What is it called when child sounds out a word but then switches it completely?

That’s something my dyslexic daughter used to do. In the Barton Reading and Spelling program, the student is to  “touch-and-say” each sound in a word. (It’s the same as sounding out, but they also put their finger under each letter, then slide thie finger from beginning to end of the word as they blend the sounds together.) So you could have her do that when she gets a word wrong.

Another helpful thing the Barton program does is has the student spell words in this systematic way: 1. Repeat the word you have given her.

2. Repeat the word again, this time super-slowly, using her hand/finger to show in the air the blending of sounds from beginning to end.

3. Spell the word on her fingers – one finger per sound.  So, “jump” would be four fingers. “Sock” would be 3 fingers.  (Use the hand that she doesn’t write with to do all hand motions.)

4. Then, write down the word.

It really seems to help my daughter concentrate on the sounds to go through all this (we’re actually beyond all this now, but if she’s slipping up, I go back to this procedure until she’s back in gear.)

I hope this gives you some ideas…….if you notice that your daughter keeps missing words, I would encourage you to check out Susan Barton’s websites.

Right. At her age, she is still young, and you do have time to let her mature some.  But if this is a sign of dyslexia or other learning challnege, you don’t want to ignore it for long.

Have you looked thru Susan Barton’s websites? Bright Solutions and Barton Reading.  She has a list of “symptoms” of dyslexia. She also has very helpful videos.

Another inexpensive help is Reading Reflex. It’s a book that walks you through helping your child hear the sounds that make up words. It uses lots of games (in the car-type games, not necessarily pen and paper or pieces and board type games). I found it helpful for getting my daughter to rhyme (dyslexics don’t rhyme easily), to hear how “cat” is really three sounds blended together.

Best wishes!  Learning reading is so easy for some kids and so stressful for others!

I’ve only skimmed the other responses, but here are my two suggestions from many years tutoring beginning readers.

First, practice the blending skill outside of reading.  While eating lunch or doing dishes, or whenever, play this game.  You say a word, sound by sound, and have her identify the word.  Then have her say a word, sound by sound, for you to say the whole word.  This helps solidify the concept of putting the pieces together to make a word.  Challenge each other with longer and longer words as she is ready.

Second, try having her sound out the last part of the word first, from the vowel on.  This is related to working with word families.  So, for “Kite” have her figure out the “ite” part first, then add the k to blend “k-ite”.  Or for jumps, do ‘umps’ first, then j-umps.  Practice this with word families when appropriate such as kite, site, bite.  Starting with the vowels helps get the tricky part of the word done first (figuring out whether the vowel is long or short), and also stops them from taking the initial consonant and just saying any word that starts with that letter.