I just found this bullentin board. I’ve only read a few posts and I’ve found them helpful. Nancy, what is your background? I so wish I had someone with your experience to consult with at the beginning of this journey. My son, now age 10 was in an accident and sustained a severe traumatic brain injury (three weekes in a coma) two years ago. He had to learn to walk, talk, speak and eat all over again. To look at him today, you would never know. However, his cognitive abilities are returning more slowly.
The day of his accident, his 2nd grade teacher had called to suggest testing. His reading was coming along but not at that pace expected and I agreed so there was a preexisting learning challenge but I don’t know exactly what it was.
We did the first Fast Forward program at the suggestion of a speech pathologist. It was a mistake because he was only one month out of the hospital. He and I both hated it at the end. H was able to get into the 90% for almost all the games.
He did IM last summer with an OT. We did before and after visual motor and perceptual skills and he got over a years improvement in each. I also noticed that his handwriting (cursive taught to him by his physical therapist - Handwriting without Tears) became faster. We also did Samonas Sound therapy for 12 weeks. I don’t have any before and after data on this one - something I’m trying to do now.
The PACE provider I found is an optometrist and he told me he needed vision therapy first. We have done that for about 4 months but he hates going. I decided to take a break and do Brain Builder. (Yes it’s tedious but he’s on level 6 now). He did the PACE pretest and was a good candidate. I just have to convince the optometrist to go ahead with PACE.
I gave him a reading test from Let’s Go Learn yesterday. His reading comprehension was low 4th grade (not bad) but his spelling was high 1st grade and word recognition was mid 2nd. His writing is slow and while he can compose the 10 spelling sentences every week. It can take an hour though. He sometimes forgets the punctuation and captialization and spelling is very phonetic but not accurate.
I would have never imagined that his comprehension was that high due to the lack of fluency.
Would the Audiblox for writing and spelling help him or can you recommend something else? Will PACE help these areas? He’s in 4th grade. Memory and attention are definitely issues.
He’s in the resource room for language arts and math but in the regular class for everything else with an aide for science and social studies.
Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks, Caran (Jason’s mom)
Re: Audiblox for writing & spelling
I want to add also that dyslexics often have weak sequencing skills — probably the result of not having full sensory input from both vision and auditory systems. PACE (and Audiblox also) tend to be very effective at developing sequencing skills. Again, I prefer PACE for this.
Nancy
Re: Audiblox for writing & spelling
Thanks so much for your answer and the vote of confidence. Now I will be able to ask the optometrist to retest for convergence and accommodation. Having a specific goal (40th percentile) will help me to hang in there with the vision therapy.
I didn’t even know about Audiblox until I saw it in your post and when I looked at the website, they had one dramatic video of a TBI recovery with the caveat that it was intensively done with the person who developed it. Apparently, there are specific modifications you can make for writing and spelling but they recommend doing it the regular way first.
Word Recognition in the Let’s Go Learn test says it’s the ability to read a variety of phonetically regular and irregular (can’t be sounded out) words.
In the pretest for PACE, his lowest scores were Visual Memory (age 5) & Auditory Analysis (age 7). He was 9.8 at the time. His highest scores were Auditory Memory (10.3) and Visual processing (10.9). So, I couldn’t clearly say whether it was a visual problem or an auditory problem.
He did the pretest for IM with someone who also does PACE, MTC and Phono-graphix. She wasn’t excited about IM so I went somewhere else for that. She told me that she liked Phonographix much better then MTC so I did have that seed planted. I’ll get Reading Reflex and check it out.
I do want to have some testing done this summer. His school gave him the WISC-III, PPVT-R, CELF-3 & the CASL. Should we do the exact same tests? At the time, I wasn’t looking for learning disabilities. We knew he had a brain injury. I’m not looking for a label, I want to know if there has been progess (definitely there has) and what specific areas to help him with. I also know of someone who does the “All Kinds of Minds” testing for 8 different neurological strengths and weaknesses so I’m wondering about that. What do you think?
Again, I appreciate your advice. Caran
The writing and spelling problems are characteristic of dysgraphia, and could very well have no relationship to the accident. Both of these problems are also often associated with developmental vision problems — which again would be unrelated to the accident.
PACE would be highly likely to help both memory and attention skills. However, you really want visual efficiency skills in place before starting PACE. Visual efficiency skills are the ones typically addressed by vision therapy. PACE does a great job of developing visual processing skills, but gains will be limited by any unaddressed visual efficiency deficits.
A lot depends on where exactly your son is with visual efficiency skills now. If he’s just borderline on these — not severely deficient anymore — then I would certainly move on to PACE. If, however, he’s scoring in the 25th percentile for convergence (binocular vision) or accommodation (focusing), you really want to try to pull those scores higher, if you can, before starting PACE. 40th percentile would be fine, in my opinion.
I don’t know specifically how well Audiblox addresses writing and spelling. However, in my opinion, PACE would be a better program for your son (more thorough, more intensive, faster, and more interesting for a bright 10yo because there is much more variety, and a cheerleading provider helps). Since you have access to PACE, I would choose that over Audiblox.
What do you mean by word recognition? My bet is that you mean decoding and word attack skills. Unusually high comprehension scores combined with weak decoding is very characteristic of bright dyslexics. They develop highly effective guessing strategies to compensate for their poor decoding skills. The end result is that their poor decoding is masked, so that you think they are reading on a higher level than they actually are.
Have you looked at “Reading Reflex” or considered a Phono-Graphix tutor? This approach is usually highly effective for the type of reader you are describing. I would highly recommend at least borrowing the book from the library, reading the first three chapters, and giving your son the assessments in the book.
FastForWord is a wonderful program for children who have certain types of auditory processing disorder. However, I don’t see anything in your description that necessarily points to this type of problem. On the other hand, I see quite a few things that are often associated with developmental vision delays.
It sounds as if your son is making wonderful progress. He is lucky to have a mother like you.
Nancy