Davis program?

The research doesn’t favor this approach. Most of the good comments you see are anectodal. I would look into an Orton Gillingham based approach. Some of the more well known in this group would include:
Wilson (maybe better for older kids— though they have a new younger kid program); Slingerland; Alphabetic Phonics; Project Read; etc. There are some OG “lite” type programs you can do yourself. There is also the Barton program which provides you with training via video tape (my personal opinion is this is better for older kids though).

Sue Barton does have good info on the subject on her website (some commercial as well) on www.brightsolutions.us (US). Take a look at areas like Symptoms of Dyslexia; what we now know, myths, teaching that works; etc. Also great info on www.charlesschwab.org (? on the org thing).

—des

The reason I asked about this is because his resource believes he knows his phonics yet he is reading at mid first grade level with low fluency.

This is his second year in first with the saxon phonics. He currently doing the Stevens? Stevison? program. A multi sensory phonics. He does good with familiar words and struggles with new words. EX he did not know how to say “City”

He does know how to code his phonics but he still gets stuck when he reads. He has problems with his filling system. Gets that from me so I understand that confusion, but I am not dyslexic. I am a bad speller and phonics was not taught in my school. It was word families.

I can not figure him out. The school believes he just needs to repeat and repeat phonics until he gets it!?

Maybe they are right. I just do not want to say two years from now, I wish I….

Not with all this information here. I could use a magic wand. :0)

he has improved with the stevens? program but I keep remembering the MISUNDERSTOOD MINDS video. The part where the boy repeats first and they think everything is ok until after the first 9 weeks of second grade and realize that he just memorize a lot and gave a false sense of sucess. I worry that this could happen to him.

I am worried about next year. He is set up for the resource room for next year but I would like him to feel sucess in the reg ed classroom.

I almost had the dyslexia teacher at the school tutor him over the summer with the alphabet phonics. After talking the assistant principle she called me and said she does not feel she is qualified to tutor my son and got the impression that the program would be to fast for him.

I am confused.

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Hi Anne,
You wrote that he is good with familiar words but has difficulty with new ones. Where you gave the word City as an example.
Yet the word City is one of those many phonetic twists.
Afterall, we learn Cat, Sat, Sit.
Therefore one would naturally assume that the C in City would be pronounced as a K sound = Kitty. Not as an S.
Though for some reason, when C is followed by an I, then C is pronounced as an S.
Given that you mentioned City as an example, I wonder whether his problem with new words, may be primarily with words which are phonetic contradictions to the normal rule?
There are an abundance of words with these contradictions, which need to be memorised.
Perhaps you might note the new words that he has difficulty with, and see if this is possibly a common factor?
Just a thought?
Geoff.

The ‘ough’ sound in thought, though, brough, cough, enough, is one of those contradictions.

This why it gets confusing. He did not say Kitty. He kept stopping himself in the beginng sound and never completed the word. He knew what he was thinking was not right but could not figure it out. That was a bad example though. It is a tricky word.

Why I do not know what to do is because he had been diagnosed outside the school with dyslexia but his school’s dyslexia teacher doesnt feel she is qualified to tutor by son over the summer after talking to the assistant principle - a former dyslexia teacher/bridge teacher. At school he is label LD. The resource teacher feels all he needs is repeation and he will get it.

Is that not what the dyslexia program is repeation. I am obviously missing something here.

I being told to be patient. It takes time and there is no cure. I just want to make sure he is learning with the correct method.

I am a worrier and a planner. Planners do not do well with wait and see.
If you can not predict an outcome how can you plan for your next move.

Most letters I read say do not wait, be to proactive.

I am getting mixed messages from individuals at the school as to what my son needs.

sometimes - most times writting it out or saying it out loud helps me to understand but it is not working with this topic.

I do not want to make the wrong decisions by not making any decisions.

