Share your list of must read books....

Suzi, I do not think “The Gift Of Dyslexia” is a good idea. The method promoted by that book is not a sound one.

Read “Why Our Children Can’t read” by Diane McGuinness., a very important book.

Janis

I thought of the Gift of Dyslexia, not because I would use any of his technics, but to gain a better understanding or perspective on dyslexia. He has dyslexia, so I was curious about his descriptions of what it is like, etc. Still a no read?

Suzi

Suzi, here’s a site by a man who is dyslexic if you want to read some personal experiences. But the main difference will be, your daughter is going to have early intervention and likely will not remain “dyslexic” forever. We know so much more about reading disorders now. Keep that in mind.

http://www.emersondickman.org/ReadRoom/Articles/DysWhatReal.htm#top

I do feel Dr Mel Levine’s book, A Mind at a Time, is a must read book, but it is much broader than just reading disorders.

Janis

Suzi,

I agree with Janis and have read each of the books mentioned in this thread.
Skip “The Gift of Dyslexia” but read The Mel Levine book and Diane McGinnuise book. Another godd book is “Straight Talk About Reading: How Parents Can Make a Difference During the Early Years”, Susan L. Hall, Louisa Cook Moats, Reid Lyon.

Since you are in Texas have you looked at the Texas Initiative Reading site http://www.tea.state.tx.us/reading/? Also http://www.readbygrade3.com/ site which was started by Jim Kilpatrick who lives in Texas.

Helen
(who lives in CA)

I think the Gift of Dyslexia is very interesting. There are some dyslexics who see things the way it is described in this book. I wouldn’t hesitate to read it again. Children and their disabilities vary greatly. Keep an open mind about everything you read.

I suppose that since my time is very limited, I choose to read only the best, research-based books. Others may read for a different purpose than I do, so I can see that there may be other opinions.

Janis

Great third book, Helen! I have that one, too. I had the pleasure of hearing both Susan Hall AND Louisa Moats speak at our state IDA conference in April. It was wonderful!

Janis

Opinions are one thing, and demonstrable facts are another. A person who presents his opinions as facts is treading on dangerous ground. Many of us are leery of Davis for this reason.

Janis, Have YOU read ‘The Gift of Dyslexia’?

This book may not have all the answers, but the point of view is valid and there is much of value in the Davis methods for certain children…perhaps ‘read with caution’ is appropriate, but I highly recommend it!

Much of Davis has research to support it — and Suzi is a parent, I believe, not a teacher. Not everything in the universe has a blind study to prove it is true — Davis methods work for CERTAIN learners.

That being said, I know the word ‘Davis’ can cause a big argument, so I advise any parent to READ the book, visit the site, and decide if there is anything there of value for your child. THERE MAY BE — or not. But the book is DEFINITELY worth reading if you have a dyslexic child!

And I agree with this opinion also — but would still recommend the book, and especially for beginning learners, certain of the methods. There is a healthy discussion forum at the DAvis site to discuss any of these issues.

I think I already mentioned that I only have time to read books that are solid and research based. This book is not recommended by any LD experts that I have read.

Janis

I definitely agree with you, Elizabeth.

I do use Orientation Counseling with my students. It doesn’t work with
everyone, but when it does, it is wonderful. If a person can focus better,
then learning will come easier and faster.

I will try any method that I feel can help my students. All students learn
differently and if I can help that one learn by using the Davis methods,
then it has been worth it!

BE

WELL said, BE! My son is NOT a ‘typical Davis dyslexic’ but for him the clay work was ESSENTIAL, and much assisted reading using Davis methods has helped greatly also.

There is much of value in the Davis methods, and in learning about Ron’s journey and theories about dyslexia. A MUST read for all parents on this journey.

By the way, just for the record: I heard about this book from a reading specialist at a private school, who got my son reading using Spalding and 20 years of experience with dyslexic learners — trust me, Victoria you WOULD respect this woman’s opinion! (took her 4 weeks, after absolute failure to learn ANY sight words in 9 mos of Gr. 1).

Just one more ‘tool in my toolbox’…

I learned a great deal from “You don’t Have to Be Dyslexic” by Joan Smith. She has her own clinic. She discusses three types of dyslexia and remediations which helped me to broaden my view of the different needs kids have. Regarding Davis, my son’s clinic did use his orientation method and worked with trigger words. Words did use to move around for my son and he is very visually creative. It was one more piece in a program to meet his complicated needs.

