auditory processing problem

I am in graduate school to become an SLP…and I work with kids who have CAPD….An auditory trainer would help him develop auditory memory, improve the signal to noise ratio in the classroom and tune him in… What is his processing speed like? Could he have co-morbidity with ADD-Inattentive? I have found the toughest kids have both CAPD and ADD-Inattentive…they are the hardest ones to tune in and help…

I have also found..working with rhythms to help him develop temporal processing and timing helps…Songs like Bingo, clapping, Street rhymes like Ms Mary Mack, Mack and the lady with the Alligator purse..and other old nursery rhymes and songs…

When I worked in an intervention program they used this CD.to teach sound symbol associaition. through music…I would think it would help him…I remember one song on the CD..apple apple a, a, a„ Baby Baby buh, buh, buh, cookie cookie, k,k,k,… I think you can get it through Discovery toys…but I am not sure…

I would try the music first…you need to train his brain to hear the differences in length of sounds…and through music you can elongate the sounds, teach him rhythm…you are training his auditory memory from scratch.. Hope this helps..

Well , he does like to drum so your suggestion might work. He loves to use the computer, too. Any specific CD titles? I’ve heard of Fastforword(?). Would that help? I think he hasn’t mastered the alphabet. We’re now on vowels in Lindamood and I don’t think he knows them. It’s possible that he hasn’t learned his alphabet because he has spent his time in school not tuning in to the lessons.

Sometimes some direct basic teaching can help, too. I use a good thorough phonics program (my personal standard is Check and Double Check from Scholar’s Choice, but any good one will do) and actively teach each sound and symbol from the ground up. The book I use starts with recognizing the sound —identifying the “p” beginning words from pictures and distinguishing them from other initial consonants — followed by printing the letter, followed by learning another two letters with very different sound production in the same way, followed by distinguishing among the three. Most students breeze through these initial exercises, but in some cases like your student I have to go over and over them, saying the sound over and over, having the student say it over and over, and doing p-p-p-p- Pig (yes, correct) and p-p-p-p- ssssun (no, not the same). In cases where the student has a lot of trouble, I cut the book apart and put it in plastic cover sheets and use wipe-off markers; then we can review the same page every day for several days until he’s at least 80% correct. Keeping the focus on one thing at a time like this can help him make that first step.

Barbara, I would agree with Victoria that you need to teach the sounds first. Explode the Code (from epsbooks.com) is another resource. I would certainly be sure he has the consonants and short vowels before getting further into the training. I also have a feeling that a half hour twice a week of reading therapy will not be enough practice for this child unless you are giving the parents practice material.

It certainly is a possibility that Fast ForWord might help, but it requires 100 minutes a day for 6-8 weeks. That is hard to manage while in school. Not to mention that it is quite expensive ($800-900 just for the license to use the product plus the provider fee). Personally, I’d try Earobics 1 first. Go to www.earobics.com and look for the home version which is about $59.

Janis

Janis, I am wondering if the Read, Write, and Type typing computer program could help this child if he likes computers. It teaches the letters by their sounds, not their names.

I tried the demo on the website and it seems good. I will also teach the letters and sounds.

It sounds like he is a dysphonetic speller. For my dysphonetic spellers, I use shapeboxes for their spelling words. They shade in boxes that match the outline of the word. I also keep pushing them to get the letter/sound connections by using word building exercises. I begin with words they do know how to spell and then compare them to similar words with similar patterns. This decoding by analogy helps them with both decoding and spelling.

My dd had severe auditory processing deficits that were diagnosed at age 5. She was most severe with auditory memory and word discrimination. Not only could she not hear the sounds in words, she could not remember sound/symbol for the life of her. We would drill the sounds for symbols A, B, C all night long and she still couldn’t remember them.

We did the Tomatis program, and followed with Earobics. (She started Earbics prior to Tomatis and it was way too hard for her - it was like pulling teeth to get her to do the program). About a month into Tomatis, she was cruising thru Earobics and by the end of Tomatis, she was actually ‘loving’ Earobics. Within a month of finishing Tomatis, she was ‘remembering’ the sound/symbol, blending and reading. We also did alot of auditory memory building exercises.

There are alot of different sound therapy programs that will do the auditory tonal training - in lots of different price ranges. Fastforword also does a form of auditory tonal training.

Similar words can be a help; you can do the cat-bat-mat rhyme groupings, and the final changes cat-cap. This loses effectiveness with multisyllables, however, unless you teach prefixes and suffixes and root words and all that.

Outlining words is something I have very little faith in. I have never seen it help students, and I remember reading an article some time ago that said this method is entirely ineffective. It actually draws attention away from the things that are important (particular letters) and encourages confusion of words of similar shape such as some-come, hat-bat-lab, may-nag, etc,