HEARING A CHILD READ - AN EXERCISE

I listened to GH reading his book ‘Mark Spark in the Dark’ by Jacqueline Wilson. I made a point of telling him any word he found difficult when he had hesitated for one second.

At first I found it quite difficult to just tell him the word as my teacher training has always taught me to encourage the child to ‘sound out the word’ or ‘have a go.’

I soon found that this method was having a positive effect on GH as he was more keen to read on and find out what would happen next in the story.

GH was happy at the end of the story. He told me that he was able to understand the story better than when he usually reads because if he struggles with lots of the words he is unable to make sense of the story.

By just telling him the word he was able to follow the story easily and he did not forget the plot of the story.

I encouraged him to look at the pictures and he was able to make comments about the story and was able to relate to what he was reading about.

When he read about a character in the book who was scared of the dark he commented, “I used to be scared of the dark too.” Usually GH does not enjoy reading and is not able to comment about what he has just read.

GH had started to read the book during the previous week and had read five pages. When I heard him read and told him the difficult words he was able to read to the end of the short story without getting tired or frustrated.

Johanne Rifkin

(Johanne is a student on the Dyslexia Certificate course. This short piece is the description she wrote of a practical exercise which forms part of the course.)

. . . the words would just get scrambled up even worse . . .

I gave a dyslexic student a short story of approximately 300 words to read aloud to me. It was on a topic he enjoyed - soccer. He is improving in his ability to decode phonetically spelled words.

We often read together aloud and he was not hesitant about reading for me. When he came to a word that he could not sound out and hesitated, I told him the word after a second had passed. When he finished, he said that it was a good story. He did not feel frustrated when he didn't know a word because he knew that he could either sound it out or I would help him.

He said he wouldn't be as happy reading it without help "Because the words would just get scrambled up even worse."

I sensed that he was happy at the end and throughout the story. He smiled when the new goalie scored in his own net. He was comprehending well. He said he would have kept reading if the story had been longer.

He related to the story because soccer is one of his favourite sports. I am considering hel! ping him to write an addition to the story since he is a creative writer but needs practise getting his thoughts on paper.

Flora Gillis

Changing over to the Golden Rule

During all my training as a Language Support Assistant we were always taught that we should allow the child to make an attempt at sounding out the words they didn’t know or give them the beginning and letting them do the rest. For two years I have tried this with JP (my dyslexic 6 year old) with much stress and no success, which of course means he now shuts down whenever he is asked to read.

However since learning the “Golden Rule” I have been telling JP the words he doesn’t recognise and I have found that he has become more interested in reading as he now can focus more on what the story is about instead of spending most of his time sounding out words. When he is finished with the story he can now recall what he has read, something he could rarely do before. His attitude towards reading has really made an improvement since we switched over to the “Golden Rule” method.

P.P., North Queensland, Australia

• • • Hearing Your Child Read