looking for reading program

Go to www.1stbooks.com/ and read about THE SOUNDS OF WORDS, a multi-sensory, concrete strategy that can be used to decode any word. It works with any reading level, any text. Email me if you would like any more info. [email protected]

What grades/ages and what are the needs of the kids? (Obviously there will be different needs for different kids, up to a point). Is the school board looking for a program from one of their “usual vendors” and that’s why they weren’t sold on PG, or were there instructional type reasons they didn’t like it?

Sorry about the lack of info. We are looking K-12 at reading but my committe’s focus is K-5. Our classloads are a mix of LD, BD, and mildly handicapped students. The group of sped teachers just felt PG wasn’t a complete program. They would like one program that addresses all areas(PA, decoding, vocab, comp). They want to put little to no work into making manipulatives and such. They want some pretty little package that I am not sure exists but I really can’t complain. They are willing to look, willing to put various programs together if they really have to, and I feel that I am beginning to get them to see that reading recovery and balanced literacy isn’t working for our sped kids. So I keep plugging along.

Well, for 4th grade and up, Language! by Sopris West is certainly comprehensive and recommended by all the “big names”.

http://www.language-usa.net/default.html

I am looking at Jolly Phonics for K-2. It has a US version and is supposed to be excellent:

http://www.jollylearning.co.uk/

Janis

There are a couple of Phono-graphix Spinoffs that are coming out now. If the teachers you are trying to get to try change liked PG but not the packaging check out this post from a product that sounds great. Now, I don’t have this program. Just tonight I sent off for 2 PG spinoffs but not this one yet. This one sounds promising though. I hope to get the other spinoffs soon and will post if any good. I am so into Phono-graphix but have been very turned off the the company’s poor customer service. I am looking for something better to convince my district of other, better options. So I continue to look for better programs. I love PG but I’m having a hard time recommending them.

__________________________________________________________________

I hope he doesn’t mind me reposting this from the ReadNOW listserve:

REPOST:

I’ve been an educator for over twenty years, most of that time
working with students who have had reading difficulties. I’ve studied
and used several Orton-Gillingham based programs, and I’ve been
trained in the Lindamood Phoneme Sequencing Program and in Phono-
Graphix (and served as a Phono-Graphix trainer for several
years). I have also studied Reading Mastery a great deal, although I
haven’t used it with students myself. Currently, I run a tutoring
clinic working with students who need additional help in reading,
writing, and math, and I’ve been developing materials in these areas,
especially in reading.

After using Phono-Graphix for a couple of years, and having been
involved in a project implementing it with a group of at-risk
students at a nearby school, I saw, as have many participants in the
discussion group, a need to make a program that was
easier for classroom teachers to implement and sustain. In addition
to making the program more classroom-teacher friendly, it was clear
that , I wanted to be able to incorporate some of the new work in
fluency and vocabulary development , to integrate handwriting
instruction for beginning readers, to provide more systematic
spelling instruction, and to provide fully developed instruction on
prefixes, suffixes, and roots for upper elementary and middle school
students.

The result of this has been the (continuing) development of the
ABeCeDarian Reading Plan. (“ABeCeDarian,” pronounced A-B-C-darian, is
a real word, formed from the letters ABCD followed by the suffix
“arian” as in “librarian” or “humanitarian.” It
means someone interested in the ABCD’s.) What exists at this point is
a program suitable for regular K-2 students with a special component
suitable for remedial students who read at a 3rd grade level or
higher. The program shares with Phono-Graphix these key principles:

—the logic of the “code” is explicitly taught (letters represent
sounds,
sometimes 2 or more letters are used to represent a sound, one sound
can often be spelled more than one way, and one spelling can
represent more than one sound)
—blending, segmenting, and code knowledge are taught simultaneously
—phonics instruction is organized around phonemes, with multiple
spellings for sounds presented together and sorted
—no rules are taught
—no special vocabulary is taught (e.g.., “long” and “short” vowels)

