Needing help in setting up homeschool program for 12 yo

Hi kcross,
I would suggest that you investigate whether their is a Homeschooling Support Group in your area.
If not, you could also join some outside your area, online.
This could be your best resource, in deciding what Materials to buy, and also for ongoing support and discussion.

Since his dyslexia is so severe, I would make access to content area material a priority. It sounds like he’s reading around a 4-5th grade level, and that’s a good foundation; can I assume he still struggles with reading, though? That it’s not his favorite mode for input of information?
I’m afraid I’m going to disagree with geodob (take notes!! how often does this happen :-) :-)) - unless you’ve experienced the severely dyslexic situation, you’re likely to give recommendations that just don’t quite fit. A very popular and otherwise excellent book on homeschool curriculum devotes several pages to the theme (and I quote) “Reading is easy. Reading is easy. Reading is easy.” An awful lot of homeschoolers fall into one of two categories - scholarly types who take language/reading skills for granted and infuse them into everything, and sort of anti-scholarly types who are more focused on the “practical living in my role in the world” kinds of skills - and even then a lot of reading/language skills are assumed.
What are your priorities for his education?
What kinds of things does he like to learn about?
The neat thing about h-s is that you can really play to his strengths and interests and build a solid curriculum around it.
I’ve got links and articles on my site for people in your situation (having taught in middle & high schools, I know they’re often horrendous places for bright but significantly LD kids who just can’t compensate and still meet anything like their potential). Just click below and then click on the”homeschooling” tab at the top…

There are things you can do to keep improving his reading level and make it easier for him. There are both formal and informal programs. des and Janis and Sue can connect you to a number of formal programs, and I can give you info on my home-cooked program. (They all do the same things and go to the same place, just a matter of style, time, and money.) My email is [email protected]

Yes, he still struggles with reading. He is a slow reader and I’ve been told he processes things slowly. He is the anti-scholarly type who is more focused on the “practical living in my role in the world” kinds of skills. He learns best using hands on, games, interactive techniques. He is an independent learner so he will not want me constantly instructing him or looking over his shoulder. My basic educational goals for him right now are improving his reading, writing and spelling and helping him to continue to excel in math.

He did not past phoneme segmentation, splitting phonemes, manipulating phonemes but did pass the others. He can read at a 4th to 5th grade level but is a slow reader and did not pass Level IIA/isolated words. If I get a program for children with dyslexia who can read at a 4th to 5th grade reading level, will this also help him with phoneme segmentation, splitting phonemes, manipulating phonemes and isolated words? Would he need special readers made for children that have dyslexia or could I purchase 4th and 5th grade readers from the bookstore and use them to increase comprehension, reading speed, story structure, etc? I am looking at a program called Strategies for Older Students.

He did not pass Spelling Level IIA or IIB and his spelling appears to be at a 2nd grade level. It was not explained why he did not pass these levels. I am looking at Recipe for Spelling as it seems to fit his learning style but will it address his other needs?

Math U See has an assessment process that I am going to use and looks like a hands on program.

The reason I provided his scores from the assessments is that I am not sure what his learning needs are at this time and therefore what programs would best address his needs. I thought maybe this board would have someone who had training in phonological assessment and Orton-Gillingham principles that could provide me guidance. I could spend hundreds of dollars and frustrate us both by making guesses, buying and trying out programs that do not work for him but I decided to try and find someone who could give me some direction based on his scores.

Sue, I visited your website and found it very informative. The article Lowering the Language Barriers in Middle and Secondary School fit my son so well.

> I’m afraid I’m going to disagree with des (take notes!! how often does this happen :-) :-)) - unless you’ve experienced the severely dyslexic situation, you’re likely to give recommendations that just don’t quite fit.

Gee, Sue. I hadn’t even posted on this thread and you’re disagreeing with me already? And what exactly are you disagreeing with me on!!

