great leaps question

I’m sorry that I can’t remember what everybody’s child has already done, so forgive me if you’ve posted this before. But has she been through a multi-sensory phonics program like LMB, Phono-Graphix, or Orton Gillingham? I really would not work so much on fluency unless her word attack scores are high and she knows the phonics.

Janis

You might want to try e-mailing Ken Campbell (GL’s author) directly with your questions. He was very helpful to me when I was using GL in the classroom a few years ago and had some quick questions. At that time, I was able to e-mail him from the GL website.
karyn

It does sound like she needs a little more of a foundation on some of the specific phonics skills — what has she been doing along those lines, recently and otherwise? How are her “sounding out” skills in general?

Her last wiat II score was word reading 78 pseudoword decoding 88 and reading comprehension 93. She is doing Spalding method 2 days a week, this her 3rd year.I had e-mailed and had heard no reply as yet from Great Leaps but then my message may not have been that clear. When I do reading with her sometimes she adds an extra letter or misses one and generally it takes her a while to change the sound from to short to long with silent e. She is reading rather well , we are reading the magic tree house series now. The public school learning support says she has talked to the assistant about making sure my child sounds out her words. Victoria had mentioned check and double check phonic series I am waiting for them to come but am wondering if I should have gone further back got level 2,3,4.

I personally do not start Great Leaps until we have the decoding skills pretty strong. I think that 88 indicates she still needs the phonics work before doing Great Leaps, but that is just my opinion.

Janis

Tutor thought she had sounds down. I went over sounds today and she does need to go over some of them again ,it also seems she has a hard time seeing the phonems in words.My daughter says she does better at tutor’s than at home. School mentioned they will be starting PALS program and I am wondering if that will help.

Gotta tell ya, one of my most frequent misjudgments was thinking a kiddo “had the sounds down.” Automaticity is elusive.

“Better at tutor’s than at home” or any similar comment is a red flag. This usually translates that the kid had developed some kind of coping or faking skill.

This coping/faking may be either conscious or totally unconscious. If it’s conscious you get the sly grin and all sorts of other excuses and arguments. If it’s unconscious the kid is as confused and frustrated as you are.

The coping/faking skill may be using the model question and copying the answers by sight rather than sound, or using the tutor’s verbal model and just imitating all through the lesson without actually filing the pattern in memory, or smiling sweetly and waiting until the tutor gives a hint and then chiming in so quickly that a less suspicious person thinks the answer is known, or memorizing the list or story and reciting it without actually reading, etc., etc.

This child sounds like there is a definite need for decoding and specifically left-to-right scanning. The of-from-for confusion is a red flag for this. You cannot possibly mix up these words if you are actually looking at them in detail from left to right, but if you are just guessing “some connecting word with an f in it and an o somewhere” you will do this every time.