which program to use?! strengths

Hi Barbara,

I’ve got a few comments:

First, I don’t think anyone teaching remedial reading is ever going to be completely satisfied until the world understands vision therapy better, and that includes all the people doing vision therapy, because it’s a pretty eclectic group. I firmly believe, based on observation and experience, that as many as half of the poor readers in second grade, and nearly all of the non-readers in the upper grades, have an undetected problem with either their binocular vision skills or another visual ability. And, I’m not talking visual perception here, but rather a visual skill which they lack, or are not competently using.

Once I got onto this, teaching reading to even the poorest readers has become a joy. The days of “how come you just can’t get this?” are nearly gone. As I got better at spotting visual problems, it became obvious that most of the lowest readers struggle when you put a full page of print in front of them, even though they would seem to be sailing through the lessons. My primary advice: Research vision therapy and find a good vision therapy department with which to coordinate your efforts. The relationship will be mutually beneficial, since they will have many poor readers who finally have decent binoncular vision skills, but need reading instruction to catch up.

Second, If you haven’t read “The Writing Road to Reading” by Romalda Spalding, I would recommend it. With the training you already have it will be an easy read, and I think you’ll find it interesting. I feel that there is a good chance that the Spalding Method, as it is usually called, is the best full-class first grade method out there, but it is rarely used nowadays. Nevertheless, you will see its influence in most modern programs.

Third, Read “Reading Reflex,” which is the parent manual for Phono-Graphix. Pay particular attention to the way they “cut to the chase,” teaching only what is necessary and teaching it in an order that makes sense. I’m working with a second-grader now who “looks to the sky” every time she sees a vowel, trying to think of the octopus (/o/) or the umbrella (/u/). This kind of training is completely unnecessary and is deadly for comprehension. By the end of the first lesson, she was automating on the basic code vowel sounds (and did not have umbrellas and octopuses rummaging through her brain.)

Fourth, see First…it’s really that important…..Rod

Hi Barbara,

I’m just a mom and am not familiar with any program except Phono-Graphix. However, my son has an auditory processing disorder so the PG method of teaching one SOUND at a time, and then the various spellings of that sound is the only method I found that worked for him. Teaching one RULE and then all the sounds that go with that rule was too much for him to take in - I think because of the APD.

Lil

Just a note to add to Rod’s post. The Riggs Institute has made a user-friendly curriculum based on Spalding. I have not used it but someone who does told me she loves it. Personally, I’d try Phono-Graphix before anything else. I think it is what most kids need…without excess information as Rod pointed out.

http://www.riggsinst.org/index.shtml

Janis

I also used phonographix with my son with excellent results.

I really like Rod’s comments about why it works. It really does cut to the chase. It teaches the absolute basics. The biggest complaint is that is too simplistic. I think that is it’s strength. These kids need the basics taught in a simple, straight forward way. I think if something is confusing to teach it probably is confusing to learn. That is why I have always valued the pragmatic, straightforward advice from the likes of Shay and Victoria. They give no nonsense advice that you can put to use.

I bought the lindamood bell seeing stars and visualizing and verbalizing material. I think it is a great concept, but it really is just a concept. One that I am a little sorry I spent $100 for. Don’t get me wrong I think it is a very useful approach but just more expensive than it needs to be. I actually use the concept of visualizing with the phonographix approach.
I spent $18 for my phonographix book and it was the best investment I ever made.

Rod,

Janis recommended that I post to you about my son’s problems. He is six years old and in first grade. He has been diagnosed dyslexic and having auditory processing issues.

We are doing PG and it is going very well. However, he has weekly spelling tests. The tests are all sight words. The first week it was “and, the, is, in” The second week she added “was, are, to” This made the issue worse. Finally, the teacher decided to decrease the list temporarily to “the, in, is” He took the test today and got 100%

I am not sure what the trouble is and what I should be doing and looking for. HE doesn’t seem to have this trouble with PG just the sight words.

