Reading and Spelling Question

Well I can pretty much guarantee that your son will NOT breeze thru Barton book 4. This is a tough book, and covers among other things: multisyllable words, the schwa, some vowel teams, etc. This book normally takes months to go thru. And though it is a pain in some respects, I have seen really big leaps after it.

To really place him in Wilson, you would require some training, and most likely more than you get in the 3 day training commonly given. So I’m not sure switching will really save you money, unless you are somewhere where training is offered. I actually do NOT think the spelling in Wilson is quite as good as the spelling in Barton. It is not scripted, but there is no law telling you that you absolutely HAVE to keep to the script. As you gain confidence, in fact, I would expect you would get off the script.

So I’m not really true that by switching to Wilson you will have a better program. The research backing it up is often some of the same research backing up Barton, as it is not esp specific to Wilson but to all OG programs. True it has been around longer, but it is not as strong on PA (as that was really researched later than Wilson). I’m not saying you couldn’t switch. You won’t really confuse him any and you can always pull in some of the more useful Barton techniques— but you should have the training first.

Wilson is not geared to young kids. There is a program specifically for little kids but it is a separate program. I’m not sure the words would even be appropriate.

—des

I agree with Des. The supporting resesarch supports both programs and both because it is more recent and because it’s aimed at younger students, Barton has more focused work on the phonemic awareness foundations.
Wilson is less scripted and therefore a bit more dependent on a teacher’s training and experience; it was designed for teachers (and for use in groups). It would be awfully, awfully easy to cover some things too lightly, and I just think that Barton will “connect” better with a younger student. Wilson is an awful lot of black words on white pages, which I *love* when I want a “no nonsense, we’re going to learn to read now” approach that is exactly what a burned-out-with-education eighth grader or 30 year old needs.
I would recommend staying the course — I really doubt he’ll keep breezing. I would also make very, very sure that he’s really “breezing.” Are all those skills smooth and automatic? FLuent? If you go back and do old stuff is it still just as easy? (I’m not trying to interrogate - I say this because when I taught O-G I *often* had
students
who could “master” things for me… and then forget them - but unless I went back and reviewed them, I didn’t know; we “breezed” through many lessons before I realized I had to have more review of old stuff in every lesson. )

Thanks so much for your ideas guys! I appreciate it. I do have a teaching background (B.A. in Elem Ed ; M.A. in Reading Ed - but have not been teaching since having children - 11 years ago other than college kids as an adjunct and homeschooling my 2), and have looked at the Wilson manual and have watched the 10 hours of training videos. Do you still think I would need to take the training before using it? I know that sometimes things are not as clear cut as they seem when skimming over them. When I looked at it, I thought, “yea, I can do this”, understanding it would take more planning than Barton, but maybe I am being a little unrealistic???
ALSO, I feel he needs more practice and reinforcement than Barton gives -especially in spelling. If I stick to Barton, I would also have to put some extra time into it because I would try to make up his spelling work to go along with what we are learning in Barton. (Hope that made sense) and incorporate more dictation work with it. Just looking over Wilson, it “seemed” to have more reading practices, word lists etc. Once I start using it, I may realize this is not the case.
Thanks!
Debbie

I’ve been using Wilson for several years and I only had the overview training. At first, I was shaky, but with the experience I’ve had with the program, it became much easier to teach.

Yes, you can use Wilson exclusively for spelling-if you have the manual, it will tell you to “Follow the program step by step doing parts 1, 2, 6, 7 and 8 of each lesson”. You can find this information on pp. 16-23 of the Teacher’s Manual.

It doesn’t matter that you have experience teaching, the more training you have the better teacher you will be.. I’m sorry but I think Reading Education is pretty much worthless in most cases. I don’t mean that your educational experiences are worthless but that background is not too useful— most of it is just not research based.

I think you could prob. do Wilson. More practice and training might be required. The ten hours of tapes is not quite equivalent to the 15 hours of training in the 3 day overview— perhaps if you went thru them the way you do with the Barton tapes vs just watching them. You would definitely need a practice element.