Two levels are now available and being used in my clinic and in area
schools. The first level is for kindergarten students and beginning
first graders. It presents the one-letter consonants and vowels, and
the consonant digraphs sh, ch, th, ng, and ck. The material is
organized into 4 sections, each section dealing with a
group of 6 to 8 sounds. Each section is further divided into units
dealing with 6 words each. As in the P-G pink level, there is neither
overlap nor variation in the code (except in the very last unit,
which serves as a transition to the next level.)
Students are introduced to each word with a “word puzzle” (similar to
P-G word construction) and then engage in a variety of follow-up
activities to help them spell and read these words independently.
Some activities not found in P-G have been added to provide
additional scaffolding to help novice readers develop the
ability to blend and segment words at the phoneme level. Instruction
is organized so that teachers can conduct 10-15 minute scripted,
whole group lessons, followed by “centers” work, small group work,
and individual practice. A workbook provides explicit handwriting
practice and additional spelling work. A new fluency
reading book provides the opportunity to read first just lists of
words, but then simple sentences. Teachers are given very specific
“checkouts” to monitor student performance and pace instruction.

The second level is designed for 1st and 2nd grade level readers who
know the one-letter code and can blend and segment CCVC/CVCC words.
This level is organized into 18 units, each unit focusing on a
particular sound. Units begin with spelling chains, reading chains,
and an error game (in which the teacher reads a word
and students have to determine if she has done this correctly.)
Students then perform an “introductory” sort, in which the words are
“coded” and then a follow-up sort, in which the words aren’t. During
the follow-up sort, students take a hiliter or pencil and mark the
target sound before reading the word. (Crayola makes an erasable
hiltier, which is very good to use with this activity.) Following the
sorting, students read 10 sentences containing many of the words they
have sorted for additional practice. Moreover, the sentences contain
only the code that the students have learned up until that point. At
the end of each unit is a list of 40 high frequency words (again
containing only code that they have learned up to that point) which
students practice reading until they meet fluency targets. The sorting
activities, sentences, and high frequency words are all contained in
a student workbook. Teachers are given fluency targets for reading
the sentences and the high-frequency word lists to help them pace
instruction. After 4 units, students are introduced to 2-syllable
words. While keeping the instruction simple, students are taught some
very basic, easy to follow, phonologically based guidelines for
saying a single syllable (specifically, it has to be
exactly one beat and easy to say). Several ReadNow participants have
commented on the lack of detailed instructions to the teacher on how
to present multisyllables in P-G. The sequence I present addresses
that gap, I think, without overburdening students with information or
procedures the way that the Orton programs and others do. Practice is
repeated on a series of 2-syllable word lists, again until students
can achieve a fluency target. These lists are on laminated pages so
that students can “loop” the syllables with a dry erase pen as he
says them. (Like P-G, I shun having students draw vertical lines—too
messy and confusing. But it is very helpful to have a motor component
in the process.) Also, unlike P-G, the “ed” past tense ending is
taught explicitly, but in a very simple, clear way. (P-G organizes
instruction as if the code represented only phonemes, but it
represents both phonemes AND morphemes. This is a big limitation,
especially at higher reading levels.)

After the multisyllable instruction, students begin oral reading
fluency practice on third-party, short, connected text. This text is
now leveled, NOT decodable, because the students understand enough of
the logic of the code so that the teacher can explain any pattern
that has not been presented yet. In my clinic, we use
passages from the SRA Specific Skills Series. I’ve also heard good
things about QuickReads by Elfrida Hiebert and published by Pearson,
I believe.

An accelerated version of this material is available for remedial
students who read at a 3rd grade level or higher. This accelerated
version differs from the “regular” version not only in the rate at
which information is presented, but also in the use of nonsense
words. Remedial readers who can read a little bit know how to read
many words—what they typically lack is code knowledge and word
analysis skills to read new, unfamiliar words. Nonsense words are
necessary to allow the teacher to monitor whether students are
implementing a “sounding out” strategy and to what extent they have
mastered the code. Separate spelling notebooks will be a part of the
program as well. Currently, only the 1st grade level spelling book is
available. Books for grades 2-6 will be available by the end the
winter. The books for grades 1-2 follow the presentation of
sounds in the curriculum, and the teacher’s manual details a robust
and effective set of instructional and practice procedures to help
even the most disabled students master the words. In addition to
practicing the spelling of individual words,sentences are also
provided so that students can practice spelling entire
sentences. (This will be the first step of an integrated beginning
writing program, as well.)

