I am considering pulling my son, Dean (will be 7 in march) out of his second year of Kindergarten.
He was identified as learning delayed before his 3rd birthday and got speech therapy then entered the school system at 3 in the EELP program for developmentally delayed children.
In his first year of Kindergarten he was moved into a self-contained special ed class where he learned the names and sounds of all of the letters of the alphabet (although his recitation was excruciatingly slow).
Following his first year of Kindergarten at the beginning of the summer we began a Handle Program with Dean (which we are still doing). Because of this I did not practice or re-inforce what Dean learned as far as recognizing the alphabet and the sounds letters make. He is repeating Kindergarten this year (wiht resource pull-out) and I thought that they would solidify what he learned last year but instead he has regressed.
Dean has visual, auditory, and vestibular issues. I am considering pulling Dean out to focus on his Handle exercises (do Audiblox) and to give him one-on-one reading instruction. I understand that his motor issues need to be addressed before he will be ready/able to handle reading instruction.
Here is my concern: If I pull him out to focus on the neurological issues, I MUST also make SOME progress in his reading instruction (so that I can prove that I am teaching him). I am afraid that Dean is not ready for even the MOST BASIC reading instruction.
I looked at the Barton screening and for part A (where a child repeats back a sentence) I know that Dean’s auditory digit span is only 3 so he could not repeat back to me a sentence of 5 to 7 words.
Back when Dean knew more letters/sounds (all last summer) I read the “BOB” books with him and he would stare at each letter for an eternity (it seemed) before saying the sound, then he would repeat this for each sound of the word then he could say the word BUT if he encountered the exact same word on the next page he was right back to sounding out each letter. He could not learn and retain a whole word. EVERY time he encountered a word he had already read, it was back to the sounding out.
Would Audiblox help this? I am wondering if he could even do the Audiblox exercises.
His testing at school on the WPPSI-R came out:
Performance - 89; Verbal - 90; and Full Scale Score - 88
He was labled with a “Specific Learning Disability”
If I take him out of school I can still take him to school for help in his resource room. They are doing Earobics with him. I could also ask them to repeat the intensive Early Reading Intervention program they were doing. It was a Scott Forseman system and very, very intensive. Ex. Holding up a card with a letter on it, “the name of this letter is ‘P’, what’s this called?” (student’s answer P) “the sound of this letter is ‘puh’ what sound does it make? They do about 6 different activities to reinforce the name and sound for each letter.
I will be working on Dean’s motor issues and will do Audiblox but need to map out a plan for beginning reading instruction. I would greatly appreciate your advice/input.
Re: Most basic beginning reading instruction?
This isn’t in answer to the how to question but how much accountability do you have for K? I mean kids are not required by law to attend Kindergarten.
Beth
Re: Most basic beginning reading instruction?
Depends on your state/province. At least one place I was in rewrote the attendance laws and made K compulsory. They didn’t actually *apply* that law, in fact they were very bad at applying compulsory attendance at any age, but it was on the books and if they had wanted to be picky they could have put an entering 6.9 year old into K because he hadn’t done it.
Re: Most basic beginning reading instruction?
What I would suggest is having him work on a Sound Reading CD. I have seen this program help even children with very severe problems. Your son can work on it independently once he is familiar with it, and most children like the program. This CD does a *lot* for developing phonemic awareness. The program starts at a kindergarten level and ends at about a mid-third grade decoding level (basic multi-syllable word attack skills). The CD is available from http://www.soundreading.com . You may want to call to make sure you order the CD most likely to appeal to your son. For a reading program, I prefer Phono-Graphix (as outlined in the book Reading Reflex by McGuiness) over SR, but SR is good also. Their CD is exceptional, however, and I don’t know of anything else as good.
You may also want to join the ReadNOW email list at http://groups.yahoo.com . There are a lot of reading tutors on that list who can offer tips and help.
Nancy
Re: Most basic beginning reading instruction?
Thank you Nancy,
I just ordered the Reading Reflex book (along with “How To Increase Your Child’s Verbal Intelligence”).
Tomorrow I will call Sound Reading.
These along with Victoria’s notes should get me going (I HOPE!) :-)
I’m sure that I’ll be back with detailed questions once I actually start instruction.
We have been where you are.
My dd was in a pre-K/K Montessori program for Kindergarten. She was old enough to be in the K program, but at the end of the 1st year she was at the bottom of her class(so she repeated again the following year). She could not remember the sounds that A, B, C made (in that order and only doing those 3) and drilled every night. It was like teaching a wall. Even the 3yr olds in this class knew the sounds by the end of the year.
