My DD just turned 3 and is reading phonetically since about 2 months (it just “clicked” and she could blend the sounds
together from one day to the other). She can read most words consisting of up to 6 or 7 letters by sounding out each
letter and then blend them together (excluding some very difficult words with many special sounds - we are reading
in German). Some months ago she could read about 20 sight words, which she isn’t using yet, she is simply sounding
out each word she sees, even her own name.
How did you proceed to make the reading fluent, without sounding out each letter? Will the sounding out
disappear automatically, when she will get more proficient in reading?
Thanks for your replies in advance, really an amazing forum here, I wish I had found it earlier …
It sounds like your daughter is excited about her new skill and wants to practice it.
It’s a bit like when you give a toddler a shape sorter. One week they will egnore it and the next they will practice putting shapes in every hole until they fit. Finally they will know exactly which hole to put each shape in without testing it on every hole.
In time with practice she will develop fluency. I would give her plenty of practice using her phonics and wait patiently for fluency to develop. It shouldn’t take too much longer. You can model fluent reading by showing her how you read the little words quickly and sound out the bigger ones but waiting will get you there anyway.
We did lots of reading and text pointing. Practice will improve this and words will become memorized that were at first sounded it. Exposure, exposure, exposure to reading is what she needs. She is doing great, You must be thrilled. I would focus on introducing word families or patterns on flash cards or the computer and read them to her without sounding them out. This will help her reading speed. A simple example would be to choose a word family such as ack, and add a different beginning sound to change the words. You could show her a set of words quickly such as back, black, crack, hack, mack, pack, etc. If you show her these a regularly a few times she will get them and be able to read more quickly. You can probably find stories online that feature that word family to have her practice at the end of a few days of reviewing or you can write your own, she can even help you if she wants to. A combination of sight reading and phonics produces amazing results. My kids were reading very fluidly because we combined the methods. My older kids that read only phonetically did not read as well, as quickly as the younger children.
Yes, that’s the way I also planned for the next months. There are so much super books in English available which
use i.e. only some sight words etc. Unfortunately there’s nothing like that in German, as far as I researched.
There is a mass of first reader books, which requires the reader to use already all blends available in German,
so that’s too much for my daughter right now.
I think I have to make some books on my own (a la Doman).
At this time we are using a German Reading Primer which is based on a syllable based approach. So at
first the reader learns to read things like ma, me, mi, mo, mu then la, le, li, lo, lu, ta, te, ti, to, tu and
all combinations of such syllables together like Mama, Timo, … with some easy sight words like “is”.
I think I will try to make her read these fluently at first…
Apart from that, we do a lot of reading (I read to her and her 4 year old brother (he is also reading, but slightly better already,
but he’s using a lot of sight words)). We read almost everything, also a lot of easy books (recommended for about 2 year olds),
so they don’t have to concentrate on the plot and can follow the text quite easily. One of the kids reads the title of the
book to me and at some points in the text they should read words they already know. Sometimes they read it to me, but they
are often also guessing based on the plot, without even trying to read them. Hoping this will get better in the future …
my now six years old very good reader got stuck at the sounding out stage for a while and i did ask the forum for help i remember . My daughter never paid attention to sight words , refused to look at flashcards , never looked at the book when i read to her and was bothered when i tried to point out words . So i kinda of ignored it for a while and continued me reading for her and started presenting her with usborn type leveled books that progress in difficulty . i bought 20/20 sight words dvds but she never looked at them . I hink what helped her is that she has been read to from birth , has good auditory skills , the way she addressed sight words is trying spelling them in the beginning she would stop half way and find out the word doesn’t make sense and immediately correct herself .
i tried to work with word families books , bob books , she didn’ like them , she wanted more meaty content . i would ask her to read a page like sam sat , instead she would go one sunny day sam felt like having a picnic and sat on the grass lol she has been always a story teller , even now that she can read , when she gets stuck on a word she comes up with a synonym and carry on reading .
my just turned 4 yesterday is doing the same , he actually knew his sounds and could read phonetically earlier than her but still he sounds out every word before he reads it , i stressed over this with his sister , i am not now , and i know he will be reading in no time . i think what can help your daughter and what helped mine also is the words family in little reader course , i was doing the course with her then 18 months old brother when we would get to this section he would stop ( not interested ) call his sister and tell her tina your turn now ( her turn to sound out ) , with the course she had the opportunity to view the presentation fast or slow to sound out words .So maybe if you have LR you could try those presentations again .
viv
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