One of the reasons that I am very leery of Davis is that I have *not* found their discussion healthy — quite the opposite. I have been attacked and blindsided by extremely aggressive Davis people. I am very offended by their negativity, and even more by some dishonesty shown by a number of them.

Given my respect for your opinion, Victoria, I’m horrified (but not surprised). I’d LOVE to know when you posted and who gave you trouble — if you are willing to share, please let me know and I’ll email you.

I must admit I don’t hang out there much anymore because there ARE some problems as you mention. However, despite the trolls, I know there are some honest and forthright people involved with the forum, and a few parents who have done the full Davis program (thru a provider) for their children posting there. I have not been active there for over a year, so perhaps it is not useful any more. Sadly, the fact of internet interaction is that you DON’T really know who you are dealing with!

To improve my advice: Any parent reading this, if you read the book and have questions about the program or methods, you can email the webmaster (she’s real AND helpful!) OR go to the list of providers and contact any of them for references. These are real people, and many have other credentials that would add to their credibility.

I don’t mean to argue, Victoria, but Davis DOES provide enough value to at least read the book, if you are a parent searching for all the information you need to decide how best to help your child. Based on my experience, I wish I’d read it when it was recommended to me — my initial reaction was ‘GIFT — WHAT GIFT!’ But when I read the book, it was VERY helpful, in many ways that would not be necessary for a teacher or tutor. I am RAISING a child — not just educating him! (not that that is a small task either, but you know there is a difference!)

It may not be what you would recommend to someone looking for a PROGRAM — but on a list of books to enrich a parent’s knowledge of the ‘dyslexic experience’ it is definitely a ‘must read’. My take on Suzi’s question was that THIS was the sort of input she wanted — a big long list to enrich her summer, and help her educate herself well enough to make decisions for her child.

Thanks for your patience…just my opinion, but I hope based on fact!

Victoria- did you read the book? I agree with Elizabeth that it is worth reading for a parent.

I did not try the method in terms of remediation, but I should say that Davis’s description of the reading experience of a dyslexic reader is the best I had ever read. When I read Davis’s words, my son was then in 3rd grade, I felt Davis was describing my son’s strugles.

I woudl strongly recommend:

“Overcoming Dyslexia in Children, Adolescents, and Adults” by Dale R. Jordan. I found it much more comprehensive than the Shaywitz’s book.

Jerome Rosner “Helping Children Overcome Learning Difficulties”.

Ewa

I think my hesitation in recommending it to a parent is while I may know the methods are not sound, how is a parent new to reading disorders supposed to know that? As a professional, I feel a responsibility to direct parents to the most sound information. And while I see the value of an excerpt talking about the experience of being dyslexic, I would not want a parent to be mislead by other information that may be incorrect.

Janis

I agree, Janis.

More people get misled by something that is partly true than by things that are obviously false. That is the problem.

Most of the nasty Davis people I met were on the IDA bulletin board; I stopped even reading it for several months because of this. However some of them fall over here; I ran into the same pattern a while ago and was again hurt and disgusted. I don’t bother to remember the names in general, or to reply to them when I do.

There are two patterns: passive-aggressive with a lie to set it up, and the world owes me. I have been the recipient of over a dozen of each, from a variety of senders.

The passive-aggressives do a setup apparently asking for advice. I blunder in and offer honest advice. You know here that I don’t promise miracles, I explain that hard work is involved, and I’m open to options. Instead of a reply asking details or discussing the issues rationally, I get a vicious personal insult telling me I’m stupid, don’t know anything about dyslexia, am damaging children, etcetera, and here is the TRUTH as expounded by the Davis organization, to enlighten me and set me on the right path.

Besides being deliberately hurtful and nasty setups, these replies generally are excruciatingly badly written. One is tempted to correct the English, but it isn’t worth it as the sender is oblivious.

“The world owes me” people ask me for ways to get the rewards of academia without actually doing the work. Some want to go to Ivy League colleges but absolutely cannot do math or learn foreign languages, so they want some way to force the colleges into accepting them and giving them an Ivy League diploma for not doing what that diploma requires and represents. You know what? I was refused by Harvard grad school. Too bad, I went somewhere else.
One mother was absolutely convinced that her dyslexic child had an automatic right to a passing grade on the state high school tests simply because he was dyslexic. Wouldn’t a lot of us like an automatic pass through life!

Again, I’m not talking about one incident, but dozens. That’s why I have a down on Davis people. As far as the book, if I see it at the used book store for a few bucks I’ll pick it up and run through it, but thank you very much, I just do not have very much interest in a method that teaches deliberately nasty passive-aggressive behaviour.

