Re: two questions - basic reading skills in order

The code knowledge improvements are clearly teaching. Not sure about auditory processing. He was simply not even teachable prior to doing The Listening Program. But by then I was burnt out from doing PACE exercises with him so unsuccessively that I only followed up for a couple weeks and haven’t done any AP work for at least six months. So my best guess is that TLP improved his auditory processing and then development kicked in.

Beth

Dear Shay,

Thank you for your response. There are several things in your post that I wish to clear up. I’ll start by saying that I *do not* believe your comments to be malicious or personal. I hope that I do not come across negatively in response and I sincerely appreciate your calm and thoughtful post. I’ll strive to keep my try to answer you in that same tone.

First, Orton-Gillingham *is not* equal to Wilson Language. This is a critical point. Yes, the author, Barbara Wilson, is Orton trained; however, she put her own ideas into this—perhaps trying to make things “easier” or simpler for teachers to use without getting the full Orton training. (I disagree with that brief training concept, by the way.) I use Wilson materials, however, I do not teach from their script. My pure Orton-Gillingham training taught me to be diagnostic: to do what the student needs in order to learn rather than blindly follow a list of items. I do not agree with every detail in Wilson, but I like their words, sentences, and passages in defined sequence within a decodable text format for teens and adults. Students need more practice applying the phonics skills that I have taught them and so I use the parts of any program that I like. I use SPIRE materials and some others. I also make many of my own materials when all else fails.

Your comment about the limited training/exposure you’ve had with O-G and Wilson concerned me. What would be your thoughts if I said that I have read 3 pages of the PG book or attended 30 minutes of a seminar from them—and had discussed on-line, in detail what that program is doing. How can you say, without being trained in the method, what O-G does? I feel that you do not understand the Orton-Gillingham method, yet you wrote about it like you were trained completely. The Wilson program is not equal to Orton-Gillingham.

You know, I’ve heard many people from my circle say that Wilson Language takes too long. I don’t know since I don’t do it like they say to do it. Sometimes their sequence is wrong for some students—so I don’t use it that time. Sometimes their multi-syllable words are too difficult so I don’t use them. Students come in all different measured ability levels—I get ‘em from 65 to 130 IQ’s. I do what needs done to get it in their memory and see that they apply it in reading. I am not a program puppet. I am a life-long student of learning methods and I apply program portions to those methods.

I am pleased to have this chance to clear up the misinformation given about the Orton-Gillingham method of teaching reading and writing skills.

Very sincerely,
Susan Long

Shay,

I appreciate your approach. I can remember finding out that the lag time for medical research becoming a part of medical practice was something like 2 years or more. I remember finding that rather shocking. They used to say, “Don’t bother reading the text books because by the time they are published they are outdated.” We had to rely on journals because there was so much research that it moved too fast.

There did seem to be more of a push in that profession to base practice on research. I have to stop myself sometimes from doing what seems right and focus on what has been shown to be right through objective data. I used to do some work with surgeons and if you didn’t have objective data they wouldn’t give you the time of day.

It isn’t always easy to base my decisions about my son on objective data because there seems to be alot less objective data in education. One only has to go to ERIC and read all of the very subjective papers that support whole language. There seems to be a million theories for every fact supported by science.

I will keep trying to stick to the research. Thanks for always encouraging that ideal.

You wrote in your post:
>>Shay helped me teach him long versus short vowels in a way that seemed to really visually implant on his brain.<<

Can you please explain what method (a variation on PG???) has helped you with this.

Thanks! :-)

This is a great thread. I just looked at it. I do teach syllable types, not as an end in itself, just to help kids get grip on how to look at segmenting words. When I get to the “advanced” endings, I teach them, period. There are many: tion, sion, tious, cious, tive, age, and on and on.

I teach them as chunks, like red words in Project Read, words that cannot be decoded, they must just be learned. Then I tack on vowels to some, like we learn to look for chunks like “ation” and “ition.” This works, it is not that hard to teach by the time they are meeting these words in print. We practice, review, read lots of examples, etc.

LD students don’t seem to internalize the chunks and the patterns. They don’t transfer what they know about “Indian” to “:initiate.” Non LD students do this, at some level they relate to the chunks that repeat themselves over and over in words and syllables. They recognize them. Something I don’t entirely understand happens in an LD brain that causes each new word to be like something totally new, despite the fact that I have taught segmenting and blending and spelling patterns from the outset in my program. Processing the chunks as related soundwise is not an easy or a natural task if you are an LD reader. You must be taught explicitely and shown and coached and so forth and gradually over time the task becomes easier as the brain learns how to deal with this process that it was not wired to do well.

I do know the Wilson program. I am the type of person that understands a program and don’t usually need training to present it. When I started my training on Wilson, it didn’t make sense. I know that OG is not Wilson, Wilson is considered a clone of OG, not exactly like it. I think that if PG hadn’t been produced, I would still not use OG, takes too long for my high school students and it really isn’t recommended for elementary students. OG really isn’t offered in many school, but Wilsons is.

Concerning training in PG, you don’t really need it. It was initially set up for parents or a therapist to teach a child. It was really not a ‘classroom’ program, but was made one for teachers who were using RR for the classroom, (like me) with modifications. This is the beauty of the program, it keeps decoding simple so that almost anyone can use it to teach reading. Since most teachers have never been trained to teach reading in college, whole language didn’t need any training, it is great for them. Of course, we do have training courses, an 8 hour and a 35 hour. I like the 35 hour just because you learn why it works and have more practice which I think is quite necessary in order to teach it. So, if you pick up the book, read each chapter and teach it using the lesson plans, I would applaud you and help you. I do think that if a multitude of methods have to be used, then the methods aren’t really that effective to begin with. I use PG and only PG for decoding and beginning spelling strategies. I don’t teach any other area of reading while I teach decoding. I use other programs for writing, vocabulary, comprehension, and fluency if needed. Remember, I teach older students and comprehension is an issue due to the fact that they have never had the ability to read on their grade level so they need some help. Mostly, if you are using PG as a regular reading program, after the students learn decoding in grade 1 and 2, they become fluent in grades 3 and 4. The ability to decode fluently but not comprehend, was a rarity but it seems to be more prevalent today. I think this is due to the fact that more kids can’t visualize language. Why? I don’t know. May be due to the fact of lack of language and reading in the household and more video and computer games.
Thanks for the tone of the post. Since you have read RR, and you use many methods, why not try it? I would help.

