Has anyone used the Saxon Phonics Intervention program? (lon

I don’t believe Saxon uses the structured, multisensory techniques that are the hallmark of an O-G program (I’ve had training & experience teaching it in a school for students with learning disabilities). What kinds of things give her problems reading, and how much trouble does she have? If she tries to read independently, is she slow but accurate (the painfully-sounding-out-words kind of reader) or does she guess at words, or not really know how to read with expression, etc?
Lexia Learning has software that has some neat reading games and its SOS (Strategies for Older STudents) goes from about second grade up to 8 or 9th, but it’s not childish — just reasonably fun :) Earobics is also a fun software program.
Karen Rooney has a good program called “WordSTorming,” too — and lots of good “stuff” for teaching LD kids at her site at www.krooney.com . Sue Barton also has materials at Bright Solutions (http://www.dsy-add.com).
IF you can go to a workshop on multisensory techniques, it would be well worth your while. Local International Dyslexia Association branches often sponsor them.

My dd has problems scanning left to right. She tends to let her eyes jump back to the left when she needs to be going to the right, hence she reverses letters. She also skips the small words (on, onto, in, no, him, her,etc.). She will guess at words but it is because she has read the vowel wrong calling a short vowel sound a long vowel sound and vice-versa. I am working on these things with her speech therapist. We are doing sciatic eye muscle training , phonic worksheets (timed), echo reading, as well as the Fast ForWord training. Her speech and learning therapist said that I should be able to use about any phonics program once she finishes Fast ForWord Language to Reading.

I know that a lot of folks on this board love Reading Reflex. I tried that program faithfully with my dd for over a year. It helped her initially, but not enough. I am using Phonics Pathways successfully with her little sister, but my older girl says that it is too babyish.

THanks for your help.
Jan P.

It really sounds like her problems are primarily in the visual realm so that Saxon should provide enough structure (I say this not being familiar with Saxon, though). The small-word-skipping is symptomatic of a those jumping-around issues. Does bigger print, or using an index card (or one with a colored overlay like those cute EZC readers) help?

You can join the secret support group of people who know that if Reading REflex doesn’t work for your kid, it may just be that it wasn’t enough, not that you somehow didn’t do it right :-)

Check out the Teaching Reading board for Rod’s posts re vision therapy. No guarantees, but your child sounds like a candidate for this kind of help.

My younger ds (just turned 8) learned decoding without a hitch, but I’m a little concerned about fluency. He is a little farsighted, and when we got glasses last year the opthamologist mentioned that she was concerned about the amount of reading he would have to do for school, so I haven’t required a lot of reading this year. We did see a developmental optometrist, but he didn’t really answer my questions, so we haven’t pursued vision therapy. Ds seems to lose his place and backtrack a lot when he’s reading, although he does much better holding an index card under each line.

The obvious solution seems to be to keep using the index card, but I’ve been told repeatedly by a family member that it will cause bad reading habits and he’ll be dependent on the card. Seems to me that he’ll develop better habits by using the card and reading fluently and with good intonation, and probably outgrow the need for the card in time. Am I right, or should I listen to the relatives?

Jean

I’m against index cards because they are grossly inefficient for the purpose desired. The index card hides the next line so that the sentence is broken in an inappropriate place while the card is adjusted, and this works *aganst* fluency.
Also the moving of the card just one line takes two hands and a fair amount of coordination and distracts from concentrating on the text. Every single student I have taught or tutored who was in the habit of reading with a card read *better* when I took it away.

If needed, or any time I’m doing paired reading, I use a retracted pen as a pointer — much less distracting than the card, readily available in the pocket, takes only one hand, and allows you to move more smopothly to the next line. With practice and a fairly small pen you can point to individual letters or letter groups to remind the student of decoding issues as well.

Actually, my dd has been in visual therapy since last October. She is not progressing like I wish, but well, she has to set the pace. I am trying to find a phonics program that will not eat up my wallet and that she will be motivated to work with. Also I don’t necessary need to start at the very beginning — consonants and short vowels, but I could always adjust a curriculum to fit my dd’s needs. Thanks for your suggestions.

Blessings,
Jan P.

Victoria is right. I used index cards to help my dc get through tables she had to read in a program called Let’s Read. However, the cards were very awkward. My dd’s speech and learning therapist calls the cards a crutch. We are hoping that eye exercises such as the sciatic eye exercises will eleminate the need for such a crutch. Her therapist also recommends the child uses their dominate hand index finger to point to the words while reading. My dd eyes jump way ahead of her finger so she still needs quite a bit of work.

HTH,
Jan P.

In my experience, crutches are given a bad rap. If a crutch gets you where you need to go, I say use it. That given, the least invasive crutch that you’re free from the quickest is the best. Penciling is what our school taught — and it has the advantage of going *exactly* where your eyes should go, as well as the other advantages Victoria mentioned. (It has the disadvantage of marking in the book… which the retracted pen eliminates :)). IT’s what folks in our choir do when those notes get tough to track, too.

nt

On crutches:

When I broke my ankle last spring, right on top of the old break from being hit by a bus, which had never healed right, yes, I sure used crutches — for six weeks I used crutches, and for two months after that I used a brace. (I posted a lot on this board last spring and summer because I couldn’t move much … )

The point is that when there is a real disability, a total incapacity, of course you use the crutches because at least you can be mobile and not bed-ridden. And when there is a serious weakness then of course you use the brace to help you be more mobile.