I also noticed that you said learning a word associated with a sound is bad. My son’s first grade class teaches using A, Apple, “AH”, he uses this strategy when he can’t remember. I am trying to get him through the PG but don’t want to go faster I should. Shay has been incredibly helpful to me and I am much more confident working with the program but this trouble with the sight words is frustrating!

Any suggestions?

Thanks
K.

K, let me just add to that and tell Rod why I said to ask him. I wondered if there might be visual issues due to the fact he was having difficulty memorizing a small number of 2 and 3 letter common words. I felt there might be some problem with either visual memory or other visual issues since he was not being asked to decode the words, just memorize them by sight.

Janis

Hi Barbara,

Both Wilson Language and Slingerland are Orton-Gillingham based programs. If you can do Slingerland well, you could probably do Wilson from the manual—though not sure why you would need to do so. I use Wilson, but know many who use Slingerland. Both are multisensory, systematic language programs based on similar underlying methodology.

I also use LiPS. I integrate both multi-sensory, systematic language and LiPS version of phonemic awareness training together. Specifically, I use the error handling for reading, spelling, and tracking. I always use the LiPS method for connecting sound to symbol if that is yet an issue for a student. After connection, I use the O-G based stuff but still throw back to LiPS for a little tracking every lesson.

Sorry, but I’ve not used Phono-Graphix and cannot comment on it. I have reviewed the program and the book; however, still do not feel comfortable commenting.

I don’t know about all the programs, but do know a few.

>I always use the LiPS method for connecting sound to symbol if that is yet an >issue for a student.

But how do you do this? I have asked this before and what I’ve seen useful so far is the visual tricks for remembering the letter shapes (like drawing an apples inside the a). I found that my student has a visual discrimination problem, but I still continue with the LiPS because like you, I find the tracking part very useful.

I have emailed the Lindamood people about making the sound/symbol connection through LiPS and they told me that the appropriate program for this is the Seeing Stars. I said that I thought Seeign Stars is just for sight words. I never got a response back.

Seeing Stars is for sight words, spelling, and phonemic awareness.

http://www.lindamoodbell.com/symbolimagery.html

(K. - I think Seeing Stars might be a program that would be good for your son after PG. It helps the child develop symbol imagery for spelling patterns. However, Rod still might say to have him checked by a developmental optometrist first).

Janis

If the child cannot visually perceive the difference between, say a lower case “a” and “c”, then you’ll have to rely on something else than LiPS to get the pre-emergent skill of letter recognition. The auditory channel isn’t very appropriate here, so try tactile/kinesthetic: Make letters from play dough, wikkistix, anything. Trace letters with hands on something (velvet, fine plastic screen strung over frame, slick piece of whiteboard) and while tracing say the letter name.

How old are these students? What is the cognitive ability?

I agree with most of what Rod has to say about reading. I do not know enough about vision therapy or have I had the success he has to comment on that part of his post. I personally believe visual perception skills to be very important part of this puzzle.

I would say to Barbara, or any parent or teacher, that before you ask the question which program is the best or which program for my child, that you do some reading and decide what is important in the process of learning to read. You must first understand what kids who read well are doing. Once you decide what good readers are doing then it is much easier to decide what kids who are not reading well will need.

I highly recommend Why Our Children Can’t Read and What You Can Do About It, by Diane McGuinness. She goes through the history of language, covers all the issues related to the process of learning to read and evaluates many programs. She received criticism because teachers felt she was too critical on teachers and others felt her statements about dyslexia too extreme. If you can see past these issues then you will learn a lot from her. I also recommend Jerome Rosner’s book, Helping the Learning Disabled Child Overcome Learning Difficulites.

I see the process of learning to read just as Rod has described in his third comment. I have not read Writing Road to Reading.

To me it is not this program or that program but what do you see as the blueprint for reading. What do kids need to do well to read fluently? What are the good readers doing? Look at the blueprint, not the method. I happen to use phonographix because, to me, it teachers the necessary skills to read without any distracting activities. Through the lessons the child discovers how “reading works.”

