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 4th 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!
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