THank you very much to everyone who gave me advice on how to help my duaghter. A received alot of great suggestions! I am still having trouble finding a tutor that specializes in reading for children with learning disabilities. My psychologist suggested more explode the code, concentrating on the specific weaknesses that my daughter had in certain vowel combinations and constinent diagraphs. I will ask her school special ed teacher to help with this. THe psychologist also suggested the remediating reversal program, for word (was-saw) and pqbd reversals. My psychologist said I can find this in a school supply store. Sounds about was recommended for auditory skills. SRA specific skills series by McGraw Hill, starting with level B, was suggested for comprehension skills. I will also try the basal readers. I just have to find all this stuff!! I will have my current tutor, the public school reading teacher use these materials with my daughter. This tutor is excellent because she is young, positive, caring, energetic, and always willing to try new methods–and my daughter REALLY likes her—actually looks forward the sessions. She just lacks the education an experience of teaching reading to children with learning disabilities, like the Wilson, Orton Gillingham, etc. Anyways,… thanks so much for your time in responding to my request for help. I am still overwhelmed with this area of expertise.
Re: thank you for help with reading for third grader
>(was-saw) and pqbd reversals. My psychologist said I can find this in a school supply store.
Well you aren’t going to find it in a school supply store!!! My last survey of a school supply school found a couple books on phonemic awareness but mostly there was stuff on whole language. You don’t want to do this.
I would really not use the psychologist as a source of reading info. Some few psychologists may know about this, but I don’t think yours does, just from what you’ve said.
>Sounds about was recommended for auditory skills. SRA specific skills series by McGraw Hill, starting with level B, was suggested for comprehension skills. I will also try the basal readers.
SRA specific skills is mostly for comprehension. If your child can’t decode, comprehension is useless.
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>school reading teacher use these materials with my daughter. This tutor is excellent because she is young, positive, caring, energetic, and always willing to try new methods–and my daughter REALLY likes her—actually looks forward the sessions. She just lacks the education an experience of teaching reading to children with learning disabilities,
My young student age 7 describes such a teacher. He commented that she was very nice and played lots of games, but he has also commented that he really didn’t learn anything. He described always getting everything right. I think this was pretty perceptive of a 7 year old. She may be “happy” but is she learning anything? I don’t know if my students have always looked forward to reading tutoring. That isn’t the goal, the goal is to learn to read.
>like the Wilson, Orton Gillingham, etc. Anyways,… thanks so much for your time in responding to my request for help. I am still overwhelmed with this area of expertise.
You could pay for her training but I consider this a rather serious and last ditch approach. You *should*really be able to find someone in Pittsburg.
Look for a the international dyslexia association online. They’ll have a lot of local links. Also you could look at Iser.com. Sometimes local weeklies carry qualified people but you want to ask a lot of questions.
Another possibility, would be to provide some quality materials like the Check and Double Check series, that Victoria talks about. The trouble with this is that in the hands of a person who is “fun” and “tries to make learning a good experience” they might be close to useless. For example, the attitude about skipping small words will be totally difference. I require students to read all the words, not misread words, etc. An inexperienced reading teacher (may have LOTS of actual time teaching reading but may not be teaching it well), will allow word skipping. Other problems may be in the amount she would require sounding out words. A good teacher will require sounding out of words when the child knows hte sounds (and won’t have her read words for which she doesn’t know the sounds). An inexperienced teacher might give too many clues as to make the experience useless.
So good materials alone might not at all be enough.
A final possibility might be too buy the Barton Reading and Spelling series. This is an expensive program but has tapes that teach you to be the tutor. You must have intact phonemic awareness (there is a tape for that), and the child must pass the test for the program. However, it is a great program and may be less expensive than a tutor, depending on where you live (you must also be a good tutor with your child). I promise you that your child will not find this all fun and games but she will learn.
—des
Re: thank you for help with reading for third grader
I’m going to have to agree with Des here. I am uncomfortable with some of the advice you were given. Academic Therapy has some books to help with reversals in their Ann Arbor series of books:
http://www.academictherapy.com/atpsubcat.tpl?bob=Ann%20Arbor%20Visual%20Tracking&cart=10948660914908993
Her comprehension is just hurt by her decoding skills more than likely. I would not focus on comprehension until she has been taught the alphabetic code. Have you checked with the International Dyslexia Association in your area? If you are in the Pittsburgh area, I would be very surprised to hear there are no qualified tutors there. The large cities usually have the greatest resources.
Well, I just looked and there is an IDA group in Pittsburgh, if that is where you are (I saw des mentioned Pittsburgh):
“The Pennsylvania Branch of the International Dyslexia Association (PBIDA), serving Pennsylvania and Delaware provides support and information for individuals, families and educational professionals concerned with the issues of dyslexia and learning differences. The branch includes a Regional Group that provides services to individuals located in the Pittsburgh area. You may contact the Pittsburgh group at P.O. Box 536, Wexford, PA 15090-0536,phone # 412/761-0898, email: dyslexiapgh@hotmailcom”
Janis
Re: thank you for help with reading for third grader
I’ll just have to chime in, too.
I work with too many folks who had friendly, helpful, positive experiences with reading — everything but solid, systematic instruction. No, not everybody needs it — but if you’re somebody who does, all the enthusiastic encouragement in the world won’t do it. The price is paid later. Yes, good self-esteem and positive attitude is important — but it’s not enough. IT gets really, really hard to keep that attitude when your skills don’t keep up.
The rest of this would be repeating what’s already been said —they’re right. You don’t find stuff that works for our kiddos in the supply stores.
Could that young person be educable? WOuld she be willing to get some training?
There are some thoughts about multisensory structured language programs in an article on my site that I put together for a homeschooling magazine — it’s at http://www.resourceroom.net/readspell/mssl.asp .
Sue (who is about to get on the *inside* bike, since it’s a fat nine degrees outside and headed for nine below tonight…)
Be sure she is given time to utilize that knowledge in practice
My son could do Phonographix(like explode the code)but when you gave him a book, he just reverted to old habits of ‘guess and go’
It took him reading aloud with me at his side totally engrossed in his book(not making dinner)to make that all important step. I MADE him stop and go back and decode; I stopped him every few sentences and had him tell me what happened in his own words I jotted down words I thought he might not know the meaning of and we discussed them after we were done(or stopped and did so if it was crucial to the story)
Be sure someone is doing that with dd-otherwise she will learn how to do worksheets and short excerpts from books-period!!!
JMO