My 4th grader is making quite a few mistakes when he reads. I think he needs some instruction but he is above the beginning level. What can I do to help him without starting over or making him think he needs a ‘baby’ program? My 5th grader is reading but he makes lots of mistakes and struggles with the longer words and complex text. How can I help him?
Students have problems reading because they lack specific skills necessary for proficient reading. If your child struggles with reading, in almost all cases you can help your student become a proficient reader. To help a student overcome their reading difficulty you need to directly help him develop all skills necessary for proficient reading. See the article How to Help a Struggling Reader Overcome Reading Difficulties and Develop Necessary Proficient Reader Skills
The first step is to look closely at your child’s reading and evaluate where he/she is at and they type of mistakes he is making. The types of errors are helpful in indicating what types of skills the student lacks. An informal reading evaluation can provide valuable information to help you identify where specific deficiencies may exist and determine possible gaps in necessary reading skills. After you identify missing skills you can then target instruction to directly help your student build necessary skills. For information on reading evaluations and how to evaluate your student, see the article The Importance of Evaluations in Reading Remediation and the article Actual Reading Errors Made by Struggling Readers.
Sometimes the student is lacking necessary foundational phonologic processing skills. These students would need a complete direct systematic phonics program to establish necessary proficient reading pathways. For more information, see the article Students Who Face Difficulties Learning to Read: Information on Reading Problems and Dyslexia
In other cases, the student is coming along with phonologic processing and may just be missing knowledge in some of the complexities or need skill development in handling multisyllable words. If your believe your student is processing print phonetically and just needs work on some of the higher level skills you can use the advanced sections of Back on the Right Track Reading Lessons to help develop the higher skills. Quickly review the vowel combinations to ensure he knows all the complexities and then directly work on the multisyllable words.
BACK to Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) Page
Additional information, articles and resources on teaching students to read proficiently is located on the Free Reading Information page of the Right Track Reading website.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This information was written by Miscese Gagen a mother with a passion for teaching children to read proficiently by using effective methods. She is also a successful reading tutor and author of the reading instructional programs Right Track Reading Lessons and Back on the Right Track Reading Lessons. The purpose of this information is to empower parents and teachers with information on teaching children how to read. We CAN improve reading proficiency, one student at a time! Additional information is located at www.righttrackreading.com ~ Copyright 2005, 2006, 2007 Miscese R. Gagen