Barton or Wilson

Well there are a few factors. I am a very happy fan of Barton.
1: The age range. Effectively Barton has a range from 1st- adult. Wilson has a range from about 5th grade and up. One could make some modifications in Wilson of course.
2. Training. Your masters won’t usually mean much (my almost masters didn’t) as most schools do not teach dyslexics how to read. All of the training for Barton is on video and very easy to watch imo. Very professionally done. Wilson training requires going elsewhere. Any of out of state training and you have just bought the first 3 levels of Barton (I doubt as a young kid he will go further than about 5 anyway?). Bottom line: you can’t just sit down with the Wilson manual and teach it even if you have a good education.
3. Ease of use. Barton is MUCH easier to use with ready made lesson plans, the ideal thing for a busy mom (or tutor for that matter).
All the materials come to you and are included.
4. Phonemic awareness. Barton has a whole level on just phonemic awareness. The importance of this was not entirely known at the time when Wilson was done.
5. Barton is not just decoding. Has proceedures to assist with spelling, memory fo sight words, fluency, etc. Wilson is straight decoding.
6. Barton uses mnmemics and other strategies. For example to teach the vowels she hinges them on a story the child is asked to visualize. The kids LOVE this. There are funny names for the rules, for example “kiss the cat” defines when you use a “k” or a “c” at the beginning of words with the /k/ sound. There are some great fun activities in Barton that your kid will love. I think that Wilson is quite a lot drier and less sense of humor. I’m not saying it isn’t work, but it does have some fun in it.
7. Imo, Barton is a much more complete program that takes apart the language more. I have one student who had Wilson for about a year. IN that year she still did not learn how to hear a “r” or “l” say in a blend like “str” for example. I taught her in a few sessions with Barton.

Price might be the main drawback. Susan Barton describes the price as a $100 a month. But put into perspective, you would need to be trained in any Orton Gillingham approach including Wilson. The training is included and you can sit in your living room. If you sent your kid to a private tutor you would pay that much a week.

You should get the free video: ttp://www.bartonreading.com/demo.html
The video will also tell you if you have the necessary auditory awareness to be a tutor and more importantly, most likely in your case, if your son has the skills to be successful at being a student using the Barton system.
The video also tells more about the system with examples of the book pages and some lessons.

—des

UH oh, I just reread your post and it said something about LB, is this Lindamood Bell? If your child really needs LiPS, you really must have someone do this with him. However it is possible he does not. Most dyslexic kids do not need this. If he can pass the Barton screening, I would use Barton.

—des

Btw, I made a slight error. I said Barton was more complete with fluency, spelling, etc. etc. and Wilson is straight decoding. Of course, Wilson covers spelling. I don’t think it does it so well but it does teach it. All good decoding programs will include spelling.

—des

Thank you Des for the reply - it was very helpful. He has not been “diagnosed” as being dyslexic, I just think that may be part of his problem. He was tested by a private individual in several areas who is a BIG fan of Lindamood Bell and he said he could benefit from this along with FF, PACE, and IM. He is 9 and is reading fairly well, but just not very fluent and he hates to read - it seems like such a struggle for him. I am not sure what reading level he is at, but is now reading A Lion To Guard Us by Clyde Bulla - I would think this is at least 3rd grade level. and doing well with it. I gave him the Wilson test yesterday and it showed that he mainly had gaps I think. He was able to read from all 12 lists of words but he missed 1 or more on EVERY level. He missed more on the nonsense words and missed a lot of the vowel combinations and special sounds. He struggles a lot with Spelling. So you think that Barton would do a better job with the Spelling? I have also read on this site (just discovered this bulletin board 2 days ago - it is great) about the Great Leaps program - haven’t had a chance to check it out yet but heard it is for fluency - maybe this is something he needs too. Are you familiar with this program? Thanks again for all your help!
Debbie

My preference would also be for Barton over Wilson.

