Scored "Advanced "Proficiency" - son still ca

Lil, you are very perceptive to discover a dirty little secret about state testing. I teach special ed. and I have students that passed our state reading test at the end of last year who I KNOW are at least a year or more behind in reading level! That gave the parents the false perception that thier children were on grade level. So how are they going to feel when the kids really get to the point of failing??? It makes me sick. The whole testing system is a joke. (I’m in NC which supposedly has one of the two “best” state test systems).

You made one more very true statement:

“My son has learned to compensate so well for his disabilities that I worry that the school system will never give him real remediation.”

You need to get an outside tutor (like Lindamood-bell perhaps) if you can possible swing it. The schools often do not know HOW to remediate. There are a few notable exceptions like the handful of excellent teachers on this board. But in most systems, kids with disabilites lag behind forever. And now, in my state, they will rarely be able to meet the graduation requirements because if the testing (no one is exempt!).

Janis

Thanks Janis,

I e-mailed the VDOE re: the perception of my son’s achievement vs. his actual abilities - they responded per phone - and said he needs a LindaMood Bell program. I e-mailed my school district (copying my e-mail to VDOE, and a synopsis of the verbal response) asking if they had anyone trained in LindaMood Bell - still haven’t received a response. I’ve been on their site (LmB), and phoned them - and the closest certified instructor is over 50 miles away.

I’m considering doing the training - but how far will that set my son behind while he waits for ME to “get it?”

Lil

Lil, as far as I know. LB will only give referrals to their own clinics, so there conceivably could be a trained independent tutor who uses LB closer to you. However, finding them might be a trick! There is a LB clinic about the same distance from us, as a matter of fact. The training for LiPS is 3 days, Seeing Stars 2 days, and Visualizing and Verbalizing 2 days for a total of about $1400.

The upside of your learning it is that the cost will be less in the long run, and you could actually tutor others of you wanted to later.

Janis

Hi Lil,
I’m in a very similar situation (my son tests beyond ability, made great progress with PG and yet still has fluency difficulties…very very slow reading!)

I decided to go outside the school and will be getting further testing - that may show more of a descrepency (more specific to the areas of possible weakness).

Also, I was thinking of just buying the LMB books myself (from Gander Press) and doing the program with my son. I’ve heard it’s not that difficult to learn. I was thinking, since I did PG with him, LMB may not be impossible.

One more thing, I know this may not be the same for every kid, but I do find that the more I work with my son (forcing at minimum 1 hour a day of after-school reading), he is making a little progress. It’s very subtle, but there is some improvement. I think it’s just very frustrating because it seems like a huge amount of work for such small and gradual improvement. But I have to keep reminding myself even a little improvement is a worthwhile accomplishment.

Well, gradual *real* progress is going to get you there in the long run, a lot better than spending years searching for a miracle and blaming others. Keep up the good work.

If you’re from DC Virginia, perhaps the Lab School in Georgetown would be of help. Their LD program is one of the best in the country.

Hi Lil,

Ask the school if he can be excused from most of the homework and use the time to improve the reading. Some homework is busy work and may not always build the all important basic skills. Tell his teacher that you will write a note on the activities you did to improve reading instead of doing worksheets.

I did PG as well last summer. My son made great early progress with sounding out words. He could sound out anything but like your and Laura’s son he was slow for a good while. It took alot of practice to get to the point where he would sound things out quickly and read more fluidly.

I would do 2 two sessions of reading a day. One where you buddy read a book that is a bit hard for him. You read a page then he read a page. Or you could just do it by reading a paragraph then let him read one. This helped my son stretch sounding out abilities.
The second session should be for him to read a book that is fairly easy for him or right at his level. One trick the school psych told me was to mark a dot over every word. If it is a word you know he doesn’t need to sound out make the the dot green. If it is a word that he will need to sound out make the dot red. Tell him that when he sees the red dot he is to stop and sound out and when he sees the green he should just be able to read it. This worked for my son because in the beginning he would read every word slow, thinking that he had to sound out even the little words. It is not about guessing the green words but about sounding them out quickly enough that you don’t hear each sound separately.

Just a comment…I do not think LiPS could be done well without training or at the very minimum, viewing the training tapes. I do not feel fully confident even after viewing the training tapes. Visualizing and Verbalizing is easier.

Janis

Thanks Linda,

Both your ideas are really great! We have my son’s annual review in a couple of weeks - so I’ll ask about reducing the homework. The dots above the words in the books are a wonderful idea - to get him to slow down and pay attention. I think we’ll start tonight …

Lil

The dots are an interesting idea! Let me know how that works for you.

Actually, I don’t worry if the student goes slowly at this phase, in fact I encourage going slowly until you’ve got it right, and I find it more confusing for the student to be trying to deal with two sets of rules at the same time (real books won’t have dots, anyhow). Slow but steady wins.

Yes, but my child was going slowly for a long time. It was a case where he just needed to learn that he could read without laborously sounding out each sound in every word slowly.
He was doing C-A-T and it taught him to just have the confidence to go with it and say cat.
We didn’t use the dots too long. Once he got the concept of just sounding things out fluidly, he didn’t need them anymore.

What can I say, “It worked.”

The school psych who recommended this also recommended orton or lmb if he needed it. I wonder if this technique was derived from one of those two programs or if she just made it up.

Hi, I too did pg with my son and then the v&v from the book a couple of years ago. Amazing how quickly it all worked for him. Most of his problems are also still with fluency, but (he’s in 6th grade) he’s improving dramatically as he’s matured. He passed all of the SOLs in 3rd grade (with nonstandard accomodation in reading…the test was read to him) and in 5th grade did even better. (except for his math one which, although it is his best subject he failed miserably. We suspect he got off track on the answer key since he scored less than 25% and would have done that well just guessing) . I think the hw suggestion is a good one, but if the school won’t buy into it, maybe you could do the pg on the weekends? And, V&V is fun so (if he’s like my son) he’ll probably think it’s a game instead of work. Anyway, best of luck to you and your son.

The dots above the words are a good idea. But, Orton-Gillingham generally uses what is called pencil-facilitation, where the individual will take a pencil point, (or eraser) and trace over the first letter in each sentence and then run the pencil under each sentence as he reads it. If there is a problem in decoding, then method allows for breaking the words into syllables by scooping each syllable and then pronouncing the word. This method also builds a child’s fluency because he or she learns that reading is done in phrases, not necessarily word by word.

One more way that this helps is it helps the student pay attention to the ending punctuation marks, because the student also would trace over the ending punctuation points, thus understanding the breaks in sentences.

In reference to the suggestion about doing reduced homework and focusing on reading, that is okay, but remember, it is also good to learn how to read from content area textbooks.

Regarding the SOL’s: There are accomodations that can be used for a child who has reading difficulties. Make sure to check into those, because if the student has the ability to pass the tests, but doesn’t do so because of his reading, then that is an area that can be remedied by modifications in the testing.