Victoria, I think you have Davis confused with some other method.

I don’t doubt that someone, somewhere has responded to you in a way you found hurtful, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t anyone associated with Davis or talking about Davis. I am associated with Davis - I am the webmaster for the Davis Dyslexia Association, and I have been regularly checking discussion on the IDA board and the LD Online board for as long as these sites have been up. I’ve never seen anything like you described, at least not from someone involved with or claiming to be involved with Davis.

The characterization you make of personality types is in itself pretty much at odds with the Davis philosphy and approach. Davis is very strong on notions of self-reliance and responsibility; we are criticized by others for maintaining the viewpoint that dyslexia can be corrected, and our view that dyslexia is a gift, not a disability. In fact, it is the fear that our viewpoint could cause some to lose their accommodations and waivers that lead many people to attack our view. I think if you had read the book, you would realize immediately that you have confused Davis with someone or something else. (I have a feeling I know who it might be, but it all goes back several years and I really don’t want to get into speculating on that). I am 100% sure that no one officially representing Davis has ever posted a message on an internet bulletin board calling you or anyone else stupid or personally attacking you, although some may have disagreed with your point of view. I spent about an hour this evening after reading your post going through old posts on the IDA board, which has posts going back to February or March 2002, and I could find nothing like you describe.

Anyway -again, I’m sorry that anyone has maligned or attacked you, but I’m quite positive that it wasn’t coming from anyone affiliated or associated with Davis. I mean, if you said it had happened once, I could imagine a possible misunderstanding or statement— but not dozens of times.

Best wishes,

Abigail

Fpr what it is worth, I have read this board for the past three years. And indeed, Victoria is right. There have been at least several incidents in which posters were like she described, including the very poor use of English. She posts with her email available so it is easy for such people to post to her personally. I suspect that is where the dozen posts come from.

I have only skimmed the book the Gift of Dyslexia and have only very general knowledge about the approach. My own dyslexic son doesn’t fit the profile so I never followed up on it. I must say that there is nothing in what I have read that would seem to produce the anger and defensiveness I have occasionally seen in posters (not this group).

Beth

This makes perfect sense, Janis — we parents forget that the teacher/tutor point of view is much different…but there IS a place for Davis methods for certain children — this is all I wanted to establish.

Otherwise, I fear we may become just like my local school — ‘PHono - what?? Spalding — isn’t that a baseball? WE use Reading Recovery here! It works perfectly…except for those children who ‘can’t learn to read well anyway’!”

Thanks for your patience…

WELL said, Abigail…!
lvoe,
lizzybee

We might call it ‘Ball Effect’ Beth…so sad that a valid programme for SOME kids is receiving such awful press. I’d almost think it was posted purposely to elicit the negative reaction we are seeing here…sigh!

Suzi, you definitely should read The Gift of Dyslexia, especially since you have read Shaywitz’ Overcoming Dyslexia, and Ron Davis’ book presents a different perspective.

I am sorry that your well-meaning inquiry seems to have produced an argument you were not looking for. You will note that the negative comments have been made by two posters who admit that they have never read the book. Therefore, they cannot possibly know what is in it. Obviously, you are smart enough to read the book and draw your own conclusions.

The Gift of Dyslexia was published after there had been 12 years of extensive clinical research and experience with Davis methods, and hundreds of students had received the Davis program. The book itself provides a summary of Davis theory as developed over the years, and a scripted how-to guide for parents interested in trying the techniques for reading on their own. The book is intentionally written in a format designed to be easy to understand and implement by lay readers, including adults and parents of dyslexic children who may have reading difficulties themselves. (Hence, big print, short sentences, many diagrams and illustrations).

The specific program described in the book is designed for children (and adults) who are older than your child, generally age 8 and older. Thus, while the book might give you insight into your child, the specific program laid out would be too difficult and beyond the capacities of most 6 year olds. This is because Davis is largely aimed at higher order reading skills (fluency and comprehension) rather than decoding skills. Since you have Dr. Shaywitz’s book, look at the charts on page 52 and 54. Dr. Shaywitz’ work is aimed at the skills shown in the gray boxes (decoding and phonological). Davis methods address the other skills - the students Davis is working are dyslexic students who may or may not have had systematic instruction in phonics when they were young, but who are unable to transition from the decoding stage to fluency, automaticity, and strong comprehension skills.

