Phono-Graphix Reading Program ?

I don;t use it myself, but lots of other people here do. See if you can get in touch with Shay who used to post here a lot and is still around sometimes.

It’s good - but overhyped (the authors are zealous to a fault about it). Good teachers like Shay have a lot of success with it - it uses Elkonin Boxes (see www.auburn.edu/~murraba and “letterbox lessons”) to get that sound-symbol connection established.
Lots of egos involved in its research backing, of which there is some out there (see the Annals of the IDA, I forget what year).

We used Phono-graphix followed by Lindamood Seeing Stars for our severely dyslexic son. Seeing Stars does the visualization of letters much better than PG, which was a piece of my son’s problems.

We also tried OG and LIPS (Lindamood) for a short time but they weren’t nearly as successful. PG has the advantage of having the lowest memory load of the three programs.

There is a lot of hype and it was no miracle for my son. It took years of work and two intensives (in Orlando). But it is a good program which has the advantage of being simple enough for a parent to do.

Beth

In defense of OG and LiPS, I think you need to consider the teacher. It is possible that your child just had a better PG teacher, than the teacher that did LiPS and OG. I think one experience is just an anecdote.

—des

Des,

I did most of the teaching of PG so hard to argue that he had a better tutor for PG, although we also went to two intensives which helped a lot. The LIPS teacher did not impress me which is why I paid more to go to a Lindamood clinic for Seeing Stars. Still, I think learning names for lip poppers ect. was for my son an extra memory load. His long term Neuronet therapist told me she thought LIPS was developed for a child with a different profile than mine and if you combined that with an inflexible therapist, well, you can see why it wouldn’t work. I am not saying LIPS isn’t a good program. It clearly is but we were able to get sound symbol relationships down with PG, which is a much cheaper option.

With OG, the teacher was recommended by his neurologist as the best teacher around. She seemed very skilled but I just didn’t like the methodology with names like open syllables, closed syllables, which isn’t to say it wouldn’t work. But it just seemed like a lot more things to remember for a kid who had a hard enough time remembering sound-symbol relationships. Again, other kids with different profiles may not have had the same difficulties as my son. But here I don’t think the teacher was weak at all.

I think the success of any method is dependent partly the skill of the teacher, although some kids may not fit the profile the program was developed for as well. . I know someone who took their kid to the PG clinic in Orlando (they lived there) and had no success. They spent a summer at a Lindamood clinic and the child was reading. Her issues were more visual and Seeing Stars is far better at that piece than PG and probably OG as well.

Beth

I am a PG-trained tutor. I am very disappointed in the way the company has evolved but I use the basic principles of my training. I teach blending and code as PG presents it but I don’t always use their workbooks. The ABeCeDarian workbooks are better as well as one privately available by another tutor trained in PG. I also use the BRI (Beginning Reading Instruction) books, especially for young students. BRI books systematically introduce code and teach blending, very consistent with PG.

Beth, it IS possible you are a better teacher than the OG teacher recommended by the neurologist. You’re a smart cookie, babe. :-)
But there is a point where one program might work better for one kid than another. The beginning code stuff (I can’t comment on ABeCeDiarn as I haven’t seen it) goes faster in PG than in some OG systems. (And I don’t think they are all created equal either.) I don’t think they handle handle more advanced code and spelling as well. The point of the syllable types is to tell you how to pronounce the vowels, but concentrating on the NAMES vs what, why, can be distracting at best. I like the way Sue Barton words it, “now you know this is a closed syllable, so what?” I have been watching kids mark up syllable types for a week now, and I wonder if they know why or what they are doing this for. (There are two other teachers teaching two different groups.) Ultimately, spelling is pretty rule bound, unless you have a kid who can look at the examples given ala PG and say “this looks right”. Either they all will look good or they all will look wrong. So with this poor visual memory kid, you need rules. So I guess I am agreeing with you. :-)

But it does matter the way you teach something, and if you let the kids know there is a reason for it. I think LiPS is way way overkill for most kids, but for the right kid is a great thing.

—des

I found that when you had enough real practice, that in the long run, knowing the names of the syllables did help. We did have the advantage of being a school for LD students, and a program that was more flexible. It could be more flexible because when we needed to know when to flex, we could talk to experienced teachers about that child’s profile and what to emphasize. I had some who took a year to get through closed and vce (for these guys I have wondered if the approach that blends those two a bit would have worked better or worse). IT wasn’t the program’s speed, it was their speed (it was more common to get through the first five of six, and some went through all six (usually ones who didn’t have major decoding issues).
THe names and rules, though, were always immersed in that multisensory practice that was a whole lot more important than whether the student remembered the names of syllables. That’s where I think training is really important (so the well-meaning verbal soul isn’t thinking that the student needs to drill the names more before getting to the reading part.)

Actually, I have found we CAN be very flexible. Of course I think we all are as flexible as we are able to be, if you get my drift.
*Eventually* I will teach the syllalble names, when the name will help the kid figure out the sound of the vowel and not just to teach the name for the sake of the program.

It reminds me of a dog training concept, sounds awful but true. You can’t teach the name of the trick, until the dog has that trick in it’s repetoire.
If not, it’s useless. You can say “shake” til your blue in the face, it won’t get the dog to do it.

The syllable type will only help once the idea of a closed syllable (say) is backwards and forewards in a kid’s mind. They do words (or syllables) of varying lengths and complexities, real and nonsense. And then you tell them, and it becomes a short cut. You see a closed syllable and the vowel is short. IF they can see and manipulate a closed syllable, I’ve never had anybody for whom the concept was too difficult (it’s possible I suppose though). The concept gets to automaticity and then they will know the characteristics, even if they can’t always find the word.

—des

I think des has got it here. This is a basic principle in *all* teaching. We have a lot of trouble with this in math, where some uninformed teachers try to teach the words about math but don’t get to teaching doing the math. What workds in all subjects from reading to math to skiing is:
- demonstrate the whole skill
- demonstrate the skill broken up into its smallest possible parts
- re-demonstrate the first tiny part skill
- have the student copy the first part skill
- correct and practice until that part is right
- do the second part the same way, demonstrate and copy and correct and practice
- combine the first and the second
- continue until the full skill or a functional subskill is complete
- use the skill or subskill in real life until it is comfortable
- teach the language AS you are teaching the skills; say the words AS you model the skills, and use those words to key the student as to what to do AS the student is performing the skill.
- encourage the student to tell you back what to do next, using the language correctly.

In teaching syllables I haven’t ever used the words closed and open, I have always gone with ends-with-consonant and ends-with-vowel, but the same policy applies:
Ask the student
Where do you divide the syllable? Why?
How do you say that part? (cover the other parts of the word if that helps)
What is the vowel sound? Why?
Then say “OK, that’s a closed (open) syllable so the vowel is short (long)”

After many, many times through this process, you can ask the student
“What kind of syllable is that again? and see if they come out with it.

Sorry, I must have missed this one with school starting back. I think Phono-Graphix is an efficient and effective way to teach the alphabetic code and phonemic awareness. However, I have changed over to using ABeCeDarian because it is a more well developed program. (I am trained in both, plus Lindamood-Bell).

www.abcdrp.com

Janis