*Updated Again* 2nd Grader Help: Understanding Instructions

[arus2001]

Vision would've been my first suggestion, but seems like other people brought it up. Not personally experienced with dyslexia, so others would be better off fielding that possibility.

As for BG being helpful, I think you'd be hard pressed to find someone who'd legitimately want to rail on someone striving to raise their kid properly relative to the shit we had to wade through with XI and the internet in general. Basically, we don't want 'em to be the future moron of the world. Some of the sillier shit that goes on here like dating advice or stupid expensive shoe discussion is free game, though.

For reading purposes, one of the earlier series I recall going through was the one that included The Black Cauldron, which I think Disney did a movie of at one point. There are 5 books with TBC being the second. It might be a bit too much for a second grader, but if it seems like she's into medieval fantasy, it doesn't go very dark and was usually easy to process. Was in 4th, myself, when I'd started on them.

[BaneTheBrawler]

The first couple Harry Potter books are fairly easy, too, iirc. And I didn't really elaborate on it, but The Hobbit is definitely a children's book. If you haven't read it in a while, you forget, but when you go back and read it as an adult it becomes really obvious the target audience is children/early teens. Probably still a bit early for those, though.

I like the comics idea. Calvin and Hobbes is a good one. You might try Peanuts or maybe Spongebob; I'm sure there's loads of material out there for those. There's also a bunch of Young Adult Star Wars stuff; it's all been canonically invalidated but who cares! Some of it is even pretty decent. And I know there's some Star Trek YA stuff, too. I remember seeing some about Data's time in Starfleet Academy.

I don't really know too much Fantasy stuff, tbh. I tend to prefer SciFi. But maybe you can find some video game books of the appropriate age? If she were older I'd suggest Warcraft or Magic the Gathering.

[Moss]

We read The Giver in 3rd grade and I remember reading Holes in a day when I was in 4th grade. Holes is a really easy read

[Salodin]

I'd recommend animorphs, but that series gained a lot of adult situations towards the end so skip it until she's older lol.

[Nightbreed]

Thanks for all the book recommendations, I do appreciate all your responses.

Going to work on all the suggestions and see how it goes.

I brought up the possibility of dyslexia with her teacher this morning and asked her to keep it in mind over the next couple weeks.

[Airenn]

Speaking of Animorphs, it's one of the very few series of books I aim to keep, but I never finished the collection. I'm missing the last 8 or so if any of you BGers happen to have them to get rid of. :D

The Unicorn Cronicles by Bruce Coville is a great series. Not sure if it's too complex for a 2nd grader but soon, it's suuuuch a good series.

[Nightbreed]

Just an update on this, going in two weeks to retest for dyslexia.

It is a 3 hour test and a week later a 1 hour consult and full report for me.

Thanks again for the help and suggestions on this, she has been doing much better but I see enough at home during homework and reading time that still concerns me.

[Salodin]

Good on you for staying on it and not giving up.

[Ratatapa]

Dumb question, but did you read to her alot when she was a baby?

That could be an issue too no?

[vivbiibasjiu]

Animorphs is awesome and started my reading obsession which lead to literally consuming an entire novel per day throughout all of school. Read every book in the series of course and would highly recommend it to any kid if they like animals or sci-fi stuff. Everworld from the same author is also great for fantasy. If they like horror try Fear Street! (I never liked Goosebumps, but Fear Street was great)

[Nightbreed]

Dumb question, but did you read to her alot when she was a baby?

That could be an issue too no?

Yes, I read to her most nights when she was a baby, once she began to read we would something like one page each.

End of 1st grade and into the 2nd grade is when I started noticing it more (as the words got harder in the books and school work)

What I did not notice until this year though that was when the page had a picture describing the scene she was able to read it much more quicker than a page with no picture.

[Vandalhart]

Speaking of Animorphs, it's one of the very few series of books I aim to keep, but I never finished the collection. I'm missing the last 8 or so if any of you BGers happen to have them to get rid of. :D

The Unicorn Cronicles by Bruce Coville is a great series. Not sure if it's too complex for a 2nd grader but soon, it's suuuuch a good series.