Before investing all that money in Barton, though, I recommend trying “Reading Reflex” or finding a Phono-Graphix tutor. “Reading Reflex” is a book that costs under $20 at bookstores, and I would recommend also getting the company’s $39 parent support guide from their website (http://www.readamerica.net ). This approach would cover all of decoding “holes” your son has up to about a 5th grade level. This approach is not only much less expensive than Barton, it is much *faster*. A professional Phono-Graphix tutor (methodology used in “Reading Reflex”) usually costs about $50 per hour, and if you work at home daily, would probably need only 10 hours or so to fully remediate. If nothing else, check out “Reading Reflex” from the library and read the first three chapters.

Once your son’s decoding skills are in place, if fluency is still poor I would recommend getting a developmental vision evaluation. Many fluency problems are due to undiagnosed vision problems — convergence problems, slow focusing, problems with gross pursuits and saccades, etc., none of which is tested in a regular eye exam.

I am trained in Phono-Graphix, FastForWord, PACE, and IM. From your description of your son, I would definitely try Phono-Graphix first (this is the methodology in “Reading Reflex”). LMB is a great program, but very few children need its level of intensity, and it would not be my first choice for a child who is 9yo and reading at a 3rd grade level.

Nancy

Debbie,

What you just told us indicates he mainly is reading by sight word memory. That won’t take him very far. He likely is dyslexic from the description you give unless he was never taught systematic phonics.

But I’ll have to agree with Nancy, I’d surely try Phono-Graphix first. It takes me more like 24 hours to get through it, but that’s a small time and money commitment to make compared to Barton. Barton is a very nice program and goes farther into things like syllables and pre-fixes and suffixes, I imagine, than PG does, but it’s hard to beat PG to fix a decoding deficit. I am also trained in LMB and agree with the others that not all kids need it. PG was actually developed by someone who was first trained in LMB.

You would use Great Leaps after the decoding is in place to build fluency. I do like it.

Janis

>Thank you Des for the reply - it was very helpful. He has not been “diagnosed” as being dyslexic, I just think that may be part of his problem.

It doesn’t matter re: formal dx. It might be helpful to know exactly what the reading problem is that you are dealing with. Does he dislike reading because he isn’t decoding that well; does he have problems with comprehension; does he have to decode everything every time he reads? can’t read to well if this is the case.

The treatment would be different in each case.

>He was tested by a private individual in several areas who is a BIG fan of Lindamood Bell

Well if he is reading at all ok then he definitely would not need LiPs. This is just overkill in most cases— but in the cases that need it well i don’t know what else would work. OTOH, if he never gets a visual memory of the words, then Seeing Stars might be appropriate, but again it would be useful knowing what the problem is. This is for kids with good decoding, but they just can’t remember the words and they never get translated to sight words. Every time they read it is a new word.

>He is 9 and is reading fairly well, but just not very fluent and he hates to read - it seems like such a struggle for him. I gave him the Wilson test yesterday and it showed that he mainly had gaps I think. He was able to read from all 12 lists of words but he missed 1 or more on EVERY level. He missed more on the nonsense words and missed a lot of the vowel combinations and special sounds.

Indicates he may have gaps. Having trouble with nonsense words may mean that he has a good visual memory for words but he may somewhat top off on about the 4th grade when the words get harder and longer. After all nonsense words are a lot like the parts of multisyllable words.
Not sure how good the Wilson test is for sorting out exactly what the problem is though.

> He struggles a lot with Spelling. So you think that Barton would do a better job with the Spelling?

Yes. I think the Barton spelling rules are very well done for recall of the rules and actually recalling/ using them. For example, Wilson calls f, l, and s bonus letters as you double them at the end of a single syllable word. This is fine but what ARE the bonus letters? Can you recall what they are? Barton calls it the “Floss” rule and fls make up the floss rule are the letters doubled and the word follows the rules.

