Help With Reading

We have someone who can help us with teaching questions. This was what we e-mailed about this week regarding Samuel's reading:

My question:


I am hoping you can help me with a question regarding Samuel's reading.

Is it possible for his reading level to outpace his underlying skills? He is doing so well in both reading and spelling, but gets impatient with me when I show him phonics. (I teach this within the context of reading -- never as a stand-alone "rules" exercise.) I guess my concern stems from seeing his language skills surge forward, then regress at times. Also, as we worked with Samuel's older brother, if he went as fast as he wanted, he didn't always have a foundation in the fundamentals (more a problem in math than reading). Too, with Samuel's personality, he usually wants to understand how something "works," and could end up horribly frustrated not knowing "why".

Most days, Samuel reads to me from a variety of materials such as story books or age-appropriate nature magazines; I read to him from a full length book that is well beyond his reading level; and he has some quiet, independent reading time. We also work some classics into the mix, Three Little Pigs, etc.

He does seem to recognize a lot of the principles -- he saw the brand Nike the other day, and following the typical rules, gave it a long I and a silent E. I've also heard him try to figure a word's spelling by saying it and applying what he knows to try to come up with the correct letters. He has absorbed end-of-line hyphenation and using an apostrophe and S for possession from our book reading.

I don't want to bore him, but I don't want a house of cards crumbling down in a few years when he'll need to be picking up more of his information by his own reading.

The Teacher's Response:

It is indeed possible that his ability to read words (word call) exceeds the underlying skills.  In fact, it is not uncommon for children who are on the spectrum to have exceptional oral reading and spelling abilities.  It typically indicates very strong visual memory skills.  The comprehension piece is often more difficult.
 
My sense is that he will continue to be a strong visual speller and reader.  It may not be critical to teach phonics, at least not to a large extent.  It may also make more sense to teach them later, especially if you start to see a gap between his ability spell and read the same word.  You may want to take a sight word approach--being able to read it, spell it, define it, use it in a sentence.   At his age, a quick draw of a word is also a good tool.
 
Instead of a lot of time spent on basic phonics, I would suggest that you teach prescriptively--teaching the rule, etc. when you see an error, and then consider building the comprehension piece.  Retelling the events of a story in terms of first, next, then, and last is important.  Also naming/detailing characters and setting.  You may also want to directly teach inferences, predictions, categories, similarities/differences, and compare/contrast.  (I have a series that teaches these critical thinking skills that I am happy to share.  It's called Think Spots.)  These are comprehension building blocks.  Just like I see spectrum students excel with their oral reading, these components often trip them up as they move on to more advanced text and/or reading assessments such as the DRA. 
 
It sounds as though he is doing very well.