Man, Bruce Coville... that brings back memories. I read his My Teacher is an Alien series when I was young. I enjoyed them quite thoroughly.

[Sepukku]

Whatever Ratatapa says regarding reading and comprehension, don't follow it

2nd grade-4th grade is when a lot of people begin having vision issues. If its not needing glasses, they may need more incentive to read independently more. If its not dyslexia maybe consider people may be reading the instructions too much to her? It seems like theres an effort to make sure she understands the directions so she can get good grades on the worksheets. I am opposed to giving too much support and avoiding accommodations if at all possible. I felt like some of the kids I've worked with leaned too heavily on them rather than working through the issue themselves. If a kid is blind, yeah, braille or audiobooks are good accommodations - you can't work through being blind; regardless of how hard you try the vision doesn't come back. Her reading skills though likely can be improved with continued efforts that involve her reading. Other people reading anything for her doesn't really stimulate the same functions in her brain. I don't want to sound too insensitive about it, and you seem to understand the gravity behind it to post here for help, but she simply just needs to work through it cause soon in a couple more grades the schoolbooks won't have pictures and she'll be an adult before you know it and to survive in the world she will need to be able to read instructions, questions, requests, and other written communication in emails, work orders, etc and make sense of them with no one reading for her and no pictures.

[Deadgye]

She sounds and pronounces the words she recognizes and can sound out very clear, when she gets stuck on a word she tends to make something up and continue on which of course messes up the entire sentence. When I have her read to me I started to use a pencil to point out each word, she is doing much better now that I started with that, tonight she had no issues reading any of the homework when I pointed out each word....I am starting to think she wanders the page without it but can't say for certain yet.

What I did not notice until this year though that was when the page had a picture describing the scene she was able to read it much more quicker than a page with no picture.

Try to watch over her reading out loud some things that have words and sentences nicely spaced out, similar in style to children's books and simple forum posts. And then watch over her reading out loud some things that are basically walls of text, like normal books. Try it with her keeping track of her place using her fingers or hands, and without her being allowed to keep her place. Compare her ease of reading and understanding of reading things she clearly enjoys and finds fun, and things that she doesn't find fun or is thinking of as an "assignment".

If there's an easily noticeable difference between all these things, there's a chance this can be an attention problem. Especially if she gets impatient while trying to do the slower methods and not fun things. Those are some things off the top of my head that I personally struggle(d) with. Replacing words incorrectly is something I constantly do if I'm reading ahead of myself, and slowing down or using various methods to keep track of my place helps immensely. These problems are also incredibly exasperated by having a smaller vocabulary, so if it is indeed an attention problem at the very least it'll get better as she increases her vocab and contextual understanding.

Also seconding the above post in that her reading things and then being corrected afterwards, then her reading it again, is infinitely more desirable that someone reading to her. The latter is a temporary workaround, not a solution.

[Nightbreed]

Whatever Ratatapa says regarding reading and comprehension, don't follow it

2nd grade-4th grade is when a lot of people begin having vision issues. If its not needing glasses, they may need more incentive to read independently more. If its not dyslexia maybe consider people may be reading the instructions too much to her? It seems like theres an effort to make sure she understands the directions so she can get good grades on the worksheets. I am opposed to giving too much support and avoiding accommodations if at all possible. I felt like some of the kids I've worked with leaned too heavily on them rather than working through the issue themselves. If a kid is blind, yeah, braille or audiobooks are good accommodations - you can't work through being blind; regardless of how hard you try the vision doesn't come back. Her reading skills though likely can be improved with continued efforts that involve her reading. Other people reading anything for her doesn't really stimulate the same functions in her brain. I don't want to sound too insensitive about it, and you seem to understand the gravity behind it to post here for help, but she simply just needs to work through it cause soon in a couple more grades the schoolbooks won't have pictures and she'll be an adult before you know it and to survive in the world she will need to be able to read instructions, questions, requests, and other written communication in emails, work orders, etc and make sense of them with no one reading for her and no pictures.

Definitely agree with this advice, I have asked the teacher at times to "back" off on the extra help because I too thought she was used to all the help she got in 1st grade and wanted the same attention in 2nd grade. With homework I always leave her at her desk to do it by herself at first and then we go over it, correct and review any mistakes she may have made but she I do have her complete it without my assistance at first. Some nights I am completely baffled by the work she does and other nights her homework is flawless.