But there is a time to put away the crutches, as soon as the bone is healed and you can put weight on it; and there is a time to put away the brace, as soon as the muscles are healed and you can begin to strengthen them again. It means some pain and a lot of time and hard work to learn to walk again and to build up the joint, but it’s worth it to be able to walk normally again.

Two problems with crutches, literal and metaphorical: one is not putting them away, becoming dependent; and another is overusing them when you could do without. For many years people with severe arthritis were given crutches and wheelchairs; now it has been discovered that you can slow down the progression of the disease by continued mild exercise and physiotherapy to keep a range of motion, and that use of crutches and wheelchairs may actualy make things worse.

The same point exactly goes for use of aids in reading or math etc.; if there is a real total inability, well, you find a way around it the best you can; but if there is a partial disability, it usually works best to try to overcome it as much as possible and to use as few assistances as possible.

Well, to teach phonics well, you can go to a center and pay several thousand dollars; you can hire a tutor and spend several hundred dollars; or you can buy a few books and do it yourself for under two hundred dollars.

To do it yourself, cheap but just as effective if not more so because of individual program design:

A lot of people on this board strongly recommend Reading Reflex; I haven’t used it myself so can’t give detailed recommendations, but you can go to the Teaching Reading page and look at posts, especially by Shay and MaryMN.

I myself have often used some workbooks from Scholar’s Choice called Check and Double-Check phonics; if used appropriately (out loud! and completely) they do the job very well.

Along with the phonics you must have some controlled reading texts; I like the non-phonic-based but very complete and consistent Ladybird Key Words, available from Penguin, for Grades K to 1.8 or so, then after that any controlled-vocabulary text chosen for interesting subject matter. Other people like to use strictly phonics-based decodable texts. There has a been a lot of discussion and many addresses have been posted on the Teaching Reading page.

Many people also recommend AVKO spelling, which I haven’t used but at least the descriptions sound sensible, and it would round out the program.

Personally I find it is almost always better to go back to the beginning and do a very quick review through those consonants and short vowels; there is always something more to learn and it’s good to get into a program with control and success. After the quick review then you can slow down for the new stuff.

You need to dedicate regular and sufficient time and to work seriously on phonetic decoding, period, not allowing self-distractions or a return to guessing behaviour.

Good luck, and please ask for more suggestions if you want details,

Thanks for your suggestions.

I have used Reading Reflex with my dd. It wasn’t enough for her.

I also have the AVKO Sequential Spelling which I am using successfully with her brother. I tried it with my dd, but put it away for awhile. My dd has been using the computer program Fast ForWord (actually FF1 and FF2). Hopefully
she will finish it this summer and I can go back to her spelling program. It was just too much to do all the phonics and spelling plus FF.

I am looking at several phonics programs such as Saxon Phonics. I am also looking into the Stevenson Reading program. It uses mneumonics as well as multisensory methods.

Blessings,
Jan P.

I have used PG and the school has used Stevenson. PG is much better than Stevenson and I would say that if PG wasn’t enough, don’t even waste a minute on STevenson. Also, Saxon seems to move too fast for many LD children, according to reports I have read. I know Janis’ daughter has used it at school and she is going to use PG with her this summer. You might want to try PG again after completing Fast Forward. She might be able to handle it then.

Beth

I also hate to say this but if PG doesn’t work, she might need LIPS, which is not cheap. I have heard of parents getting the training themselves. I finally have found a tutor (instead of the center which is incredibly expensive) for the summer. My son has learned to read using PG but even after two years, he still isn’t at grade level. I decided it was time to try something else.

Beth

Yes, Beth is right! Saxon is an excellent phonics program for typical kids. But it did move too fast for my child with APD. I think we were lucky to have it as the regular class instruction, but just as Beth said, she will need extra instruction in PG to master her decoding skills.

Now that I look back at the main topic, I see that Jan was referring to Saxon Phonics Intervention, the remedial program. I have not seen it. But after all my research, I’d still go for PG and then LiPS if PG didn’t do it.

Janis

I know some folks who are fully trained LMB tutors who aren’t “official” with LMB because the cost to the parents ends up so high. Of course, it can be hard for a parent to tell these tutors from say, somebody who’s been to a weekend workshop on LMB to be able to say they did it.

There are also other structured multisensory programs that bring in more multisensory work and structure and repetition like WIlson and Language! and SPIRE.

I very much would prefer an Orton-Gillingham program that a parent could teach. I have looked at samples of Saxon’s Phonic Intervention PRogram, and I don’t think it moves at break neck speed. In fact my dd knows probably the first half of the program. I have been told that I should be able to do about any phonics program with dd after she has gone through FF. I am hoping that this is true, but I still like multisensory programs.

I know that many of you like the Phonographix program. As I said in the past we spent over a year with that program and did not make much progress in her reading. ANd I mean that we covered everything in the book!! I think part of the problem is that the child has to memorize every vowel combination and recognize them by sight. My child has memory problems added to all these processing problems. THere were no games or additional ways to practice the advance code except by doing lists. THey also teach that there is no such thing as long or short vowels. However, in the last year my dd has been taught this by her speech therapist and she is understanding the concept and it has helped with her reading. She marks all the vowels in a word and somehow that gets across in her memory, so it helps her to remember the words.

THanks for your imput and the time that you spent responding.
Blessings,
Jan P.

I just purchased Phonics for Reading, a primer by Bonnie Dettmer. There is a site called www.smallventuresbooks.com with this for preschool through 1st/2nd grade. There is a program for upper elementary also. I haven’t used this yet but it seems to adhere to Orton-Gillingham philosophy and multi-sensory approach.
Rachel