middle school reading programs

I spent my life working middle school SED’s in Florida and developed Great Leaps for middle school non-readers. It worked. After the holidays give me a call or check out the website. www.greatleaps.com 877 - 475-3277

Ken Campbell

Welcome! You have come to the right place! I would suggest that you go to the link LD Indepth above and read all the articles on reading. You will learn why these kids aren’t reading. They have never been properly taught. I personally use a program called Phono-Graphix (book available from Amazon.com, “Reading Reflex” by McGuinnesss, $12) and I also use Great Leaps afterwards to build fluency.

Here is the training site list for Phono-Graphix:

http://www.readamerica.net/conferences.asp

Here is the Lindamood-Bell site. It is also an excellent program and covers other skills such as comprehension, etc. It will have training sessions listed as well, but the summer sessions won’t be out until sometime in March. Their Visualizing and Verbalizing would be good to use for comprehension even if you decide to use Phono-Graphix for the phonemic awareness/phonics portion:

http://www.lindamoodbell.com/

My district would not pay for me to have any of this training. But I made the decision that I could not in good conscience go on teaching and doing an injustice to children. Maybe one by one, we can get proper training, educate others, and make a difference to some children.

Janis

Just checked the Lindamood-Bell site…you are in luck because there is a clinic in SF! Call them and I’ll bet they have information for you.

Janis

Janis,

As the parent of two children that did not learn to read in Elementary, I would like to take this opportunity to thank you for your professionalism and dedication. These children need more teachers like you.

I have sought language therapy from a independent teacher. She uses the Orton-Gillingham method. It is highly recommended by the Texas Scottish Rite Hospital—Luke Waite Dyslexia program.

Once again, thank you.
Rhonda

> By the way, these kids can speak and write fine.

Hi,

Could you please explain what you mean when you say they “write fine?” It doesn’t seem consistent with your statement that they have “virtually no knowledge of alphabet and no reading ability at all.” I’d be surprised to find that they even have good penmanship, much less that they can “write fine.”

….Rod

Rhonda, that is very kind of you. I am glad you found help for your child. Orton-Gillingham has been the foundation of the very best of programs, so you are fortunate to have found those services!

Thanks!
Janis

Poor use of language on my part, sorry. The children I have in mind (except one) can copy words written on the board. They cannot generate their own sentences. So, yes, I was referring to penmanship. Most of them, also, have an interest in using computers for games and software like “Reader Rabbit.” I am very pleased to get responses such as yours. All information provided will be researched and some will be used.

Finally, have any of you had experience with the Edmark Reading Programs, Level 1 and Level 2. Ideally, I would like to see how some of these other programs work or how some of you middle school SH teachers handle reading.

Thanks.

Bob F.

frankfurt,

i am now working with an 11 yo, came to me not reading, i use Phono-Graphix, www.readamerica.net

after 15 hrs of one-on-one tutoring he is now up to 3rd grade level, it takes work, lots of it and you will have to raise your expectations cuz the kids have none due to the dumbed down curriculum bottle fed to kids in LD,

we treat LD kids like they are morons, when in fact we made them that way,

expect nothing, get nothing, stop blaming the home life or previous teachers or whatever,

buy Reading Reflex and teach your self how to do Phono-Graphix and get busy, the kids lives are depending on you,

libby

Bob,

I am pretty sure that the Edmark is sight words. If you do nothing else, get the “Reading Reflex” book and teach them from that. Most poor readers can’t read because of poor phonemic awareness…they can’t blend and segment sounds in words.

Somewhere Shay, a high school resource teacher, has listed the things she uses and some are below. I may not remember them all but here are the most frequently mentioned excellent programs I see mentioned on this site:

Phono-Graphix or Lindamood-Bell or Orton-Gillingham for the phonemic portion

Great Leaps or Read Naturally for the fluency portion

Lindamood-Bell Visualizing and Verbalizing for comprehension

Step Up to Writing (by Sopris West) for writing

Janis

“My district would not pay for me to have any of this training. But I made the decision that I could not in good conscience go on teaching and doing an injustice to children. Maybe one by one, we can get proper training, educate others, and make a difference to some children.”

You continually amaze me. Thanks for all you do for your kids.

{{{Leah}}} thanks! And I think you are a great mom and advocate for your daughter!

Janis

Hi Bob,

Thanks for clearing that up. I, too, use Phono-Graphix as the base for how I teach reading, and I work with the same kind of kids you’re asking about, but one-on-one, instead of whole class. Nevertheless, there is notthing that I do that could not be done with a group of kids instead of one-on-one. With older kids, I’m not even certain that it would necessarily go that much slower with a group because much of what I do involves having kids “figure out” how English works. Though I have no experience in this regard, I suspect that a group of kids, properly led, could help each other out a lot.

The thing that you are likely to miss, however, is the high likelihood that most of the kids you’re dealing with have undetected vision problems. These will not be acuity problems, but rather problems with their basic visual skills, those skills that require both eyes to function efficiently together. Most of the kids in the class you’re concerned about probably don’t have well-developed visual skills and this is holding back their reading. Most of them also probably have siblings or a parent who had similar problems, incidentally.

As long as you’re willing to do the research, make sure and do some reading on vision therapy, and the type of visual issues vision therapy addresses. If you’re lucky, there will be a good behavioral optometrist (a full-fledged O.D., but with added training in detecting the problems I’m discussing here) somewhere near you. You can check by going to www.covd.org and using their search engine for your state. You’re looking for one with an active vision therapy department.

And by the way, you aren’t wasting your time. The people who say these kids can’t learn are following the research that got the kids to where they are now, not the ones who know how to get them out. You need a good reading program, access to vision therapy for many of them (this will be a challenge) and the ability to get the system to take your efforts seriously.

Good luck….Rod

P.S. There’s a California-based parent group which was formed to advocate for the exact vision needs that I’m talking about here. Their website is www.pave-eye.com. PAVE stands for Parents Active for Vision Education, and is composed primarily of parents who’ve seen the benefits of vision therapy and don’t want other parents’ kids to have to go through school undiagnosed. Check them out.