However, even thought the Davis book is aimed at somewhat older children, it is valuable for you to read it now to assess whether your child has a learning style or behavioral patterns similar to those described in the book. Your child’s needs will change as he grows older, and there is a diminishment of effectiveness of phonics or phonemic-awareness based programs from 2nd grade level and beyond. (Source: National Reading Panel)

Davis does have an intervention program designed for primary level students (grades K-3), which is a modified version of the techniques described in the book. This is called Davis Learning Strategies, and has been the subject of published research which evaluated outcomes over a 7 year period, comparing students in classrooms with the Davis program with similar students in other classrooms who received the identical curriculum, but without the added Davis program. Results of the research are summarized at this site:
http://www.davislearn.com

You also asked for other recommended reading. If your son seems to have an artistic bent or a knack for spatial tasks such as working with legos or putting together jigsaw puzzles, I would highly recommend the book Upside-Down Brilliance by Dr. Linda Silverman, available from either The Gifted Development Center site (www.gifteddevelopment.com) or the Davis site (dyslexia.com)

I also found the book You Don’t Have to Be Dyslexic, by Dr. Joan Smith, particularly helpful when I was first trying to make sense of my son’s difficulties; it helped to get a good perspective of the type of symptoms he had and what might be the best interventions.

Please don’t let anyone’s negativity discourage you from reading anything and everything you may find helpful in your search for help for your son. It is wonderful that you have taken the initiative to get your son assessed early on; one advantage that gives you is that you have time to read and explore before your son has fallen years behind his peers. That doesn’t mean that you should wait until you have become a self-educated expert in every single approach. Rather, it means that you should choose an approach from what is available to you now, but be alert to your son’s progress and response to any program, so that you can be prepared to make or request appropriate changes.

By the way, the book that Janis recommended - A Mind at a Time - is also an excellent choice for understanding your son’s learning style. It is ironic that Janis is recommending that, however, as Dr. Levine’s views as to learning styles and the need to tailor educational strategies to the child’s strengths rather than focusing on remediating weaknesses is very close to the Davis view. Those who are in the business of categorizing various theorists basically put them in the same camp. The main difference is that Davis’s book was first published 8 years earlier, and that The Gift of Dyslexia provides a very specific program for addressing reading issues, whereas I believe Dr. Levine’s book provides more general guidelines designed to be used in choosing or structuring a plan for a given child.

Sorry about the very long response, but honestly I have been spending two days mulling over the issue of how to respond to you without becoming embroiled in hostilities that seem to erupted over here. Feel free to email me directly if you have more questions.

Best wishes,

Abigail

In regard to Dr. Levine’s book, it is a wonderful source to understanding neurodevelopmental profiles. It is by no means a book on learning strategies or remediation. Dr. Levine certainly supports remediation in areas where remediation is possible. He supports developing strengths and talents as well.

Davis is not listed as a research-based reading method either on LD Online or on the Schwab learning site. I do not see it listed in the books, Straight Talk About Reading or Parenting a Struggling Reader, by Susan Hall and Louisa Moats. I have not read all of Shawitz’s book on dyslexia yet, but I see no mention of the method in the index.

Reading disorders can be remediated fairly well if phonemic awareness and structured, systematic phonics are taught. If Davis promotes such instruction, then I’d be glad to read about it. After teaching hearing impaired children for many years, I am 100% certain that children with reading disorders who are not taught with a structured language reading program remain weak in reading forever. Children must have the tools to decode words, and learning the code is they way to do that. If this is what Davis does, then perhaps they need to see that the program is included in the list of research based programs both here and on Schwab.

Janis

I have been reading these posts with interest. I thought I would throw my two cents in as the adult dyslexic. When I read the gift of dyslexia for the first time( I have read it more then once) It was like the light bulb went off in my head. For the very first time,someone put into words,what I have done all my life and couldn’t explain. I have always visualized in picture form, ALWAYS. When I say house,I immediately see a house,not the word. It takes far more energy to see the word,then it does seeing the House,if this makes any sense to anybody out there. I can, and still do often, mispell words like The. I have problems with visual spatial input and output,looking through a half opened window blind will cause a headache immediately. Weird,I know. I spent years doing vision therapy. This helped my eyes and the headaches.I eventually learned by age 8 or 9 to decode words,but comprehension came much later,I leanred to fully read by age 12,when one day I laid down on my side,and for some reason the words didn’t swim. Hard to learn to read when those damn things moved around so much. God the motion sickness I used to get.I thought my kids were saved by the weirdness that was “mom” ,they learned to read very early and was able to read way above grade level,until one day during math homework, my oldest son rolled his eyes and nodded his head,I asked what he was doing,and he said,”my stomach feels like a rollercoaster ride”This is when I told myself, find help. Anyway,we all are incredibly creative and intelligent people,never focusing on what in wrong but rather what is right,and I can vouch for the fact that being dyslexic does have it’s advantages. One of which, is a will to never give up. LOVED the book. Also LOVED “no easy answers” by Sally Smith,which gives a school based perspective,because no matter how you feel, the realtionship with the school still exists.Coexisting is a must.