A new level, devoted to prefixes, suffixes, and root words is under
development. The first part of this level (roughly for 3rd and 4th
grade level readers) will be available at the beginning of the summer
of 2004. I also envision having a 5th/6th, and an 7th/8th grade
levels as well. I’ve been looking for years, but haven’t
found a “morpheme” program that did things exactly the way I think
they should be done, although there are many programs that have nice
pieces. (Mega-Words is pretty good, for instance.)

The ABeCeDarian Reading Plan has been used for the last 3 years at a
local urban kindergarten with many at-risk students—the students
read at beginning first grade level by the end of their kindergarten
years, often outstripping the performance of their suburban peers.
This year, the program is also being implemented in several
kindergartens in another district as part of their Reading First (No
Child Left Behind)grant. And I have been working with special
education teachers in yet another school district for the last three
years as well.

I have seen some of the ABeCeDarian program, and it is very good. They correct some of the flaws in PG and add important components like fluency. I am ordering some of it probably, so if anyone wants more info, you can ask me later. They’ll have a web-site around the middle of next year when more of the product line is ready.

Janis

I love the Read Well program by Sopris West. It is used in my son’s school for K-3, and it seemed to me to be pretty much a turn key program, and they have an add in writing and spelling program.

Have they looked at SRA (http://www.SRA4kids.com) — been around for a while, but works :-) When I realized my seventh graders had *no* idea what sounds letters made, I found Corrective Reading; they’ve got DISTAR and a couple of other good things for younger students.

I would suggest the Reading Lesson. It is great for young children K-2 and also special ed. class. It combines several teaching methods and in contrast to 100 lessons is very child friendly and reasonably priced. Check at the Amazon.com or www.readinglesson.com

Book review:

I looked at readinglesson.com

There are many good ideas on this site. It is based on sound ideas and research. The general presentation is OK.
However, the pace is far too fast for a student with real difficulties, or even a student with a weak background. Lesson 1 presents five letters at the same time, two vowels (short a and short o) and three consonants, “hard” c, s and t. A large number of kids I’ve taught, including many non-LD, would be stymied right there on page 1; five new letters at once will lead to great confusion, guesswork, and frustration.
There is no tie-in between reading and writing, no tracing of letter forms to get a kinesthetic memory of them. Again, some kids will pick this up fast — especially if they have successfully done other letter work first and are familiar with letter forms — but the real beginner or the kid with real difficulties will find the first step very high.
It is good the the period at the end of the sentence is explained rather than ignored — this starts a good habit of attending to punctuation from the beginning, rather than treating it as weird decoration.
It is very good that lower-case letters are used.
The syntax is really tortured, and a lot of kids will rebel at reading a sentence that says “sat a cat at a cot.” Yes, it’s phonetically regular and we know there are reasons for these choices; but a bright kid will say “NO, it can’t possibly say that; that’s not right (and is here demonstrating good language sense, so don’t be negative.)”
It is a problem that the “curly-topped” form of the letter a, rather than the handwritten round style, is the one used; this adds to confusions.

Altogether, I wouldn’t choose to use this program. It is a decent little program, but there are better and more complete approaches around.

You might want to look into Textmapping for teaching reading comprehension skills, as well as regular classroom content, to your special ed. students.

* Textmapping involves paper scrolls, colored markers, and a spatially-descriptive form of marking called mapping.
http://www.textmapping.org/scrolls.html
http://www.textmapping.org/middlebrookScrolls.10.02.03.html
http://www.textmapping.org/mapping.html

* It has six key instructional benefits.
http://www.textmapping.org/benefits.html

* It is easy to learn and easy to implement in the classroom.

* Implementation costs are very low.
http://www.textmapping.org/costs.html

* It has been used with mainstream, ESL, and special needs classes at all levels, from elementary through college.

