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Question: My daughter is in sixth grade. She is a good reader and understands what she reads. The problem is she is a very slow reader, and I wonder how she is going to do on all the standardized tests that she will be required to take. What can be done to increase her reading speed? — Slow Reader
Answer: The best readers are not always the fastest nor the slowest readers. They are the ones who recognize most words, read most material at a grade-level rate and most importantly understand what they have read. Nevertheless, you are right that on standardized tests an extremely slow reader is going to have problems.
First of all, what is your child's reading rate that you believe is too slow? At the start of the school year, the child should have been reading about 160 words per minute, and she should improve to about 170 words at the end of the year. If she deviates greatly from these speeds, she needs to improve her rate. This can be done by removing bad reading habits if her comprehension and word recognition skills are up to grade level.
You will need to observe your daughter while she is reading to see if she has any of the bad habits listed below that could lower her rate. If some are the problem, solutions are given for handling them and thus improving her reading rate.
Reading aloud: Moving lips for each word. Put a pencil between her lips. The pencil will fall out if she is reading orally while reading silently.
Finger pointing: Using her finger to keep her place definitely will slow her reading rate down. Have her replace her finger with a 3x5 card to keep her place.
Head moving: Put her reading material on a flat surface in front of her and have her place her elbows on the surface and hold her head with her hands.
Word-by-word reading: She will need to make an effort to read phrases instead of individual words. Try having her read passages with a fluent reader. Also, make flashcards with common phrases and see how fast she can read them.
Moving from line to line: Triple space a typed paragraph then draw a line from the end of a line to the beginning of the next.
Backtracking: As soon as a line is read, she should cover it with a 3x5 card cut on an angle, so it covers the beginning of the line as she reads the end.
Parents should send questions and comments to dearteacher@dearteacher.com or to the Dear Teacher website.
©Compass Syndicate Corporation, 2019