How can I teach my child to read? He memorizes the stories!

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What about a video game aimed at reading/phonics? There are quite a few inexpensive computer-based games available in this category.

Thanks again for the tips...I can see where really if he memorizes it, he'll just memorize words as well and learn to read that way...again, with that variety of books...Definitely working on that for now...

Video games is a good idea...I'll have to check into that. He does have a couple of computer games, I'll have to pull those out again now...You know, his interests change so much that some things I had put away, he is now getting into...

Thanks again all!

PS - WOW! It's just amazing when I hear about these 2/3 year olds! That is just too cool!

Sadly my kiddo went to daycare when he was 2-3, so the time we spent with him was minimal...I very much regret that..After that time, came a move and some major adjustments and issues and we were again super busy...Honestly, now that I homeschool him, I feel like I missed out on so much because I didn't see him as much before..so maybe that's why I'm constantly full of questions now too...

don't forget that there are certain "sight words" that a student needs to memorize by a certain age....so memorization is not all bad.

Your son sounds great. I envy the idea of homeschooling, and even considered it for our younger son. If he ever has real social problems, homeschooling is a great alternative.

One word about reading --

Some AS people are terrific readers, reading on a level way above their grade level. My first son was typical AS, in that he memorized the books as a little guy, then became a great reader and read voraciously for most of his young years.

Then my second son -- well, that's been a different story. He can decode GREAT, but his reading has been SLOW, and his comprehension has been horrible. It has affected his schoolwork to a marked degree. I just thought I should relax and live with this slow reading ability of his. He has been in a special ed class, where most of the work has been using short stories, somewhat low level, and he's been working with other kids with varying diagnoses. We just got back his standardized test scores from 5th grade, and his reading comprehension scores were well below average.

Fast forward to now. One would think that middle school would be a horrible change -- much more demands, socially much harder than elementary school. We made the decision to demand that the school take our son out of the special ed communication arts class, and put him in a class that is more grade level appropriate. He is required to read a book a month (something that would have been impossible in the past), and then he takes an AR test to test his comprehension. For a change, I decided to step back and not quiz him on his comprehension -- just let nature take it's course. On his first AR test, he got a 90%!

SO, . . . is the lesson here that maturity has finally kicked in, and he just is ready to be a much better reader?

OR, . . . was it just a plain good idea to kick things up a notch, and expect him to work at grade level?

I don't know what the answer is -- I just know that suddenly, he's reading and enjoying it, and really enjoying taking AR tests on a computer and getting a really good score. You just never know when a child is going to vastly improve with his reading skills.

Kris

Often special ed class materials don't respect that many of the students lack skills, not intelligence.

Wow! That's great about your son...I think it was a great thing to move him to a regular class instead of the special ed...Sometimes like someone mentioned, the teachers don't realize what they lack and actually a more simple (possibly boring) book is even worse than one that is more age appropriate or that they are interested in.

I know as a child in school when I was told to read a book it meant nothing to me. I still remember falling asleep in both my spanish and english courses reading books and having to start everyday at page 1 because I had no clue what I had read...yet once I was told to do a book report and because I was able to find books that interested me, I wrote an awesome report and I remembered everything...So, I think again that part of it is also related to how interested your little guy is in the subject...

PS - by the way, interesting about the whole middle school thing...My fondest memories of school were middle school...

Perhaps the unschooling approach is useful in some areas, most notably maybe in keeping that spark for wanting to learn. I'm personally not a fan of it because, after studying psychology in college, I know that schools structure learning timeframes around what a large body of evidence from research has proven is the best window for them to pick up these particular skill sets. Your son will have to learn some things as he needs, while continuing to pursue the interests that he wants. A healthy balance is key. It sounds like he is very bright and curious. Reading will open the whole world up for him. Explain that to him, I think he will understand. That was a huge motivating factor for me when it came time to learn to read. AS children tend to be extremely curious, especially with their special interests. For me it was cats, so my parents bought me cat books. I learned to read very quickly after that!

Memorizing is a healthy and necessary part of the learning process, but you don't want him falling behind his peers in his basic skills. Does he have a special interest? If so, it could be very useful.

So then you must be even more aware of why it is vital to teach your child that he can't follow only what interests him. If he doesn't learn that concept now, he will struggle for the rest of his life. To raise a boy who will become a successful adult, he needs to understand that not everything in life is about doing what we want...it's more about doing what we must.

AS children are a bit more difficult to get this point to, which means a bigger challenge for mom (and/or dad). Coddling the difficulty becomes enabling. The key is to help your son be as successful as he can in the real world. I was difficult, my parents did not know why, and they did not try to help. As a result, learning anything I don't want to learn is excruciating. I needed those coping skills much earlier.

Now, not to turn this into a debate on which is better, but this is one reason of many that I prefer the academic environment. Many kids want to do as their peers do. If Joey sees George reading...Joey might want to read too. Does your son interact socially? Some libraries have special children's story hour times, and that might be a great way to provide him with some social time too. I started taking my two year old son when he was only a few months old, and now he LOVES books. Similarly, my 4 year old is trying very hard to learn to read because she wants to know what all those books say.