All reading programs teach the code in some fashion. Some use implicit instruction, some use explicit instruction, some use gimmicks like picture clues for vowels, some use blends, some use word families, some use “red” words, some use sight words–but all are attempting to teach the code of our language. Many feel context plays into this process and use strategies that include reading on, use the picture, skip the word, use a word with the same meaning and so on. All of this is an attempt to teach the code. Once code is learned, reading can begin and then comprehension can take place. You must decide how these issues play into the process. Which comes first or is there a first?

You must also know that words have sounds and that the sounds are represented by symbols. Your cannot learn a sound symbol code without the ability to access the sounds. Plain and simple. How does the program you are using teach this? Look at that. Does your program teach a child how to blend or assume he can do this skill? Does it teach a child to segment and how does it do this? Does it teach a child to take sound in and out of words and how does it do this? Does it do this in the context of words and reading where the skills are needed or as a prereading activity? And most importanly why are these skills needed?

To me, good readers have good auditory processing skills when they enter school, they have good visual perception skills, and according to Rod they also have good visual efficiency skills. These kids seem to learn effortlessly. They put all the bits and pieces together and the code makes sense to them. The other kids, at least 40%, in our schools, are not putting the pieces together.

Is it our instruction, it is weak or under developed visual and auditory skills, or is it something else? These questions can never fully be answered. There are just too many opinions. I do know, from what I have read, and from my teaching experience, that focusing on the basics is good place to start. Once the child understands how words work, and he or she has the skills to access the sounds of our language to make the sound symbol connection, and the child discovers the code and understands the code, then he or she will be ready for reading.

To me Step 2 is practice. Many parents and many teachers are under great pressure to teach kids to read in weeks, get him or her to grade level NOW. They then begin to jump from program to program looking for a magic cure. To me that is not coming. Practice is coming and lots of it.

Give your child a chance to practice his or her new skills. Remember no one learns to play a piano over the summer.

Step 3 would be for schools to come to some kind of agreement on the process of reading and begin early. Maybe, if we started in kdg, with skill instruction as outlined in phonographix, started with printing activities, did not encourage kids to learn tons of sight words, begin teaching the code form the get go we MIGHT see less kids struggling. We might see less vision problems, we might see less of all the learning disablities we know see. MIGHT-that is the operative word.

Kathy

Rod — in many cases I agree with you, and certainly getting over vision problems is very important.

However, I have to disagree with you very strongly on one issue. The “writing road to reading” makes me run away screaming. You could not possibly pick a worse approach for a child who is verbally quick-developing and physically slow-developing. As my daughter and I and several other people in my family fitr this pattern, if your advice were applied to all first-grade classes, a large number of very intelligent and capable students would be frustrated and lost. Something like this did in fact happen to two of my younger relatives, one of whom started as gifted and is now a two-time dropout. Not good. The “:writing first” approach is fine for well-coordinated kids who have low demands verbally — but I don’t think these are the majority.

My suggestion is to not do “sight words”. Not at all. Punt the whole idea of memorization. All words in English have at least SOME phonetic clues. “is” is reasonably regular, the usual short i and the second sound of s. “it” and “in” are absolutely regular. “the” is regular, the usual th digraph and the third sound (the muttered unstressed vowel or schwa) common for e. “are” is almost regular; the sound of “ar” and then a silent e at the end. “was” is a nuisance word, but the w is regular, the s has its second sound, and you just need to remember that it’s an a and not a u. (The very worst words phonetically are “one” and “once”, but even they have consonant clues.) Teach reading these words phonetically, and teach spelling them by sound and then remember that the zz sopund can be either z or s and you try and see which looks more familiar; that some words just have a silent e; and that some words just have a stupid vowel. This makes tons more sense than trying to memporize half your voicabulary by sight and half by phonics, and once the phonnics is mastered the s[pelling will stick. It takes time but is worth it.

Victoria,

I personally don’t have a problem with that, assuming K. is willing to tell her son’s teacher that she is taking him out of the classroom spelling curriculum. If she does it phonetically, some of those “sight words” will have sounds that she has not yet taught in PG. So the child should not have phonetic spelling words that he cannot decode yet.