Janis,
Shaywitz did research comparing dyslexic teenagers and adults in the Connecticut Longitudinal Study who had become accurate and fluent readers - with those who were still struggling and characterized as impaired and a control group of good, nondyslexic readers. The research showed that on semantic (meaning-based) reading, the GOOD dyslexic readers relied LESS on phonetic decoding left brain areas than the poor dyslexic readers, whose brain pattern looked more like those of the control group. The name of that study is Neural Systems for Compensation and Persistence: Young Adult Outcome of Childhood Reading Disability.

Do you have her book? There is a chart on page 316 that shows the neural route that the dyslexic brain will take - you will see that it bypasses the decoding aspect and relies on other contextual clues for meaning.

What Shaywitz doesn’t address is the use of visual strategies for word recognition, but other researchers have. Geiger & Lettvin of MIT did 2 studies in different schools teaching visual strategies to some children, whereas children in the control groups received the traditional phonics-based instruction. Like Davis, they also had the children work with, but I don’t know what they did with it. The children learning visual strategies made so much more rapid progress than the students in Orton-Gillingham/type programs that after a few months, the “control” group was shifted to the group being taught the visual strategies so as not to deprive those children of a therapy shown to be effective after only a few months. URL: http://www.ai.mit.edu/projects/cbcl/people/geiger/geiger-new.html

There are many children who will learn to read well with phonetic strategies. The National Reading Panel reported those programs to be very effective with children at the K-1 level (but not with older kids) which is why I told Suzi that her child, age 6 1/2, is young for the formal Davis Dyslexia Correction program. However, there are a significant number of dyslexic children who will never learn to read effectively and efficiently with those strategies because they cannot process the sounds of words and make sense of them without extraordinary effort. They have particular difficulty because the English language is not phonetically consistent or regular. However, those kids are highly visual and very bright, and can learn to read much faster and more efficiently when taught visual word recognition strategies as well as visualization skills to aid in comprehension. Silverman has extensive discussion in her book on visual-spatial learns as to why phonetic decoding strategies do not work for these kids. The Davis method helps these kids gain whole word recognitions skills that are tied to meaning, without needing to resort to phonetic pathways that do not exist in their brains.

Assuming that the child has been exposed to appropriate instruction, if they don’t “get ” reading or transition to fluent reading by the 3rd grade, they probably will never do well if taught by traditional methods. (I think the stats are something like 75%) We can take kids around the age of 12 who have been struggling for years, reading at 2nd or 3rd grade level, and have them reading at their grade level within a week, because we teach strategies geared to their right-brained and visual strengths.

Davis methods are NOT the same as traditional methods — that is exactly the point. We don’t do much in the way of phonics, though we do teach dictionary skills and use of the dictionary pronunciation key. It is an approach that is effective for the kids and adults who don’t do well with the phonetic decoding. They way you know which kids should have which program is through observation and assessment of learning styles. We would be the first in line to agree with the statement that our methods are not for everyone, and to object if a school were to adopt our approach for exclusive use. But the converse is true — the Orton-Gillingham methods aren’t for everyone. We tend to see the most rapid and remarkable progress with the same kids whose parents are told after years of tutoring that they have untreatable “dyseidetic” or “surface” dyslexia and will never learn to read. They come to us and it seems like a miracle - they pick up on the Davis strategies right away — but it’s no miracle, its simply that they were taught with methods they couldn’t utilize before.

I mean, you could say “all children need milk” and it would mostly be true - and you could say that you would never approve of a meal plan for children that didn’t include milk – but the reality is that some kids are allergic to milk, and what is good for others is bad for them. The wonderful thing that Shaywitz has done with her research is show that dyslexics use their brains differently for reading, and it doesn’t change over time.

Most dyslexic kids are bright and capable learners when taught by methods that work for them. If these bright kids do not progress quickly with a program once one-on-one or intensive tutoring has begun, that means that whatever program is being used is wrong for them and it’s time to try for something else.

