improving phonological memory

Some tasks, some of which are also games:
(This is a list to pick and choose, not to be done all at once!)

Most of these are classic, and they are classic because they are both fun and effective.
Memorize rhymes and recite them.
Memorize songs (traditional style with pattern and rhyme) and recite or sing them.
Memorize more difficult fast-paced songs such as Gilbert and Sullivan or Hot Rod Lincoln; try to siong along with fast record, enunciating clearly.
Memorize and recite religious texts which are personally meaningful and also beautiful in sound — if appropriate, King James Bible is classic.
Memorize and recite Shakespeare speeches, first short then longer.
Analyze rhymes in games and songs — what makes a rhyme, what are good rhymes, what are funny rhymes, what are rhyme schemes.
Make up rhymes — use a rhyming dictionary or a list at first, then do independently later.
Memorize and recite tongue-twisters — not in the silly as-fast-as-you-can slurred way, but giving every sound its full value.
Analyze alliteration and similar/different sounds in tongue twisters
ie Peter Piper is difficult because of the switching betwen front-back stops p-t-k and short i - short e; she sells sea shells by the sea shore is difficult because of switching rapidly between low sh and high s, sounds which are formed similarly but with one small distinction.
For all of the above, tape-record, listen, and re-do trying to improve.
Read aloud from good novels with literary value, working on clarity, emphasis, expression.
Tape reading aloud, listen, and try to improve, re-tape.
*Along with* the oral work suggested above, do advanced phonics work fom a good series that includes a lot of exercises on making finer distinctions and building new words by inserting or changing sounds.

Thanks, Victoria! You always have such super ideas. I’ll let you know how it goes. I’m using a combination of o-g and Rewards along with some phonemic analysis tasks. Thanks again!

Well, you can try BrainBuilder. It works on the skills that are tested on the phonological memory subtests. Also, Fast ForWord is supposed to work on working memory. Of course. BB is about $49 and FFW is $850, so I guess one is a better candidate to try first than the other! I woudl say that it woudl be hard to get improvement in this area without pretty intensive work.

Janis

I have FFW—have not trained yet—and may try it after training. BB sounds interesting; I’ll ck the website. Thanks so much!

Here is the BrainBuilder link:

http://www.advancedbrain.com/bb_intro.asp

I also read a study today comparing FFW and Earobics and the outcomes for Earobics on sentence recall were better than FFW!

http://www.interdys.org/pdf/PS29-Steppingstones.pdf

Janis

Hi Janis,

Wow! Thanks for the info. I thought FFW would have better results, if only for the intensity of the treatment. I’ve used the first Earobics; I’m looking for something similar for my 6th-grade student, but I demo’ed the one for adults at the website and can see that she would be able to do those tasks, no problem, even at the most advanced level. Still, her scores on the CTOPP were weak-poor. She seems to have the most trouble with new multisyllable words; if she gets stuck midway through, she forgets the first part and says something else. I agree with you that she needs something intense; I was looking for a computer program that she could do when I’m not there. I’m having her orally blend long multisyllable nonsense and low-frequency words to me (she recognizes nearly all the real words—she’s a bright kid).

I did check out BrainBuilder, but couldn’t try it. Have you tried it? Are the tasks similar to those in Earobics? I may splurge and try it; maybe it will help me if nothing else! (I have new baby brain melt.) I’m glad IDA is checking out this stuff. Thanks again for the info.

Congrats on your new baby! :D I could probably use BrainBuilder, too! But learning to use a Palm Pilot might be more successful for me! Ha!

The thing to remember about that study is that Earobics was delivered very intensively, too. I think most kids would die having to do Earobics that long each day, but an hour a day would seem doable. Even FFW has altered their protocol to allow for 50 and 75 minutes a day instead of only 100. I like the idea of FFW very much. I think it has great potential. But the price is still too high to make it very accessible. I can spend $600 and be trained in LiPS and use it with unlimited children. So honestly, FFW is the most restrictive program, and to me, it would need significantly better results to make the cost worth it.