We did Tomatis sound therapy at the end of 1st year in K. Somewhat concurrantly, we did Earobics. Prior to Tomatis, Earobics was torture. After Tomatis she breezed thru in a month. The only exercise she could not pass was Karloon’s Balloons which was a digit span type of exercise. At 6 she still had a digit span of 3-4(which is handicapped for a 6 yr old). So we did BrainBuilder- of which she moved to a 5 in less than a month. (getting past digit 5 was alot more work!) Once she hit a 5, she breezed thru Karloon’s Balloons. She also learned all the sounds of the alphabet in less than a month’s time and at the same time she hit the 5, she was starting to be able to blend the sounds and could read the Bob books and other early reader books. (and I mean at the SAME time she hit the 5, she could blend).
That said yes I think Audiblox(we did Audiblox in 1st grade) would be helpful for you and let me explain why. Audiblox will help with both the visual and auditory digit spans (and a bit funner than brainbuilder). I also think the reading program will help you, esp in the short term while you are building his digit span up. The technique they use is very similar to what NACD taught me. It’s more of a whole language approach, where you flash the word very rapidly. (It was amazing - she could remember words with this approach to flash cards vs. the old fashion way I learned). If the words are too hard for him in the Audiblox program, make your own flash cards using the sight words they are suppose to know in Kindergarten and/or 1st. My dd learned her sight words this way and she saw she COULD read and it boosted her confidence. Until your son’s digit span is improved, he will struggle with the ‘phonics’ approach. In the meantime, get the book Reading Reflex so that you can also supplement teaching the ‘correct’ way to read. At the end of K - my dd was in the top reading group.
However, if your son is 7 and still has digit span of 3, he has some ‘cement walls’ that need to be broken down. These walls are preventing him from learning and Audiblox could be slow and painful to him. The work you are doing with Handle should help with breaking these down. 15 sessions of Tomatis crumbled the wall for us in a very short period. It made learning SOOO much easier for her. She was a different child after we did Tomatis.
Re: Most basic beginning reading instruction?
I definitely agree on basic skills development such as Audiblox, Brainbuilder, etc.
However I do not agree with the whole word memorization from flash cards. Most of my reading tutoring involves UNteaching after that approach. I find that kids develop a thinking style; whatever you learn first when you are young and impressionable must be the right and only way to do things, and anything else is silly or second rate. If you think you learn every new word by having the teacher tell it to you, and by guessing from general appearance, and you think sounding out words is silly and just tooo slow and hard, well you’ve got a serious reading problem for life.
I work with a lot of kids who for one reason or another are very bad at sounding out. I work by modelling and giving just enough assistance but never more, and slowly backing off the assistance. So *at first* I sound out the whole word with the student repeating after me as I track a pen under the letters; later I give clues to the beginning and the vowel sound, track the letters and point to the next one, or cover all but one syllable to get the student to read in order; and as we progress (after several months or even a year) then I only help with particularly difficult, four-syllable or highly irregular words. Using this approach, the student is never left hanging unable to read, but is reading at least 90% independently almost all of the time.
I do work with a very restricted (17-word) beginning set of high-frequency words and coach these intensively; but please don’t omit tracking left to right, looking at each and every letter, and using phonics to identify/distinguish even the high-frequency words. You do not want the kid I have who thinks ‘a’ and ‘the’ are one word and ‘of’, ‘for’, and ‘from’ are all the same, and cannot see the middle syllables in words — Grade 8, possibly gifted, with Grade 2 reading level — you really don’t want this.
Re: Most basic beginning reading instruction?
In the classroom application of Audiblox (unsure of home version), the words are shown to the student left to right. It is not a “whole word” approach.
Well, definitely keep trying on every front. I’d say keep up the Earobics and do the Audiblox — anything that may help improve his memory and verbal skills. I read from others who succeeded with Audiblox that it takes dedication, thirty minutes a day faithfully for six months, but then the results are impressive.
I believe you already have my packet of reading teaching posts (If not, email [email protected])
If you go to those notes, Files #1.5 and 1.6 apply to *exactly* the level you are talking about and give even more time and detail than the Scott Foresman you are talking about — same very basic approach but with more multisensory as well. DO make up the tactile letter binder as described in those notes; it is the vital multisensory part. Sure it takes time, but hey, you’ve spent three years already not learning well, so what’s to lose?
You need thirty minutes a day faithfully on reading to teach this skill too, but this should work. Do get back to me with feedback, good or bad.