[senco-forum] [SENco-forum] reading recovery

While this RR maybe pose problem for tutors with the amount of unlearning it creates, the problem does not just originate with RR.

 Well meaning teachers, reading buddies, parents and family are equally likely to promote a whole mish mash of approaches to reading and often, with children with undiagnosed dyslexia, purely in desperation to try and get the child to connect to text. 

In an attempt to get the phonetics or whole word across can be heard to say 'What does it start with? 'c' -so it must be cat because there is a cat in the picture'.  This then prompts the child to scan pictures in vain for other clues etc etc. Similarly running a finger under words and so good for normal early readers can be a real problem for auditory dyslexia or APD where they process sound slowly and are hearing the sound for one word while the finger is pointing g to the next word already!  Great!

I was told off for teaching phonics to my child and then using a phonetic way of reading. She could read -ergo it hadn't worked & therefore she must be a whole word reader. During our 7 years together I had run the whole gamut of reading strategies - starting with lovely clean phonics before reading was ever attempted and all in vain.  She was as unable to cope with phonics and then blending as she was ill equipped to deal with whole words. The tutor, a great one as it turned out in the end, at least had the grace to apologise when she realised the extent of the difficulty.  ICT helped to make the best inroads to reading with TextHELP being used to type and this improved spelling no end.

Time spent reading with children with no SEN works.  They seem quite immune to how we choose to teach them and just learn to read.  A US study found merit in both whole word and phonics and said that a mixture of both works best.  So spending time with slower, or GLD learners via RR or anything else with 1:1 input ( or ICT using Eddie's Electronic library) will work. 

Where the system always breaks down is for the unlucky 20-25% where dealing with phonics/blending/consonant clusters 'str' or 'tion', or, abstract whole words - 'was/are' is difficult and where context in dictation sentences has to be used to learn and then these broken back down to individual words in isolation. 

Not sure how this scheme got to be pushed to the fore by government.

Sharon

No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG. 
Version: 7.5.524 / Virus Database: 269.23.20/1453 - Release Date: 18/05/2008 09:31