can read the word in isolation but not with a sentence or l

My son has always done better with single words in isolation than sentences. Part of the issue for him has been the effort that tracking requires.

Beth

THANKS Beth For your Reply….. how old is your son? what do you do help with that?
Nan

thanks Beth

I would consider this to be a fluency problem.
He is spending so much effort reading the individual words that he can’t manage groups of words, overload probably.

Visual training and tracking are certainly a good idea, running in parallel with good reading teaching.

Make sure he really has good phonics knowledge, particularly *past* the basic one-letter and short-vowel level. I always upgrade phonics along with fluency training.

I would approach it as I do fluency in general:
(1) start off with a book *much* lower than his instructional level — if he is testing at 3.1, a book at 2.1 or even lower; testing at 2.0, a primer; testing at 1.5, the first pre-primer.
The book should be if possible *below* his mastery level on vocabulary.
Given those two limits, if at all possible a book which has interesting content, but content comes after ability to read.
The goal is massed practice of print, so avoid the books with big pictures and little print, shooting yourself in the foot; get old basals with good stories, and after 2.5 the Boxcar Children.
(2) Have him read orally at least twenty minutes a day. If reading primers or pre-primers, get two or three of them and alternate so as not to build up to a higher level too fast.
(3) In the primers and pre-primers, have him read every word. By the time you get into storybooks with masses of print, you read a page and he reads a page. Your page you read with plenty of expression, as slowly as you can, and you point to each word with a pen as you go. His page, teach him first to stop for a second at periods. Later work on expression for other punctuation — exclamation point raise voice and sound excited, question mark tone rises, comma take a short breath.
He starts on a level that is easy enough that he shoudl have some fluency. Then you increase the difficulty *gradually* so he maintains fluency as he moves up.

When a child can decode words in isolation but cannot do it in text, there is almost always a developmental vision delay involved. It would be up to the parents to take the child to a developmental optometrist (or an opthalmologist who utilizes an orthoptician to assess developmental vision). Developmental vision problems are not tested in regular eye exams, unfortunately. You can find out more about developmental vision problems at http://www.childrensvision.com , and locate board-certified developmental optometrists in your area at http://www.covd.org

Developmental vision problems are usually highly responsive to vision therapy, but that can be expensive. If the parents are on a budget, they may want to utilize an optometrist listed at http://www.homevisiontherapy.com . These optometrists are licensed to dispense computer software that can be used at home. This software works on some of the most common developmental vision problems.

One thing you could do through the school is to request an occupational therapy evaluation. Sometimes (not always) developmental vision problems will show up in this kind of evaluation as problems with visual-motor integration. You might want to talk to your school’s occupational therapist. Unfortunately, many schools do not want to become involved in sensory integration issues and this portion of an eval may have to be done “off the record”.

You could also check to see what kind of educational testing assesses visual processing skills. This is another kind of testing you can sometimes get through the school. This would verify that there is a problem, but would not indicate what to do about it. However, it would strengthen the case for the parents getting a developmental vision evaluation for the child.

Nancy

This has been a difficult problem to solve. Basically, reading taxes all my son’s sensory systems. We have found that, as Victoria suggests, that increasing his reading skills have translated into greater fluency. My son actually skipped fewer words when his decoding skills improved. We also have found, as Nancy says, that there is a visual component to it. Basically, anything you can do to improve processing helps. Vision therapy didn’t help this issue much for my son, although it did help other issues (like doing a worksheet). We found that exercises that addressed the vestibular system helped this particular problem more (but I would hesitate to generalize too much from my son). .

Another thing that helped my son was developmental reading lens. These are an overprescription that basically makes print larger. Larger print is easier to read so another suggestion is to pick books with large print. We actually went to large print books for a year or so. It made a big difference then (not so much now).

Another thing I have done is to use a word box. Following Lindamood Bell, we have categories in it—snails, bikes, and jets. Then there are grads. I take words he misses and put them in snails. There are times when he knows the word just fine in isolation (not as true as it used to be though). Still he has to move the word through the categories and graduating requires automatically recognizing it five times (put check on the back). This is done every day and grads reviewed once a week. What I found is that the words that are recognized in isolation are often automatic enough to be recognized when the cognitive demands are greater.

Of course, you don’t want to take a whole word approach but in tandem with a good phonics program a box is useful.

In my son’s case, it has been a bit of this and a bit of that. Everything has helped but there has been no one magic cure.

