Halloween is almost here and it’s got me thinking about tricks and treats from a reading specialist’s perspective of course! The tricks and treats that I see can be found as words.
When your child reads, he meets them. Does it appear that he encounters more tricks than treats – the tricks being sight words like “said”, “many”, “move” – words that cannot be sounded out – words that do not follow phonetic “rules”? The ratio of regular to sight (nondecodable) words in our English language is around 80/20 but it seems often to a struggling reader that the reverse is true! In turn, the challenge of a reading specialist, is to use the many teaching “tricks” in her “bag” to help ensure the child will learn these sight words. Often I create a story around a sight word because many dyslexic children think with pictures, reception often stronger in the right hemisphere of their brain.
As Halloween approaches, next to the “countdown calendar” on the fridge, write on a sticky note just one nondecodable word that your child needs to know. See if you can think of creative ways to help him learn it.
Wishing you a month filled with hearing your child read those “tricky” words – I’m sure they’ll be your kind of “treats!”