Anyone try "My Reading Coach"?

If he’s reading on about a 4th grade level, I would use Rewards (http://www.sopriswest.com/rewards/ ). The program is entirely scripted, so it is easy for a parent to pick up and start using. You need both the teacher’s manual and a workbook. The video can be helpful, but isn’t necessary.

Before using Rewards, you might want to check his code knowledge and skills with the assessments in the book “Reading Reflex” by McGuiness (see if your library has a copy).

If he’s reading below a 4th grade level, the Sound Reading CD for teens would be a very good choice (ideally used along with “Reading Reflex”). Website is http://www.soundreading.com

I’m familiar with most of the remedial reading programs that have good track records with older children. Haven’t heard of “My Reading Coach”. Is there a website?

Nancy

Hi Nancy,
thanks for the info. I will check them out. The website is myreadingcoach.com. see what you think of it.

thanks,
Micki

I remember Mindplay :-) That’s a company that’s been around for a while — a mom got tired of software that her LD kiddo got frustrated with, so she started a company to make stuff that would work.
It’s been a while… but if I remember right, they should have either a demo version, or lesson samples on their site. They’re real chunks of lessons and I thought they were pretty good, especially for older learners I’d give them a call and ask (they may be able to email you a demo file,even). The frustrating thing is the only way to know if it will really help your kiddo is to sit him down with it. THere’s a screen shot on the site (otherwise I wouldn’t be sure I was remembering the same program :)).
Another good option is LExia Learning’s software which is probably comparable but perhaps more expensive. Reading Coach, also, is more like a standard reading program and less game-like (that could be good or bad…)

BTW, the screen shot is on the page about the author (I’m gonna catch ya, des, one of these years!)

I’ve also seen OmptiRogers, which is another OG based reading program on CD. Looks pretty good. I can’t really imagine doing all reading instruction on computer and how far you could get that way though. But as it goes it looks pretty solid.

—des

Hi,
If you will email me at [email protected], I will tell you all about a concrete, direct, multisensory program I have been doing for 20 yrs now. It should be helpful for your son. Anita

I had a chance to look at the website for My Reading Coach. I would definitely email them asking about a demo, as that would tell you a lot more about the program than the website does. Based on the website alone, here are my comments…..

First off, I think it would be extremely difficult to get any 12yo boy with a reading problem to sit down with this program for one hour five days a week, which is what they recommend. The only way this would work with the children I know is if I sat down with them for that hour. In that case, both of us would be better off using a program in which we interact directly with each other — e.g., Rewards or Reading Reflex.

Second, I didn’t like the mention of rules and sight words. I’m of the school that believes rules simply do not work for reading, and that there are very few undecodable words. See the first three chapters of “Reading Reflex” for an explanation of this.

Third, there was no mention at all of fluency. It’s unclear if the program includes fluency practice. Everything that was mentioned seems to involve decoding skills (which are often easier to develop than fluency). Many children need lots and lots of practice reading actual text in order to develop fluency. Ideally, they should be reading out loud to an adult every day so they are getting immediate feedback about mistakes made while reading text (“Reading Reflex” includes explanations of good error correction techniques to use). Silent reading often allows guessing habits and mistakes to go unnoticed for too long, creating unnecessary problems.

For the phonemic awareness skills and an excellent introduction to multi-syllable words, I think the Sound Reading CD is difficult to beat. Kids like it, so you don’t have to pull teeth to get them to sit down and work at it for 20 minutes at a time. It starts at the beginning, so there’s no chance of anything being missed. Children who are solid on those early levels simply complete the exercises quickly and easily, and the program automatically moves them on. Average time to complete the program is 14 hours, which is a lot less than what MRC seems to require.

My Reading Coach sounds like a good supplement for classrooms, where a teacher is unable to provide one-on-one, because it allows multiple students to work independently. If several other students are working on the same program, it probably makes it easier for a 12yo to sit there and work on it.

As a home tutoring program, I don’t think it would work very well. I know that I have lots of $$$$’s invested in wonderful, educational computer programs that no child within my sphere would ever willingly sit down and use! For home tutoring, it’s much easier to engage a child’s attention if there is a warm body to interact with, the opportunity to interject humor, play games, etc. Even Rewards allows lots of oral discussion of word meanings, creation of sentences that use the words correctly, etc. — all things that introduce flexibility, novelty, and make things more interesting for the child.

Nancy

I’m going to have to respectfully not share the “dislike” of mentioning rules, especially for the older set. To do without rules, you must be able to make the intuitive leap (a “reflex”) in making the sound symbol connections. This is simply something many learners really struggle with.

For many people (especially older learners), knowing the patterns of the language can be extremely useful. Yes, I just *knew* that hoped was different than hopped and therefore I could infer sloped and slopped without even knowing I inferred it.

One of the first surprises when I started teaching was that my students didn’t share this sense. So, I taught them rules and patterns. “Why didn’t anybody tell me this before?” is a common chorus. Alas, for most of them it doesn’t “stick” even being told the rules— they need practice too — but… with the rule and practice, it does stick.
Those rules really help fill in the gaps that most of us don’t have because we intuitively generalize; they also help those of us who intuitively generalize by keeping us from overgeneralizing and knowing when *not* to follow a pattern — and by actively teaching things like exceptions (lest we read “epitome” out loud with the silent e!)
One of the serious dangers of teaching rules, though, is teaching them instead of teaching the reading and spelling. We’ve all known students who can recite the rules but you’d never know it, reading what they’ve written or hearing them read. There’s also the point that if you know how to do something, you do *not* necessarily have to be able to do a dissertation about it… if you can already add suffixes, okay, I’ll tell you the rule but I won’t make you recite it, any more than I’ll sit and make you practice correctly identifying which equation represents an example of the commutative or associative properties.
SIght words are also a way to build fluency, especially since those very common words are the most likely to follow irregular patterns. However, I don’t know whether or not fluency is addressed in My Reading Coach beyond that (of course, it’s “addressed” in Reading Reflex by saying “read real books” — which, of course, you could do with My Reading Coach, too).

