How much progress is realistic to expect?

It’s consistent with public school philosophy that good enough to get by is just fine, thank you. And sometimes that’s true.

However, at the LD school where I taught, continued intensive work with language is what makes the difference between getting by and being able to meet the language demands in a college setting. THat 34th percentile does not factor in her native intelligence and her educational expectations, which are probably more like those of the top 30 percentile (if not, if she’s already completely set on being a rodeo rider or a fashion model, then forget this advice ;)).
Continued work on fluency and attacking bigger words (“word workshop” is a good program for post-OG), as well as continued development of vocabulary and comprehension as she needs it, can really make a big difference.
Now, the school probably is simply and utterly unequipped to provide this. How independent a learner is she? If you set her up wiht a resource period where she was supposed to spend X amount of time on other work because it takes her longer, and Y amount of time on something like word workshop (which comes as a book and as software) and some fluency work, a non-expert teacher could monitor this… though it might be that the resource room isn’t even the right place for it; a “library assistant” period or “office assistant” or “teacher’s assistant’ period with somebody that she gets along well with could work just as well. And giving her a little control over things, or involving exploring a topic she really likes, could mean it would help develop good independent learning habits — the opposite of what usually happens.

Thanks for the suggestions. I looked at the website of the program you suggested. ( http://www.thewordworkshop.com/ ). It looks interesting. As always, the information I learn on these boards has taught me so much. Thanks to all the knowledgable people out there who take the time to mentor the rest of us along.

Hi Dora,

I worked with a boy almost exactly like you describe your daughter, with the exception that your daughter has had the OG training that should have addressed the word attack problem. As you say, it takes diligence and two to three times the effort to maintain good grades.

The boy I worked with needed the phonics work, but also turned out to have a vision problem that was making reading difficult, though obviously not impossible, as he was getting good grades and considered an excellent student. But he had to re-read a lot and he read considerably slower than his peers.

I discuss a lot of this in a thread titled “Vision Therapy” down a page or two on this board…..Rod

I think when they get to about 5th grade reading level the biggest single thing to improve reading skills is lots of reading and discussion of books. Read books together not strictly at the same time. Each of you read and do a book club where you discuss the book. You can look at vocabulary and predicting, inference, literary terms etc. The more discussion, especially of vocabulary in context the better. Practice figuring out the meaning of unknown vocabulary words. Work on strategies to fix comprehension when it breaks down, such as reading on, reading again, asking questions etc. All of these things will help her become a strategic reader able to know when she is having trouble comprehending the text. Reading is understanding and the best way to get better is to read text that is slightly challenging, not frustrating but not too easy either.
Nan

She has no trouble with comprehension. In fact I am always amazed at what she understands especially with the number of words on a page that she will skip over. She will read along substituting “something” whenever she doesn’t know a word and can’t sound it out and still has no trouble with comprehension. Half the time I can barely understand what she is reading.

Great Leaps is another program (check website) that continues to work on oral reading fluency post- elementary school. Also inexpensive, out of a teacher manual well-crafted enough for a less experienced teacher or aide to support your dd with.

If she is substituting “something” that often, then she *definitely* needs more work in decoding and accuracy. Decoding on a list or flashcard or test is one thing, and using the skill in actual reading is another. Shay has said some things about her classes acting as if they had never learned a thing when they switch from lists to text.
This is a clue to me that something more needs to be done, and soon.
This skip/substitute pattern often crops up in the Grade 4 to 6 level, and it never gets better on its own; if left alone, the student pretty much sticks at this level for life and becomes effectively a non-reader — one who memorizes the outlines but doesn’t read the novel, one who never reads the directions but works by rule of thumb, etc. These students sometimes do struggle and scrape through college but they miss most of the education.

When I have a student who substitutes, I usually back up to a level where the substitutions are minimal and have the student read aloud, either I or the student pointing at each word. Any time there is a skip or an error I point to the missed word and we work on it. This is slow, tedious, and the only effective way I know to get an inaccurate reader back on track, so it’s worth every teeth-gritting minute. Sometimes in short books the student does all the reading, and in longer ones the student and I alternate pages.

You’ve been working for five years and you’ve achieved 5.5 test level — where’s the problem? Sounds like a decent speed. If you keep working on good programs, well, you should keep seeing improvement.

We backed up a reading level with my son who skips words and misreads a lot. His errors decreased tremendously—to the point he only skips and/or misreads a couple words a page (instead of each senstence).

The text are at a second grade level and he can easily read every single word in them by sight so he isn’t having to decode at all. It seems to be the combination of having to decode and visually track which is causing his problems.

So now that we know he can read accurately with easier text any suggestions on what to do next?

Beth

Victoria are you sure you have not been to my school? Just this week my son came home with 2 reading “papers” that were scored for words misread, words skipped, words subistituted. Each time he made one of these errors is was marked on the story so I know what is occurring. I thought this was great so I could see what types of errors he was making and use the same correction as the school. I don’t know what program they do this off of though, because on impulse after reviewing these which was part of his going home folder, I threw them away. Since there are 2 weeks of school left and he will be going to summer school I am hoping more will be sent home. It looked like a printed short story that was read out loud to the teacher who marked what errors he made. Off to the side of the story was “scores” for various reading tasks. This was the 1st time something like this was sent home so I am guessing it is a new program they are using with him. I must say they have been trying their hardest to help him learn to read. He started the year out at about the K level and is now up to the 2nd grade level. Does this program sound familiar to you are am I being to vague?