I’m taking my marbles and going home. :-P

—des

Well contrary to what Sue thinks I MIGHT say, well I am not sure about this one. He sounds a lot like my nephew in terms of reading level. IF you could find someone at the school to work with him (say take on a private client— that might be best), you could do this 3 hours a week or so, and see if that would bring up his skills some. A fifth grade reading level sounds maybe worse than it is. If you could get him to sixth grade then he could easily read most things you stuck in front of him.

>me constantly instructing him or looking over his shoulder. My basic educational goals for him right now are improving his reading, writing and spelling and helping him to continue to excel in math.

I actually agree that you should figure out what he is really good at and work on that for the most part.

>Math U See has an assessment process that I am going to use and looks like a hands on program.

I think it is an excellent choice for a kid who likes working with his hands.
I would add a bit more drill to it though. I know drill is a dirty word, but get him to understand it and then go on. Math U See goes up to Trig.

>Orton-Gillingham principles that could provide me guidance. I could spend hundreds of dollars and frustrate us both by making guesses, buying and trying out programs that do not work for him but I decided to try and find someone who could give me some direction based on his scores.

The thing is that this kid has been thru OG and it has gotten him so far. I could recommend another program but you would be kind of forced to start over to figure out where he is. If he hadn’t done it so far I might be full of suggestions. The same thing for spelling. If he hasn’t internalized the rules, I’m not sure if I would switch programs so that he could go longer on it. IF you found someone who did that program, it would maybe make sense to see if he could go farther as some kids might require up to 4 years or so.

One program I might recommend more easily is a word roots program. There are several to choose from. I know of two. A really good one called Words (but by gosh, I don’t know who does this one or ??? Looking for this might be quite a headache!!) or Dynamic Roots
(http://www.dynamicphonics.com). This would teach him to read/spell hundreds of words by learning the roots (and might actually be interesting as well). It would be good to do whether or not you get him tutored. And either is easy to implement.

I’d also look into technology— ie text to speech which will read scanned articles/books or stuff off the net (like Kurzweil). KJT (?) is the person to ask such things in the technology forum.

Meanwhile there are other cool things to do including nonreading type things that have nothing to do with reading (Lego Mindstorms— robotics programming), etc.

—des

When he started in 2nd grade with an Alphabetic Phonics instructor, he had low Pre-k language skills. He took to AP like a desert plant to rain and within 3 months was able to read simple words. He was so proud and excited and that did more for his self-esteem than anything I had said or done. He even was cured of that behavior problem the school said he had! He worked really hard for the next 2 years with AP tutoring everyday after school and during the summer and vision therapy every night. I am always being told that he amazes people with his determination to succeed no matter the barriers. Guess his strong will has its positives!

I am very happy with his reading level although he expresses some disappointment that he cannot read better and is very self conscious about his reading abilities. IF he is capable of getting it even higher than I owe it to him to try and make that happen. As I stated in my first post, I lost my job and have started my own business so at this time it is either a roof over his head or tutoring ($70 an hour). If only I could get the money the schools get, he would be set.

I am going to assume that the scores I gave you suggest he is still struggling with spelling rules and root words and this is what I need to look for when selecting a reading/spelling program. I will check into the programs you suggested. Guess the ones I was looking at are not ones you think might be appropriate for him.

I have been looking at word processing programs that he can use: text to speech, speech to text, word prediction. However I will allow him different ways to show what he has learned, more time to complete assignments and different ways to impute information so since money is tight and this is not a necessity right now, I will wait for awhile to get one.

He excels in sports and math and enjoyed being in school plays and helping with the school newspaper. He says that he wants to go to college but it is to play sports. Have not really seen an area that he is enthusiastic about, except sports. I am hoping that through homeschooling. without the pressure of grades/achievement, he will encounter more areas of interest to him and get back his joy of math.

Some of the things I use are good for helping students at this plateau; I work with many of them. The phonics books 3 and 4 help with grouping letters, syllables and root words and prefixes and suffixes. Guided oral reading of appropriate novels and/or grade-level basals is also very helpful. Practice with guided developmental workbooks on word skills and comprehension is really valuable. Time and hard work are definitely called for; this is a two to three year project to go from reading simple words Ok to being fluent on multisyllables. But it can be done.
If you haven’t already, do email me for my general notes. And if you want photocopies of good out-of-print materials, talk to me about it.

