Back with another question...

DS,

The order of the vowel sounds is irrelevant in relation to the testing because they all should be taught this year. However, it is a bit unusual for the long vowels to be taught first.

You need to find out the NAME of the reading program she is using so we can give you opinions about whether it is a good one or not.

I think you are testing IQ too often. IQ scores do vary.

Has he had a developmental vision evaluation? I would think that would be important with the low performance subtests. Vision therapy has mixed results, but he could even need special lenses or something else that might help him. If you haven’t done it, go to www.covd.org to find a doctor.

Janis

Long vowels before short vowels is often proposed as an alternative. Three reasons for this idea:
(1) The long vowels are the letter names, so if you have taught the letter names or are attached to letter-name spelling, you see this as “easier”. Standard rule — whatever *you* already know and/or learned first seems the “easy” way *to you*. Doesn’t however necessarily line up with what works in general
(2) The long vowels are easier to distinguish auditorially, this is true; it really is *much* easier to tell ay from ee from ie and oh from ue than it is to distinguish between ban - ben - bin and bon - bun.
(3) People trying to sell a new program have to do something different to make a sale point why their new program is better.

That said, the standard system of short vowels first is standard for a reason; the spelling rules for short vowels are simpler and you have no silent letters.

The decision of which plan to use in phonics-based reading programs is kind of like the technology battles of the 70’s and 80’s — VHS or Beta VCR’s, 8-track or cassette tapes, IBM or MacIntosh computers. Cassette tapes won over 8-tracks because they were simply technologicaly better, no horrible jumps in the middle of songs, and smaller and more convenient. VHS won over Beta because the quality was similar and VHS was less expensive and more available. IBM won (or got a huge advantage) over Mac because it was readily available on the open market and there were many add-ons available off the shelf, even though Mac did/does have many good qualities.

So the most common phonics-based systems follow a similar pattern for the same reasons — they work effectively, they are convenient to use, the price is competitive for comparable results (people pay fortunes to LindaMood *after* the lower-price options have failed), they are readily available, and the results are transferable to other programs.

Your program has already failed number one test, as it isn’t working. You have also been warned that they don’t expect transfer. Because it’s non-standard, you can’t supplement with add-ons.
Sound’s like you have a Betamax VCR on your hands, doesn’t it?

When a teacher tells me that a kid won’t do well on standardized testing because they aren’t teaching that way, this raises a HUGE red flag. This is excuse #2 for not teaching. (#1 is to blame the kid, #3 to blame you.)

Standardized tests are carefully designed to be as unspecific as to program as is humanly possible. One person can use PG, another can use sight word memorization, another can use OG, another can use Open Court, I can use my home-crafted phonics-plus-fluency approach, and so on, and all of our students can take the same test and get approximately on average one year’s improvement between the beginning of Grade 1 and the end. (The sight memorizers run into trouble later, but that’s another story.)
Now, *very* short term results are another story. Sight memorizers on average get higher scores in the first few months because they recognize whole words quickly where the rest of us have been building foundation skills on sounds; our kids pull up even by the end of the first year and ahead after that.
Any well-designed general reading skills test properly applied will measure a variety of skills and will not be affected by the program choice, unless it’s a bad program.
This doesn’t apply to specific skills tests designed with a particular program in mind, but that doesn’t seem to be the case here.

As far as having skills and losing them: a certain amount of three steps forward and two steps back is normal in learning, with any child.
Also, skills are often learned as imitation and not really integrated — this is especially true of math and spelling, and I can see how it could easily happen with phonics — they are learned by drill and melt away when the drill stops. This is why I constantly recommend a whole-part/part-whole approach to teaching; it looks slower at the beginning but remember the tortoise and the hare, quick rushes don’t help if you then collapse.

What it sounds like at a distance is that you have a child who had learned some basics in one approach but had not yet had the opportunity to integrate them, and now he is in an experimental program that has promised miracles (they all do) but which is confusing him by contradicting what he previously learned and which is generally not a proven effective approach. The teacher appears to be backpedalling frantically and dipping into the list of standard excuses.

I’m not sure what you can do about the classroom. The best thing would be to get a proven effective method in there, but it’s late in the year.
If you start pressuring now and other parents do the same, sometimes schools magically find another miracle program for the next year.