I have seen scoring systems like this intended to be used with the more serious versions of whole language. (The problem with whole language is that it started out weak on phonics and long on unproved theory, and then got watered down to be zero on phonics and weak on everything else.)

I use a similar approach, called a reading inventory, to place and diagnose new students.

A reading inventory can be an extremely useful tool if used as a basis to plan corrective instruction: for example, if the child is skipping all the function words, you need to do the one-word-at-a-time stress for accuracy; if the child is omitting all verb endings you need to teach those and practice reading and writing them; if the child is missing all the words with digraphs such as sh, ch, th, ph, ng, you need to re-teach those; and so on.

The more extreme whole-language supporters invented their own categories and theories of errors with no scientifically-proven basis; for example, they are quite happy with the substitution of “daddy” for “father” because the meaning is the same, but they mark down seriously the substitution of “father” for “feather” because the meaning is not the same. In fact, the opposite is the case; students who make the phonetic substitution “father” for “feather” usually need only slight correction in details, while those who make the meaning substitution “dady” for “father” usually have real problems progressing in reading. If the report you got is based on this kind of thinking, then you will do better to throw it out.

What you need to do is to get a carefully graded reading series with controlled vocabulary and lots and lots of text. In fact, I often use two or three such series, alternating them, to get more text practice on each level. You can order books on the net, but I do better — both much lower cost and a chance to see the actual books and not get burned ordering something unsuitable — with used book stores, garage sales, and (wonderful source if you can get it) school discard sales (which also often have workbooks, a real treasure).
The kind of series I’m talking about is typified by the old “Dick and Jane” books. These things had many faults and the anti-phonics teaching of the first levels was a disaster, but a lot of work went into them, and the upper levels from First Reader to Grade 6 or so are an excellent resource, if you go ahead and teach phonics as well.
You can identify the sort of controlled book you need by opening the back and looking at the vocabulary lists. From beginning to Grade 3, there will be a statement of what the previous book is and how many words are expected to be known, and a list of the new words introduced in the book, usually by page number, with no more than two or three new words on any one page and an average of about one per page. Around Grade 4 or 5 this will switch to an alphabetical glossary of more difficult vocabulary that the student can use as a reference. The interior of the book will have stories with lots of running text, with moderate-sized type, starting with 50 to 100 running words to page in Grade 2 and working up to several hundred words per page in upper elementary; and a moderate number of pictures, reducing from one every second or third page in beginning Grade 2 down to one or two small sketches per story in upper elementary. If you collect a set, there will be two to five books at each grade level, with a total of several hundred pages of running text and hundreds of thousands of running words to read.
The idea is to work on *gradual* progress from the present level of mastery to higher levels. One problem with many newer books — whole language being the prime offender, but many poorly thought-out phonics series running a close second — is a lack of transitions. (American education in general has a problem with transitions). So in many series or systems you have Level A with a certain amount of vocabulary and structural difficulty, and Level B with a higher degree of vocabulary and structure, and no way to get from one to the next. This is what you child seems to be experiencing.

You get any good controlled-vocabulary book or book of this type, or again two or three at the same level, and you start at the level that your child has mastered — only a couple of faults per page, nearly independemnt reading. Then you have him read a page aloud to you, as you point to each word and work with him on correcting errors as you go. After he has read a page, you discuss it with him, both factually and regarding inferences and predictions and opinions (and it’s OK to think this is a stupid story — critical thinking is *good*). Then you model reading a page out loud as he follows along (watch that the eyes are on the pointer) and you discuss that. Alternating pages this way, you read a story every day. (Note — in many books the poetry is meant to be read *to* the students, so don’t expect the child to read the poems unless he wants to) If you start to see signs that the difficulty level is getting a bit high, you switch to the other series for more fun stories, and then you continue switch back and forth every unit or so. If a particular unit, for example a play, or supposed humour, is really distasteful to the child, you can skip that and use the alternate book for more practice instead. There will be forty or so stories in the book or grade level, so in a couple of months when you finish reading the Grade 2 book(s) you start the Grade 3 book(s) in the same series. As you go to higher levels the stories get longer and you may need two days to cover one story. But basically doing this kind of intensive reading, you can easily cover two to four grade levels in one year. Since the difficulty level increases *gradually* and since you are discussing each little problem as it goes along, you (and the child) are not faced with suddenly having to scale a cliff to get to the next grade level. This is not an exciting magic wand, but it is truly wonderful to sit there in December and have the child pick up his September book and say “Wow, this is really EASY, baby stuff.”

Of course, you should also be doing some sort of phonics and systematic spelling and if time permits some independent writing to back this all up.
If you can get your hands on the workbooks to go with the texts, after you get close to grade level you can have the child work on these too. Suggestion — when using out-of print books, never write in the original workbook which is ireplaceable; write on notebook paper or photocopies. Workbooks often have very good comprehension exercises and once the basic reading and oral comprehension is down, written comprehension is a good thing to get under control.

Good luck, and please tell me how it goes.

I will have to be more viligant next week and see if it says where it came from. It appeared to be a story downloaded from a computer program. For the misprounced words they had written above how he pronounced it, they did the same for the substitution errors. I know that they are using a phonics based program with him because they said that he had a severe phonics weakness. IF they send another one home, I will let the board know what program it is.

Victoria,

This makes a lot of sense. I used old primers with him through grade 2 which is all I have. My husband had picked them up at a garage sale long before we knew we’d have a child with a learning disability. I do think it is that there is just too much work on each page for him that is the source of his errors. I also noticed this weekend with a cold the “easy” series was also hard for him and he was making errors.

I will go hunting through used book stores this weekend.

Beth