You don’t have to agree with this — but the point is that we do know what we are doing, we’ve been around a long time, and we have helped a lot of kids and adults. It’s fine for you to say to people that you personally don’t know much about our methods and can’t recommend them for that reason — but don’t stand in their way if they want to find answers on their own.

-Abigail

You know, I resent being characterized as a negative person on the basis of one obviously rather superficial reading of one single post that I made.

People who have seen me here and who know me also know that I am in general very positive and very open to various ideas.

My response was *specifically* to the negativity and deliberate attacks made on me by certain Davis supporters. If you were not in this group, you would not need to say anything. Or, better yet, you could have tried to change my mind by being a positive and friendly Davis supporter, one who tried to convince others of your ideas by reason rather than criticism. I am sorry you do not choose this approach.

Having been hit and hit hard, I decided that a little self-defense was in order. I was asked a question why I am strongly unimpressed by this program, and I answered honestly. This does not make me an awful person, nor does it make the discussions here terrible and dangerous for you to enter.

I do not appreciate you deliberate use of negative connotations. As, for example, you mention two of us who posted disagreements with Davis, and then you immediately followed this up with the sentence “You are smart enough to read …” thus implying that we others are too stupid. This leaves a very bad taste in the mouth.

Before characterizing me as a negative person, you should read some of my posts or speak to me by email. Before characterizing the discussion here as embroiled in negativity, you should read all of it and judge on the whole.

I am honest and admit that I have not gone out of my way to spend money to buy a book that trains people who have deliberately, with malice aforethought, verbally abused me; therefore you claim that I “can’t know what is in it”. This is a ridiculous statement. Just to take a few well-known examples, have you read every word of the Bible or the Talmud or the Koran? Or have you read Piaget’s original writings? If not, why not? How can you make a decision about these books and whether you should read them or not, as you obviously can know nothing about them, since you haven’t read them?
Since nobody, not even a bookworm like myself, can possibly read every single book about every single topic, one must make decisions about books based on reviews from trusted people, scientific reports, and experience with others who have read them. Please do not blame people and put them down for acting rationally.

However, I will make you an offer — send me a used copy of Davis’s book and I will read every single word of it and post a complete and detailed review. You can get my address if you email me.

I have about one second to reply before work! But surely you are aware of the brain imaging studies where dyslexics brains were indeed found to have weak areas but with appropriate (auditory/phonemic awareness) remediation, those areas definitely became active? Those areas do not have to remain weak. Thh other issue is that the human brain is only capable of retaining so many thousand words by sight. Without decoding strategies, people ARE limited in what they can read. There is almost no one who cannot benefit from good multi-sensory structured language approaches to reading. A profoundly deaf child with no cochlear implant and no hearing aids would be the exception, assuming normal intelligence, of course.

Janis

I read your references in detail, and your reporting of them is incredibly distorted and biased.

You write:
>What Shaywitz doesn’t address is the use of visual strategies for word recognition, but other researchers have. Geiger & Lettvin of MIT did 2 studies in different schools teaching visual strategies to some children, whereas children in the control groups received the traditional phonics-based instruction. Like Davis, they also had the children work with, but I don’t know what they did with it. The children learning visual strategies made so much more rapid progress than the students in Orton-Gillingham/type programs that after a few months, the “control” group was shifted to the group being taught the visual strategies so as not to deprive those children of a therapy shown to be effective after only a few months. URL: http://www.ai.mit.edu/projects/cbcl/people/geiger/geiger-new.html

In reading this paper over, there is no, repeat NO reference to Orton-Gillingham or Orton-Gillingham/type programs. In fact, the comparison was between an experimental training group and a *no-change* control group. In the German experiment, the paper simply says that the control group continued their usual program, and no description of that program was given. In the Massachusetts study, again it is stated that the control group continued their usual program, and that usual program is described in the phrase “mostly phonemic awareness”. This would NOT be a description of an OG program.
So you are setting up OG as a straw man to knock down. This is not in good traditions of science and research.
There is also NO mention in the paper of “so much more rapid progress”, nor “not to deprive them”. You are once again using loaded vocabulary, another rhetorical device not in the best traditions of science. In fact, in many experiments the experimental and control groups are exchanged after a time in order to see the effects of starting/stopping various treatments.

In fact I find this study interesting, as I have used the cut-out file card on occasion, as have many other teachers/tutors; it is not a new invention. How to get students to use it for an hour at a time is a good question.

