poor reading program in gen. ed.

Sorry, but I would definately get a tutor. I am in the same position. I tried talking to the school and tried to get it into the IEP of just sounding out words, they didn’t put it in.Since my child has speech problems I am going to try to get the speech teacher to help with that. Maybe the speech teacher can help them realize my child’s needs.Keep trying to get a good IEP, hang in there. My child has increased 2 years of reading with 2 years of tutoring and the learning support teacher said now that my child was reaching standard she won’t be able to get services. I think to myself and what services were you giving that I would miss.

Judy: In my opinion, your school suffers the same disease my son’s does: ‘Some children (those who don’t learn with our programs) just can’t learn to read well’. The teachers truly believe this — that if there wasn’t something wrong with the child, ‘Reading Recovery’ would do the job.

This is crap. My son learned to read in 6 weeks in a summer program at a local private school, thanks to a wonderful teacher who 1) used Spalding (a direct, specific, sequential phonics programme) and 2) BELIEVED that he could. She said to me at the end of the summer: ‘If Learning doesn’t happen, TEACHING DIDN’T TAKE PLACE!’.

My son sat through 9 mos of whole language, plus reading recovery for the last 4 months, and made NO PROGRESS. Then learned to read in 6 weeks…then the school tried to say ‘Well, he was probably just ready…’ NOT! I was the one who watched this child flower (and had watched him shrivel all through Gr. 1!) over the summer! He is still a dyslexic thinker, terrible speller and a gifted daydreamer, who struggles in school — but in gr. 4 he is reading Harry Potter ‘Goblet of Fire’ (aloud or silent, he READS WELL!) and counting the days til ‘Order of the Phoenix’ is published.

My advice: Do it yourself, or find a suitable method and tutor. Others can guide you to the school battles, and they will likely continue throughout elementary school — but you will never change their mindset in time for your child to learn…Best wishes, and remember you are NOT alone in this!

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It gets me very angry when the attitude is that if a child isn’t learning, the child can’t learn. In the 1960s I was a special education teacher. In one school the attitude was that if a child wasn’t learning, we hadn’t found a way to reach the child. In the second school (a school for deaf children) the attitude was often that it was because the child “wasn’t a normal deaf child.”

In the first school, children were taught according to their needs. In the second school, they weren’t.

I remember one teacher who said that a deaf 7 year old couldn’t learn anything. With her permission, I gave the child a task that she was able to do. The teacher was amazed. What did she do? She continued to teach above this child’s head and continued to complain that she and the other children in her class couldn’t learn.

UNFORTUNATELY YOU ARE RIGHT. hOWEVER, i AM HAVING AN AMAZINGLY HARD TIME FINDING AN EXPERIENCED (TUTOR, TEACHER, ED THERAPIST) to work with my son a few hours a week using researched based techniques. I sent my materials to one highly reputed educational center that I found out my school district contracts with back in April. They charge an enormous assessment fee and a high per hour cost. Well, we’ve spoken a couple of times, and they’re very slow getting back to me. I went to another center run by a very experienced ed therapist who charged me a nominal fee for a quickie assessment, but was pushing PACE before she saw my son or his materials or his scores. I spoke to a very nice resource teacher who is not familiar with LMB, and another who is somewhat familiar with LMB but won’t know her schedulr for 2 weeks and doesn’t work in August. The Int’l Dyslexia Society sent me a list of 3 practitioners in my area (L.A.) who indicated to them they use techniques in line with the society’s standards. One is the head of the center I’m still waiting on, another is someone I spoke to and rejected last year, and the 3rd is too far away. TheLMB center only does the 5 day per week 4 1/2 hr per day intensive in the summer. It’s too intense for my son and too expensive for me. Help!

You are not going to make these people change their minds or their methods; they have a nice little system of circular arguments to keep them satisfied, and it will take a major earthquake to shake their self-confidence.
(Isn’t the self-esteem-is-all-you-need theory wonderful?)

For your own child right now, get a tutor or find out how to do it yourself. Email me if you want my how-to-tutor outlines (I’m backlogged this week but will get onto it hopefully this weekend.)

For the sake of the rest of the scholl, and maybe even your onw kid in a few years, get the facts about reading instruction — start with the National Reading Panel/NIH study, available on LD In Depth page of this board. Copy relevant sections, highlight the most important parts, and send it (a) to the principal (won’t change his mind but he can’t *honestly* claim not to be informed), (b) to your school board representative (c) to your school superintendent (d) to your disttrict’s “reading specialist” (same as principal, squared) (e) to your state board of education reading supervisor (f) to the state governor or provincial premier. (The office will get it, but again you can slowly get *some* facts into a few heads.) Send it with a cover letter describing the non-instruction at your school, and append local SAT and other standardized scores. Point out that your school is not doing anything at all that is actually known to teach reading, and that if test scores are not where one would hope, there is a simple reason.

What a wonderful quote:
‘If Learning doesn’t happen, TEACHING DIDN’T TAKE PLACE!’

You couldn’t have said it better. I wish schools would take more responsability for the many learning struggles that occur. My son had no problem learning to decode, but needed (and needs) direct higher-level instruction for comprehension. The school never taught that.

Any suggestions for a program that is geared towards this?

