symptoms.
Do not assume that your child has "had" phonics if you've used Hooked on Phonics or
The Phonics Game. Do not assume your child has "had" phonics if he knows the letters of the alphabet and their sounds. Do not assume your child has "had" phonics if the teacher tells you she is using a balanced program and integrating phonics into her whole language instruction. Children must master all 40+
sound-spelling correspondences to have "had" phonics.
They must have had ample practice reading completely decodable text (text that contains
words that can be sounded out from what the children has learned); predictable books with
words that cannot be independently decoded by the child don't count.
- Q. Will my child "grow into" reading?
- A. Reading is not a natural act like walking and talking. Some children are able to figure out
the
reading process on their own by virtue of strong inherited phonemic awareness skills (the
abilities to hear and manipulate the sounds of language) and/or a print-rich environment filled
with constant reading aloud. But these children are in the minority. Most children need some
instruction in phonemic awareness and phonics to become skilled readers and many more
children need a very systematic and explicit program of instruction that begins in kindergarten
and continues into first and second grade. Many children will need one-to-one instruction to
help them develop phonemic awareness and to learn phonics. Without this intense early
instruction, they will find themselves in remedial reading which unfortunately is no guarantee of
reading success. A child who is a poor reader in first grade has a strong likelihood of being a
poor reader in fourth grade. Prevent rather than remediate is the best plan.
- Q. What can I do to help my child if he/she is having a reading problem
in school?
- A. Educate yourself on reading and the instructional process. Purchase Reading
Reflex by Carmen and Geoffrey McGuinness at Amazon.com or visit their website www.readamerica.net. This
parent manual which is also suitable for use by tutors and school teachers is a good place to begin.
The book contains short diagnostic tests to determine where to begin with your child and a
step-by-step process to teach both children and adults how to decode.
In preparation for writing my book, The
Principal's Guide to Raising Reading Achievement, I reviewed the PhonoGraphix
program. The following summary is adapted from the book by permission of Corwin Press.
Phono-Graphix offers pure training in phonemic awareness, phoneme
segmenting,
and blending. The program eliminates letter names, all exercises or language
that conflict with the logic of the code, or that add an unnecessary memory
load. It teaches the 43 phonemes of the English Alphabet code as represented
by approximately 100 letters or letter combinations. There are three levels: Level 1 teaches the
basic code (i. e. the correspondence of one sound to one letter with no digraphs). Skills
training covers phoneme analysis, segmenting, blending, reading, and spelling. These skills
are mastered in
simple three-sound words and words containing consonant clusters. Level 2 is
the advanced code level and includes consonant and vowel digraphs followed by
phonemes with multiple spellings (i.e. one sound to many letters) as well
as code overlaps (i.e. the 21 vowel letter patterns that overlap more than
one word sound: the letters ou stand for five phonemes). Level 3 teaches
multisyllable words up to five syllables and students are taught to build
words by syllable and to decode by syllable. The curriculum materials are
hands-on. The motto of Phono-Graphix is "Teach nothing that must be
discarded later on." (McGuinness, 1997, 317). Phono-Graphix was developed to
teach every important skill necessary to read, write, and spell, and to
teach them as rapidly as possible. Although the methodology was developed in the Read
America
Clinic in Orlando, FL for use by individuals (both adults and children) who
had not had success in learning to read in school, the system has been
adapted for use with small groups in the school setting. In one first grade
classroom a teacher who had been trained in the Phono-Graphix method
implemented the program four to five days per week in groups of four to nine
students ages six through ten years (McGuinness et. al., 1996). During the
treatment period (8 months) the students received no formal reading
instruction in the classroom but rather engaged in sustained silent reading
and other language arts activities. Pre and post-tests were administered
including the Woodcock Reading Mastery word identification sub-test and word
attack sub-test, a blending test, a segmenting test, the phonemes
manipulation test and the code knowledge test. The average pre-test score on
the word attack sub-test of the Woodcock was first grade-seventh month. The
average post-test score on the word attack was seventh grade-second month,
reflecting an average gain of over five years. The lack of a control group
and the disturbing absence of any kind of comprehension strategy building
activities in the regular classroom during the treatment period,
notwithstanding, the preliminary testing results are promising. More
research is definitely needed but when phonemic awareness and fluent
decoding of authentic text are what you want to teach (and they should
definitely be a priority goal in kindergarten and first grade), this program
is well-worth a closer look.
- Q.
What can I do if my child is having a problem with reading comprehension?
- A.
The essence of reading is meaning and if the reader cannot summarize what he/she has read
and/or cannot answer simple questions about the text, he/she is having a problem with reading
comprehension. If a child has excellent listening comprehension (i.e. when a story is read
aloud, he/she demonstrates understanding and can answer questions about it with ease), the
comprehension difficulty may well be related to an inability to fluently and automatically read
the words on the printed page. This is a decoding problem. If the child does not have a
decoding problem and also has poor listening comprehension, then the comprehension
difficulty may be related to other problems: 1) lack of prior knowledge about what has been
read; 2) lack of vocabulary knowledge; 3) inability to visualize and image what is being read;
and/or 4) attention and concentration difficulties.
Investigate the Lindamood Bell Human Learning Management System's
programs for
improving comprehension. They include Visualizing and Verbalizing for Language
Comprehension and Thinking. This program develops the brain's ability to conceptually image
and then remember the "big picture" of what is read. Research shows that many students with
poor comprehension lack the ability to visualize the contents of what they have read. A
second program: Seeing Stars: A Program of Symbol Imagery for Phonemic Awareness, Sight
Words, and Spelling is designed for children who have a difficult time remembering words as
wholes. Both of these programs can be obtained by calling 800-233-1819.
Please note that all programs mentioned should be thoroughly evaluated
before purchase.
Research results are available upon request from ReadAmerica and Lindamood Bell to help
you determine the programs' effectiveness. I have no financial interest in Phono-Graphix or
Lindamood Bell.
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