I will add that I did take my child out of her first grade spelling last year. She could not decode the words and I felt they were inappropriate for her at that point.

Janis

Hi Kathy,

The schools that are using PG as their reading program are having very few referral to special ed services, that should tell you something. I know of parents, who are using PG at home, that are going to the schools and telling them that they will not permit sight words and no spelling tests beyond what their kids should do. Actually, kids shouldn’t get into the advanced code, except sh, wh, th, and ck, until they are second graders. The kids who aren’t able to sight read words that include the advanced code in first grade are those usually referred to sped. In actuality, they are only doing what they should be but the schools are clueless to actual maturation in reading. Knowing this, it sure makes sence that most of the kids that can’t read are boys. They mature generally slower than girls in the reading department.

Once you have taught the child the sound/symbol relationship using PG, there is no need for Seeing Stars.

You know what, Shay? I think you are precisely right about something (again). Saxon Phonics is such a good regular phonics program but they rush through too much of the advanced code in the first grade. That is where my child tripped up. She’s repeating first this year (she was the youngest in her class last year anyway) and then we’ll likely follow-up with the PG advanced code. Advanced code really should be in second grade as you said.

Janis

Shay, why do you think the child is struggling to spell words like “in” and “is”? They reduced his spelling list to three words per week. Do you think he just doesn’t have basic code yet?

Janis

I am not sure that he can generalize yet. Have him decode his sight words. Ask him the sound of ‘i’ and then ‘n’. The sounds/symbol relationship hasn’t imprinted yet. I also think that he is geting confused in thinking that some words he can decode and then there are some that he is supposed to know by sight. All of the sight words can be sounded out as long as you have taught that sound/symbol relationship. For example, when is three sounds, wh/e/n/ but if you haven’t taught him the sound for /wh/, then how will he know? He may have visual memory problems until he is taught the sound to symbol. Don’t let him get frustrated, when they give him words, teach him that sound that the symbol represents.

I believe what you are saying. They are evaluating sped in my district and the parents have been asked for input. I decided that of all the points I could make this was the most important one.
I want something to support the idea that with early phonemic awareness instruction such as the program phonographix, there are smaller number of sped students.

If you have anything you can email me and I will send it into the district. Thanks!

He had his spelling test this week on “in, is, the” she said them and he wrote them. He did fine, got all three words with no cueing or help. He is now working on “and, to,” we are still working on the other three, just for reminders. He also does recognize them when he sees them in sentences.

He is doing ok and we are working really hard (and well) with PG. The teacher is really great about seeing when he gets frustrated and talking with him. He did tell her he didn’t want to fell different from his friends but was having a hard time understanding all the words at once.

So far, so good, I just need to stay on top of everything!!

K.

Look under anything with G. Reid Lyon. Ph.D. You might look under Http://www.apa.org/ppo/lyon.html Phono-Graphix supports the research, segments, blends and phoneme manipulations, as well as understanding the code. The biggest problem is that most kids who have trouble reading think that one letter/ one sound; they have problems understanding the advanced code and therefore multi-syllable words.

The student is 6 years old with an IQ of 130 from WISC. Thansk for all the responses, everyone!!!

Hi Victoria,

First, I can understand where you’re coming from on this, but let me explain further.

If, in fact, a child’s hand coordination is so poor that they can’t be taught to print then there are likely, in my opinion, to be other fine-motor issues with that child. Am I correct in stating that you had a visual issue when you were young? I think I remember you saying that long ago, but can’t recall for sure.

In any case, the vision therapists see uncoordinated kids all the time, and kids with poor speech too, another fine-motor skill (tongue and lip movement.)

My feeling on this (buttressed by your own comments) is that fine-motor deficits are genetic in nature, which is why “dyslexia” appears to be genetic in nature. This was, incidentally, backed up by the very study from Norway (?) that Diane McGuinness uses to discount the need for vision therapy. They found in that study a definite tendency for one parent of a poor reader to have fine-motor deficits. Unfortunately, they also conducted insufficient vision testing and concluded that vision was not an issue at all.