> I have also read on this site (just discovered this bulletin board 2 days ago - it is great) about the Great Leaps program - haven’t had a chance to check it out yet but heard it is for fluency - maybe this is something he needs too. Are you familiar with this program? Thanks again for all your help!

I am not too familar with it. I think Janis has used it??
I doubt you would need it if you used Barton as it does address fluency, but if that is the ONLY problem then that might be what he needs.

Several people have mentioned PG, it might work if there are more simple gaps in his decoding. Not sure that it is so much faster. Barton covers more material (including some fluency, decodable text within the lesson to read, more spelling, even vocabulary, etc.) so it is going to take longer. After you are done with PG you still have to go back and really teach fluency and I don’t think that is the case with Barton. PG has an appealing price tag, esp for the book. IMO, the book does not have too much info on dealing with multisyllable words, advanced code, and so forth that may be addressed in other PG sources.

My student is actually making pretty rapid progress, imo. However, I think regardless of what you use ymmv as they say (your mileage may vary). It also would help, I think, to know exactly what the problem is with your son’s reading.

>Debbie

—Jane

Right des, I couldn’t use PG without the Parent Support Book which gives you the workbook pages to go with the Reading Reflex book.

What type of fluency does Barton have…single words or timed text readings, or other?

Janis

Thanks so much for all your replies! I really appreciate it.

” It also would help, I think, to know exactly what the problem is with your son’s reading. ”

Yes - we have been trying to figure this out for years! When he was in PS, they would not even do any testing on him. The special ed teacher said that “they didn’t need to waste their time on kids like him” (her words) because he was reading close to his chronological age or something like that - don’t remember exactly. Every teacher he had said there was a problem they “just couldn’t put their finger on”. This past fall, we took him to a person lots of homeschoolers in the area recommended to have some testing done. His conclusion was a broad spectrum of things - there was not any ONE thing. Some of the testing was not very reliable either it seemed because my son would get locked in a pattern, he also would start out doing bad and then “get into it” and do ok, and even his IQ score, the man told us was not accurate because he scored between 102 and 104 on all the tests of Language development, but only scored 83 on the test of nonverbal intelligence - so his report says that this score he felt was an “aberration and not an accurate score”. He said also because his reading fluency on the GORT-3 was at the 25th percentile, while his comprehension was at the 75th percentile he said that “while it is common for individuals to be fluent readers while having poor comprehension, the reverse is almost never true unless the individual had the intellectual ability to reason with the fractured information transmitted by his poor reading skills” and he recommended a full-scale intelligence test. He also said he was one of the best “guessers” he had ever seen. But really, what good would an intelligence test do for us - really? Any insight on whether I should look into having this done?
Caleb has a lot of difficulty with retrieval.
He scored a 64 on the Lindamood LAC test. He says this is a “severe degree of auditory conceptual dysfunction” - so I don’t understand how he can be reading as well as he is! Unless again - this is misleading because he is not a very good test subject.
He gave him the AFT-R and the SCAN-C for Auditory processing and language. He said the AFT-R showed inconsistencies, but performance was normal after he adapted to the test, and his scores were within normal limits. The SCAN-C he scored at the 75th percentile on Filtered Words, the 37th percentile on Auditory Figure Ground, the 25th percentile on Competing Words and the 25th percentile on Competing Sentences His overall performance was at the 34th percentile. He gave the GFW test of auditory discrimination and his score dropped to the 14th percentile. He recommended Fast ForWord for this.
He had the token test for children TTFC. One test was not normal - all others were ok. He showed significant difficulty when the number of elements was increased from 4 to 6 - this difficulty was also evident on the Gibson test where his visual working memory was considerably better than his auditory working memory. He recommended Fast ForWord and PACE for something later but might help with this too.
He scored 75th percentile on the GORT, but he has difficulty understanding humor (loves slapstick), following oral directions and written, drawing conclusions, making inferences, sequencing events esp when reading, etc. He recommended Visualizing and Verbalizing.
I said he had trouble learning math facts, spelling mistakes, difficulty remembering spelling exceptions, and difficulty remember spelling words after test. He recommended Seeing Stars for this.
He gave the Gibson Cognitive Test Battery - he said his scores indicated severe deficits in visual processing speed, auditory analysis and logic and reasonong using visual symbols. He recommended PACE or Brain Skills for this.
He said during testing Caleb had difficulty with sustained attention, was distractible, and had difficulty controlling impulsive behavior and tended to perseverate (lock into a pattern). He recommended Interactive Metronome.
So you see…I am just a * little* overwhelmed and unsure of where to start. I want to do the IM first and plan on just getting trained in that possibly. A friend was told by same person that her kids needed LB and she researched and decided to go with Wilson (don’t think she has ever heard of Barton) and is experiencing success with Wilson with her kids and felt that it would be good for Caleb too.
Caleb was ahead of all the developmental gains until he started school. He walked and talked fairly early = is very imaginative and active, tries to be a clown, loves being silly. Trouble started in preschool and continued until we pulled him out mid 2nd grade. He was never a behavior problem, he just doesn’t like anything academic. I could never even try to disguise academics in games or anything - he knew what I was trying to do and he just lost interest. He was never interested in coloring drawing and didn’t care if he ever learned how to write his name or anything else for that matter. His preschool teacher thought he was incapable of learning his numbers to 10. She worked on getting him to say them for months. He would just say he didn’t know. Then one day she sat down beside him and he rattled 0-10 at her as soon as she sat down. He seems to not know something after we try and try to teach it and then one day - boom - he knows it - like tying his shoes. He is a difficult child to figure out.
Thanks for any insight you can give me on this.
Debbie

