This is the continuation of the story of my 9-year-old grandson’s breakthrough in reading. He is a very bright lad, but has really struggled with reading. (First part of the story and the third part.)
For the past two or three years he has refused to have anything to do with reading. He loves being read to – quite complicated stories like a biography of Sir Isaac Newton (albeit for children), Leaving Microsoft to Change the World, and My Friend Flicka, Thunderhead and The Green Grass of Wyoming.
About a month ago he was given the ultimatum, either he work with me or they would hire someone to tutor him. He reluctantly agreed when there was no way out. He had to concentrate really hard and struggled with our first session on “u_e” words. (The USBs for Success with Phonics had just arrived. Would I need to change anything?)
He has discovered that it is much easier for him to read in his head than out loud.
Recently I was staying with them for a couple of days. His father had been away working for a week, so the time available for someone to read to him was limited – perhaps he would need to do some reading for himself!
On the first morning, it was his job to clear the table after breakfast. My daughter came back to find me clearing the table and him reading. He thought that was a safe bet to get out of his chores. That was the start of his breakthrough in reading.
By the middle of the next morning he had read three chapters of The Children at Cherry Tree Farm by Enid Blyton. He even took the book to the toilet with him so he didn’t have to stop reading. He was only asking for help with an occasional longer or irregular word like “thinking” (confused with “kn” in “know” etc.), “sure”, “enough” and “caught”.
Then I took the opportunity to have a session with him (our second session). We only worked for about 15 minutes on the sounds of “y”. He is learning cursive writing at the moment, so we used that.
/y/ – He volunteered “yoyo” and we talked about how to spell it. Then I suggested “yet”. While he was thinking hard about how to spell it, his 3-year-old brother piped up /y/ /e/ /t/. We looked at each other in amazement, but he wasn’t fazed that his 3-year-old brother could do something easily that he found difficult.
He was fine with /i/. He would have spelled “happy” with one “p”. I explained that the “y” would do the same as a silent “e” and it would say hApy. He was also happy to treat the sound of “y” as /i/, where he would have chosen /EE/, when I pointed out that we really say it somewhere between the two and if we use /i/ we only have to remember three sounds. I wrote in “hymn” and sounded it out for him pointing at the letters and saying /h/ /i/ /m/ (two fingers for “mn” = /m/). “Hymn” was within his experience where “myth” was not. On the spot, these were the only two words that I could think of with that spelling pattern. (Actually, he was right. See word lists for the sounds of y.)
There were no issues with the /I/ sound in “fly”, “my” and “sky” but he was exhausted and didn’t think he would do any more reading just now.
So, although he has made a huge breakthrough in reading, it is still going to take him a lot of hard work to be confident and competent in both reading and spelling at a level that he needs for his interests and general abilities.
By the way, his record for solving the Rubik’s cube is now 38 seconds.
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