N.B: All names have been changed
This post contains affiliate links. I have the privilege of teaching Ben. Ben is a 14 year old boy who is autistic and has ADHD. He is very behind with his reading and writing and his mother has become concerned about his lack of progress. From the reports from his school it seemed his reading was better than his spelling, but neither were great.
When you first start to teach and older child who has fallen behind in reading you first need to find out where s/he is at and where the gaps are that are hindering her/his progress. However in order to do this, you may need to win the child's confidence first.
Win the child's confidence
Any older child who has become despondent about reading will need to trust you not to fail them again, after years of failure. Games take the risk of failure away. After all, if they lose, they can blame the game, not their lack of ability. It has taken me several sessions to win Ben's confidence. To start with I met just with his mother, who showed me various reports so that I could get a feel for where he is at. Not all children will have such reports and you should always do your own assessment anyway. I then gave her a lesson in phonics, starting with initial sounds and progressing to hear the sounds in cvc words. I left her with my Alphabet Matching game to play with Ben When I next visited, I was told that Ben had really enjoyed playing the game and had played it several times. This helped me form a bridge to Ben - I could play the game with him too and he knew it was safe. My next step was to invite Ben to my garden, where he picked raspberries and joined in a game of football with my son. By my next visit to his house he was no longer running away, but willing to talk. At this point I still didn't try and teach him, but just let him get used to me by establishing a relationship. Not all children will need this level of reassurance, but they will all need a period of 'learning to trust you'. How to assess current reading ability These are the stages I take in an assessment.
For his first visit to my house for a lesson, Ben started by wanting mum to stay, but 5 minutes later, told her she could go! Another game (fishing - see instructions below) had caught his attention and he was delighted to find he could read the cvc words with the vowel 'e'. This was a fun way to assess. I discovered that he had a smattering of look and say, and although he attempted to sound out the words he didn't know, this was hit and miss. After much fun and laughter, he was relaxed enough to sit at the table with my son, with a white board each, and I tested his ability to write given letters as I said their sound. He performed quite well with this, but his fear of failure was evident as he was reluctant to directly show me his work. I contrived a way whereby he checked with my son first, before showing me. He was happy with this arrangement. Assessment is taking time as I am having to slowly win his trust, but my initial reactions are that Ben is fairly secure on his initial sounds, with just the letter 'x' causing problems. Handwriting is an issue, and I think some letters he knew but couldn't remember how to write the letter. This was confirmed when the next session I gave him a set of magnetic letters and asked him to match them to the alphabet game pictures. He did this very quickly and accurately. However, he had difficulty recognising some of the magnetic letters, particularly, u/n and b/d/p/q. This is not unusual. After asking him to spell out some cvc words, I discovered that he was not sure about the final sounds of cvc words. We will work on that with the Final Sounds game next session. Ben is very keen to read. He read me a book his mother had bought him, but it was obvious to her and me that Ben had learnt to use the pictures as a cue to guessing. Therefore, he wasn't actually reading the words. I had chosen this book from his collection as it was titled 'Mad, Mad, Mad' and contained some cvc words I knew he could read. I therefore covered over the pictures and suggested we share read it. He started and I read the non cvc words. He did know little words like 'the' and 'is'. I could feel the temptation to guess was strong and I had to keep saying, 'Now you can read this word - sound it out!' He was so thrilled at the end. I feel sure he himself knew the difference between really reading and guessing. This gave me much information to use to plan out lessons. Plan your first phonic lesson Having assessed the above points, you are now ready to decide where to start teaching. You begin teaching at the point that you identified a weakness. If there was only one letter of the alphabet that was weak, for example, then you will want to address that. At the same time you will be moving forward. Maybe that letter was weak, but they could blend and segment cvc words well, but were not secure with consonant blends. In this case, I would make practicing the weak initial sound a short part of the lesson, a 'warm up' activity, before moving into more specific teaching of the lacking skill. Each lesson can have several short activities. Plan to keep the pace brisk, purposeful and focused. I always like to finish with a game as it sends the child home on a positive note. My games are designed so that it is easy to print a copy to send home for the child to play and show mum and dad how well they are doing.
Make reading as multi-sensory as possible When you are working with older children who have not made expected progress in reading, a multi-sensory approach is most often beneficial as it links sight, sound, movement and touch. These help the necessary brain connections to be made. So as you plan activities, think of how to make them feel, look, listen and get them physically moving as much of their bodies as you can! Here are some ideas:
The fishing game This is great every once in a while for a child who finds it hard to sit still for very long, as they can get up and move about. Do be prepared for 'tricks' that they will soon find, like picking up more than one word at a time. I never mind this as they have to read more words!
How to play!
Print out a page of fishes. Write a cvc word clearly on each fish. Attach a paper clip to each fish. Make a pond with a piece of blue paper/card. Make two rods with cardboard tubes (the stiff ones from rolls of tin foil are best), a length of string and a magnet to tie on the end. Take it in turns to catch a fish. If they catch more than one, I allow two (after all it means more reading!) Comments are closed.
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WelcomeHello, I'm Lilibette, qualified teacher (B.Ed Hons). I have taught phonics in mainstream education, followed by have home-educated my two sons to 18, and am now a private tutor. Categories
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