Language Wise and V & V--Shay!!!

Hi Beth,
I use them differently depending on the circumstances that I am under in school and what subject I teach. In my classes this year, English 11, I have had to teach PG in the beginning, Step Up to Writing and Inspiration for creative writing, grammar (Stevenson), capitalization and punctuation, suffixes, prefixes and word roots for vocabulary, research writing, books, poetry and last but not least, America literature. In the middle of all of this, every thing has to be done in class because most of my students have a job after school or they just don’t do homework. Did I forget to say that I also have to teach to the state tests, SOLs? Luckily, I think that I have figured how to remediate their deficiencies and also teach ‘to the test’. Having said this, I really haven’t had time to do V/V or Language Wise. I may do Language Wise (LW) during the last nine weeks as the Warm-up exercises at the beginning of each period. My students do have their last project assigned that they have to do outside of school or in their Basic Skills classes. It is a three-five page research paper on one or two subjects of their choice. I have enlisted all of the parents, case managers, and basic skills teachers to help them with the paper. My class is not just LD kids but I have 3 mentally challenged as well. They are doing the same work as the rest and doing it well. Are they truly Mentally Challenged? I don’t know. I honestly don’t care. I don’t believe much in labels or sped for that matter. The kids come into my class and start to work immediately and finish when the bell rings. I am teaching my Basic Skills class my form of V/V. I am using it as a study skills program and may put in Language Wise in the last nine weeks. I have mixed the two up sometimes but usually will teach V/V first and Language Wise after. No real reason except that LW works better when the students can visualize languge better. When I remediate in my tutoring business for comprehension, I do a quickie PG, then V/V, and lastly LW. I have, in some cases do the above 3 programs, then Inspiration and Step up to Writing, and then On Cloud Nine for math visualization. I have used all of these for one girl that uses hearing aids in both ears and I have been working with her for three years. She was in self-contained classes in elementary school and is now on the honor role in all teamed classes in seventh grade. I still have work to do with continued vocabulary work and comprehension techniques. Sorry that this is so long, but I really do things differently depending on the student (s) and what environment. I hope that this has helped.

Just outline how you do that “quickie PG,” V/V as study skills… I’ll present it to the college here (where we’ve got a department devoted to kids like yours who don’t have you and come to us when they’re 19 with no skills whatsoever).

That is so interesting to me, Shay, as I primarily teach Hearing Impaired children! In my recent research into reading disabilites (mainly because my own child has an auditory processing disorder), I came to realize that the hearing impaired children need the phonemic awareness training as much as anyone else. I have tested all my students with teh PG tests and plan on using it as soon as I attend the Word Work workshop in New Orleans. I can’t do it with all of them, only the ones I see almost daily.

I also have a bright fifth grader (HI) who is just slightly below grade level and mainly scores poorly on comprehension. I need V/V for her! I have to decide whether to go for the live training or buy the training videos (less costly and others can use them).

May I ask you a question? If I learn PG, do you think I’d need LiPS, or could I get by with PG and V/V? Do you ever reinforce PG with something like Explode the Code? (I am working with elementary age children this year). I have to decide which LB workshops I need to take this summer as they are being offered nearby. My school system won’t pay a penny so I must make wise choices.

Have you worked in elementary? I wonder what you like for elementary writing and vocabulary, too.

Janis

Thanks Shay!!!

I found your post very interesting!!! It is encouraging to read how someone has not given up on high school kids.

What do you mean by V & V as study skills?

Beth

Hi Janis,

I don’t use PG, but I do use LiPS with my elementary resource kids, and I also use “Explode the Code” as follow-up work and homework with my kids, so I would think it would work well with PG, since everyone says they are similar. The LiPS workshop is very good, and would probably improve your skills in teaching HI youngsters, since that is the exact population the program was designed for. Pat Lindamood designed it, along with her husband (who was a phonologist) to teach Hearing Impaired chilren how to read, so I would think you would find it very interesting and useful. As for V/V, I think you could get by with just the videos and book, but the LiPS workshop is much more important to get “hands on” as it is more complicated.