My son is a second time first grader at kindergarten level until a month a go was tested at a mid first grade level. Improvement has been shown but for how long. Summer is coming and no one is qualified to tutor my son. What are they afraid of doing?

Oh and he has a slow retrieval response time which is why I was wondering about the Davis program. Is there anything else out there to help with this?

Several issues here which I will try to answer separately:

(1) I have heard very little good and a lot of bad about Davis. Davis is not so much a teaching program as a philosophy and a mind-set, and the mind-set can get pretty offensive at times. I would not recommend this route. And they don’t teach phonics at all, just another approach to word memorization under a different name.

(2) There’s phonics and then there’s phonics.
Geoff above demonstrates one of the most common misunderstandings about English phonics. Unfortunately in English we have 44 or 45 sounds to be represented by only 26 letters, so we are already going to have a more complicated system than other languages with one letter - one sound correspondence. On top of that we have word roots in several different languages and five hundred years of literary history, so the system has grown more complications than we like. Nonetheless 90% to 95% of words *are* rule-based and predictable; and the parts that are irregular are often limited to one silent letter or pair (gh is infamous), or to one vowel group. You do NOT, repeat NOT need to memorize half the words in the language as if they are strange things in Martian — that is the huge misunderstanding that slows so many kids down — Learning reading twice over with two self-contradictory approaches can not possibly be efficient!

We have slightly complex rules, an unfortunate fact of history, but there *are* rules and patterns. For example, speaking of ‘city, c and g are “soft” (like s and j) before e, i, y, and “hard” (like k and as in go) before any other letter. This rule is more than 95% accurate — common exceptions ‘get’ and ‘girl’ and ‘give’ but that’s about it for beginners — and learning this pattern makes far more sense than memorizing separately five thousand separate words with soft c and g in them.

The problem arises because it is fairly easy to teach one letter-one sound and this is done in kindergarten and early Grade 1; then many schools and underprepared teachers say they have “done” phonics and the student “knows” phonics so that any future difficulties cannot possibly be phonics, in their opinion. Well, if your child had learned to add and subtract up to ten with the help of his fingers in K and 1 you would probably accept that — but if the teacher said that now they have “done” math and he “knows” math and needs no more teaching in this area, would you accept that? I hope not — you would not leave him on his own to figure out multidigits and multiplication and division and fractions and algebra, you would teach him or expect him to be taught! Similarly with phonics, if he knows the short vowels and the single common consonant sounds, good, excellent start; but now he needs to move up to Book 2 and then Book 3 and learn the REST of the system. He needs to learn the digraphs (two-letter patterns both vowel and consonant), the alternate c - g sounds, the long vowel rules, multisyllables, common silent letters, the variants for ch and ou etc, the ed and tion endings, and so on. Not as simple a job as we would like, but eminently teachable and learnable.

(3) There are reading teachers and reading teachers. Unfortunately the anti-phonics philosophy has been strong for several decades and often is the leading system in schools of education. So often teachers arrive in the school with all sorts of diplomas, they are very good people and willing to work, but they have little understanding of the structure of written English. The teachers themselves have absorbed in their own minds the rules for reading English, more or less, in one way or another, but may not have learned to abstract and verbalize these rules, so they are very frustrated in their teaching — they know how this works, it seems obvious in their own minds, but they can’t get it across to this student. This may even apply to your “dyslexia” teacher — it is a real shame that people get credentials in this field without knowing about research-based methods of reading instruction, but all too often it happens.
It is actually a good sign in a way that your teacher says she cannot help your child — at least she is honest and leaves you the time and the money to look for something more effective. Far too many people, and worse yet profit-making programs and centers, claim they have the answer to everything, take your money, and leave the student with a list to memorize and no more real skills than at the beginning.

