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Showing posts from December, 2019

Reading Backwards

Despite what the title may suggest, I am not going to talk about the myth that Dyslexics read backward. Instead, I am going to point out how purposely reading backward (word by word, not sound by sound) can help break a guessing habit. In David Kilpatrick's book, Essentials of Assessing, Preventing, and Overcoming Reading Difficulties , he provides a good overview of how we read, including using decoding, context, and contextual guessing. He states, "For weak readers, contextual guessing allows them to bypass the orthographic mapping process, which secures a particular written word in memory for later, instant recall." (page 39) Hmm, skipping the process that secures a written word in memory for later, instant recall. That doesn't sound good. So, what do you do when your student, who may have been taught specifically to guess the word from the context, keeps guessing instead of slowing down to decode the word? Several strategies can be used, including using high