I do appreciate all the advice and suggestions here.

[Nightbreed]

Try to watch over her reading out loud some things that have words and sentences nicely spaced out, similar in style to children's books and simple forum posts. And then watch over her reading out loud some things that are basically walls of text, like normal books. Try it with her keeping track of her place using her fingers or hands, and without her being allowed to keep her place. Compare her ease of reading and understanding of reading things she clearly enjoys and finds fun, and things that she doesn't find fun or is thinking of as an "assignment".

If there's an easily noticeable difference between all these things, there's a chance this can be an attention problem. Especially if she gets impatient while trying to do the slower methods and not fun things. Those are some things off the top of my head that I personally struggle(d) with. Replacing words incorrectly is something I constantly do if I'm reading ahead of myself, and slowing down or using various methods to keep track of my place helps immensely. These problems are also incredibly exasperated by having a smaller vocabulary, so if it is indeed an attention problem at the very least it'll get better as she increases her vocab and contextual understanding.

Also seconding the above post in that her reading things and then being corrected afterwards, then her reading it again, is infinitely more desirable that someone reading to her. The latter is a temporary workaround, not a solution.

Thanks! She does much better on her own with spaced out words and short stories that are broken out into parts, their weekend homework usually consists of two stories broken out into five parts and then they have to answer questions at the end. She does very well with these assignments and even reading aloud to the class from the school workbooks the teacher says she always volunteers and reads the sentences clearly.

I will just continue to work with her teacher and do everything I can to keep her up to speed, she gets down on herself quite easily when it comes to school.

[Viq]

If her problem is reading comprehension (not to be confused with simply being able to pronounce the words in front of her), then you should actively assist with her homework, and not just the actual questions that are part of the assignment. Have her read the instructions out loud, not just the stories. Ask her to rephrase the instructions. Really, asking her to rephrase anything that she has trouble with will be the best window into where her problem lies. If she can't rephrase a specific part, you can check what you said, and figure out if there were words she didn't understand, or if she has trouble with the grammatical structure that was presented. From there, you can have a better idea of which area to focus on when helping her with reading assignments (or just reading in general).

Theory time~ There was a Russian psychologist named Lev Vygotsky who did a lot of work in the field of language acquisition. His primary theory was known as the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD). Basically, Vygotsky hypothesized that all learning is a social activity. Studying by yourself, while fine at building slowly off of areas that you already understand, is not sufficient to actually learn new things, especially within the realm of language, including 1st and 2nd language acquisition. Anything a child can do on their own falls into the Zone of Actual Development (ZAD), or it is something that the child has already learned completely. The ZPD is any task that the child can not complete on their own, but can be completed with assistance from a teacher, parent, peer, etc. This is the key. Evaluating your daughter's ZPD, and then working within that to help her complete tasks (in this case, understand things that she is reading), is crucial to her development.

This may mean revisiting books that are too easy for her to establish that they fall within her ZAD. This also means trying to have her read things that are beyond her capability, to get an idea of how far her ZPD reaches. She needs active help to understand things that she is struggling with, and it sounds like you are certainly willing to help her, which is fantastic.

Remember the basic tenet of Vygotsky's theory: What a child can do with assistance today, he can do by himself tomorrow. Learning, especially language learning, is a social process.

Source: Linguistics major with 5 years of ESL experience teaching to both college students and kindergarten students.

[Nightbreed]

Received her results back this week and they confirm she has (Problematic - Mild) Dyseidetic and Dysphonetic Dyslexia.

Problematic - Mild is at the bottom of the severity scale, they suggested an Orton-Gillingham program for her and gave me all her results from the test.

Spent the last day researching some of the programs available in the area and have calls into a few that will allow me to sit in on other sessions to see how they work.

Just wanted to stop in and thank you all again and give you the final update on how things turned out.

[Salodin]

I want to congratulate you on taking care of your child. Bout time some one listened to internet advice.

[Nightbreed]

I want to congratulate you on taking care of your child. Bout time some one listened to internet advice.

And not a single water bottle was thrown!