The reason I find Spalding interesting is that it teaches fine motor skills via handwriting instruction. It also encourages visual fine-motor development (tracking, binocularity, etc.) by starting with large printing, then moving to smaller print later, and by always having kids look at the words left to right, sound by sound (no mental pictures to look at the ceiling for, and no encouragement to check the picture, think of another word ending like this or beginning like this, etc.)

Finally, when Spalding was more actively used, it generated exceptionally good results according to a researcher named Aukerman (Robert, I think.) Recently, I have talked to a couple of people who actually still use Spalding and they appear to have nowhere near the referrals for extra help that the average classroom today seems to have.

To clarify, I’ve never used the Spalding Method. However, I find the discussion in it quite interesting. Users of Phono-Graphix will see many similarities, and also some very clear philosophical differences.

Rod

Hi K,

First, I didn’t intend to come off so strongly about the picture clues for letter sounds (like apple, octopus, umbrella, etc.) Basically, I just think it’s a waste of instructional time and is building some unuseful habits which then have to be overcome by the child. At least it indicates the teacher is trying to teach sounds.

As for the sight words, I agree with victoria….make them phonetic. A six-year-old is capable of handling the shocking bit of news that the letter “s” represents not one sound, but two (/s/ and /z/) Heck, he’s probably even capable of understanding that they are closely associated (/z/ is the voiced form of /s/) but does he really need to know? He does need to know that the letter “s” can be the /z/ sound though, so tell him.

For those of you following the Spalding discussion intermingled here, the child’s first exposure to the letter “s” in the first or second week of school is that “This is /s/,/z/ (sounds only, not letter name).” He is then shown how to form it properly. One of the features I like about Spalding is that it is very forthright about the overlap options for a letter or digraph.

With this added bit of information, “is” “has” and “his” become phonetic. “Was” is a little trickier, and here I would tell him that he is eventually going to run into a lot of words where the letter “a” is the “ah” sound (like in father) and that “was” is one of them. Yes, it’s really a schwa in speech, but if you pronounce it exactly like the “a” in “want” he will certainly recognize the word. In fact, you might consider adding “want” and “father” to his spelling list, challenging him with “advanced code” sound pictures that he will be learning later. Incidentally, I handle “what” the same way, and also words like “ago,” “around” and “about.”

Now, if you happen to have a kid who “just doesn’t get it” AND if you or your husband (or other siblings of your child or you or your husband) had trouble learning to read, begin to suspect a vision problem, and try to deal with that issue first. Also, the “dyslexic” diagnosis would certainly make me want to check with a behavioral optometrist, one with a vision therapy dept, or who refers to one.

Hope this helps….Rod

PS…as long as I’m at it…tell him “th” also has two sounds. Have him put his hand right in front of his mouth and say “that thing” and then ask him if he feels air blowing on his hand at the beginning of one of the words. It may take a couple tries, but he will feel the difference eventually. Tell him there are two sounds that we spell with “th” (write “th,” don’t just spell it aloud.) Then say both sounds for him, and see if he can say them too. I feel this is important because so many words that kids mix up start with the voiced form of the “th” (then, the, those, this, these, them) and poor readers never seem to be comfortable with them. Then teach the word “the” with a long-e sound as in “The End”….the end.

A general suggestion. I call this the “teach three times” strategy.

This requires drawing a fine line. What I’m going to suggest bears relations to the spiral curriculum. In its overdone form, the spiral curriculum has been a total disaster to the math program, and hasn’t done much good in a lot of other areas. So NO, don’t go there. You don’t want what has happened to the math program, trying to teach every single possible topic every year, and ending up skimming over thirty topics in four days each and ending up really teaching nothing.

On the other hand, you don’t expect anyone, child or adult, to get everything perfect the first time. or to remember every single detail about every single thing they’ve done.

So a good program works something like this:

(1) Introductory teaching. Tell the child the skill directly, for example “th is the sound in this, that, they, the”. Have the child imitate you. Have the child think of other sounds with the th sound. Write several words with th and help the child sound them out. Do NOT test, and do NOT demand the child do this independently yet. You are just introducing an idea.
As you are reading, when you meet a word with th, run your pen under the pair and ask “Remember what sound this is?” If the child remembers, good, lots of praise; if not, just say the sound and have the child repeat it. The common words the and this and they and them are learned this way.