As for writing programs, I recommend the “Stack the Deck” program — you can buy the books for all elementary grades (it goes up through high school), and it works on oral language, vocabulary development, grammar, mechanics, all in the context of writing as a process. My favorite to start with is “Check the Deck,” I think it is the 3rd/4th grade level book. I’ll see if I can get the publishers address for you, but you can probably find it through a search on the web…

Sharon

Hi Sue and everyone, Sorry that it has taken long for me to respond to you but I just came home from the Virginia Branch Dyslexia Association Convention in Richmond. Reid Lyon was there and spoke. He is wonderful. He told us that they were looking at IDEA and there would be some drastic changes. He combined it with President Bush’s ‘No Child Left Behind’ education initiative. He said that no longer would the schools put children in special education without doing research based reading programs as interventions. When that day comes, I will truly celebrate as will a lot of you. I would love to share what I do with PG so that it works fast with older kids but it would be too long to put on this board. I have never written it down but I would be glad to and maybe attach it to an email or send it by snail mail to anyone who wants it. I am in the process of adapting V/V for study skills but I will also tell you what I am doing at this time. Anyone wanting these plans, please email me personally and I will share them with you. Just remember, the PG approach, that I do, is rather radical. I can tell you, I approach my students as adults and don’t do any worksheets. Sue, It would be faster if you would email me with your phone number and I could call you. I never use all of my long distance minutes, so it wouldn’t cost me anything. I am on spring break for the next week so let me know when would be the best time. I will work on the lesson plans this week.

Hi Janis, One thing that you will learn at the convention, is that you don’t combine any other decoding program with PG. It doesn’t work as well and confuses the kids. I have worked with many speech impaired children and have never needed any other program. At the convention, I will introduce you to Michele Gibbs of Washington Reads. She is just one of the speech therapists that changed from using LIPS to PG in her practice because of the speed and efficiency of PG. If you are going to take any Lindamood training this year, take V/V and On Cloud Nine. These are also the programs that Washington Reads using in their work. Michele is the reading therapist that remediated my daughter. She is a great person and I will introduce her to you at the convention. I did my pilot program at a school called Grafton in Berryville, VA. It is a school that is partly for very disturbed kids. Most of my students had mild to severe speech problems. What I noticed, while presenting the program, was that since PG is a sound to symbol program, the speech of my students improved while they were reading but not when they were just in conversation. I brought this to the attention of their speech therapists and to them. After the students realized this, they started to improve their conversational speech! I remember that the girl that improved her reading the most, was the one with the worst speech problem! LIPS is a very good program, don’t get me wrong, but most kids don’t need all that it does in the program and it usually takes much longer time than PG to increase the child’s reading ability. I would recommend that you first start with PG , V/V, and On Cloud Nine, work with them and then if you still want LIPS, go for it. By the way, I spoke with Reid Lyon yesterday, and he said that Dr. Torgesen is going to do an independent study on PG! I am going to contact him and see if maybe my school district could be part of that study. I think I can convince the head of reading to go along with it, since my presentations have sparked an interest in it not only amoung the sped elementary teachers but the reg ed ele teachers. See you in New Orleans.

Hi Beth, If you have the V/V manuel, you will see that there is a chapter in the back of the book on taking notes either when reading a book or from a lecture. This shouldn’t be taught until the student is at least in the sixth grade. You will also see that the key words that you use in V/V to ask questions of the student in order to form a gestalt picture in the mind is an extension of who, what, when, where, why and how. I use these words to help the kids ‘see’ the information and make connections from print. Please read my other post concerning lesson plans.

Shay,

This is valuable advice and I greatly appreciate it. I want to use my time and money in the very best way. I am so excited about PG! I’ll tell you, after many years of moving kids along at a snail’s pace, it is an awesome thought that I might FINALLY use something that works! Isn’t it interesting how we have both found these methods due to problems with our own children.

I am back at elementary this year, but I spent the past four at a high school. I can tell you that they tried hard to get those kids to pass the end of course tests with many accomodations, and some did. But honestly, there was NO remediation whatsoever. (I was working with kids who were hi/emd so they were not in the std. course of study). It is facinating that the kids you worked with at the other school were helped with their speech. I can see that definitely.

I have another question for you. Will I be able to do PG with that one day Word Work workshop? Would it help me to get the Carmen M. videos? Did you train at Washington Reads?

I think I emailed you and told you that I have to leave the conference Sat. morning because my older daughter has her first prom. It makes me sick, but I have to put my child first, of course. I will try to find you at the event Thurs. evening. I’d love to talk with you more. It’s really thrilling to read your posts at how you are actually teaching older children to read. Just think how wonderful it would be if someone had taught them much earlier! I’d love a copy of your methods, too.

Thanks so much for inspiring us with you posts!