(4) What to do.
OK, repetiton *is* going to be a big part of this.
Again, there is repetition and there is repetition. There is repetition of the same program that has ceased to make progress and repetition of trying to memorize words by sight which always hits a brick wall; neither of these is going to do any good.
Then there is repetition as part of a planned progressive program working from simple to complex, beginning by reviewing the things he has already done and checking his mastery, then teaching new material with tons and tons of practice. This will not be overnight, no miracles, but steady incremental progress will add up — as I always point out to people, one sheet of paper apparently weighs nothing and has too small a thickness to measure, but get a package of a thousand sheets and it is a pretty heavy lump and pretty thick — add up those little tiny papers one or two a day, and in a year it will *look* like a miracle.

You can go for a program that is scientifically research-based, you can get a private tutor who know how to do this, or you can go the do-it-yourself route. It is always a question which you have more of, money for the professionals, or time and work ethic to become professional yourself.
For the professional centers, LindaMood Bell has the best reputation; Phonographix can be effective but may not have the depth and extent you need but will be successful if it is extended and supplemented. A professional private tutor may use Orton-Gillingham or a number of other programs that use the same philosophy and approach. If you decide to do it yourself, you can buy the above programs and teach yourself. I send out copies of my old posts/book in progress, no strings attached, to anyone who asks; if you want them email a request to [email protected]

I will just add the reinforcement here that Davis would definitely be a mistake.

As Victoria said, children with dyslexia do not always learn to read with the kind of phonics programs in most regular classes. Unfortunately, Stevenson is not one of the better programs. I also agree with Victoria that it is wonderful the teacher was honest. Few dyslexic children can get what they need in school.

You need to contact your state International Dyslexia Association and get a list of tutors who are qualified to work with dyslexic children. You are wise to seek help now. He needs the tutoring by a qualified person over the summer.

Here is an article from this site that explains the kinds of methods your son needs:

http://www.ldonline.org/ld_indepth/reading/reading_approaches.html

Here is the International Dyslexia Association site:

http://www.interdys.org/

There is an excellent books that you should read as well. It is called Overcoming Dyslexia by Sally Shaywitz. You will have to become the expert in order to get what your child needs. Most often this has to be found outside the schools as most teachers do not have the specialized training in programs for dyslexia.

Janis

As Victoria says, there are phonics and phonics, and reading teaching and reading teaching.

The idea that “city” it taught as a sight word is very absurd, or that “city” somehow represents a phonetics twist is equally aburd. In fact, it is as regular as it can be the letters e, i, y switch a “c” from the more typical /k/ souund to a /s/ sound. This is, imo, not really even a particularly difficult rule to teach. I taught this and the corresponding spelling rule to the most severely dyslexic child I have ever worked with, and fairly easily at that. If your child did not learn it, I would look at the instruction methodology and not the child. To teach this as a sight word means they will be unable to read or spell a large no. of regular English words without first memorizing them. It not only means he won’t be able to read and spell words where “c” takes on an /s/ sound but where “k” or “ck” are used instead. I’m not talking wierd words here but the regular normal words in English.

The phonics your child needs is NOT the garden variety regular classroom type, but systematic explicit and multisensory. There is no magic. I can’t say that it is easy, necessarily, your child will have to work hard, but it is far easier than memorizing thousands of words— prob. can’t evne really be done.

Janis and Victoria make very good recommendations as to where to turn for assistance.

BTW, the program the “dyslexia teacher” uses may just be the wrong age level for your child. I have found that strangely some people do not like to take younger children. I don’t understand this. (I have never heard of a school dyslexia teacher, so I am very puzzled on that part, but some of the programs— I mentioned the older version of Wilson— are not geared to younger kids.)

You may need to go with a private tutor. Find someone who has worked with and likes to work with younger kids.

—des

Thank you all for your advise on the Davis program.

Now I have a new concern. The Steveson program is the program he will be using at his school. They just started it this year. The resource teacher is very excited about the program. Should I say anything to her? She said this program is multi sensory.