Meanwhile, some tutoring in phonics with a tutor who will deal with *both* short and long patterns will help sort out the confusion.
I do this all the time; I use a phonics series which teaches the short vowels first, to the point of overlearning, well and good; but I want to do the part-whole/whole-part and get some real reading and fluency work in there, so I *tell* the student about long vowels and point out the differences (usually one vowel versus two with second silent). He doesn’t have to master all the vowels at once for independent decoding at first, but he knows they exist and can read high-frequency vocabulary. I do this with lots of kids with all manner of abilities, and it works. Takes time and hard work, but you can get there.

Dear Victoria:

Thank you so much for your detailed response! The points you brought up regarding the reasons for using long vowels before short makes sense. With regards to this being a new program, I believe it’s been around for some time now, actually. I don’t think it’s a question of “selling it” to the school system, actually my child’s teacher is a strong believer in it. On the other hand, imho, what works for one may not always work for “all”. I am not clear still if it’s the program or if my child just needs a slower pace with it, or if this in fact is the “norm” for a child with these type of disabilities. The teacher has indicated that this is a two year program (but she expects that in my child’s case it will take 3-4 years to complete). So, should we not expect the mastery of say the first three vowel patterns until later on? (For example, the third vowel pattern of the program was “ea” such as in the word “seat”. After introduced and repeated many times, it seemed that it was successful. He would still sound it out several times, but he had the phonetics correct. Now many months later, it’s like the phonetic sound of “ea” has been forgotten.) Also, I am getting more concerned as of late, as they are now introducing blends such as words that begin with cl, cr, bl, br, etc… and sometimes my child is confusing them with the words that are similar without the second consonant (ex: clove versus cove). I guess I am not clear if the skills (ie: the word pattern of the week) should be mastered in of itself before moving on or if eventually after more exposure (this program continues to expose the child to the same words while adding new ones) it will just happen while continuing to introduce more material.

I understand that as you said that “standardized tests are carefully designed to be as unspecific as to program as is humanly possible”, but if this program is not geared to introduce certain things until later on and it teaches “in reverse”, again how do you judge progress? I am just so confused. My child barely had all the sounds of the letters mastered by the begining of grade one. Now at the end of the grade he can sound out words, has about 50 sight words, but is inconsistent (as stated in my other post and this one). So is that “enough progress” in one year? How do I know for sure? My fear is that about 3rd grade we will realize that not nearly enough progress has been made and what do you do then??
Would you consider what my child is doing “three steps forward and two steps back”?

With regards to a change in program, I honestly do not think that will happen. THis teacher swears by this program and says my child is doing well with it. She has used this program for many, many years.

Thanks again for all of you input!

Reading 50 words not too accurately, able to sound out minimally, limited to specific program materials — that is pre-primer to beginning primer level reading, and is certainly not the ideal place to be at the end of Grade 1. Whether it is the best possible for this particular child is a big question.

Looking back at your previous post, I see that his IQ scores seem to be generally in the 80’s. Being as objective as possible, does this seem to be a realistic measure of his actual abilities, or are the scores being held down by his other problems?
Some of the things to look at — does he play well and join in with kids his own age, or is he more comfortable with kindergartners? Is he starting to show an interest in logical arguments and puzzles, or is he still either totally accepting or magical thinking? Is he showing signs of what Piaget calls conservation — recognizing that quantities stay the same even if poured into different containers or split up etc.? Is he trying to be independent and grownup with his school work, or is he looking lost all the time? Does he understand and play rule-based games, or does he just want to make up his own things? Does he work well in fairly large groups, more than five, understanding taking turns etc.? Does he have a sense of calendar time and clock, not in detail but understanding things in the future and about how long? What is his speech like, both vocabulary and structure?

If he really is more like a five-year-old in general, then an IQ of 80 is probably realistic. If he shows *several* (more than two, but nobody shows all of them all the time) six-seven-year-old mature characteristics, then the IQ score may be lower than his true abilities.

So, there are two possible conclusions and two possible approaches.

If the scores in the 80’s are realistic for where he is now, then a pre-primer level is appropriate. Keep working with him step by step and keep up practice, practice, practice until he does integrate these skills. In this case, the program in school may actually be going a bit fast for him and he may need extra review, and next year re-do parts of it.
This seems to be the assumption that the teacher is making in assuming that he will need three or four years to go through the program.

