Hi - I have a 9 year old son who is having a lot of trouble (still) with reading. He will do things like read “polar” as “plovar”. When he hears words like truck and train he spells them as “chuck” and “chain”. He seems to do a bit better with larger words like “beautiful” but often reads “of” as “for”. I have recently discovered Stevenson Reading program but am having trouble finding out much about it. Do any of you have any information about it? Or any advice? Thanks so much!
Laura in MO
Re: Stevenson Reading program
Stevenson is okay — based on solid principles — but you can find newer materials with more support materials to work with. It sounds like he really doesn’t have the concept of sound-symbol connections — you might want to start with a visit to THe Reading Genie at http://www.auburn.edu/~murraba . It’s an excellent overview of reading — digest it all and you’ll probably know as much as his graduate students :-) — and includes something called a “letterbox lesson” that is great for teaching this. (You want to make sure he has phonemic awareness first — that he is aware of the sounds in words… that’s covered in some depth there, too.)
Also, there is a yahoo group called MSSL at home which is awfully quiet — but has all klinds of excellent materials in the “files” section, so if you join the group you can get “how to set up a reading notebook” and all kinds of other goodies and ideas that were collected from parents teaching their kids who struggled with reading at home.
I think from what I have read here about Stevenson that it is not the best; you can do a lot better.
Your son’s errors are absolutely typical and yes they can be remediated, but it means work and time, no way around it.
If you want copies of my posts explaining a direct method of teaching him yourself or with a tutor, email me at [email protected]