My 11 year old 6th grader was diagnoised with dyslexia at the at of 7. He has about a 2nd grade reading level. He has an extremely high IQ and is a great student.He has an iep and He gets classroom support. He does well in school and is on the honor roll but yet he still can not read enough to get by. Everything he does from math to science has to be read to him. although I am happy with the supoort he gets at school I am terribly concerned that he is not progressing with his reading skills enough to function in society. In other words I feel he needs as well as is entitled to help with his reading skills. Having someone read things to him is ok for now but what is going to happen when he graduates from high school and still cannot read enough to get by. I have voiced my concern to the school but yet there is no program to help with this at this level. When he was in elementaryschool he had this help. The lindamood bell method was used. I reasearched an purchased the Lexia program last summer for him to use but he has not used it much this school year. I plan on starting him back up over thesummer. Last night he was tring to read the title of the movie (Along came Polly) He did not know the word along. HE was tring to sound it out really hard and came up with (a loooog). My 7 year old first grader read the word and it devastated him. He was cring and thinks that he is sutpid and I do not know what to do to get him the help he needs. My question is are there any funded programs that he is eligibily for. Thank you
Kim
Re: son with reading disibiltiy
I agree with Sue that your child may never learn to read if you don’t seek private tutoring. I seriously doubt they did LMB intensively or long enough if he is still on a second grade level in reading. They legally can’t tell you that they don’t “offer” the kind of help he needs. His needs are what drives the service. You can get an advocate or lawyer and fight for what he needs, or just go ahead and get the private tutor. The fight with the school might take awhile and then you still have no control over the intensity and quality of service. So my vote is to contact your state branch of the IDA immediately and get him started with a tutor in OG, Lindamood-Bell, or another good multisensory structured language approach to teaching reading.
Janis
Multisensory decoding
Hi,
Your son needs help with reading—and fast. I just finished helping a 14 year old student who is very smart like your son. I used a direct, concrete, multisensory, pencil-and-paper decoding method. If you would like to know more, email me at amlandoll.com. Anita
Glass Analysis
Does anybody do Glass Analysis anymore? I studied reading remediation with him in college (several thousand years ago), but it was a good, direct program to consolidate skills and fluency. I can see how Orton or LMB instruction would precede Glass, but I have and colleagues have had very impressive results with Glass, particularly in improving fluency. In light of recent research on Rapid Automatic Naming, it seems to make sense. I’ve also used the technique with Dolche lists and got my students’ fluency and reading speed way up. Any thoughts?
Fern
Re: son with reading disibiltiy
My gut feeling — so no evidence since I can’t try everything :-) —is that when you’ve got folks who missed the concept first time through get a lot of help from it, especially if they don’t have a processign issue that would make it tougher to figure it out.
I am seeing real evidence that unfortunately, some “good results” really do fall apart at a very basic functional level. Folks I’m working with now “read fine.” “require” turns into “requirement,” “Jewel” is interpreted as “jewlery,” but we can get the gist, usually.
Yes, it’s better than not being able to make even an educated guess — but ask me in six weeks if maybe we could be figuring out a way to teach the finer points…
Re: son with reading disibiltiy
Sue — those people with “good results” that fall apart are a large part of those I work with — as a totally private service and fairly expensive for a family, I get the calls after everything else has failed and/or the special ed folks have washed their hands of the kid. I’ve posted before about my approach of working on accuracy, accuracy, accuracy and lo and behold, in every case where people hung in there for more than a short time, the fluency *followed* the accuracy. I do a lot of work on fluency but it’s indirect, first reading the words as actually writ, then discussing the meaning of what is read, then looking at how sentences are put together — and then hey, we’re really reading and having fun here. So far I have never run into a kid who had *only* a fluency problem. Any time you want to discuss my very direct approaches, ask away.
Re: son with reading disibiltiy
Currently, I am a graduate student seeking certification for Special Needs Children. Also, I am tutoring an 8-year old boy — who appears to have dyslexia symptoms. He is, also, hyperactive. It is very difficult for me to get his attention. Since, I am not his teacher, do you have any suggestions. He just wants to act silly or say “I don’t want to do that. . ” whatever it is that I want him to do. The most success I have had is taking turns reading. . and he wants me to do all the reading.
Also - I am interested in knowing more about your method - Anita.
My e-mail is [email protected]
Thanks
Vonna
Re: son with reading disibiltiy
I think they are out there but that they rarely get (or possibly need) special ed or tutoring. A friend of mine has just a fluency problem. She reads at a really slow pace, we will pass around an article and 5 of us can read it in the time that it takes her. She graduated from high school and did some college but the reading speed kept her from finishing. (She said maybe if she had only taken a class or two). I’m sure she is not alone.
Still it hardly is the extent of disability the comprehension problems or decoding will be. I didn’t ask but I would bet they put the dag burn tachistoscope on her case. :-)
—des
>having fun here. So far I have never run into a kid who had *only* a fluency problem. Any time you want to discuss my very direct approaches, ask away.[/quote]
Well, first, reading is a skill. Not knowing how to do it has nothign to do with intelligence. I could be a fantastic athlete — but if I haven’t learned a particular sport, or it’s one that requires, oh, upper body strength I don’t have, then I’m going to look like a flop out there.
You’ll probably hear from a lot of folks with recommendations for reading programs — none of them are going to be quick fixes, though. (There’s a fair amount of research that, when you step back and look at it, indicates that intensity and frequency — and toss in teacher belief in what s/he’s doing — can be more important than exactly which species of reading program you use… whcih is not to say there aren’t some that are poor use of that time, intensity, frequency and enthusiasm, but without at least some of those elements, an excellent program isn’t going to get a kid reading.)
Could he read “long?” It sounds like he didn’t get far enough in LMB to have learned the ol’ A-says-uh-at-the-start-of-a-word and the -ong pattern… which is a weakness of LMB and some OG programs; an awful lot of very common words would take over a year of instruction to get to! (Our version had daily oral reading from literature and practice of words missed there, and we’d call them “categories” and add similar words… helped immensely.)
The bad news is that while technically he is eligible for the remediation he needs so that he can be a functional reader, programs that work that are in practice in the schools are few and far between. Where in the world are you — your local IDA (Interantional Dyslexia Assoc.) branch may know of some options. For instance, we’ve got The Reading Group which does intensive tutoring; they may even send tutors into schools and the school should fund it.