Grade 4 tutoring. (reading)?

Question

hey,

well i am tutoring a grade 4 and i need some ideas how to teach her. she isnt good at reading. she skippes words and cant say them properly. if you could please give me some ideas how to teach her and how to make a test for her. i would be very thankful.

&& also if you help me in any way. 5 STARS & best answer :)

Answer 1

If she's having trouble saying words properly she may be having trouble decoding.  Analyze the words she's struggling with.  My guess is that they are multisyllabic.  If that is the case I would recommend working with her on how to decode (sound out) these types of words.  I teach the kids I work with as an elementary school reading specialist to count the vowels in a word to figure out how many syllables there are.  We also look a lot at open/closed syllables.  This helps them have an awareness of how to approach a big word.

As for skipping words, you might consider taking passages out of books she's reading and using them to do fluency practice.  Take a passage of about 200 words and make two copies of it.  Have her read it to you for 1 minute.  You follow along making note of any word she skips or says wrong (I like to highlight them).  At the end of 1 minute count the number of words she read correctly.  Also count the number of words she read incorrectly or skipped.  

Add the two numbers together and then divide the number of correct words by the total number of words to get an accuracy rate.  (If she read 105 correct words per minute CWPM and had 15 miscues you would do 105/120 to get the accuracy rate).

Practice reading the passage repeatedly and see if she can improve her accuracy rate to at least 90% (but preferably 95%).  Choose a new passage and start over with the goal that she get to 90 or 95% the FIRST time she reads something.  If it doesn't look like she will ever get to 90%, the materials you've chosen are probably too hard.

Answer 2

If you stop her everytime she skips a word or says one incorrectly, she is going to get frustrated.

While she is reading outloud to you, listen. When she skips something or says something incorrectly, stop and say "wait, can you repeat that, I didn't understand it." She should go back over it and put in the missing words the second time. Then say, oh, ok, that makes sense, keep going.

On words, if she mis pronounces it again, say, "spell that word for me, I'm not getting it." then help her pronounce it by pointing out any special pronunciation rules, like "the ph is pronounced f in that word"

As far as testing, every couple of paragraphs have her stop and ask her comprehension questions,  what is the setting, who are the characters, what are they feeling, what is going on, and also, "brainer" questions, like "what do you think will happen next, why do you think they did that"

that should help a lot. Go to some websites, like Cliffnotes or something and get some ideas of how to put together a reading comprehension test. You will have to read the books yourself first in order to know what type of questions to ask.

Once you have put together a couple of tests, they will be very easy.

But start with the steps above first. You need to get her comprehension up before you give her written tests.

Answer 3

You might try Saxon Phonics Intervention.  It starts at the very beginning and reviews everything that a child needs to read.  It is specifically designed for kids in 4th grade or higher who are not reading well.  It isn't cheap though, so if you are tutoring for pay you should find out if the parents will shell out the money to buy it.

It is available from http://saxonhomeschool.harcourtachieve.c...

If you want something cheaper try getting, "Phonics Pathways" or "The Ordinary Parents Guide to Teaching Reading."  Both are available from http://www.rainbowresource.com