Hi Libby, I believe that helping my dd hear the different sounds in the words really help her ability to learn the code. (mainly because my son struggled with this until we finally did find PACE which worked on improving that skill.) She still mixes the “short” /e/ and the /i/ sound and says “sall” (like in ball) for the word “saw” so she still needs work in this area. (I didn’t do the whole PACE program with my dd just because of her age.)

I think another thing that helps is that I know how to help her. With my son, I didn’t know enough about reading and the skills needed to learn to read to catch his errors. Nor was I educated enough about teaching reading to actually teach him to read. With my dd I can correct her right away. I can actually break down what she is doing, where she is having problems, and then (best of all) work on those areas. That makes a huge difference!

The problem with reading is that it is very seldom “one problem”. It’s like an onion with lots of different layers. You make gains in one area and then you work on the next layer until you finally get to the core of things. Some kids just have more layer (problems).
The hardest thing for a mother is to identify the layers (problems) so that you can directly address those issues. When you match the program to the specific problem, that’s when you see the most gain. I hear some people say “well that program didn’t help my child one bit” it’s probably because the child already had those skills already. Now, if we could just find that one reading professional who could evaluate, identify and then plug us into that program that would most benefit our child. I pray that that happens in my life time.

Hope this helps.

Donna in MO

I agree with your statement also about re-teaching phonic. If the child doesn’t really know it (and I mean ‘really know’) phonics, they would benefit from being taught phonics.

I think you are also right about the visualization to improve spelling. Have you tried doing the spelling words in clay and then making an object with the clay to help him remember that word? Also some kids will see a whole picture but they don’t pay attention to details. Sometimes just pointing out the details of letters or making associations help. Just a couple of suggestions.

Donna in MO

I think that the RAN is definintely a factor.
Another factor is just the motivation. My dd really, really wants to learn to read. My son could care less when he was in 1st grade. Just not a priority. So, my dd pushes on even if things get tough where my son would just stop and ask to do something else. Maybe that’s a girl/boy difference.

Donna in MO

I guess you misread my post: I have not read but a page or two of the PG book(s). My knowledge of PG is sort of like you attending 15-30 minutes of a seminar. I could say—“Oh, it’s just like this or that,” but I *really* don’t know since I don’t have the training in both that is needed to compare at a detailed level. And, in my opinion, neither do you.

Thanks, but I don’t feel a need to use another phonics program right now because I’m successful with the kids I teach. However, because I have not read the PG book or been trained, I refrain from posting or dialoging with people about PG specifics; I am not qualified unless I have invested that learning time. You may disagree with the practice of knowing something well before you discuss it’s details. That may be why it appears that you missed the whole point of my dialog with you.

Wilson is not a “clone” of O-G. That term implies a duplicate of some kind. It is separate and independent of Orton-Gillingham, but the author uses some of the Orton-Gillingham method. They are not twins or clones.

I am not trying to sell you to become an O-G instructor. You seem pleased and productive with your current instructional delivery concepts. You are obviously zealous about PG and I say nothing when you laud its praises for any situation. My difficulty regards your misstatements about O-G. It appears to be a desire (my opinion) to sell PG over other things rather than state the facts and let folks decide for themselves. Great. Sell it. Just don’t make misstatements about other things that you don’t know very well.

Have a great weekend. I’m off to see Harry Potter.

Don’t think it is gender. My LD child was as disinterested as your son but my 5 year son in K is just driven to learn to read. My daughter wasn’t as disinterested as my older son but nothing like her younger brother.

Beth

I have some notes on my computer at work and if you are interested, you can email me and I will send them to you.

Basically, the approach I used was to have him do all long vowel variations of code at once and then short. I had him stare at the list of variations (enlarged the print) and then we made a list of words that had the long (a) sound in it. There were several other steps but can’t remember off the top of my head. Basically, though I was getting him to see the patterns that were there and have him use his visual channel as well as opposed to just his auditory. I then used long of a specific vowel and then short of that vowel. There was something about doing long and then short of the same vowel that did something to his brain. He was just exhausted and quite frankly hasn’t been the same since. He just didn’t have the CVC pattern imprinted on his brain. So although he knew tons of CVC words by sight, he couldn’t seemed to generalize his knowledge. So when he saw a name he didn’t know by sight like Pam, for example, he would mostly say Pame. We had been through PG a couple times, he had it at school (and his teacher made the same comment about lack of generalizing), we tried LIPS briefly, and OG briefly, but none of these tapped into his problem of not having a visual imprint of the CVC pattern in his head.

Beth

I agree. My point was that motivation is one of the many factors in the mix of “learning to read”. If the motivation is there, then the child tends to keep working through the tough times. If there is no motivation, that, “it’s to hard so I quite” bar is much lower. Because of my dd motivation, she continues to work on the task of reading thus continues to make gains, thus continues to read, thus continues to make gains etc… It just so happens that it’s my dd who is the motivated one.

There are so many issues when a child learns to read. I was just throwing another issue to think about. However, it would be interesting to see if girls are motivated more to read than boys. Any teacher want to comment???

Donna in MO