I took him to be tested for visual therapy and and the average deviation from patient’s age was -1.13. He was 8.9 yrs at time of screening and here was the scores:

Fixation Speed 10 yrs
Selective Attention 5 yrs
Reversal Frequency 4.2 yrs
Visual Memory 11 yrs
Visualization 9.5 yrs
Logic and Form Reasonong 9.3 yrs
Visual Motor Integration 5.4 yrs

Thanks,
Debbie

Were these the only vision tests performed? What about convergence, accommodation, gross and fine pursuits, etc.?

The average deviation number is meaningless. What you need to look at are specific areas of deficit.

If all visual efficiency skills are in place (convergence, accommodation, gross pursuits and saccades), then — based on the test results you have posted — I would recommend cognitive training exercises, which specifically work on attention skills, directionality (including reversals), and visual-motor integration. A good home-based cognitive training program is Audiblox (http://www.audiblox2000.com ). A more expensive provider-based program is PACE (http://www.processingskills.com ). Before embarking on cognitive training, you do want to make sure there are no major problems with convergence, focusing, or gross pursuits. It’s not clear from your post whether these were tested.

Although Phono-Graphix will teach decoding skills quickly, it will not do much for the visual processing deficits you have posted. Cognitive training is needed to remediate those areas quickly and efficiently. Poor visual processing skills usually do interfere significantly with reading fluency.

Based on what you have posted so far, I would recommend a combination of Reading Reflex and Audiblox (or PACE).

Nancy

In answer to Janis, I think the technique Barton uses for fluency is repeated reading. There is an interesting section that has like a Chinese menu with “Who phrases” (for level 4, lesson 2—“The Spanish lady”, “a crazy pilot”, 2 others. “Did what phrases” like “will hijack a camel”, “did her desk duty”, etc. “Where phrases” like “in a British city”, “in the humid city”, etc. And “Add on phrases” “for the navy” , “for his son, David”. The kids (and you) make up sentences using one from each starting with just who and where and then adding each one, so that the sentences end up being of 4 parts. For example, “The Spanish lady did her desk duty.” Then you do a few fo these and then go to three parts, “The Spanish lady will hijack a camel in a British city”, then to four parts “The crazy pilot will hijack a camel in the humid city for the navy”. You keep rereading reusing the phrases but it is fun as the kids love being creative and making up wild sentences.