Yes our school has two dyslexic teachers. They travel to several schools and give one on one 45min instruction a day. Each child in this program will only qualify for two years. They do not want to start my son in this because is it only for two years and he is 7. I can only guess that they think he will get more out of it if he is older. Oh and knows cursive.
This program is also new this year.

This is our assistant principle first year ever. For the past two year she was my son TPRI (a texas reading and phonics test) tutor and bridge teacher. She know better than anyone where my son is and how he learns. Many years ago she also taught dyslexia students.
I think it is because of her background that the school is getting these new services but they all new and the bugs are still being worked out.

My son resource teacher is in the process of looking for a tutor (a resource teacher) for over the summer but it would be in the stevenson program. Would this be a bad idea?

Would it confuse him if he changed programs for the summer and then went back to the stevenson program next year at school?

Just a short reply here, more detail later.

If Stevenson is working and the school is willing to use it, certainly better than the guess-and-pray option.

If he can have a trained, experienced teacher continue the same program that is succeeding over the summer, that is a reasonable option. If the teacher is new at this, then I wouldn’t go that route.

All systematic structured language programs teach the same things, English is English and the phonetic system is what we have inherited; the differences are fairly superficial ones of order and presentation. Any good program with a teacher who follows the system can do him a lot of good — the approach my be a little different at times, but there will be no big contradictions.

One thing you absolutely must do is to back up and start at a level where he has some mastery. This means NOT pushing him ahead to read “interesting” books — failing on every second word is not interesting. Rather, he should be reading strictly controlled books, either controlled by phonics content, decodable readers working on one new sound at a time; or controlled by high-frequency vocabulary, teaching one very common necessary word at a time with multiple repetitions.
If you are telling him more than one word in ten to twenty or five to ten words in a hundred, the level is much too high and you should back down.

Even in the same program, when he gets individual tutoring over the summer he should go back and do a quick review of things already covered before pushing ahead.
If he uses another program, he should review from Book 1 Page 1, moving quite quickly but doing every step and developing mastery, then slowing down when he gets to the level where he is learning new work. This may mean the first month of the summer is going over things he has already done; good, he gets lots of success and a firm foundation — then in the rest of the summer he will move ahead and probably pick up a lot more speed with a better background behind him.

I just have never seen Stevenson recommended by any credible dyslexia expert. I gave a source here with a list of programs and there are also lists in the books Overcoming Dyslexia and Parenting a Struggling Reader. I’d be asking them to provide the research that shows Stevenson’s success with dylexic students. So I wouldn’t be looking for a Stevenson tutor over the summer. I’d be going to the IDA to find someone who knows an effective method and get them to use it. I begin tutoring a 6 year old this summer and his mom has already asked for a twice a week after-school slot for next school year. He would never get what he needs at school and thankfully this mom knows that. Actually, she knows it from personal experience…her brother was dyslexic and had a very sad school experience.

Janis

Just a comment and a disclaimer, I really don’t know anything about Stevenson. But I did take a look at their webpage. It looks kind of cute and gimmicky, imo. I am always a little wary of cute and gimmicky for dyslexic kids.

They use a lot of mnemomics. Makes sense, but the mnemomics themselves might even be distracting. I thought the “o” one was rather strange, and certainly didn’t make me think of the sound /o/. The sandwich model where the bread are the consonants and fillings the vowels could be more distracting than elucidating. You have to think, not what this is looking like in the minds of adult marketers but how this works with actual kids. The sizeways sandwich and cake are further distractions but otherwise you have sideways words.

One program I saw, used various sounds and gestures for different sounds all using an animal theme. Might have been ok, I guess, since it was very early reading. But the gestures did not show where the sound was made or anything other than associating it with a keyword sort of. If you’re going to that kind of trouble I prefer LiPS, which is at least associating the sounds in a meaningful way.

I use mnemomics but I think it as a program, that is the program really. Well just “how cute”.

BTW, I didn’t see anything that looked terribly multisensory. But remember that’s just one part of what your kid needs.