Incidentally, my own child and one of my students both have extremely low Phonological Memory scores on the CTOPP. That’s why I bought Brain Builder. I haven’t used it yet but plan to over the summer. I have heard that it is more boring than Earobics. Hard to make memorizing strings of
I have a lot of doubts about “fixing” memory issues, but I guess it’s worth numbers interesting! But far better for a computer to provide the practice than me!!! I think incentives and a schedule would need to be set up to make it work.

I am putting my boy student on BB and Sound Reading Solutions CD’s for the summer. He has been using Earobics at school and he is tired of it.
a try. It’s definitely a harder problem to deal with than PA and phonics, I think.

Janis

A Palm Pilot is way too high-tech for me! Good for you for even trying it!

FFW is way expensive—I’ve been putting off training in it because of that. It seems to be better for kids who have auditory processing issues, not just phonological deficits, and extreme ones at that. I referred one girl to a FFW provider last year—her phonological processing scores were below the first percentile in almost everything with a questionable APD. I’ve heard that the upper levels of FFW are not that great, too. I really like Earobics, especially the fact that it’s so self-explanantory and easy for kids to use. It’s a bit corny, but the kids don’t seem to mind. An hour does seem very reasonable—one girl just loved it and cruised through many levels on her own. The progress chart is very motivating for them.

I trained in LiPS this summer, and I haven’t really used it yet. It seems wildly complicated—teaching kids an entirely new way of thinking about sounds—yet wonderfully logical. Did V/V, too.

Yes, phonological memory does seem tough to improve; it seems to be more about training someone to do a task rather than actually increasing memory skills. We’ll see—I’m going to try to get this girl to remember longer stretches of syllables. Please let me know how your child does with the software. How lucky to have a reading expert mom! Did you seem improvements after Earobics with your boy student? How often did he do it in school?

Thanks again for your replies; I enjoy reading your posts here and on the Read Now group (I’m a lurker there!). You trained in Seeing Stars, right? Do you like it? Thanks in advance.

Sounds like we have a lot of training and methods in common! (And no, I haven’t even tried a Palm Pilot! I just thought it might be easier than improving my memory!)

He has done Earobics just a few minutes a day for about 3 days a week. I got a two year gain in word attack skills from doing PG with a little Earobics on the side for a few months. I work with him a total of 45 minutes a day 4 days a week. I just don’t have him long enough each day to let him have much computer time. He did take the CD home last summer, though. I am now doing some Seeing Stars with him because his fluency is awful. He can decode, but he stumbles on words and doesn’t always remember them the next time he sees them. But he can sound them out. I think the low ph. memory is a real problem for him. He was a super tough case, but the PG really seemed to work to teach him code, so I don’t know how much I’ll really need LiPS, but I will take it as it is the only LMB class I lack. Incidentally, you may have seen me say that I am switching to Michael Bend’s ABeCeDarian materials as they are better, IMO, than PG’s.

Janis

Hi Janis,

Wonderful progress!! How old is the child? I have the book Reading Reflex but I haven’t gone through it in-depth yet. ABeCeDarian is something I’ll have to look at. I’m still using o-g to teach the code, but it’s really only because I’ve been too busy to explore something else in depth (except LiPS). I thought of LiPS for a girl who had severe auditory processing issues due to Landau-Kleffner syndrome (a kind of epilepsy); the idea of “feeling” the sounds to check herself and the phoneme tracking seemed to be just what she needed. I started it with her, but the basic concepts were hard for her to grasp, likely due to a lot of auditory presentation and attentional issues. Her language skills have since improved with medication (decoding and phonemic analysis scores went up a good deal), so I’ve switched to my old stuff for now w/lots of comprehension work. LiPS is great but a biggggg undertaking on everyone’s part. I know people who do parts of it, like the vowel circle (where you can check which sound you’re making based on how your mouth is open).

The article you recommended on the Read Now group is super; thanks for posting it!

There is actually a mother of two L-K kids who tutors other L-K kids with PG. She has had a lot of success. I am not pushing PG as I have really switched to ABCdarian for decoding, but it teaches the sounds without “rules” like OG. So many kids just can’t grasp six types of syllables, etc. But you may want to talk with Becky on the ReadNow board because she knows the LK/autism spectrum kids very well. I know she would like to do some of the LMB training, though. I doubt I’d ever tackle pure LiPS. ABeCeDarian’s author has both LMB and PG background, so he sort of combined some components of both in his program. I have read that the research doesn’t really support the use of the “tip tapper” stuff. But I think the training gives the teacher some excellent background knowledge, so that’s my primary reason for wanting it.