Another section has them read sentences, usually using these phrases, and teaches them how to read using phrasing. For example they find the “who” “did what” and “where” phrases. They first just read it and then with phrasing after they have “diagrammed the parts”. My first student is so much better at that, ends up reading the stories and everything with phrasing. For example, they are marked and they learn to read the pause “The Spanish lady/ did her desk duty/in the humid city.” (The marking is a bit different).

hah! I bet that was more than you wanted to know. :-)

>> ” It also would help, I think, to know exactly what the problem is with your son’s reading. ”

> He scored a 64 on the Lindamood LAC test. He says this is a “severe degree of auditory conceptual dysfunction” - so I don’t understand how he can be reading as well as he is! Unless again - this is misleading because he is not a very good test subject.

It could be that Caleb has an outstanding visual memory. The good visual memory is making up for pretty bad phonological awareness. I did a little of my own make shift test for one of my students and you might try the same, it was very revealing. I had her spell and decode increasingly difficult words, however they were common words. Then I did the same with unknown and unfamilar words. She did very very well (no mistakes at her grade level) with familar words but started making tons of mistakes on unfamilar ones. This was revealing to me as it indicated she has a phenonmenal visual memory, imo, making up for terrible phonological processing, still is struggling with hearing “e” and “i” for example. The trouble with visual memory is that it will only take you so far. I think the 4 or even 5th grade, if it is truly phenonmenal. Normally they say that sight word reading, which is what your kid may be doing, will max out at about 3rd or 4th grade. This means that when he gets to more difficult words he just won’t be able to recognize them and can’t decode them as he doesn’t have the skills. Some of these kids start really struggling in junior high, where a possibly less alert parent may first realize the kid is ld.
Your memory load for such things as the shape of words is only so big and after that… also you are not always able to hear every word first a few times and there is much more reading of unfamilar words.
I may have a copy of this thing if you want to try this for Caleb. Might give you some understandable info. (You can send me a message with your email address.)

This is why his spelling is probably so poor. He can’t hear the sounds, so he can’t figure out how to spell them and must make guesses based on how other similar words might be spelled, etc.

This is just a guess on what you have said btw.

>auditory discrimination and his score dropped to the 14th percentile. He recommended Fast ForWord for this.

Fast Forward or some other auditory processing program might teach him to hear the sounds better but can’t teach him to read. In other words, it may help him develop the equipment but he still has to know what the code is, because my guess is he is not hearing the sounds and doesn’t know it.

> written, drawing conclusions, making inferences, sequencing events esp when reading, etc. He recommended Visualizing and Verbalizing.

V/V is an excellent program for developing comprehension and the above mentioned skills. But it may be that he is doing more word calling based on just recalling the words. The student that I have who I bet is similar is like this. She reads a sentence with no concern for phrasing or punctuation. Does he understand stuff you read to him better than stuff he reads to himself?? If he has trouble comprehending everything I think that V/V is more useful. If he only has trouble comprehending his own reading then you might think that that will be best addressed by first dealing with dealing with decoding, etc.

>remembering spelling exceptions, and difficulty remember spelling words after test. He recommended Seeing Stars for this.

Well though, or possibly he just doesn’t hear the sounds welll enough. He remembers the spelling words for the test because he has been looking at them awhile (good short term visual memory), but after he is not looking at them so much.

Seeing Stars is usually recommended for kids with good decoding.

> So you see…I am just a * little* overwhelmed and unsure of where to start. I want to do the IM first and plan on just getting trained in that possibly. A friend was told by same person that her kids needed LB and she researched and decided to go with Wilson (don’t think she has ever heard of Barton) and is experiencing success with Wilson with her kids and felt that it would be good for Caleb too.

Yes, I can see why you are overwhelmed.

