Tutor needs assistance...

Sarah,

You can either buy the book, Reading Reflex, by Carmen and Geoffrey McGuinness or order materials from ABeCeDarian www.abcdrp.com. Either one of those will teach him to read. He needs a structured, systematic reading program that teaches phonemic awareness and phonics. Reading Reflex actually would be helpful to read even if you used the ABCeDarian materials.

Good luck!
Janis

Yes, definitely a good structured system, as recommended above or others of the same sort.
I have made up a bunvch of tutoring outlines/book in progress and you are wlecome to them by email, free no strings attached; just email a request to [email protected]

Why shouldn’t he have experienced, qualifed support in Special Ed? I don’t understand? Please expalin.

I think the school has referred him for reading tutoring as intervention before referring him for testing. I think this is good when the intervention is effective. It is rather worthless when they hire tutors and do not equip them for the job.

Sarah, I was just thinking of another program that was designed for tutors or paraprofessionals to implement and it is called Sound Partners by Sopris West. You might want to look it up on the website. I haven’t used it, but I have read about a study where it had good results. I admire you for trying to seek out something worthwhile to use to help this child.

Janis

Wow, never thought I would hear of that program again. I tutored my child with it. It was free to me from the school district as they were just trying it out. I did not see much gain from that, so I found a Spalding tutor and got good progress to a point and then the tutoring stalled. I then changed to Barton and found it the best for my child’s needs. My child is dyslexic as she reverses letters and numbers and has poor working memory. I am amazed that she is remembering spelling rules and has gotten more fluent with the Barton program. It is an expensive program but it is scripted and also DVD to show you what to do.

This tutor is very caring to be asking about programs she can use to help a child in an intervention setting. Even Sound Partners is a little too expensive once you buy the readers. Probably the most economical solution is Reading Reflex since the materials are bascially provided in the book. I would think that Barton would be far too expensive and time consuming for this situation.

Janis

I agree, and if it were a tutor that got paid anything Barton would end up paying for itself, but with someone who isn’t paid anything it would be a bit much (or a lot much!).

—des

With the” Sound Partners” they used the “Bob Books” which I checked out from the library at the time,so there was no expense there. The program didn’t include pictures which would have helped my child. ” Reading Reflex” has pictures as I remember for the sounds. Loaned my “Reading Reflex” to another mom, haven’t heard how she is doing with it, with her two boys.

Actually, Reading Reflex does not have pictures for the sounds There were some pictures for words which were optional, but not for the individual sounds. I believe their philosophy is that picture associations for the sounds would be an extra unnecessary layer of learning. Lindamood-bell doesn’t do it either.

I agree that a good reading program is worth every penny (and I certainly have paid for most of my training and materials myself), but Barton is a long term program and just not ideal for an intervention program, IMO. I’d say the same about Wilson and other OG type programs that are intended take two or three years to complete.

That’s a great idea to borrow the readers from the library when they are trade books! That would make Sound Partners affordable as the other items would cost under $100. But I guess I’m still partial to ABeCeDarian since it is what I primarily use for intervention and for dyslexic kids.

Janis

What kinds of mistakes did he make with the basic words?

I’d jump right in with “letterbox lessons” ( http://www.auburn.edu/~murraba - look for “letterbox lessons’) if, as is common, he’s making reasonably intelligent but wrong guesses at basic words. This kind of lesson (which is pretty much the foundation for Reading Reflex but it’s free from The Reading Genie site :)) addresses both sound/symbol correspondence and getting those letters in order, and it’s very multisensory.

Mmm… it’s a reasonable question: why shouldn’t he get qualified help… BUT… there is no reason to assume that that’s what is offered by Special Ed. It’s very possible that he’ll just get bumped into a special ed classroom that does not begin to meet his needs. However, if the main issue is simply the fact that it’s Special Ed (whether because of stigma or simply not wanting to accept a painful reality), then it’s worth including SpEd as an appropriate option.