Go find a tutor who knows something about how reading is really taught. IDA is a good place to start. I wouldn’t worry about confusing him so much. If it were at the same time, that might be an issue.

I don’t know if I would knock what the resource teacher has found here. I’m not sure if that would help that much. Maybe you could recommend Sally S’s book on Overcoming Dyslexia? As Victoira says at least Stevenson is a bit better than the “guess and pray” methods.

—des

I have used the davis program with a dislexic student and followed the book, the Gift of Dislexia, to the letter. I think the exercises are valuable, particularly with the clay alphabet and numbers. The physical exercises using balance,were also very valuable, she does show disorientation . After completing the suggested exercises, she can now find her orientation point and reorient herself. I also now use the Audiblox program and have put aside the Orton Gillingham phonics for the moment. Look up Audiblox.com and read the info.
There is value in each program, it depends what your child needs and in what order of priority.

Sheila, your post might impress reading and writing teachers more if you could spell “dyslexia” correctly, especially in the name of the book you are quoting.
If you yourself cannot spell the name of your text properly (and you make the same mistake twice so it is not a typographical error), as well as having other writing problems in your post, how are you going to teach this skill to a child with difficulty?
This is yet one more example of exactly what I was saying about Davis — a mind-set that gives people oodles of self-confidence, but doesn’t teach the skills, sorry.

First post, about flames and posting (post to follow about reading instructional questions)

Just a gentle “hold on a second!” …. how ‘bout we not start making people feel like they have to watch out for the spelling police when they post an honest opinion in defense of a program being, basically, flamed?

I happen to agree that there isn’t a body of research to support the Davis claims. However, scientifically speaking that is possibly because it’s a new enough model of how learning happens so that said research simply hasn’t happened. That doesn’t mean I’m going to recommend it or consider it, when there are methods that *have* already been through rigorous research. However, it also doesn’t mean I’m going to snub somebody with an anecdote. (And it wasn’t a pushy sales-pitch anecdote, either.)

The Stevenson program has been around a while; I agree that it’s heavy on visuals & mnemonics and light on “true” multisensory (activities like saying a letter sound while tracing it), but I also remember that since I work with older students I have a much lower appreciation for “cute” stuff that really does help younger students more than, perhaps, memorizing a rule. I’ve had students who could recite rules that they couldn’t apply (yea, gentle but methodical repetition helped repair that, and teaching them to stop and ask “does one of those rules I memorized apply here?”)

I would imagine that some of my students’ teachers had to “patch” a few holes I left, too.

You are absolutely right, I did not check my spelling at all, my fault. That is what you get when you try and do to many things in the morning before heading out the door!
I stand by my experiences with the Davis program. It is not a cure but can be valuable to students with particular difficulties.
There are many new directions that are evolving in education of learning disabilities. We have much to learn about teaching these kids and I sure don’t have all of the answers.

Anyone have any info on the Dore Achievement Centers?

Okay, the diagnostics for the reading.

*Does* your son memorize books?

From your description of “City” he didn’t know where to begin with that word. However, while it is a completely “regular” word…. it’s only “regular” if you have already learned that unlike most of the letters, C has two sounds and you have to decide which one to use. The majority of my middle and high school students at the private college prep school for students with LDs where I taught didn’t have that down at all, even though they were solid with most other letter patterns.

With other words, does he sound them out or is he lost if he doesn’t already know the word?

If you showed him a “Martian” word like “fap” or “grav” — and told him it wasn’t a word he knew, but to sound it out — what would he do? Would he say “flap” because he automatically goes for meaning? Or would he simply be lost?

Can he rhyme words?

I sense that you’d really like to find an expert who could find the key to open the “reading door” for your son; you don’t feel you should have to get a degree in reading yourself … but as you can tell, experts tend to have strong opinions and to reallly believe in what they’re doing — which is a good thing, but only if what they’re doing is a good fit for your son. So, knowing some of the basics and how they apply to yo8ur son can be really helpful in the short and long run.

