Question about new readers

[HIU8]

DS is a new reader. He is currently reading level 1 books with us at home. We also go over site words (from school and from a site the Devel ped told us to go to). Anway, I was wondering how long a new reader sounds out words out loud before they recognize it's the same word again? Also, my DS sounds out words using short sounds and then says the word correctly with the long vowel sound and vice versa. Is that something that a new reader does normally?

I know DS needs to feel super comfortable with something before he will do it automatically and I can see this with the reading (almost like he is afraid to take the risk of saying the word even though he may already know it). His teachers said that he is still sounding out every word on every page, when they know he knows the site words (b/c they have tested him a few times already), and they are just waiting for it to finally click.

[JoyNChrist]

DS1 is a new (early) reader too. At this point, he doesn't tend to automatically recognize sight words at the beginning of a book, even if they're words he knows, but he will recognize them without sounding them out if he sees them again in the same book.

So for example, he knows the word "this" as a sight word. But if we are reading a story and "this" is in the book, he will sound it out at first, but recognize it on sight if he sees it again later in the book. So it only gets sounded out once, but he sounds out even the sight words he should know.

My perfectionist does need to feel really confident before he'll read out loud. If he feels like he doesn't know the word, he's very hesitant to even try to sound it out. He also gets pretty frustrated if he's having a hard time and will often want to quit or say "I can't do this."

[lalasmama]

That's some great reading skills he's developing, sounding out sight words!

DD attached to her sight words like white on rice, and, early on, refused to sound out anything--she wanted all sight words in her books. She has always seen words as a whole, not as parts, if that makes sense. Teaching her to sound things out, and use other decoding, has been tough, because she sees the whole word as one.

She still has a hard time figuring out when to make hard or soft sounds, and long or short vowels. I think this is totally normal. As adults, our vocabulary helps us figure these things out--but for kids, they are seeing these words for the first times, and don't know a context around them to figure out if city is that thing that meows, or a place people live and work....

[HIU8]

good to know. My DS is about your DD's age, so sound appropriate for the age. We work on a book nightly (although his teachers were surprised and thought it was me leading that train, when I explained that DS pretty much begged me to read with him nightly).