Why Bright Children Can Struggle With Reading and How To Help

It is unfortunate that some children develop serious reading problems quite unnecessarily. The cause can be the design of the early reading books that they use. As a parent or teacher, it is important to know the pattern of symptoms you will see when this is happening.

Luckily, we have found it quick and easy to fix. 

The Warning Signs

At first things seem to go quite well. The child often learns most of the alphabet and then a few words without a problem. 
As things move on, the child starts to guess more words, sometimes with no relation to the word on the page.    Then the books get more complicated and the child's reading seems to go into reverse.

Eventually you get an implosion of confidence, usually around the age of 6 or 7. By this stage the child is very reluctant to read at all.   This can become a permanent situation, without the right help. That will destroy the child's changes of reaching anything like his or her full potential. And yet we find it can usually be fixed in a few weeks.

Why This Happens

As a child approaches a task like reading, it is natural to use what seems the easiest approach. For a very visual child, memorising words by sight will seem the easiest thing to do.

At the moment, most children are given phonics tuition in the classroom. But to a non-auditory child, it can seem baffling. And in a group setting it is very hard for a teacher to know that or to have time to fix it with one-on-one help.

The design of early reading books usually feeds this very situation. They use a small number of words and repeat them a lot. That makes them easy to read for a child who is memorising the words by sight.   But, in reality, the child is not reading at all, but using a shortcut. And is travelling down a blind alley with no exit.  
The child needs guidance out of this situation and onto the right path.

The Solution

The most important thing is to help the child get a handle on all the different phonemes being used in English. You need to give these abstract sounds dimensionality, so that they are easier to remember. For instance, in Easyread we use classic memory enhancement techniques and connect each sound to a bright, active and slightly surreal image. That makes them very easy for the child to use as a memory hook.    Then you need to present exercises that break the memorisation and guessing habbit. The Easyread Coaching System uses games and exercises specially designed to do that.

And finally, you need to create a way for the child to read text, without getting stuck. Easyread does that by floating the image for each phoneme above the words in Easyread Text. That means the child can look for a clue whenever a word is unfamiliar.  
Using these simple techniques you will see dramatic progress. Children who have become totally frustrated and depressed can learn to read in 2-6 months.

Article Source: http://www.content-corral.com

For more information on phonics and literacy for children and details on Easyread, click www.EasyreadSystem.com
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