What Reading Program has worked when all others have failed?

Diane McGuinness wrote a superb book on this subject: [i]Why Our Children Can’t Read; And What We Can Do About It[/i] It analyzes America’s literacy problems and critiques the popular reading programs. I learned so much from this book, especially what to look for in a reading program.

The program that worked best for us was one based on Orton Gillingham. In fact the effect of the program seemed almost magical to me. My daughter could not read before she started it and was strongly resisting my attempts to get her to try. Within a few weeks of doing Orton Gillingham sessions twice a week, she became very excited about reading. After a couple of months, she was reading at a basic level, and she progressed from there. It seemed to open up some window for her. The program used a multi-sensory and step by step approach that worked well. Phonic sounds were taught not only by how they sound but by how they feel when you say them (tongue placement etc.). Her tutor also used a lot of hands on techniques allowing my daughter to write in shaving cream, manipulate cards, and move a colored transparant strip when she read to keep track of where she was on the page. Her tutor also utilized nonsense words to make sure my daughter was learning to actually decode. She also was always playing games with my daughter to keep her attention and allowed my daughter to follow her quirks. For example, my daughter seems to learn better when she is standing. I was surprised when I observed one of her sessions that she kept standing up and sitting down. I’d never seen her do that in class. Today I actually let her dance at home when we are going over spelling words because the movement seems to help her. All this said, I think these programs often depend on the student, the tutor and how the program is administered. We moved and have started a new tutoring program that also supposedly utilizes some Orton Gillingham approaches. However, I found their approach to not be as effective because they want my daughter to memorize key words to associate with sounds, such at blue for “bl.” The problem is my daughter’s memory is not always the best and since she has been reading now for awhile she has made her own associations for many sounds. I asked her what the key word was for “bl” and she said black. That’s works for me (!) but technically that’s not the “right” answer. Anyway, I would recommend giving Orton Gillingham a try.
[Modified by: rogomom2 on November 06, 2007 02:43 PM]

I am a learning disabilities teacher and private reading tutor and am trained in the Lindamood-Bell programs,Phono-Graphix, SRA Corrective Reading, LANGUAGE!, and ABeCeDarian. The one that I find most user-friendly that also gets excellent results is ABeCeDarian. It has similar philosophy to some of the above programs but has a structured sequential lesson format which is easier to learn to use that some others. It also incorporates automaticity and fluency work into the lessons. The website is www.abcdrp.com.