Th boy student who made the good word attack gains is 8 (almost 9) and in third grade.

Janis

I doubt if the research would support LiPS type articulatory feedback for the vast majority of kids. It is just too intensive. You spend a lot of time on it and that time could go into other types of intervention (be it OG or PG or Sound CD or…). BUT for those kids that do need it I doubt that there is anythinng that would work the same way. IF the kid is NOT hearing the sounds in the first place, then you can call them sound pix or give them keywords til you are blue in the face and it won’t work. I don’t think there are too many of those kids but if you DO run into them it is sort of magic (combined with all manner of hard work etc.). But it is pretty heady stuff.

Hey I should know, doiing it without a net (training) as I am. Not that I recommend that sort of thing. Just trying to get the manual has prolly taken me hundreds of hours (give or take :-)). I am no doubt not doing it right. But it is working for a very severe kid. He is now reading and spelling— ok it’s CVC words but he is doing it. So I must be doing some part right.

I think a bit of the tip tapper stuff can go a long way if a kid does not hear an individual sound or two. I think the training would be valuable for the teaching the response to the response sort of error correction. This is darn hard to do and very unteacherish unlesss you are Socrates. They sure don’t teach it in teacher ed. (along with a lot of other things, like how to teach reading, but I digress…).

—des

Hi, des,

No doubt, LMB programs are hard to learn for the teacher! And I agree, there are some severe APD-type kids who might not learn with anything else. It sounds like you’re doing a great job with your student!

Janis

[quote=”Janis”]Hi, des,

No doubt, LMB programs are hard to learn for the teacher!

I think they put pressure on a teacher to really really pay attention not just to a wrong answer but how the answer is wrong and then try re-present it. I have frankly been confused so many times by a response with many errors that we just start over.

>And I agree, there are some severe APD-type kids who might not learn with anything else.

I admit that this might not be a terribly large group!

But heady it is. I think of it as trying to teach the basics of linguistics 101 to children and not correct them like a regular teacher in the process. If you can pull all that off.

> It sounds like you’re doing a great job with your student!

He is learning and that at this point is the whole point. The strongest area of Lips is no doubt the consonant brothers and vowel circle. It kind of leaves you on your own when they get to reading and spelling. I plan to introduce bits of Barton at the lower levels to get some sentence, word reading, that type of thing. I may need to drop back by for “expentencies” and “multisyllables” but we’re not their yet.

—des
Janis[/quote]

Yes, I would still go on into something like PG (or now ABeCeDarian) to teach the remaining decoding skills even if I started in LiPS.

Janis

Agreed. LiPS is just too hard to implement and takes way too much preparation. He takes more than my other students put together.
The other thing is that though the consonant brothers, cousins and third cousins twice removed :-) and vowel circle is very well organized and followable (relatively), once you get to reading and spelling actual words, a lot of the coherence of the program decreases, at least imo.

I like something organized— ok organized for me. :-)
Hey, I’m a busy woman.

—des

I couldn’t agree more!!!

Janis

You might find it interesting that even the LMB people do not start with the whole LIPS program unless kids are particularly severe. I was talking to one of the offices in FL about testing—I am considering having my son do SS this summer. I wanted to make sure he wouldn’t be back feeling sounds in his mouth–what happened when I hired a private LMB person a couple years ago.

The SLT told me they only put kids who score below 16% on word attack in the full LIPS program. In other words, as you guys are saying—the most severe kids.

Beth

That would be the kid I am working with! I don’t know much about the neuropsyche test, Nemsy, but he scored in the 1% level on it.

I’m sure if they redid it now, he would do much better. (At least I hope so. :-))

Janis, we are going to have to start some disagreement here or someone will think we are the same person again. :-)

—des

:D

:D

Lol!

Speaking of LMB, I saw that they raised the prices on their summer trainings…as if it weren’t painful enough already. :(

Janis