You write:
> There are many children who will learn to read well with phonetic strategies. The National Reading Panel reported those programs to be very effective with children at the K-1 level (but not with older kids)

I have read the National Reading Panel Report in some detail. Please tell me *where* it says these programs are supposedly not effective for older kids? As I remember the report, they did point out that reading remediation gets more difficult as children get older and have more to unlearn, and they do admit that it is quite difficult to remediate *spelling* later, but I do not remember their ever sayintg to drop phonics. Quite the contrary; the National Reading Panel made a specific and clear and incontrovertible recommendation that *systematic synthetic phonics should be taught in every classroom.*
How you can make a clear statement like that mean its exact opposite defeats me. Please elucidate.

You write:
>which is why I told Suzi that her child, age 6 1/2, is young for the formal Davis Dyslexia Correction program. However, there are a significant number of dyslexic children who will never learn to read effectively and efficiently with those strategies because they cannot process the sounds of words and make sense of them without extraordinary effort.

Interesting statement. Whose research are you basing this sweeping generalization that kids “will never learn” on? Not, as far as I know, the NRP, so who?

You write:
>They have particular difficulty because the English language is not phonetically consistent or regular.

Admittedly English spelling is more complex than the ideal. But your statement is provably false. I may mention for one example a piece of assistive technology, the Kurzweil 3000 text scanner/voice program. I have personal experience with this program, working with a blind engineer/law student. This program can read unfamiliar words, including names and technical jargon which it could not possibly have in its memory banks, and can pronounce them very well — using phonics rules, the same rules we teach to kids. If a machine can do it, it must be regular.
An old but still good book, “Why Johnny Can’t Read” goes into this issue. The author analyzes English words using the standard phonics rules and concludes that 87% of common reading vocabulary can be classed as regular, and most of the rest is irregular in only one vowel. Perfect it isn’t, but yes, regular and rule-based.

You write:
>However, those kids are highly visual and very bright, and can learn to read much faster and more efficiently when taught visual word recognition strategies as well as visualization skills to aid in comprehension. Silverman has extensive discussion in her book on visual-spatial learns as to why phonetic decoding strategies do not work for these kids. The Davis method helps these kids gain whole word recognitions skills that are tied to meaning, without needing to resort to phonetic pathways that do not exist in their brains.

You say “much faster and more efficiently” Can you give us the data to back this up? Those of us in this field for a long time tend to see a lot of the opposite.
You say “phonetic pathways that do not exist in their brains”. Indeed. Those of us in the field for a long time spend a lot of time and work helping kids *build* those pathways, and it has been proven over and over to work — see the NRP.
You mention Davis uses “whole-word recognition skills”. The NRP has come out clearly *against* whole-word teaching, as have nearly all the other reputable researchers I found when researching this subject on ERIC and through other sources.

In summary, you make a false claim that this MIT study goes against OG, you use loaded language to make the visual training sound better than OG — in fact, the training was given *in addition to* the other phonetic programs, whatever they were; you make a false claim that the NRP is against phonics for older children when in fact it says the exact opposite; you make a provably false statement about the English language; then you make all kinds of statements about the Davis program with no proof to back them up.

This unfortunately confirms my extreme doubts about Davis as a teaching method.

National Reading Panel:

“Phonics instruction produced substantial reading growth
among younger children at risk of developing future
reading problems.Effect sizes were d =0.58 for
kindergartners at risk and d =0.74 for 1st graders at
risk.Phonics instruction also significantly improved the
reading performance of disabled readers (i.e.,children
with average IQs but poor reading)for whom the effect
size was d =0.32.These effect sizes were all
statistically greater than zero. However,phonics
instruction failed to exert a significant impact on the
reading performance of low-achieving readers in 2nd
through 6th grades (i.e.,children with reading
difficulties and possibly other cognitive difficulties
explaining their low achievement).The effect size was
d =0.15,which was not statistically greater than
chance.”

“several particular
concerns should be taken into consideration to avoid
misapplication of the findings.One concern relates to
the commonly heard call for “intensive,systematic ”
phonics instruction.Usually the term “intensive ”is not
defined,so it is not clear how much teaching is required
to be considered “intensive.”Questions needing further
answers are:How many months or years should a
phonics program continue?If phonics has been taught
systematically in kindergarten and 1st grade,should it
continue to be emphasized in 2nd grade and beyond?”

“Finally,it is important to emphasize that systematic
phonics instruction should be integrated with other
reading instruction to create a balanced reading
program.Phonics instruction is never a total reading
program….Phonics should not
become the dominant component in a reading program,
neither in the amount of time devoted to it nor in the
significance attached.”