Well you haven’t told me anything that would make me think that Barton wouldn’t be appropriate (or other systematic explicit phonics approach) and I htink it is a superior program for the reasons I gave. The level on phonemic awareness is very good for kids with the weak auditory skills.

—des

The other info on the Vision Screening report is
Distance Accuity Poor (he will need glasses eventually I was told)
Binocularity Good
Near Acuity Good
Focus Change Good
Fusion Good
Near Point of Convergence Good

Accuracy Good
Speed Poor
Energy Good

I would love to try the test you made up - my email address is [email protected] . Thank you!

I must have missed the post about a test. At least, it wasn’t me.

Since his visual efficiency skills seem fine, I would definitely start Audiblox to develop his visual processing skills (which were the low scores you posted).

I’d also use Reading Reflex for decoding and, once he’s up to a mid-4th grade reading level with normal fluency, start on Rewards from Sopris West (http://www.sopriswest.com/rewards/).

These are all very parent-friendly programs that don’t require any specialized training — just persistence.

Nancy

Thanks for the info, des!

Janis

And it was a LOT of info wasn’t it?? :-)
I’m so good at that, huh? :-)

—des

THe WISC IQ test can actually be very helpful in figuring out someone’s strenghts and weaknesses in different kinds of thinking. Do you have subtest scores?
I”ve had students (but not many) who had very good language abilities, but were very poor decoders. Basically, they had trouble with connecting print to speech sounds, and thus trouble *making* words out of the letters. ONce they knew the words, they were fine. (There are strong visual learners who also think very visually and really don’t “think in words” as their first language… but one of these folks was the head of the English department where I was teaching, so there’s no reason to assume it will hold somebody back from learning to love language.)
Sounds like he has good verbal “sense” so that given his struggles in decoding, he can piece enough to gether to get meaning. Frankly, I had a *lot* of students who scored ‘way higher on the GORT comprehension than accuracy & speed. The questions tend to be pretty straightforward and literal — and are multiple choice. Your kiddo sounds like he’s got the kind of intelligence to get multiple choice questions … exactly the kind of intelligence that makes teachers think there can’t be a problem. That’s a bit inconsistent, though, with those relatively low scores in completing sentences and that sort of thing — but since that was done through that auditory channel, that could be the issue.
I would be leaning towards Barton, too — my gut feeling is that Phono-Graphix isn’t going to address his specific challenges or give him enough practice and review. And if you could do LiPS, even though he’s technically “on track,” with an experienced tutor, it’s got the intensive individuality where the tutor gets to deal with the unique problems as they come up (and they do). Again, *if* you can find a really good tutor, it could be better than trying to ahve a different program for every little thing! However — big however — I am *not* familiar with IM or PACE; my experience is with daily, intensive language therapies with older (sixth grade &: up) students. At that point time is of the essence *and* academics are much higher up on the priority list, so channeling language therapy through academics helps kill lots of birds with one stone — you’re retraining the brain by learning stuff you need to know. It makes sense that with a younger kiddo you wouldn’t have to/want to be doing academic kinds of things (all kinds of developmental issues and how abstract they can get, motivation, etc).
For a taste of the foundation of Reading Reflex/PhonoGraphix, drop in at http://www.auburn.edu/~murraba and look at “letterbox lessons.” These can *really* help build that sound-symbol connection. Soudns like he sees the stuff fine but has trouble with the connection between the symbols and the language. (And, just because I *think* something more intensive is called for doesn’t mean you shouldn’t give that a shot :))
This does sound like a kiddo that homeschooling is an excellent option for. What does he like to *do* that he might like to know about?