Oh, and given a choice between Omti-Rogers and Reading Coach, in my opinion I’d pick Reading Coach hands down. Omti Rogers tries to imitate an OG teacher — but there’s no feedback; you just go through the lesson and move on. If you don’t have it yet — well, do that lesson again… the same lesson… no varied practice. Basically the “feedback” aspect of the computer program was not developed well (it also doesn’t care whether it takes you 2 or 200 times to get the right answer, so a student could just quickly try each option until he got the right one, and plow through the lessons… would be *very* tempting because they’re not exactly exciting… Reading Coach is not going ot be exciting, but it’s got realistically animated graphics so you can actually see the guy talking (which is very important to some of our more visual learners — they did it on purpose). It’s been too long so I don’t remember about its feedback loops (I reviewed O.R. more recently) or how much of different kinds of practice it included. That varied practice and review is extremely critical for our students and it wasn’t in O.R. at all — you just did the next lesson and it stood alone. One of the things that sets an LD kiddo painfully apart from others is that the natural incorporation of what you already knew into the new unit generally isn’t natural enough; some students really need that extra bridge of reviewing the old stuff often and welll, even when it’s “easy.” (This was something I was reluctant to believe —it seemed to be easy, so I was wasting time — excxept that the teachers who did this all the time, rigorously ummm…. shall I say rigidly?… and, aarrgghh, reviewd those rules…. dang it, the stats didn’t lie… their students consistently gained more in the same time, when I’d have thought moving along faster would mean faster gains.)

Sue your point on O-R is probably well taken. In actuality I haven’t seen the thing in a long time. I can’t imagine doing OG without a tutor.
I also agree with your remarks on rules. I think as a beginning reader they may get in the way. But a couple days ago I just explained why there are double letters in words. I got a very big “ah hah” from my student! I think rules can be explained in a way that is not stiffling. I can’t imagine a person with poor visual memory spelling without rules. What you have them do is look at a bunch of words spelled different ways and ask which one looks better. This won’t work with a kid with poor visual memory, they’ll either all look the same or all look wrong. OTOH I suppose you could go the Seeing Stars route and improve the visual memory of the student or do some processing program that improves visual memory.

—des

And of course Seeing Stars is done by Lindamood-Bell, and their LiPS absolutely *does* include those rules, so many students using Seeing Stars will have already been learning the rules.

Thanks for all your discussion - I posted earlier but it didn’t seem to take so this may be a reprint!

I am working with kenny again with Reading Reflex and he has noticed that some of the “rules” that he kinda remembers from school don’t work with some words.

I just don’t feel very qualified to teach reading to him, I love to read and research but having to work with him going over the little things to try and get them into his long term memory is not exactly what I excell at. That was why I was looking for something easier. But i think it will be back to Reading Reflex and just a lot of basic reading out loud every day and lots of writing. I don’t know how else to bring up his written expression scores. he is very smart, she just seems to have gaps that I am not sure how to fill and that is why we are homeschooling this year. The middle school wasn’t helping, they were trying I will say and very willing to work with me but it just wasn’t improving anything for him.

thanks so much!
Micki

>And of course Seeing Stars is done by Lindamood-Bell, and their LiPS absolutely *does* include those rules, so many students using Seeing Stars will have already been learning the rules.

Sure, they may call them expectancies, which I like (you might general expect this but it isn’t a rule etched out in granite), but it is still a rule.
They use some mnemonics (like the sail, boat, on the sea) to tell you what letters will generally combine to get the long vowel sound in the middle of the word. If you have to go, “saal sael sail saol saul” to come up with the right spelling all the time, I think spelling will be VERY difficult. I think a lot of kids would toss out the double a but beyond that…

—des

You forgot sale and sayle…

Reading reflex and lots of oral reading sounds like a good battle plan to me.

If written expression is truly lousy, _When They Can’t Write_ is a great step-by-step program that’s all laid out for you (and therefore worth every penny) and starts with really simple sentences and teaches assorted sentence patterns with lots of (fortunately interesting) practice and review.

If his writing isn’t that bad… I would seriously spend my time on the reading. That’s the foundation of it all — good writers are usually good writers because of all their *reading.* It’s seeing and hearing really good language that lets you get those words flowing.

Hello mmwells:

As a person who struggled with reading, let me share some of the things that worked best for me.

Being read to — being read to even when you’re in older student helps to sustain your interest in books and good stories. While in school one of the few things that I enjoyed was when my fifth-grade teacher would read books to us every day! I never forgot the experience and it made me reread those books later on even as an adult.

Reading more than once — reading a very good story for than once was one of the ways that helped me gain better fluency as a reader. Later on as an advanced learner, I found that rereading build comprehension and develops critical thinking skills.

Jim — Michigan

Hi, my son is 11, bright, and reading about 2 years behind - also very strong auditorily. He is learning much about the good sounds of words from being read to, of course, but now that he is older, by listening to the many great story tapes that are out there. He tells me he uses words he hears and has developed his considerable vocabulary from this listening. With respect to decoding, the research I did indicated that the Wilson REading program was the very best for a child with decoding problems who was also bright. My son currently has a one on one tutor 3x a week doing this program - he likes it a lot and is making slow but very solid progress. If you want to email me directly for more info please feel free. I am at [email protected].