Report of the National Reading Panel: Teaching Children to Read
Reports of the Subgroups
Part II: Phonics Instruction

–––––
“The Development of Reading Fluency
While the ability to read words accurately is a NECESSARY skill in learn to read, the speed at which this is done becomes a critical factor in ensuring that children understand what they read. As one child recently remarked, “if you don’t ride a bike fast enough, you fall off”. Likewise, if the reader does not recognize words quickly enough, the meaning will be lost. Although the initial stages of reading for many students require the learning of phoneme awareness and phonics principles, substantial practice of those skills, and continual application of those skills in text, fluency and automaticity in decoding and word recognition must be acquired as well. Consider that a young reader (and even older readers for that matter) has only so much attentional capacity and cognitive energy to devote to a particular task. If the reading of the words on the page is slow and labored, the reader simply cannot remember what they have read, much less relate the ideas they have read about to their own background knowledge.”

“Constructing Meaning From Print
The ultimate goal of reading instruction is to enable children to understand what they read. Again, the development of phoneme awareness, phonics skills, and the ability to read words fluently and automatically are NECESSARY but NOT SUFFICIENT for the construction of meaning from text. “

“We have learned that for 90% to 95% of poor readers, prevention and early intervention programs that combine instruction in phoneme awareness, phonics, fluency development, and reading comprehension strategies, provided by well trained teachers, can increase reading skills to average reading levels. However, we have also learned that if we delay intervention until nine-years-of-age, (the time that most children with reading difficulties receive services), approximately 75% of the children will continue to have difficulties learning to read throughout high school. “

- Dr. Reid Lyon , Address to Committee of Labor and Human Resources
of the U.S. Senate “Overview of Reading and Literacy Initiatives”

+++++

Davis Dyslexia Correction provides kids age 8 and over with comprehension and word recognition strategies, and bring them to grade level or above. On average, we see a 3-5 grade level increase in the one week program, with older children experiencing greater increases. Follow up work reinforcing and extending the methods used in the initial week is needed to sustain progress. These methods have been used for 21 years, and are now in use in 27 nations and at least 18 languages.

-Abigail

Yes, the studies show that with remediation, the auditory/phonemic awareness areas become more active, but some studies also show where that happens there is a decline in comprehension and semantic abilities, and Shaywitz’ study of effective dyslexic readers from the longitudinal group (as opposed to those who continued to be impaired) showed that those readers did not use the phonetic pathways for semantic tasks. Zav Breznitz at Haifa University has shown through brain scans that for the dyslexics in his study, there is a correlation between increases in reading speed and efficiency and use of visual, non-phonological pathways. In other words, the phonological pathway can be strengthened, but it slows the dyslexic down.

(Quick analogy: I’m right handed. The best way for me to strengthen my left hand would be to exercise it a lot and use it for tasks like writing, but I don’t try to write with my left hand because it simply is too tedious and painstaking, and much easier to use my right. So if I was a right-brain dominant rather than left-brain dominant individual, it would be reasonable to expect that even though left-brain pathways could be strengthened, the preference for right-brained strategies would continue and in the end they would prove more efficient).

I have no clue as to how many sight words the human brain can store in memory; I honestly didn’t know there was a limit to discrete bits of information that can be stored in long term memory. My dyslexic son is in college and now studying Japanese. Right now he’s only proficient in Hiragana (the phonetic-based system), but if he starts to study Kanji I’ve read that one has to learn about 3000 symbols just to achieve basic proficiency, so I guess the brain can store a lot.

Shaywitz has a list of the 150 most common words in her book (pp 219-220) and says jut the first 10 on the list constitute 25 percent of the words in print (the, of, and, a, to, in, is, you, that, it). She says that these must be memorized, and advocates learning them by rote (even though she says elsewhere in the book that dyslexics have a very hard time learning by rote), using index cards for practice. With Davis we model these same words in clay, have the student read the letters of the word, model the letters, say the word, read the dictionary definition, use it in several sentences, model the meaning. (So the kid is touching, seeing, saying, hearing, and thinking creatively — so one difference between the index card approach and ours is that ours is multisensory). We’ve got 212 words or so on our list - kids who have support at school can complete the word list in about 5 months. When the kids have those words, they probably have about 80% or more of the words they will encounter on any page.

-Abigail

PS Thanks for taking the time to post even when in a hurry. The reason I have all these quotes from Shaywitz at hand is that I’m reading her book right now, doing lots of underlining & comments in the margins. :-)