Janis

Sharon,

Thanks so much! I knew that LiPS sounded very much compatible with teaching hearing impaired children but I did not know that it was designed with that purpose. I think PG will be all I need for my hard-of-hearing children but I might need LiPS for the deaf ones. I’ll just have to try one thing at a time!

Thanks for the writing program recommendation. That is one I haven’t heard of. I’ll do a search and find it. Thanks again!

Janis

Hi again Janice, If there is one thing that I have never been able to do is train teachers how to teach PG in their classrooms using just the 8 hour training. You will have to really learn it by teaching it. I think that there are many reasons for this. One of the reasons is that most of the other reading programs are scripted, (you have specific script and sequential steps to follow) and PG isn’t. Second, the others you start at the beginning of the program no matter what the child needs, PG you don’t always start at the beginning, you have to make that determination depending on the test results. Third, the other programs are teacher driven instruction, in PG, the student discovers and drives the program. A lot of teachers don’t want to give up this control. Fourth, PG makes teaching reading easy and the teachers have been indoctrinated to believe that teaching reading has to be hard. Lastly, teachers haven’t been taught anything in college concerning phonics and they really don’t understand what teaching reading should involve and they are confused about the whole process. I think that the best thing that you can do is buy Reading Reflex and read it before the training. The next thing is realize that you will never really know how to present the program until you teach it. I remember that when I started teaching it at Grafton, I only had the book and noone to confer with. The book wasn’t even out on the market yet. Carmen and Geoffrey had some books from the publisher and sold me one. It wasn’t even being used by classes but only in tutoring. I just winged it! I was so desperate to find something to help not only my kids but my daughter, that I knew that I couldn’t make them worse! My students and I worked together on it and learned together as well. Grafton is a school that at the least, there was a ratio of one staff to two children. Many children had a staff of their own. I had 10 teenage students (ages 13-19) and about 8 staff. Their reading levels were on the average of third grade. I copied the lessons, (sorry Carmen) and gave them to all of my staff and we just did it. You can’t hurt the results of this program. Even in my confusion, the kids learned to read and fast. If you could only visualize this, letters, words, and envelopes all over my classrooms! When we had substitues, the kids taught them how to do the exercises. The kids didn’t have many behaviors because they really didn’t have time, they were busy learning. I really will never forget the happy smiles as these wounded, abused and often misunderstood teenagers learned how to read. I will never forget when they asked if they just could do the PG and nothing else until they learned how to read, then I could put the other subjects back in and they could read their books. I also will never forget when my daughter passed her GED and finally realized that she might just have a future after all. As I used the program, I became better at it. I did finally get training, after I was finished with the pilot at Grafton, by a Gwen McGowan in Pennsylvania. The classroom version, Wordwork has only been out for the past two years. I guess what I am trying to say is that you will understand how to do it after the 8 hr presentation but you will get better with age. You also have the advantage of the bulletin board at Read America, all of the trainers and Carmen and Geoffrey. I do apologize for being verbose about the answer to your question but I guess I was just reminising. I guess this happens when you get older!

Shay,

I am very thankful to know someone who cares enough to share the information with me and I am interested in all that you wrote! I have had the book for a couple of months and have read it. I know phonics well since I had to take phonetics to teach HI children, so that part will be fairly easy for me. I did order the manipulatives and have cut them up and put them in very organized little envelopes with a page number in each corner! I did order a parent support manual to use with my own child, also. But it is a bit intimidating to not be told what to do in what order particularly in the PSM. I think I feel okay about what is in the RR book, though. I have tested my child plus about 10 at her school and about 6 that I teach. So I am just waiting for the workshop to begin.

One reason I chose RR is that my child has a poor working memory (and APD, but not the decoding type) and I liked it that it doesn’t have rules. She needs to learn the sounds that go with the sound pictures, but forget the rules! Some of the O-G programs have rules that I wouldn’t even remember! I don’t think she’ll end up LD in reading if we can intervene with PG now. I am bringing her principal and LD teacher with me to the conference. They plan on trying PG as a summer intervention. I am almost wondering if they shouldn’t just use it in K and 1st as the main phonics instruction. They’ve been using Saxon Phonics and it is okay, but there are still some kids who don’t pick it all up because of the rate the new sounds are introduced.

Thanks again for the feedback!

Janis

Janis, you are, as the kids say, totally ready, just totally

Thanks Shay. My son is in just third grade so I am glad this isn’t something to think about yet!!!