>I owe it to him to try and make that happen. As I stated in my first post, I lost my job and have started my own business so at this time it is either a roof over his head or tutoring ($70 an hour). If only I could get the money the schools get, he would be set.

I’m sorry that you lost your job. If you are happy with the reading level, then perhaps the reading isn’t the big problem at this point. It may be that some work on roots, prefixes, etc. can bring him up more. Also spelling would be easy enough on a limited budget. I’d suggest “How to Teach Spelling” which gets great reviews out there (I haven’t personally seen it). But the teacher’s manual tells you how to set up the lessons etc. and it is $28. (http://www.epsbooks.com)

>I am going to assume that the scores I gave you suggest he is still struggling with spelling rules and root words and this is what I need to look for when selecting a reading/spelling program. I will check into the programs you suggested. Guess the ones I was looking at are not ones you think might be appropriate for him.

Strategies for Older Students would be approp. based on the description, but I am unfamilar with it. It is OG based.
I really didn’t analyze the scores to figure out what he needed. I was thinking here is a boy reading at 5-6th grade level. At this point, most of the new words are going to be words with roots and that sort of thing, so I was thinking, how would you push up the reading skills on this kid?
I didn’t analyze it as such.

>assignments and different ways to impute information so since money is tight and this is not a necessity right now, I will wait for awhile to get one.

One useful skill for imputing on the computer is to be able to organize his thoughts coherently orally. Perhaps get a cheap taperecorder and work with him on making reports via tape. Have him give a main idea, supporting points, conclusion, that kind of thing. Speech to text requires this kind of organizational skill.

>He excels in sports and math and enjoyed being in school plays and helping with the school newspaper. He says that he wants to go to college but it is to play sports. Have not really seen an area that he is enthusiastic about, except sports.

See about homeschool groups. Some of them have teams which play other teams in the area (more intramural than anything I think).
But it would be fun for him. Check around as many parents are teaching their disabled kids at home.

I wouldn’t say no to what Victoria offers as well.

—des

I’ve discreetly edited out my blunder (how I imposed your name on somebody else’s name I don’t know, except that strange things happen when you’re typing and somebody comes into the office, which is prob’ly what happened). So now the casual reader may well wonder what *you’re* talking about :-)

I’m working right now (okay, right now I *should* be working on it…) on some vocabulary exercises for our ‘developmental’ reading here at the college level. He will find these awfully easy in the comprehension area… but they *are* the level our entering-but-not-ready-for-101 college students need. So for nothing but his ego you may want ot have him try them … but now I gotta go polish ‘em a little so I can post them for you :-)

One program I would suggest is BrainSkills from http://www.brainskills.com . This program works on developing a wide range of cognitive skills that tend to lag in kids who have had sensory-level problems (especially auditory processing and vision). Optimizing cognitive skills makes academic learning easier. This program includes intensive, graduated exercises in segmenting and phoneme manipulation as part of its auditory processing section. It works on optimizing many other skills also — such as directionality, visual sequencing, visual short-term memory, auditory short-term memory, attention, multi-tasking, reasoning, etc. Every exercise has incremental goals and benchmarks so you know when to move on to the next level.

If you have a PACE provider near you (http://www.processingskills.com ), call them to see if they offer a workshop with the program. Otherwise, you can purchase the program online from the company. Ideally you would spend an hour a day five days a week on the program, for perhaps 4-6 months; however, the program can also be done more slowly.

Nancy

The program I was thinking of was Words by Mary Henry. It is ancient and a copy recently fell into my in box mysteriously. A newer version is Strategies for Success. It is Orton based and also includes things like orthography and word study. I just looked on Google and gosh it looks hopeless. I’ll see if I can find out anything else.

You’re forgiven, Sue. People ALWAYS wonder what I’m talking about. :-)

—des