I haven’t posted here for a long time and didn’t post often but I am a regular reader and want to tell everyone who posts here thanks for your help. It started 5 years ago when my son was labeled “too smart to not be reading by now”. Thanks to a good teacher (yes, they do exsist) who told us this the quest for information began. It was followed up with a passing comment by a school phsychologist about ldonline.
Since then I have turned to this web site for much help. I posted my sons scores and received a very good interpretation of his problems. From here I learned about vision therapy. Thanks Rod. I am forever grateful. That led me on a quest to find a vision therapist. I found one (there are only a few here) and although it took longer than I expected. It put us on the road to success. The next big step began when I finally (after several years of looking) found a program started by a retired educator to help struggling kids. From these people I learned my son had problems with not recognizing all the sounds in words. This was another step for us. We are now working on a program that for us combines, processing and cognitive enhancement and and “reading”. In a little over 6 weeks my son has gone from absolutely hating to read and write to reading for 35 minutes (out loud to me) and being told it was time to stop. It is so exciting to finally see some progress. Last week during our 504 plan meeting the teacher who told me last year to have my son checked for ADHD said she can’t believe how much my son has improved. You should have seen the smile on his face. After an absolutely miserable 5th grade year, it began his 6th grade year with a bang. Hopefully, it will continue.
I have some reservations about the program but given the progress I’ve seen so far it has been well worth it. The hard part is, we have to do it an hour a day six days a week. We’re six weeks into an 18 week program and I’m already wondering what our next step is. I don’t think they’re set up for continuing with a child even after the program is over. One of the reasons I have reservations.
Most of what I have been able to accomplish to help my son has come because I have spent many many nights reading many many posts about learning disabilities on these bulletin boards. From these I have learned about books to read, programs to try, etc. and been bouyed up by the fact that I’m not alone.
Now that we’re finally making some real progress with reading should I begin working to get rid of his bad habits or should I wait until we’re finished with the program we’re doing?
As we’ve been reading I notice he still says “a” for “the” and vice versa and often says “when” for “then”. He also leaves off the end of the word sometimes (e.g. he doesn’t add the “s” at the end.) I have always corrected him but just getting through the text was such a problem in the past that that is all I did. Now I can see he is reading better I’m wondering how to go about eliminating these problems.
Someone once posted something about what she does to eliminate these problems. Does anyone remember who it was?
Is there a way to do some real formal “auditory analysis” (right word?) testing and how would I pursue it?
Re: Thanks! Now we're reading how do I get rid of bad habits?
I would work on it now - but not necessarily on top of other things if it would compete for focus and attention. (Victoria may disagree :-)) I’d say “okay, for the next paragraph, let’s really focus on the little words. Use your pencil to help you track along the words, and I’ll follow along” - and I’d lightly mark his errors & count them. Then I’d have him reread for fewer errors - but not for perfection, since that could take forever and you don’t have that. (The pencil part is part of *my* training, but it helps immensely with these kinds of issues; kiddo underlines under the words, I track along with my pencil over the words.)
I’d also keep track of it from day to day, looking for improvement - if a paragraph goes by that’s got fewer errors, esp. if it’s *not* when you’re focuising on it, I”d take notice.
Re: Thanks! Now we're reading how do I get rid of bad habits?
Now, this is one of the few places where I do disagree with Sue. I cannot work with one rule some of the time and another rule other times.
And when a habit is bad and you want to break it, you want to break it *all* the time, not just when somebody is watching or when you think it’s important — habits don’t work that way. I have this discussion frequently about spelling, grammar, and manners — if you are sloppy 90 percent of the time and then you try to shape up when someoe is watching, does it work?
No, you don’t want the correction to be stressful, but yes, you want to keep it up as much as possible. He has enough time to practice bad habits all day at school and you want to really spend your time with him undoing that.
I track with the pencil or pen as Sue describes. I signal the student when he makes and error. At first I have to say something, but as time goes on he clues in when I stop and repeat the pencil, or when I say “ahem”. If it is an a-the guess (which bugs the heck out of me, not visually similar at all) I just wait for him to get it right. If it is a when-then, I tap under the first letter. If it is a multisyllable, I support him sounding it out. This is relaxed and fairly fluid reading, no long stops but with continued correction and assistance.
The occasional student will try to get away with errors by just running on and not stopping. In that case I will talk over them and in extreme cases put my hand or a card over the page, then redirect them to the beginning of the sentence and start again.
It does not take long for the student to realize when you are *serious* about accurate reading (and since yes I *am* serious I can’t do it sometimes and not other times) and then he starts to attend more because it really does matter, really does make a difference.
it takes six months to a year to get a new habit ingrained well enough to let up, and whenever the student jumps to a new level of difficulty there will be backsliding. Persevere.
I have worked this way with several students and have just had another wonderful breakthrough (our third huge jump) with one guy in Grade 9 that I’ve been working with for just over a year. He is now reading an adult novel!! Amazing and funny. More on this in another thread later when I have time to write it up.
Nancy3
Is it the PACE program that you are doing? Along with Master the Code? If so, I wouldn’t worry too much about corrections at this point, since they will probably take care of themselves with progress through the programs.
However, if your son doesn’t mind corrections and they don’t interfere too much with reading flow, I’d probably do them anyway — to draw his attention to the fact that he is making these mistakes (since he is undoubtedly unaware of them as he makes them). To make corrections, I use a mechanical pencil with the lead retracted to point to the mistake from above the line of text (less interfering than pointing from below, in my experience). I leave the pencil point there until the child comes back to correct the mistake. This doesn’t interrupt the flow of reading too much, gives the child some control over when he breaks off to make the correction, but is just intrusive enough to motivate the child to pay enough attention to eliminate these small mistakes. It also keeps the corrections positive. Most children do not become angry or frustrated with this methodology.
Hope this helps!
Nancy
Re: Thanks! Now we're reading how do I get rid of bad habits?
Practicing oral reading without error correction is just further ingraining bad habits as far as I am concerned. Once they understand they will have to reread a sentence everytime they make an error, they have incentive to be more careful. And I am primarily speaking of reading text with code the child has already been taught. I do it like the others using a pen or pencil point to call attention to the error.
Janis
I may be the person you are thinking of; I work on correcting this guessing habit *all* the time. Yes, you DO need to correct it. Inaccurate readers only fall farther and farther behind and get more and more frustrated as they go through middle and high school, and if the problem is still allowed to slide they hit a real crash in college.
I have posted answers to questions like yours and others for a few years now. Rather than re-post the whole kit and kaboodle all the time, I have instead started to send out copies of the posts (now up to a book in progress) by email. I send out the whole packet and you can work on the parts you need.
Email me at [email protected]
(If you already have the stuff, then email and ask me for specifics)