Beth

i thank all of you for your input. this is my very good friend’s grandchile that i have been seeking information for. Her parents took her to
Sylvan to be tested and evaluated and i do not know what they found and what course of action to take. I homeschooled my kids several years and my son had a reading problem ao i sought informatin everywhere i could and then some just came so naturally to me how to help him. I also prayed alot for the creative ways to get stuff through to him. I know i am not a professional but i realy believe if i could get a few key factors to this type of problem i could work with my friends grandchild and help her immensely but then again, who am I to go up against educated professionals. I wondered if there might be a vision problem. The public scbool system is not much help it seems in this area. It takes alot of time to get any testing done… so they just went on to Sylvan. So all thoughts, opinions, etc. are truly appreciated.
Nan

i thank all of you for your input. this is my very good friend’s grandchile that i have been seeking information for. Her parents took her to
Sylvan to be tested and evaluated and i do not know what they found and what course of action to take. I homeschooled my kids several years and my son had a reading problem ao i sought informatin everywhere i could and then some just came so naturally to me how to help him. I also prayed alot for the creative ways to get stuff through to him. I know i am not a professional but i realy believe if i could get a few key factors to this type of problem i could work with my friends grandchild and help her immensely but then again, who am I to go up against educated professionals. I wondered if there might be a vision problem. The public scbool system is not much help it seems in this area. It takes alot of time to get any testing done… so they just went on to Sylvan. So all thoughts, opinions, etc. are truly appreciated. (p.s. typos are becaue i am tired and it is late)
Nan

i thank all of you for your input. this is my very good friend’s grandchile that i have been seeking information for. Her parents took her to
Sylvan to be tested and evaluated and i do not know what they found and what course of action to take. I homeschooled my kids several years and my son had a reading problem ao i sought informatin everywhere i could and then some just came so naturally to me how to help him. I also prayed alot for the creative ways to get stuff through to him. I know i am not a professional but i realy believe if i could get a few key factors to this type of problem i could work with my friends grandchild and help her immensely but then again, who am I to go up against educated professionals. I wondered if there might be a vision problem. The public scbool system is not much help it seems in this area. It takes alot of time to get any testing done… so they just went on to Sylvan. So all thoughts, opinions, etc. are truly appreciated. (p.s. typos are becaue i am tired and it is late)
Nan

Whatever else you do, do NOT send your child to Sylvan. They are NOT set up to handle LD kids. Contrary to what they might say, they are not individualized, unless you compare it to the public schools. They do not (as far as I know) do any type of testing recognized as being tests suitable to diagnose ld. This is “KFC-style” tutoring, packaged, mostly computerized, etc. It is also expensive, imo. (Going rates for tutoring here in ABQ are $23-65 with Sylvan towards the top.)

To get good testing, you need to ask around for people in your area. If you live in a metro area of some city, chances are good someone will know somebody. You can contact IDA (International Dyslexia Assoc.) www.interdys.org ; you can look under iser.com; also there might be people known by the local LD association or in the local weeklies (ask carefully). The later more for tutoring though.

—des

Just one comment—Sylvan does not have a very good reputation for its work with LD kids. Works fine with kids who need the same thing as school repeated.

Beth

I am a reading tutor. Every child that I have encountered who has this problem has a significant visual deficit. I totally agree with Nancy that this child needs a developmental vision exam or something comparable such as an assessment and home treatment plan by a Handle practitioner (www.handle.org).

You can teach a child the entire code of the English language but if you don’t resolve their visual problems they will not become fluent readers.

I just talked to a mother whose son spent a year with Sylvan tutoring for his reading problems. He essentially made no progress. Their “guarantee” consisted of providing him with an extra two weeks of tutoring at no charge.

I heard of another family that spent $7,000 on Sylvan tutoring for their daughter. They finally gave up and drew up an IEP at school for her.

Sylvan is high-priced drill-and-grill. If drill is what a child needs and the parents would rather pay top dollar for it rather than do it themselves, fine. For anything else, it is worthless. Many children with reading problems have undiagnosed underlying deficits. A better approach is to diagnose the deficits and provide appropriate therapy to reduce them.

Unfortunately, some parents think that the more they pay, the better the program must be. Sylvan takes advantage of that kind of thinking.

Nancy

I work with students who have the apptitude to read and for a vareity of reason do not. Fluency (reading passages vs. words in isolation) is a common problem. I do a lot of work with timed activities ( tracking their times- like a game). First I have them attempt words, ( goal 60 words in 60 seconds)then move to sentences. ( I use an old program called Sounder from Edmark) Using text below their grade level is critical. They need to increase speed with words they know rather than using decoding or other skills. I also have them read a passage three times ( approx. 100 words ) and time it each time. I typically see a big improvement by the third read. I also partner read trying to keep the pace moving. You can tape record a pre read and have your child read along with the tape. It is vital when working on fluency, that they are not working on identifying new words.
I also use one of the Lindamood Bell programs ( Seeing Star) to increas visual memory skills)