United Brachial Plexus Network, Inc.

My daughter is starting to learn how to read in school. They are teaching it from a phonetic stand-point...meaning they teach all the sounds and then get the kids to blend sounds. So to read cat, they have the kids say the sound for each letter and then pull the word together (remember Sesame Street). Well, my daughter has retreival issues, so she says the last sound, and then puts that first. So when she reads cat, she sounds out c..a...t...and TAT is the word she comes up with.

From what I understand, most kids can learn reading through phonetics, but there are some - like my daughter- who just don't learn to read through phonetics and it gets fairly frustrating. Her teacher has given me some suggestions for things we can do at home.

I wanted to know if there were any others in this group who've experienced this and have any suggestions or thoughts on what I can expect as she gets more into school.

Thanks,
Lisa

How funny is that subject line!!! OOOoops am I embarrassed. We are on day 5 of kids being home from school sick...I'm a wee bit distracted here.

Not to worry Mom, child learn from three sources recognition of the entire word, phonetics and rhyming. Looks like you child is learning from rhyming, which is a great avenue and you should see an explosion of related word recognition soon....

Congrats....

I am a teacher for 3-6 year olds. So there are preschoolers and Kindergardeners in my class. How old is your daughter? Age makes a big difference. The letter reversal thing is normal when a child starts to learn how to read. You can e-mail me with any questions if you would like.

Thanks,

Lisa

Lisa! How have you been?? Long time. How is Hannah?
Paula

I'm a kinder teacher so I have some experience with this. In my opinion reading instruction should be balanced. In other words...there should be phonetic instruction but there should also be an opportunity to use meaning(context) and structure(sentence structure) to read the words as well.
I can tell you that blending those three seperate phonemes c-a-t and coming up with the appropriate word is a skill that is hard for a lot of kindergartners at least in my experience. This is definately an aquired skill that requires lots of exposure and practice. So it may be that she just needs a little more time with it.
Also, you said Hannah has retrieval issues? Is this something that you just noticed or has it been diagnosed? Just curious.
I would try not to worry too much about this particuar skill. In my experience children learn to read in a variety of ways and many learn w/o a lot of phonetic knowledge.
Good luck and I'm sure she'll be just fine!
Shari

Lisa,

I have been teaching reading for a long time to beginning readers - even babies (yes, babies can read). First, there is no right way to learn to read nor is how your daughter's processing wrong.
My daughter Tara (LOBPI) age 4 has been sight reading small words since she was 2. The big words she reads by sounding out. This is how we all read. You don't sound out the small words - your mind has memorized them.
I am not sure how old your daughter is, but younger children learn to read the whole word, this is why flash cards work really well. The spelling doesn't make any difference to them and in some cases the order of the letters - it is the picture the word makes.
Tara knows all her sounds and can sound out big words. Occasionally when a word is very large she forgets half way through and when she says the word as a whole it's all messed up. But then she is just learning and that is the fun part about it.
We believe that spelling and the rules of reading and writing will come later. For now reading books is the best thing next to ice cream in our home. We get new books often and when we do, I go through and make a flash card for each new word in the book. Before, we even open the book we learn the new words. Then Tara reads the book to me.
We never push and we do the flash cards randomly throughout the week. When we pull out the stack (about 20 at a time) at any given moment (like in line at the post office) I flip through and Tara reads them, if she gets one incorrect I say it the right way and that's it. Sometimes I put the cards all face up and scattered on the floor and say words out loud and she has to find them and point. We always make it fun and a game.

If your daughter is struggling and feeling bad herself - even though we know she shouldn't - try a different method to help her until one works. There is no right way. I hope this helps a little.