phono graphix

I am certified in Phono-Graphix. It is a method for teaching reading. Although many children benefit greatly in spelling from the program also, it is not enough for some children.

The best way to learn more about Phono-Graphix is to buy the book “Reading Reflex”. Someone I know just ordered it from Amazon for $7.50, but it is also widely available in bookstores for $16. This book was written by the developers of PG specifically for parents who are interested in using the method to tutor a child.

My own daughter has been through a PG intensive and now, at age 11, reads fluently on a 5th/6th grade level but still spells on a 2nd grade level. We are currently using Sequential Spelling (http://www.avko.org), which has worked better than any other spelling approach for us.

We found the “process spelling” portion of PG to be very useful, but my daughter seemed to lack the visual processing subskills necessary to be able to do the “scratch sheet spelling” recommended by the authors. Around lesson #45 in Sequential Spelling, my daughter spontaneously started using the scratch sheet spelling technique on some words — successfully! — so I think SS has developed some of the spelling subskills she lacked.

Mary

I am curious. Are you a Reading Specialist? My sister is a Reading Specialist but she was not trained in this program when she attended graduate classes 10 years ago. During the summer she plans on working with my son and thought this might be something she could study to benefit her students as well as her nephew. Any info would be helpful.

I’m not a reading specialist, but rather a parent who got frustrated with schools. Phono-Graphix did not come onto the market until 1995, so your sister would not have been exposed to it in college. Actually, the educational system is so far behind current research (I figure about 20 years), few — if any — current college students are being exposed to it.

I got my training in Orlando from the developers of the program, during the same week my daughter did an intensive with their specialists. It is an *excellent* approach to teaching reading. There are several clinics around the country authorized to train and certify Phono-Graphix tutors. They also have a training program available to school systems, to certify classroom teachers.

My daughter was reading at a preschool level at age 8-1/2. Using “Reading Reflex” at home, I was able to teach her to decode words at a 2nd/3rd grade level within about 6 weeks. Her reading fluency was so bad, though, that I suspected something else was wrong. A developmental vision eval revealed severe developmental vision lags (on top of her severe congenital astigmatism, which had been corrected with eyeglasses since age 3). She did 8 months of vision therapy to develop visual efficiency skills, and then 3 months of PACE to develop visual processing skills. The PG-intensive gave her a grounding in advanced decoding and word analysis skills, and we haven’t looked back since. Last October, just after turning 10, she scored at the 70th percentile in reading/comprehension for ending 4th grade students, on the Iowa test. Unfortunately, she scored 1st percentile in spelling on the same test!

Mary

I agree with what Mary has written.

I’d like to add that you may need to learn whether your daughter can discriminate the sounds within words. You can “test” her yourself by saying a four-syllable word and asking her to break it up, then asking her to leave out the first syllable and say the rest; repeat the word broken into syllables, and ask her to leave out the second syllable; third, then fourth. Get a sense of whether she can “hear” (I mean, “perceive”) the subtle changes in sound within words. If there seems to be a problem (auditory processing problem or phonemic unawareness), then you should have her formally tested. The problems of auditory discrimination sometimes have to be tackled separately from the other problems that result in poor spelling. Lindamood-Bell offers one approach to diagnosis and remediation.

Carol