Why Bright Children Can Struggle With Reading and How To Help

Failing to learn to read is a devasting blow to a young child, and it is usually quite unnecessary. The underlying reason why many bright children find reading hard is that the early reading books they use encourage the wrong techniques. The warning signs are easy to spot.

However, this problem has proved easy to fix.

The Pattern of Failure

At first things seem to go quite well. The child often learns most of the alphabet and then a few words without a problem.

As things move on, the child starts to guess more words, sometimes with no relation to the word on the page.

As the child moves up to higher levels of books, it can seem that his or her reading ability is actually going the other way.

Eventually the child's confidence can collapse and you will see massive resistance to any further reading.

If this situation locks in, the child's entire educational career (and future adult life) is threatened. But we find it is usually simple to fix in quite a short time.

Why This Happens

Most children find text very baffling initially. And so they will use whatever seems the easiest way to decode it. A child with a strong visual memory will use that strength to memorise words by sight. That will seem the easiest option.

Any child will almost certainly be being taught phonics in the classroom. But, in a whole class setting, it is easy to be quietly baffled, without the teacher really knowing or having the time to work through it one-on-one in any case.

Most early reading systems start with books using a very limited vocabulary, which is repeated heavily through each book. This actually encourages the memorisation technique that the visual child has developed.

But it isn't really a reading technique at all, but a shortcut. And the child is travelling down a cul de sac to disaster.

The child needs guidance out of this situation and onto the right path.

How To Fix It

The key is to help the child get a memory hook on all the different phonemes being used in English. The Easyread Coaching System does this by presenting a bright and slightly bizarre image for each of them, with a simple rhyme to remember. This was developed from memory activation processes used by memory specialists.

Next, you must find a way to draw the child away from the memorisation and guessing approach to reading. In Easyread we do this with games designed to do that.

And finally, the child needs to be able to practise reading without fear and loathing. In Easyread we achieve that by showing the text with the phoneme images floating above them. It allows the child to read the text unaided and build experience and confidence each day.

The result of these changes of approach is that we regularly see children who have been completely stuck after years of effort, become enthusiastic readers in just a few weeks.

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For more information on reading help and literacy for children and more on Easyread, click EasyRead Coaching System