Anyhow, enough rambling from me. Hope this makes sense.

Believe me that I understand both points of view, the schooling vs. unschooling, the traditional public schools vs. private schools and we take everything into account. Actually, with our method, we are not tied to doing something because everyone else does it, but because it works better for him.

I do agree with you that children in school attempt to do what their peers do...that goes from attempting to read...to drugs, sadly enough...So, there's always that fine line between raising a child that listens to what his heart and mind tell him he wants to do and "going with the flow" of his peers.

Again, I thank everyone's perspective and I'm sure that all of us have our best intentions in mind regardless of the road we each take our children through. For us, for now, this is the best road for our child. The great thing about our thinking is that we are not tied to doing anything because others feel that's what we should do, but we are always flexible in our thinking and changing our ways as we feel something is more important or can possibly be more beneficial. That's really what we are about.

Back to our topic of reading, I appreciate everything said here. Again, your suggestions are greatly appreciated and I will definitely use each and everyone with my son until we figure out what works best for him. That's what we strive to do.

I was an example of how good teaching can work wonders.

In first grade, I was reading at fifth grade level. I believe I learned through the phonics method. I went from someone who knew no English to one who was reading English well above grade level in the space of a year. The class was presumably a special education class, but the teacher respected my intelligence.

I remember learning to read by memorizing words myself...can't remember sounding things out. I memorized books when I was little too.

My son is 6, and he enjoys reading very much. He started around 4 with memorizing whole sentences, and has adjusted to reading single words by way of phonics (as was mentioned). Breaking down the words was very rough at first, as he'd argue that the parts that were being shown to him were not whole words. Now that he's gotten used to it, he can read just about anything I hand him. Whereas before he would only recognize certain words if it was in a specific book. Outside of that book, he wouldn't know what it said.

We also got him a V-smile which has several games geared towards spelling, etc. He really enjoyed/enjoys them a lot!

When he was first getting the hang of it, we had cards that we made up with word endings, and he would pick what letters he wanted to put in front of them. (example: We'd have a card with the ending of "ig", and letter cards like "p" "b" "f" "w", etc. on magnets so he could put them on the refrigerator). He loved the idea of how one or 2 letters could change an entire word. Now he easily reads words like "exasperated" and "decision".

Edit: Oh! I just thought of another thing we did with him. We would make a "word of the day" as well. Whenever anyone said the word, we would cheer (yes, thank you Pee Wee for that one, lol) and then spell it out.

We got leap pad for my son that helped alot. Another thing he really likes to do is to watch movies with the sub titles on. Go figure it drives us nuts lol.

I think the next step for him is to develop 1:1 correspondence, which you can do on your own with a strip of paper, a pen, and some scissors.

Help him think of an interesting, but short, sentence to write each day. ("Jason" has a dog named Spot.) (Jason ate a cookie today.) (Jason likes trains.) If he recognizes his own name or any other words, get him to use those in the sentence, but make sure it is a sentence of his own phrasing.

You write the sentence down on a strip of paper. Read it once by crisply pointing to each word as it is read, not sliding your finger across. Have him read it once the same way, crisply pointing to each word. You can help him point if he doesn't have the 1:1 yet.

You read it again, cutting off each word as it is read with the scissors. You can even cut a whole phrase if it is too many separate words. (Jason/ rode/ a / bike / at the park today. )

Now put the words in a different order and ask him to put it back together again. Have him read it once.

IF he feels like it, he can glue it to a larger paper and draw something about it, but only if he thinks the sentence is really special and he wants to keep it. Otherwise, trash it and do another one next time.


All of this should be done within a matter of minutes, short and sweet. Do not be-labor it with too much explanation or practice. This is simply done to help him get the idea that a spoken word correlates to a written word, so don't use this time to teach him how to actually read each of the words.

Once he has 1:1, he might just take off and start reading, as I've seen a lot of kids do. If not, the next step would be to teach him return sweep, which is going left to right, then back to the left when reading the next line.

p.s. \
If you think back to Dick and Jane, Janet and Mark, or whichever series you learned to read with back in the day when everybody in school learned to read, those were all sight word programs.

Phonics, or course, is critical to being able to read unfamiliar and more complicated words, and spell, but you will notice that most of the words we read on a very high frequency (the, is, if, ....) are not phonetically written, so you don't want them to get tripped up with too much focus on "sounding out." That is why I said that it is actually a blessing that your child focuses on the meaning and content of the story rather than the phonics.

I have seen many a student who was so focused on phonics and sounding out when they got stuck, that they never really developed the fluency needed to become great readers. It is really, really hard to break those kids of that habit and get them to not only read with fluency but also to learn to comprehend what they are reading.

Wow! What great ideas! I have written each down and I'm already working with him on this. He was adding words as someone else's child here and he's no longer doing that.

Anyway, I appreciate all these awesome ideas!

phonics with drills and cards with the letter(s) to be learned such as "ph"
then have him build words with the cards