I have a 7 1/2 yo d in 2nd grade who showed delay last year with phonemic awareness and was at risk this november for reading failure. We worked intensively on phonics and she is now reading at grade level. Therefore, the school is no longer concerned. I, however, see continuing reading problems and holes in phonemic awareness. She had a reading evaluation at the Sackler Institute in NYC last month. Her WJ III reading cluster scores are all around 100-107 Standard Score. TOWRE scores are 107 Standard Score. GORT fluency in 10, GORT Comprehension is 14; BUT CTOPP memory for digits is 7, for non-word repetition is 8, rapid letter naming is 8; and blending words is 9; and elision is 11. Barton Reading and spelling seems just right for us and I plan on ordering beginning this week.
However, I wonder if I should also get the Sound Reading CD? My daughter’s problems appear to include some listening memory issues and perhaps the auditory work would supplement the Barton system? Or is the CD redundant, and the Barton system would cover most auditory needs? My daughter is a terrible speller, often missing sounds in her version of a word. Also, we are scheduled for the Psych Ed evaluation (private, outside school system) early May. I think I should get going now to cover as much ground as possible before 3rd grade.
Thank you for any advice you can give. Don’t want to order the sound Reading CD if it is not necessary. Holly
Re: Barton Reading and Sound Reading CD?
I woulnd’t skip Barton at all — in my experience this is exactly the profile of the student who benefits from the wider and deeper treatment it offers.
I don’t know Sound Reading but I suspect it would be redundant… though the other common experience for me is that *no* program has enough practice. Sound REading also might have a lot of stuff she has already covered. For straight focus-and-listen issues (related to reading) Earobics is good.
Re: Barton Reading and Sound Reading CD?
I think you might want a language eval. from a speech and language therapist, but I wouldnt’ redo the reading eval.
I would say that at least I would get Book 1 of the Barton System. This has a very neat phonemic awareness practice that is really terrific— and it really works. Kids who can’t hear that /n/ after the /s/ or the /r/ after the /p/ start hearing it. It is super well done and very easy to follow.
Since she is so young working with her might have helped her out so far but I think it is too soon to say that her reading is now normal judging from the phonemic awareness levels.
I’d take her thru book 1 — at least(the cheapest of the lot anyway). I would definitely say it is won’t be a waste of time. Then I’d go from there.
Barton does deal with fluency, vocab building, etc. and other aspects of reading aside from straight decoding.
As for Sound CD. As long as you have the time, etc. It might be reduntant but it wouldn’t hurt either. I have heard that it is a bit more interesting than Earobics, but haven’t seen either one.
—des
Re: Barton Reading and Sound Reading CD?
Janis, Sue, and Des,
Thank you very much for taking the time to reply. The range of advice in your replies perhaps reflects current thinking on how to support kids with my daughters profile without employing the “let’s wait and see” attitude of the schools. Yes, those scores aren’t so bad. But, believe me, in November, she was in a very different place, reading wise, and her reading problems were very unexpected. She was highly verbal at an early age, which the school noted, and we focus on language and read alot at home. She decodes some words, but guesses at the majority.
We did a classification exercise yesterday. Every word she missed was a word she couldn’t read, i.e, she read soccor as stroller, and skate as spate and sape. When we reviewed and reblended the word, and she could finally read the word, she could categorize it with no problem, as I suspected. We only did the exercise because her progress report Friday said she was coming along slowly with the newly introduced concept of classification, sorting, etc. I found this surprising because she categorizes things so well that she actually finds it funny if something is sorted into its wrong category. This really tickles her funnybone, or sense of the absurd. I find it puzzling that she should be judged to be behind in classification skills, when I simply perceive her as not being able to read a word before she can place it appropriately.
Again, thank you all. I’m going to forego a CD at this time. Get Reading Reflex, $20 is cool, and probably start with Barton 1. My d likes the idea of the tiles. I also have 3 and 4 year olds. Those materials could come in handy when they learn to read. P.S. the eval in May is not reading, but more cognitive. I miscommunicated. It’s just to get a sense of her strengths and weaknesses. Also, the idea of speech, language eval is interesting. Will discuss with a good friend who is a speech pathologist. Holly
Re: Barton Reading and Sound Reading CD?
I agree, I would defin9itlely *not* wait and see with this one. LEt’s face it, early reading skills aren’t that demanding so you can cover up some huge holes with a little bit of innate intelligence — and the more of that innate intelligence you have, the better you’ll cover them, which *might* turn out okay, but also might mean that down the road when they take the non-reading cues away, you’re SOL and I don’t mean Standards of Learning. The classification thing is a classic example — she looks like an “average” kiddo, even though she is a very much above average kiddo with below average decoding skills. Keep her in average land and she will be a bored kiddo with poor decoding skills.
Holly,
First of all, I would mention that it would be inappropriate and unnecessary to have another evaluation in May since your daughter was just evaluated with excellent tests last month. The WJ-III, CTOPP, GORT and TOWRE are all great tests, so I can’t see any reason to have more tests. Those are about the best, so I can’t imagine what they could even give her. You can’t give the same tests again that close together.
Has she had a speech-language evaluation? Since her reading scores are normal, I wouldn’t be overly concerned about the CTOPP scores. With blending and elision being in the normal range, I don’t think I’d be too worried. I absolutely would not buy the Barton program for issues this mild. I think it would be overkill. You could buy the Reading Reflex book and go through the advanced code with her which will help with spelling and reading if you wish. Or the Explode the Code books from EPS.
What the CTOPP manual says is that low phonological memory (digits and non-word repetition) may effect vocabulary acquisition. That’s why I asked about a language evaluation. Or she may have had the vocabulary subtests in the WJ-III. The rapid naming subtest was a little low, and that would usually effect fluency, but her fluency score is good.
So my recommendation is to consider a language eval if it has not yet been done, skip Barton, review the vowel digraphs in something like Reading Reflex, and have her read aloud to you every day.
As far as increasing digit span goes, there is a computer program called BrainBuilder that you can buy for about $50. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen evidence that increasing digit span has carry-over to anything else, but it can’t hurt. I think Earobics or the Sound Reading CD’s can’t hurt either. But I see nothing in your child’s scores that indicate she has a need for a program like Barton. If you read with her, go through the vowel digraphs, and do these computer programs for the next year, then you could start a spelling program like AVCO if she was still weak in spelling.
Janis