software for visual memory?

Oh, I forgot—I know about Brain Builders; I’m looking for something besides that.

Well, this is yet another proof that memorizing words by sight is very, very inefficient.

In general you don’t need software programs and all that for this problem; all I use is left-to-right scanning, phonics beyond the minimal level, and some practice reading and writing.

You write the problem word on a file card with a black marker. Then if the student knows letter names, almost certainly for a gifted kid in Grade 2, you spell it by names «doubleyue aitch ay tee». The student points to each letter, left to right, while spelling.
Then you go over it again and mark any digraphs/vowel combos — in this case wh; I lightly circle them with a lighter colour, say yellow or light blue. If there are any silent letters, not in this case but for example in «light» or «lamb» or «write» (both w and e), you lightly cross them out. In vowel combos oa, i_e, etc this means the combo is cirlced AND the vsecond vowel is crossed out, OK, that`s a double clue.
Then you go over the word saying the sounds, strictly left to right, «what» is wh - aw - t. Note that wh is a slightly different sound from w (unvoiced or whispered rather than voiced) and it deserveds to be noticed as a digraph, makes things clearer. The A making an aw sound is fairly common especially after w (water, want, wash, wad, wander, watt, watch but NOT wax) and it is the third common sound of a as in all, ball, talk etc. and arm, car, art, farm, etc., so this sound should be learned as the third option if short and long don’t work. The t is of course just a «t» sound.
Then you have the student say the sounds as you point at them.
Then you have the student write the word on paper, saying the sounds «wh — aw — t» as he/she writes.
Then you run your finger or pen left-to-right under the student’s writing and say the sounds together and then the whole word again.
This all takes about two minutes per word, a very small investment.
You keep the list of words the student writes and/or the cards you make, and review reading them every couple of days, and you give a reasonable number — whatever the student can manage — for spelling testing at the end of the week.

At first this very low-tech approach goes slowly, but it builds skill and the student starts to pick up words faster and faster until you dont need to teach any but the most irregular any more.

Hi Victoria,

I agree with you completely; even if a word isn’t easy to sound out, at least there are usually one or more phonetic cues you can use. The things I’ve been doing are very similar to what you describe: visualizing, contextual and isolated practice, reading, writing, spelling, left-right, games, noting parts that don’t “play fair,” multiple exposures, you name it. Even mom practices with him vigilantly. This child can still not remember some words from one situation to the next.

He’s done great, say, while playing a concentration-type game; then he sees it on a file card and has to sound it out (“wh-a-t” rhyming with “cat”) all over again. Then in context he’ll say “with” and self-correct to “what” given contextual clues. The next day he gets it cold, first try, keeps it, only to lose it at the end and sound it out the same way.

I’ve read that this is caused by problems in the visual-spatial sequential memory area. He’s been diagnosed NVLD—performance IQ is deficit range. Presents with many of those symptoms, except for the great decoding—appears severely dyslexic! What’s interesting (not surprising) is that his testing shows that, over the past two years, his decoding has improved significantly, yet his word recognition remains flat. (I just started working with him about five weeks ago.) I intend to plug away; but I’m looking for a fun computer program he can do in his spare time that might address the v/s thing.

Oh, and where we live, the “a” in “what” is pronounced as a short “u” sound. I actually hadn’t thought of grouping words where the “a” makes that sound (about, agree, senator…) Hey, what do you think about doing that, but not going into the unaccented syllable part (for now…he’s barely reading)??

Oops—that was me. Forgot to sign in.

OK, for someone who has the basic idea of decoding but not reading, I don’t know of any computer programs but I do know another low-tech approach.
I use the *old* (not the new junky) Ladybird Key Words readers. Due to popular demand (seriously, people practically beat down the doors) these have recently been reprinted and are available from Penguin.uk (note the uk, NOT .com). I use 1a to 6a and 1b to 6b fopr the basoic reading skills program. If at all possible you also get your hands on the workbooks that go with the series.
These present high-frequency words in real meaningful sentences with incredible amounts of repetition. The plots are shall we say not exactly vibrant, in fact practically nonexistent, but the idea is to read that list of 200 high-frequency words at least fifty times over, BUT with each word coming up in a different combination every time.
I’ve used these with a large number of kids that everyone else had given up on — as a private tutor outside the system, I am the last ditch — and all I can say is that this program works. Time and hard work, but the words stick in the memory and after it’s done people say it looks like magic.

They sound perfect—I’m at wits end coming up with new phrases, sentences, etc! Thanks so much—I’m going to check it out.

Here’s another alternative: Reading for All Learners Program from one of the universities in Utah. It had more decodable text practice than any other series I have looked at. It repeats the new graphemes over and over again until the child finally gets it. I think that is the problem with other decodable text. The child just doesn’t get the repetitions required to master the code in text. I still use an adaptation of PG to teach deocoding, but I am going to add in the RALP books for text reading practice this year and see how it goes. The sets of Little Books span K-3 reading levels.

http://www.usu.edu/teach/LittleBooks.htm

Janis