Thanks.
PS. Wow, Harry Potter! I’m jealous!! :)

I “stalked” the tutor we eventually got. I left messages allover for her - of course waiting an ‘appropriate’ 2-3 days between each. Of the 4 tutor names the Int.’l Dyslexia Assn. gave. she was the only one that had an opening. So, keep at it - be assertive and polite, but don’t give up. Even if you get them on the phone while they are telling you they can’t help, they may have other names/sources.

Also, you could look into a university-based reading program. The tutors are special ed/teaching majors but the programs are run by the professors. Fees are sliding scale so usually more affordable (our private tutor was expensive). But research and phone away, b/c there are often waiting lists.

GL

I called the county school offices and asked the head of the reading dept for a recommendation and found the person to whom we owe our daughter’s literacy. There are likely to be excellent people in the system, even if the system is not excellent. Since teacher salaries are not great, they may tutor over the summer. I was particularly pleased to find someone who had the skillls, knowledge and desire to tailor her teaching to my daughter’s needs. I’d rather have a great teacher than a great program.

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Email me if you want suggestions on places and methods to hunt for tutors.

Judy: If you had met the lady who quoted that, you would know why I get tears in my eyes whenever I think of her…she was truly a reading expert. I am no expert, just a parent and a former adult literacy tutor. But I do believe that what I’ve done has really worked for my child, once he got started.

I’ve mostly worked on fluency using assisted reading, which I’m comfortable with because it worked for my learners in adult literacy. This is just reading together, ALOUD. Book must be high interest and chosen by the learner, and should not be so difficult that the person struggles and stumbles. My son and I took turns, so I would read so much and then he would read so much. Because you are NOT working on decoding, you don’t let the learner struggle — give them a few ‘beats’ to try and work out the word, then supply it and move on. If they do insist on decoding painfully, I make them go back and re-read the sentence to ensure they get the meaning. Expression is important — if he is not yet able to read with expression, practice this.

Frequency is REALLY important — my son and I did minimum 1/2 hour per day (and stretched it to the limit whenever the story made him forget the clock!) EVERY DAY and more on weekends, throughout grade 2 and grade 3. We have relaxed this now that he is a reliable silent reader, but I will return to this for texts in future. A friend of mine did this as bedtime reading, and also did it for the homework reading — her borderline dyslexic (but never officially dx’d) son is doing really well in grade 8, despite the fact that he was not reading at beginning of Gr. 3.

Coaching (cheerleading!) is essential — congratulate when a ‘hard’ or new word is successfully attacked, be POSITIVE that practice makes perfect, and congratulate any small improvements. It is essential that the learner catch your belief that he WILL improve — so make sure YOU believe it!!! Confidence is catching — the provider of that ‘teaching didn’t take place’ quote gave more to my son than her knowledge of code — she BELIEVED he would learn, with every fibre of her being. This is something that can’t be taught — go deep down, and convince yourself that your son WILL learn. Then, when he is down and discouraged, you will be able to lift him up.

These are just general ideas — your son might be quite different from mine, but I believe that the fluency is essential for comprehension down the road, and this is something any parent can do.

For comprehension, which is not a problem for my son so far,(though proving his comprehension through written expression is another matter!) you can use his school texts and assignments, and teach him to stop, summarize, question, take notes, etc. — much expert advice will help you here, and I can’t cuz I’m only a ‘grade 4 mom’ — ask me after we get thru middle school! This may be an area where a program would help you — post over on ‘Teaching Reading’ and you will get answers.

I have to stop now — break is over — but I have a million questions about your son, his reading level, where his strengths/weaknesses are…we all learn so much from sharing about our kids, where they struggle, and what works!

Bottom line is that I believe parents CAN have a huge impact on reading skills, even without buying programs…if you focus in on your kid, I think you can do alot to help him, even if you can’t find tutoring help. I have given up on trying to influence programs in the schools, that is not my strength. But in adult literacy we say: ‘Each one, teach one’ and ‘If it is to be, it is up to ME’ …and people DO learn, though often the only resources are two people, and a public library. Of course, 4th and 5th grade boyos have the added complication of the ‘don wanna’s’, but for that, I resort to…BRIBERY! ;>)!

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Hi Judy,
You aren’t alone! Our school doesn’t use anything appropriate for dyslexic children in general ed — or even special ed!!! I even called other schools in my district to find out what they were using and was disappointed to learn that they aren’t using anything better.

I’m hoping next year, maybe my son will get a flexible teacher (or I can move him to one) that will agree to using a seperate spelling program (like Avko’s Sequential Spelling) with my son.

Good luck to you! I know how frustrating it is.

I educated my child’s regular ed, special ed. and principal at my child’s IEP meeting on the National Reading Panels’ findings and the the no child left behind act. It must have made an impact because they are hiring a second reaource teacher and reviewing several recommend reading programs such as Language!, SRS, and phongraphix which all meet the study’s criteria for effective reading programs. I know it may not be as easy in other schools, but if you don’t try the school will never have an appropriate reading program until they get sued. You have the law on your side, if you can afford the lawyer!

That is great news, RA! Good for you! The system can be tough to change, but we never know unless we try!

Janis

Judy,

Truthfully, children should be reading fluently in fifth grade, so basic reading instruction is simply not part of the fifth grade curriculum. It would be the job of a reading specialist or LD teacher to teach the reading at that point.

However, sadly, many schools do not have an effective remedial program in place. So as the others said, at this age, your best bet is to get some good materials and tutor yourself, or find a tutor who uses research based methods. Or, you could hire a tutor and send her to training in the methods you want used.

Janis