My child has trouble reading...what to do

Being a slow reader is not a phase. But, your child will be thrilled to know he or she is missing only a small set of lessons. 

You might not be aware of trouble until 3rd or 4th Grade but skills weakness has been stealing the fun from your child for a long time. 

Luckily, there is a way to give your child a quick-fix. (And, once this system is in place for your child, you can start work on the weak letter team skills that caused the problem.)

This system works at any grade-level. An 8th grade boy went to the Honor Roll at his private school after one summer of catch up with this system. A 3rd Grade boy got the highest grade of his entire classroom on a social studies test.

1) Quit stopping to sound out; telling your child the unknown word will have better, faster results. Stopping to sound out causes the short-term memory to drop most comprehension gathered to the point of stopping.This is the way the brain works for everyone.

When your child is reading with you, tell your child the unknown words or tell him to slide over the unknown word and keep reading onward. Tell your child to let the words he does know help get the meaning of the sentence and the paragraph. This helps your child get better at gathering the meaning of what is happening on this page, or this story. 

At the end of the paragraph or page, you ask questions of your child: what is happening on this page, who is doing what, and so on.

2) Now look back to the unknown words; ask your child to try them twice, then tell him the words. Many words cannot be sounded out but your child can get their meaning. Canoe, chaos, boulder - cannot be sounded out but your child will get their meanings from the rest of the words in the paragraph. Do these steps in several 15 minute sessions with your child, so that your child can see what to do when he is reading on his own. You will see good progress. 

To work on your child's weak letter skills, find this blog's search box -- top left corner. Search: ce, ci and ge, gi and silent gh and compound words and short vowel long vowel and tion and tious. 

Or look at my new books. I use ebay as my website. Search Instant Reading Help all my books will pop up for you. Write me if you wish. Have a great day, Mary Maisner