However, I don’t really see too much of a compelling case for switching. Wilson is cheaper, but I think you are going to see pretty dramatic gains after book 4. I agree with Sue about not sailing thru too much longer, but no one sails thru book 4! Even a normal learner would be challenged. So I would decide what you think AFTER book 4. Book 4 takes many months, and I would take it slowly, read all the stories, and do all the practices.

I disagree that there is more reading of sentences and stories in Wilson than Barton. At least by book 4 each lesson has two short stories (that are better written than Wilson’s imo) and practice in reading phrases (the Chinese menu type exercise) and sentences. The Chinese menu activity is a great fluency builder, and imo, there isn’t anything in Wilson like this( I do have the levels 1-6 in Wilson and have studied it).The repetition was designed to build fluency, and done specifically. At the time Wilson was written there was no such activity because not that much about fluency was known. There may be MORE sentences, but the sentences do not build the fluency. Repeated word spelling is not accident either— spelling like reading requires some fluency, though I’m not sure they call it that.

I question doing exclusively spelling. IF your child has trouble reading longer words, s/he has an inadequate strategy for breaking them down.
I also practice the spelling rules with some kids. I think that is a possible weakness, but not one that Wilson is stronger at. I think you would still need to do this. But why make this so tedious? Simply take a rule each session that you review (out of order of course), say “The Milk Truck rule”. Go over the rule with tiles and then do a few real and nonsense words. I found this quite easy to do. Each session you give practice in a separate rule and gradually the spelling gets incorporated.

I also agree with Sue, re: watching about “breezing” thru. If you are doing extra practices and your child can NOT read and spell any regular one syllable word in a closed syllable, I’m not sure that she is really ready to go on. I would go back over the spelling rule lessons esp.

BTW, I had one kid that had something like 6 months with Wilson. We got thru book 5 at which point mom decided that she was reading “well enough” (at grade level in 6th grade). Anyway, the point I was going to make was this. She went thru all the closed syllable, earlier schwa stuff, breaking apart two syllable words, etc in Wilson. I just started at the beginning though she went thru the first couple books very quickly. HOWEVER, she was really not able to hear all sounds in words with blends. She did MUCH better in Barton. If I had to teach Wilson for some reason, I would pull in a lot of Barton stuff— I just think it is a way better program.

My advice would be to go thru the lessons with spelling rules, and really make sure your child hears all the sounds. Then go thru book 4 and really take your time. Do easy reviews of the various spelling rules out of order each time. I don’t think you will regret it. I will warn you book 4 is a bear. It is very hard.

BTW, I have made up some cool games, so if you message me I could send them on.

—des

Thanks for all the info! I agree about Reading Ed. to a certain extent. I think it did help me to be a better classroom reading teacher though. My undergrad degree only required about 6 hours concerning the teaching of reading - a word attack class and a methods class. At least that is all I remember - and I went to a university that was really heralded for its teacher ed program!!! Crazy! One problem is that the professors tend to jump on whatever bandwagon is passing by at the moment. When I was doing my grad work - late 80’s early 90’s - the BIG thing was whole language. So that is what was pushed by a lot of the professors.
I wasn’t planning on teaching spelling exclusively. I planned on teaching it along with whatever program I used. Just putting more focus on it than say Barton does - kind of making my own spelling program to go along with it.
I just found out that a SPIRE training is in my area and some friends are thinking of attending. This is a program I just found out about recently. Does anyone know anything about it? Does anyone know how SPIRE compares to Barton.
I need to make the decision soon because we will be starting school in August. I hate always looking for something better, but when it is your child, you want the best most effective programs. I should just stick to Barton for the long haul and stop looking into anything else. Most OG programs are fairly similar anyway - if they are true to OG.
DES - I would love the game ideas! I will be out of town for about 10 days, but please email them to [email protected].
Thanks,
Debbie