I'm tutoring an 8th grade student twice a week. He is in all upper-level (advanced) courses and performs well in math, science, and social studies. His weakness lies with reading however. He's not very good with words, particularly vowels. His reading level is probably average, and his understanding of the context is fine, however he has a hard time pronouncing words and figuring out how to say and spell words. Any tips on how I can help him, like speech activities or exercises?

 

it's all about phonics and learning to sound a word out phoenetically (sp?)

that's how i learned to read in grade school and i can tell i have the advantage over some folks in spelling and even reading even now in my 20's

 

ethnicity...? maybe just an accent LoL. have the student read aloud and engage in conversation more often. it will work... trust me. =)

 

Just have him enunciate a certain sentence with the problematic words until he gets it.

If it's really bad you might have to talk to a speech pathologist.

 

especially if his reading is not in line with other abilities. demand the school district provide some testing. all this is well understood, no mystery. they dont have the best of schools around here but my wife knows they provide the service in colorado. it might be a federal thing.

he has had this disability for some time, may be related to a physical cause.

you will get a better idea of what he knows and dosnt know.

 

i wonder if having your student listen to audio books on tape/cd would help? just brainstorming

 

werd.

my daughter goes to montessori and that's how she's taught.

she's 4 and she can read better than most 8 year-olds.

 

He's a black kid, very smart intellectually and he understands his problem, which is why he's seeking tutoring. This is however, in Philadelphia, so he deals with the regular hardships of being underprivileged and such. From what he's told me, his middle school is worthless. But you can tell he's got an imaginative mind. Through middle school, every summer he runs a water ice "business" with his friend out of his friends house, as well as making many of his own clothes. He does advertisements at grocery stores and such, he does all the inventory for them and everything. Bright kid, star athlete, but you can tell as he is reading say his vocabulary assignment, he is a very slow reader, and has problems with vowels. Apparently, he mixes them up.

For example, he wasn't able to say the word "definition", note how many i's there are that throw him off, but that's a reasonably straight forward word that you could probably say correctly by saying it phonetically. At the same time, he could not say the following words:

huge
oasis
prodigious
discord

and a few others.

I'll try the reading aloud, he has a book to read every week (hence, he is in the advanced courses). He is ahead in math, fine in science and social studies, but he is struggling through reading. Perhaps him reading out loud is the best way to go, I remember a huge part of middle school was getting in groups and reading out loud to each other as we followed along in the books, and I have some doubts that he gets that kind of exposure at his school.

Thanks for all the input! Hope I can help this kid out.

 

^ i admire your work....kudos.

 

What you are describing is a discrepancy between his expressive and receptive language ability as well as what appeared to be some delayed reading skills.

I would suggest a few things.

Get him an evaluation with a Speech Pathologist. If there is a language problem then they will be able to administer tests to isolate and quantify this. Once this is done the school system will be required to pay for any services that can address the problem.

Secondly, get his eyesight checked and have a follow-up done for dyslexia. The types of problems that you have mentioned can be related to this as well. You may simply be seeing a subset of a larger problem because you are sensitive to these behavior patterns and not others.

It sounds like he's a bright kid but when you grow up with a disorder like dyslexia or language delay you don't always know it.