(P.S. — glad to see sometimes des has to take 3 posts to get it all out ;) )

>(P.S. — glad to see sometimes des has to take 3 posts to get it all out ;)

Well at least I never claimed brevity as one of my strengths. :-)

—des

Thanks for your response! I appreciate it! The IQ test given was the TONI -3. I don’t have anysubtest scores.
As for what he likes…he is a hockey NUT. He is a goalie. We have checked every book out of the library having to do with hockey, but he tends to just look at the pics and read the captions etc.
I am *thinking* of doing Barton, IM, and Audiblox to start with. Hopefully finishing the IM before starting Audiblox. We’ll see how it goes. He and my 6 yo daughter are using Earobics for 15-20 minutes 5 days a week. I know that his regular ed (We are using the K12 program) will suffer during this time, but if I can just get him remediated, I know the regular ed would be so much easier.
Thanks,
Debbie

Don’t worry about the “academics suffering.”
Sometimes (tho’ I don’t want to get your hopes up) the combination of a break from academics and the remediation of the skills means that when they go back to it, the process is so much easier that a lot of old reluctance and resistance is gone. They’ll usually perceive only gradual improvement (if any) — but if you go and try something you haven’t done in a long time then you can see the big differences.
Besides, it’s a great motivator — basically, you promise to work your butt off on these skills improvers, then we’ll let you SKIP the other schoolwork.

(That was me, not having logged in ;))

I think the Sound Reading CD for teens would be much more valuable than Earobics for a 9yo who is already reading somewhat. It would be a lot more fun for him too. I have had very, very good results with this CD. It takes about 14 hours for a child to work through all the levels. Website is http://www.soundreading.com

Nancy

Nancy,
Does the Sound Reading for Teens CD offer any practice in Multi-syllable decoding or Morpographs? What reading “level/s” would you describe it being most appropriate for?

Yes, the Sound Reading CD does include work on multi-syllable words. This is one of the reasons I like it. It does not include morphographs as far as I know (I have only sampled portions of the CD, but nothing I saw indicated work with morphographs).

I have used the Sound Reading CD with a 12yo reading on a beginning 2nd grade level, and with a 13yo reading on a 1st grade level. Both children have sensory integration problems and low IQ, and both benefitted substantially from the CD. It would be just as appropriate for high-IQ students, though, and students who have mastered basic code but are stumbling with multi-syllable.

The CD starts from the very beginning, with individual sounds. The teen designation simply means that the babyish graphics that appeal to younger kids have been taken out; the content otherwise is exactly the same as the elementary CD. It is appropriate for anyone needing repetitive work with sounds, sound/symbol correlation, word building and word attack skills. It can be done completely independently by the child because as soon as one level is passed, the CD proceeds to the next level.

For morphographs I use “Spelling Through Morphographs” put out by SRA. This is another very excellent program that helps with vocabulary as well as spelling, but I’m not sure it has much of an impact on reading. There is a placement test for it online that very reliably indicates if the program is appropriate for a specific student.

Nancy

I would say the Sound Reading CD would be overkill for most children reading at a beginning 4th grade level. If a child is reading that well, I usually move them into Rewards from Sopris West.

Nancy

Thanks Nancy,
I’ll look further at Rewards. We haven’t done any recent testing, but I’m going to guess my son’s fluency is about 3rd grade (maybe high 2nd - we’re in a competitive district so my measurements might not be comparable to other schools) while decoding is currently close to 4th. He’s not a “stable” decoder. But I’m trying, of course, to move him in that direction.

By the way, do you happen to have a favorite decodable text series?

I’m still looking for the perfect decodable reader series!

Currently I’m using “Phonics for Reading” by Curriculum Associates, Level 3, for students who are having difficulty getting over the 3rd grade reading hump. I use only the story in each lesson, not the exercises, and choose the story (each of which emphasizes certain sounds) to coordinate with the sounds we are working on in Phono-Graphix. I *much* prefer the ordering of the advanced code sounds in PG to the one in this series, so PG is my spine and these stories are the supplement. If you use it as I do, all you need to buy is the student workbook. The teacher’s manual contains all the instructions for the exercises, which I find far inferior to the exercises in Rewards.

One nice thing about the “Phonics” stories is that there are word counts at the end of each line. This makes calculating rate (words per minute) very easy.

Nancy