Speaking of visual issues....

[Perry]

I haven't decided whether or not to pursue a VT assessment yet, but something interesting came up today.

In another thread, Claire recommended the ReadNow group, and through researching fluency on that list I found some very interesting posts on the Beginning Reading Instruction group. Someone there recommends drilling many of the basics to improve automaticity- phonograms, word roots, math facts, etc. This sounds like something that might be very helpful to my son, who has RAN deficits. I printed up a page of 30 sight words on a page, in 3 columns and 10 rows at 14 font, so there was lots of white space. I had ds read them, and he actually did pretty well. Then I timed myself, and thought there was way too much white space, and figured it would be easier to read if I put the words a little closer together. There is still white space, but now the 30 words take up about a quarter of the page, instead of the whole page. It seemed much easier for me to read them this way. My son found it much harder, and his speed was quite a bit slower. I had some other family members and neighbor kids try it, and most of them found the page with more white space easier to read. That really surprises me.

What do you think? I am going to be making a bunch of word lists, so I need to figure out the best way to print them up. It seems like you would WANT to have the words close together, because it seems like your eyes then don't really need to move that much- they see all the words at once.

Is this even making sense? I thought those of you with VT experience might have some suggestions. Thanks.

[Claire]

I think it's impossible to tell from this one experiment whether vision issues are at play. There are many different components to reading words on a page, and the vision issues alone are varied. You may have better acuity than most people, for example, or you may be a more proficient reader with more highly developed pattern recognition skills. Usually, for this type of exercise, you simply space the words so they are comfortable for the reader. Just as you will want to drill on simple symbols at first and then work up to more complex symbols, you may want to use the same drills in different spacing formats -- starting far apart, where your son is comfortable, and incrementally making the font size smaller and the spacing between symbols smaller. It depends on what your specific goals are.

When a child can read individual words but then has difficulty reading the same words presented in lines of text, it's almost always a vision-related problem. Developmental optometrists have ways of assessing this, but there are really no tests that can be done at home. If you see this happening, the only way to know for sure if vision issues are involved is to get a professional evaluation.

[Laurie4b]

You didn't say how young your child is, but the younger the child, the more white space is optimal. Look at the font/white space in beginning reading books, for example. If you're asking what is optimal for your son, I'd use the one he can read faster because you're working on the automaticity of the word recall. If the font size, etc. interferes with that (ie gives him still another thing to process), you'll slow the process down. You might try giving him the larger font and practicing to automaticity and THEN giving the same words in the smaller font with less white space. Given that it is your preference that is out of whack with other family members and neighbor kids, I think that is all the more reason to go with his preference.

Also, keep in mind that his preference may change as he develops.