Don’t hesitate to contact me if you have any questions.

Dave Middlebrook
The Textmapping Project
A resource for teachers improving reading comprehension skills instruction.
http://www.textmapping.org | Please share this site with your colleagues!
[email protected]
Join Reading Comprehension: a listserv for middle school, high school, and community college teachers
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/readingcomprehension/

This program was piloted in the state of Florida and was rated #1 by a think tank in the US

[url http://www.spellread.com/a/publish/homepage.shtml ]SpellRead [/url]

I have Dyslexia and these people helped me out. The program works and has science to back it up. Good luck

[quote=”Anonymous”]I am serving on a committe in my school district that is looking for ways of improving our special education services. One area we are investigating is reading. I tried selling PG to them but it doesn’t seem to be impressing them. What other programs/methods would you suggest we look into?[/quote]
You should look at this http://www.neurolearning.net/brain/index1.html

I am a private tutor that works with learning disabled children in reading. I know the frustration of finding a program that works. Therefore, I developed my own. I took the word families as a basis, and developed a comprehensive reading program. It includes sight words, impress spelling, vocabulary, comprehension (fill-ins), sentence writing, word recognition, multiple syllables, and reading practice sentences for root words and multiple syllables words. It has 95 separate lessons, divided into 3 sections; short vowels, word endings, and long vowels. Also, I designed a program that teaches the sounds of the letters and beginning blends. It has proved to be very successful for me and at my beta test site in a school’s resource class. I am wondering if your forum might be interested in my program. I am located in Sacramento, CA.

I am a private tutor that works with learning disabled children in reading. I know the frustration of finding a program that works. Therefore, I developed my own. I took the word families as a basis, and developed a comprehensive reading program. The worksheet based program includes sight words, impress spelling, vocabulary, comprehension (fill-ins), sentence writing, word recognition, multiple syllables, and reading practice sentences for root words and multiple syllables words. Game cards are included to use instead of using only worksheets to make learning more fun. It has 95 separate lessons, divided into 3 sections; short vowels, word endings, and long vowels. Also, I designed a program that teaches the sounds of the letters and beginning blends. It has proved to be very successful for me and at my beta test site in a school’s resource class. I am wondering if anyone in your forum might be interested in my program. I am located in Sacramento, CA.

I am a private tutor that works with learning disabled children in reading. I know the frustration of finding a program that works. Therefore, I developed my own. I took the word families as a basis, and developed a comprehensive reading program. The worksheet based program includes sight words, impress spelling, vocabulary, comprehension (fill-ins), sentence writing, word recognition, multiple syllables, and reading practice sentences for root words and multiple syllables words. Game cards are included to use instead of using only worksheets to make learning more fun. It has 95 separate lessons, divided into 3 sections; short vowels, word endings, and long vowels. Also, I designed a program that teaches the sounds of the letters and beginning blends. It has proved to be very successful for me and at my beta test site in a school’s resource class. I am wondering if anyone in your forum might be interested in my program. I am located in Sacramento, CA.

Pamom12, take a look at the EPS website, they sell some good materials:

www.epsbooks.com

There might be a program there they would purchase.

Another excellent resource is http://www.rlac.com — they have lots of peripherals too, like bookmarks that have colored overlays to accent a line or two of text, for *cheap*

My 16 year old son has been through all the school reading, phonics and decoding programs from 2nd grade through 10th grade and still is ready way below his grade level. This year he does not have a reading class in school and I would like to do one at home. What is out there for older children that are poor readers? Is there any computer reading programs for his age? He has a short term memory problem and can have his subject books on tape but will not use them because he is determined to read the material himself. I cannot get him to understand that the tapes are a tool, to help him succeed. Is there any SAT & ACT reviews for LD students?
MEK

He may find that tapes are frustrating if his auditory memory is not his strong point — without the words in front of you it’s hard to keep track.
Lexia Learning has an “SOS” (Strategies for Older STudents) that is good (http://www.lexialearning.com) and if he’s not too far behind then The Word Workshop (http://www.thewordworkshop.com ) is very good for learning how to break down longer words and get them right.