(2) Formal teaching: This is in my Book 2, just as Shay says, although I find that most kids can do this by the last quarter of Grade 1 IF they have worked thoroughly through Book 1 first — although many Grade 4 and above students need to go back and review this as well of they haven’t done the preparation. Age varies from 5 to 10. And some adults. Here the students do a number of exercises identifying words with th, discriminating between th and sh and ch in both sound and writing, practicing writing words with all three, etc. At this point if I had time to teach spelling formally I would introduce a lot of th words in spelling. Of course we also keep practicing these words in reading, although I back off and give less help, waiting longer for the student to come up with the sound.

(3) Review teaching: In my Book 3 there are several pages which repeat the same kind of exercises and re-teach the sound pattern. It’s absolutely necessary to do this work to consolidate the ideas. The older students can go through it faster, but a few months is definitely not time wasted. I would also re-teach the spelling at this point. if I had time (as a private tutor with limited time I have to cut some things until time permits.)

If you approach all the difficulties in this way, they certainly don’t go away but become much less of a hurdle.

Rod — I agree with you 95%, and keep referring other readers of this board to you.
But from knowledge and personal experience I have to pick up on a couple of points.

Most of the members of my family are very advanced verbally. There’s a slight tendency to stuttering, but some of that seems to be the mind racing away from the tongue, and it pretty much clears up by itself.
Vision problems hit us randomly. I had a problem that could easily have been corrected (farsightedness and some astigmatism) but which developed into severe amblyopia when the Freudians decided I was just trying to copy my brother. He was a 1948 incubator baby and lucky to have vision at all. My coordination issues are the result of growing up half-blind, not the cause (as soon as I got glasses I caught up ten years or so in three years.) My daughter has a vision problem related to high fevers, probably not genetic.
Both of us, and some other relatives, simply have slow-growing hands. There is nothing at all wrong with them, they’re just programmed on a different schedule from the average. My daughter’s coordination was excellent, as evidenced by doing somersaults before she was two and handsprings at six, downhill skiing since she was four (and that requires balance and fine-muscle coordination). But in kindergarten she was still wearing mittens from the toddlers’ department. You simply could not expect her to write well any more than you could expect an average three-year-old to write well — the muscles and nerves just weren’t there.

I agree again 95% with what you describe from Spalding — stressing left to right absolutely GREAT!! I fight over this daily with my students. Writing large and loose ABSOLUTELY — I am trying to teach this attitude to a number of students and parents who have gotten so tied up in being “neat” that they have forgotten to actually write content. Reading what is actually there and not what you hope to find WONDERFUL! From what you say, I’m definitely interested in looking at the program.
But, there are limits, as I found out with my daughter. There she was, reading anything she could get her hands on — the landlady used to get a laugh out of having my five-year-old read something out of the newspaper to her — and writing like a four-year-old. I gave her markers, encouraged her to stay large and loose, and battled regularly with the schools over the issue of written work. She could do only a limited amount before tiring, and it was all over the page and not pretty like they wanted it.
I made up my mind which school NOT to send her to when the school she was in gave her “gifted” programming, which consisted of having her draw a picture and write a single sentence underneath, the same thing they do with slow learners. Here was a kid who could read anything she saw, and she was wasting her small-group “enrichment” time spending an hour fighting with one sentence; and finally when she did struggle through and got something good on paper (“We went skiing at Mont Orford”) the teacher completely devalued all her efforts by rewriting the sentence “properly” underneath. I wouldn’t have minded so much if the teacher had been trying to improve the handwriting skills, but she wasn’t, just blindly applying a program that was totally unsuitable. Had my daughter been kept in this program, she either would have become a nervous wreck, or more likely gone the way of my nephew the gifted dropout. He had wonderful creative schools that did all sorts of writing, students publishing books, etc… . what he needed and didn’t get was a combination of guidance and challenge.