The folks I’ve known who’ve had success with Davis have tended to be learners like the author of the program (which rather makes sense if you think about it :-)) — and those who worked with very experienced tutors who had worked with a lot of different students with different kinds of issues. Davis’ profile is that of a *highly* visually gifted learner with severe reading problems (and he still gets support for reading and writing).
My training teaches me that the English language is phonetic — those letters stand for sounds — and therefore to read effectively you need to learn what sounds those letters stand for. Davis’ method doesn’t do that — though, if it in fact made that process significantly easier then it would be a good thing. It’s also awfully easy for folks like me to underestimate the power of a week-long immersion in an emotionally positive atmosphere. However, I’d be really hesitant to sink the bucks into it at this point — it will still be there in another year.
I wouldn’t be patient either, though. There’s an awful lot of data that overwhelmingly indicates that early intervention is the way to go. I would look at other ways to teach him that elusive sound-symbol connection.
If you want a good primer yourself on that reading process, wander over to The Reading Genie ( http://www.auburn.edu/~murraba ) — it’s not too technical and it has a *lot* of good ideas for fun things you can do to help out with the learning process.

Sue — I have developed rather strong feelings about Davis after having been verbally abused on this very board as well as on others.

I try hard to bite my tongue about spelling and grammar, and to pay attention to content, and after all I type fast and post a few typos too — but when someone claims to be able to teach a subject better than anybody else, they had better demonstrate reasonable mastery of that topic themselves.

If the poster had said “This program helped me a lot with my problems and maybe it could help you too”, I would be positive. But when the poster suggests that it is better to “put aside the Orton-Gillingham program”, well, then there should be some demonstrable reason to get rid of a proven program in favour of something without research backing — and that poster, like so many other Davis supporters I have met, merely states that Davis is wonderful and “successful”, meanwhile showing weaknesses in many basic writing skills that a “successful” program should address and should have addressed for the teacher.

Sue

I would have to say he does memorize books and most no all the books he reads give clues with its pictures.

He struggles the first time reading these books and then every time after that he can figure it out with its intial sound and the pictures. I know he does this because sometimes he tries using a word that describes the picture and then stumbles because it does not match the intial sound of the word he is trying to figure out.

He definitely tries to sound it out first.

Fap and Flap. He would sound it out unless there was a picture of a bird he may just add the L.

Yes he can rhyme. Last year not very well but this year he is good at it.

I definitely need someone else. I do not know the rules of phonics I learned by memorizing. I have to say I have learn a lot more myself by doing homeword with him but not all the rules.

I do not know if my son is highly visually. I would have to guess a no because he - no - I just do not know because my reason why I would not think so, is the thing they say they can correct. He needs to be redirected - he gets off tasks often.

He doctor said he is NOT add/adhd

The school and the preschool he went to all have said he is a tactile learner and needs multi sensory instruction.

I have not had a chance to look at the suggested website but I will.

Well I’m not out to correct spelling. Gosh knows, I make my own mistakes, and this is keyboarding too. I wouldn’t recommend Davis over OG, but I’m sure that there is anectodal, if not strong evidence that it works. The anecdote given by Sheila (or anybody else), to me, doesn’t replace all the hard evidence out there that supports a discrete, systematic, phonetic approach.

Sue, I know what you mean about low tolerance for “cute”. I have it I think. Still there are some “cute” things that I am more likely to buy into. I thought the sandwich diagrams were frankly visually confusing— not to say all kids would be confused by them, but we are talking about kids who tend to read “b” for “d” and “was” for “saw” anyway. So Stevenson has them look at the diagram sideways or has them read the letters vertically. That’s what I had a problem with. Actually Barton uses some mnemonics as well, which some of the kids like. (I’ve found other kids do NOT like it.)

Actually Sheila’s description of making letters with clay is something you could do with OG.

—des