emergent reading in older student

I have never found a miracle way around doing the hard work of working up through reading levels. And unfortunately most beginning reading materials are aimed at six-year-olds.
There is one exception, the OLD Laubach Literacy workbooks and parallel reading booklets, which you can probably find by doing a search for Laubach on the web. They are still pretty limited and stiff, but have appropriate content. Don’t go for the new stuff that Laubach is pushing, which just continues the same-old same-old problems that have failed this student for nine years already.

When I work with older students I tell them straight off that we will have to take some time and work up through the basic levels, but we WILL work through those levels and get to more interesting things pretty fast. I show them the workbooks I use, starting with Book 1 on single consonant, working up to Book 4 with five-syllable words and grammar lessons. I show them a pile of reading materials, from Book 1 Peter and Jane through the Boxcar Children up to (age-appropriate) Hatchet. I tell them we will start by doing the easy stuff that they can master (because although they want to do the other, it frightens them) and then we will *work up* step by step until they *can* do the advanced things. Seeing this planned progression, they are a lot less resistant to doing the basic work with a goal of getting out of it in mind.

In order to make this work at all, and to make it work at a reasonable speed, you need to use effective research-based reading methods. There is a lot of info on this site on the LD In Depth page.

If you would like copies of my how-to-tutor notes/book in progress, please send me an email at [email protected]

Susan Barton has some “older readers” that are decodable text but they are at about the CCVCC level (books to follow level 3). You don’t have to buy the whole series for this. I think they are $10 each. I have seen them and they are pretty good. http://www.bartonreading.com

Actually Sue Barton doesn’t even do anything beyond sentences for people reading at the primer to first grade level like this.
Morgan Dynamic phonics (http://www.dynamicphonics.com), puts out a high school adult series. This is a total program, but I think you could buy just a student book for level one. It is about $16 or so, nicely bound and has hundreds and hundreds of decodable sentences. I can recommend this as I am using this program as review and reinforcement (it is kind of Orton lite). But the sentences are very good. He specializes in jokes and silly sentences and some gross content. With my student I take turns reading the sentences. There is lots of repetition which I see helping with fluency.

Sopris West puts out some readers to go with Language, as well as some high interest but decodable text. Look for J&J Readers level one (about $65) and High Interest Readers level one. http://www.sopriswest.com
(YOu might call to check out the latter and make sure they are decodable, though I think they are. I have never used these but know people who have. Again you do not have to use Language! to use these. You cannot use the usual high interest- low vocabulary stuff as it is not decodable and dependent on high levels of “sight words”, contextual cluing and the like.

HTH,

—des

PS — oce thed student has some base vocabulary in place (and this may take several months to a year, don’t rush him) I found with one adult student that I could use selections from a good adult ESL program that I have. I didn’t do all the language training exercises, but the little reading selections and comprehension questions were helpful; simple in vocabulary and structure but adult and work-oriented in content. Even some of the grammar, like past tense and plurals, was helpful too.

As usual, my experience has mirrored Victoria’s.

It’s not that rare a problem, though, so there *are* materials out there. I’ve got some of the Laubach stuff on sale at my website (not from Laubach, but from a lady who tutored with it who was an author who wrote her own books). http://www.teamprairie.net/litlib.html will give you more information (pardon the early-stages-of-development website :-)) and it has a link to Laubach, too.

For folks really just starting, most “high-low” materials (I’ve got a list of those at my website, too — are simply too “high.” http://www.resourceroom.net/older/hilow_sources.asp has the list — some of them are pricy, too, since they’re being marketed to school libraries. (It is, sad to say, a growing market… well, at least they know they’re needed!)

There’s also a lot of practice stuff on my site, and basic reading comprehension materials.

Oh, and another really good resource is http://www.nifl.gov/ — look at the bottom of the page for good links for adult resources.

If you have specific questions about specific troubles he has, holler :-)

Casey65

E-mail me at: [email protected]. Provide a safe address (school, business, friend) to protect your privacy. I will mail a CD without cost or obligation.