Crutches used by my students

Imagine a smart kid going to kindergarten full of excitement and confidence and finding out that he cannot read like most of the other kids. What would he do to avoid shame? Being smart he will learn ways to cope with the situation. He memorises passages and uses picture clues to guess words.

When a kid has done this for 2 years in kindergarten and another 3 years in primary school it takes time to rid of this habit/crutch.

My current student, just like all my previous students, has learned to cope by memorizing and using picture clues to deal with the stress of reading and to avoid shame. As he has been doing this sort of coping for 5 years it takes longer to rid the bad habits than if he were in primary one. As such it is best to identify a shut down kid as early as possible.

On the 4^th lesson my student read the word 'mug' as 'rug' and read 'jogs' as 'run'. He read the word 'rat' as mouse using picture clues. This is what I mean when I said that he still memorises and guesses words when he can already read phonetically. This guessing habit, that has been learned as a means of coping to avoid shame, will take more than a month to overcome. (You will understand these examples better when I publish my book on-line – hopefully by end of February.)

The page at the end of each lesson, I have designed, comes only with sentences without any picture clues to ensure he reads using phonics together with sight words he has learned. He is forced to read using phonics as there are no picture clues.

Because this bad habit has been ingrained over many years it is executed automatically. 

As such my first step is to let him understand what he is doing and why he does it. He can and will remove the bad habits of guessing only when he is aware of them.

I keep repeating that he is a smart kid and that it is the wrong teaching of alphabet sounds that has confused him. 

When he read ‘mug’ as ‘rug’ I asked him for the sound of the first letter. He then quickly read it as ‘rug’. I then tell him not to guess the word as he can already read it.

When he read the word ‘rat’ as ‘mouse’ I asked him how the initial letter ‘r’ got the sound of ‘m’. 

Now, after 7 one hour lessons with me he is more confident and I believe I have restored his self esteem. However, it will still take a month or so to get rid of his bad habits. Slowly but surely!