Some people here have worked with various forms of sensory and cognitive training to improve their children’s learning abilities. I’m not familiar with those programs so will leave you to the experienced parents to suggest what may help.

If he acts in other ways at a much higher level than the IQ scores indicate, then he may be suffering both from his disability and from low expectations.
In this case he needs one-to-one tutoring with someone who knows good reading techniques and who has faith in your child’s ability to learn and their ability to teach.

In either case, we had a discussion here a while ago about teaching blends; the method your program is using is generally disrecommended. The reason we don’t like it is exactly the problem you are seeing, that the blends are *not* one unit, and treating them as one is going to make reading harder, not easier, and lead to confusion. The kind of error you mention, confusing for example band and brand, is classic; I’ve seen hundreds of kids (and adults) do it. It is a bad sign, yet another red flag. No matter what the teacher thinks of it, you seem to have a less than ideal phonics program here.

Thank you for your VERY detailed and thought out post. I hope this is not too confusing, but I will quote each part of your post and respond to each one after the quote.

“Looking back at your previous post, I see that his IQ scores seem to be generally in the 80’s. Being as objective as possible, does this seem to be a realistic measure of his actual abilities, or are the scores being held down by his other problems?”
I questioned that for a bit, because his teacher did from the get go, stating that she thought his IQ scores were wrong. But the more I thought about it the more I think they may be accurate. He is delayed in all areas gross, fine, speech, etc… by about 2-3 years on average.

“Some of the things to look at — does he play well and join in with kids his own age, or is he more comfortable with kindergartners? “
His play skills are limited. He does interact, but it’s in limited doses. He prefers to play with kids that are younger (ie: 4 years old) or girls. He also interacts well with adults, but only adults that he knows well and is comfortable with.

“Is he starting to show an interest in logical arguments and puzzles, or is he still either totally accepting or magical thinking? “
His conversations mostly consist of what he wants to talk about, ie: Thomas the tank or SpongeBob or something of that sort. He will off and on spew out some commerical or movie he has memorized as “conversation”, once in a while.

“Is he trying to be independent and grownup with his school work, or is he looking lost all the time?”
He definitely needs me on top of him. With reading I have to point to each word or he gets “lost” on the page.

“Does he understand and play rule-based games, or does he just want to make up his own things?”
Definitely the latter there. If you explain to him the rules and re-direct him, he will comply, but he definitely prefers to play “his way”.

“Does he work well in fairly large groups, more than five, understanding taking turns etc.?”
He doesn’t like large groups. It causes him much anxiety. He will tolerate it when he has to (ie: recess, etc…) He will interact to a certain point, but lots of times he will go off on his own. Also, he will sustain “play” longer if it’s more running around/chasing type stuff.

“Does he have a sense of calendar time and clock, not in detail but understanding things in the future and about how long?”
He’s trying to understand all of that. He does ask questions about it.

“What is his speech like, both vocabulary and structure?”
He has a pretty significant dysfluency (primarily word retrieval issues) and a significant expressive language delay (has trouble w/the “wh” questions, ect..). For expressive language function he is about 3 years delayed. Although his VOCABULARY is large.

“In this case, the program in school may actually be going a bit fast for him and he may need extra review, and next year re-do parts of it.”
This has been my feeling as of late. But his teacher tells me he is doing fine. So, then I question if I am being realistic.

“This seems to be the assumption that the teacher is making in assuming that he will need three or four years to go through the program.”
But she doesn’t seem to be backing up or slowing it down more, even though he is forgetting some of the sounds previously taught. So, I am wondering if she’s thinking that he will eventually catch on again to these sounds. I just don’t know how he will catch on with the spelling. He has really truly never “gotten it”.

“In either case, we had a discussion here a while ago about teaching blends; the method your program is using is generally disrecommended.”
I will definitely look for that post thread.

“The reason we don’t like it is exactly the problem you are seeing, that the blends are *not* one unit, and treating them as one is going to make reading harder, not easier, and lead to confusion. The kind of error you mention, confusing for example band and brand, is classic; I’ve seen hundreds of kids (and adults) do it. “
Wow I didn’t even have to tell you that the approach was as “one unit”. That is definitely the way it’s being taught.

“It is a bad sign, yet another red flag. No matter what the teacher thinks of it, you seem to have a less than ideal phonics program here.”
Thanks for making me feel “not so crazy” LOL!! But at the same time it’s definitely not a “happy thing”.