It isn’t my only tool, however, for some of my students, they’d not get to first base without it. I do believe that poor phonemic awareness accounts for a huge percentage of students who experience early reading failure. (Estimated 80%)
My school district has trained *all* K-3 teachers, Title I, and Sped teachers to implement our version of LiPS called “Pathways.” K-3 are mandated to use it everyday along with a phonics programs (that I like less than the PA program…another story.) The names/copyrighted labels from LiPS have changed and it is adapted for whole-classroom delivery along with small group. The underlying methodology is the same. Schools also do 1:1 pull out when needed.
We have reduced our sped referrals a nearly 100% in primary grades—they’re coming later as the need for a more multi-sensory phonics approach is needed to help students toward automaticity of decoding multisyllable words. Next we’ll fix that instructional delivery across the board.
And, I do plenty of rate/accuracy and comprehension strategies instruction so that we don’t leave behind the whole-word learners, either.
The trick is being able to tell the difference. The other trick is having good enough PA yourself to implement the instruction. I’ve seen many folks who cannot rapidly isolate/segment/shift/blend phonemes who struggle to teach LiPS. They might often say the program doesn’t work, when the teacher may not have the linguistic skills to teach it.
It isn’t my only tool, however, for some of my students, they’d not get to first base without it. I do believe that poor phonemic awareness accounts for a huge percentage of students who experience early reading failure. (Estimated 80%)
My school district has trained *all* K-3 teachers, Title I, and Sped teachers to implement our version of LiPS called “Pathways.” K-3 are mandated to use it everyday along with a phonics programs (that I like less than the PA program…another story.) The names/copyrighted labels from LiPS have changed and it is adapted for whole-classroom delivery along with small group. The underlying methodology is the same. Schools also do 1:1 pull out when needed.
We have reduced our sped referrals a nearly 100% in primary grades—they’re coming later as the need for a more multi-sensory phonics approach is needed to help students toward automaticity of decoding multisyllable words. Next we’ll fix that instructional delivery across the board.
And, I do plenty of rate/accuracy and comprehension strategies instruction so that we don’t leave behind the whole-word learners, either.
The trick is being able to tell the difference. The other trick is having good enough PA yourself to implement the instruction. I’ve seen many folks who cannot rapidly isolate/segment/shift/blend phonemes who struggle to teach LiPS. They might often say the program doesn’t work, when the teacher may not have the linguistic skills to teach it.
Follow up questions?