phonological awareness

I am not familiar with the PAT but the LAC is a very thorough test that has good history and reliability so I am inclined to go with the tutor’s assessment. Phonemic awareness is literally just what it sounds like- the awareness of the different phonemes (sounds) in a word. If your daughter isn’t able to make those discriminations then learning the necessary sounds/symbol correspondances (letters and sounds) will be really hard because she won’t be able to “hear” them as individual sounds in a word. I can’t comment on why the school’s results are saying something different because I don’t know what the PAT assesses specifically.
Robin

Maria, I am not sure if this is what you are looking for but I posted some information on the “teaching student with LD on this web site” on 10/22/01. Just go to that board, click on “search” and type in “Donna in MO” under “authors”. Then click on “10/22/01” post.

There are different types of dyslexia. My son sounds like your daughter, he can sound out words but only with a lot of effort, knows the phonic rules, and spells everything like it sounds.

Keep digging for answers. When you know what the exact problem is, then and only then can you find the solution.
Donna in MO

What you might want to do is see if you can get a complete speech and language evaluation. Find a good clinic and call them to ask if your insurance would cover it. This is what I did, and the evaluation was covered on referral from our GP. That type of evaluation is very thorough. Ours included both the LAC and the CTOPP (Comprehensive Test of Phonological Processing), and several other tests of reading, language and comprehension.

You can take the results of an evaluation like this to the school and the school is legally obligated to take it into consideration. You can read more about this in the “LD in Depth” section of this website, under “assessment” and “IEP”.

LMB is good, but expensive. Many kids do just as well with Phono-Graphix (a parent using the book “Reading Reflex” at home, or a certified PG tutor). A lot depends on the severity of the difficulties. I usually advise parents to try RR first and, if that doesn’t work, then try LMB. The good thing about Phono-Graphix is that you are able to tell very quickly if the child is responding or not. Typically if you don’t see significant gains with RR after 12 hours of one-on-one, or significant gains with a certified PG tutor after 6 hours of one-on-one, it’s a good idea to check out other options.

Mary

She may be able to blend phonemes auditorially but when confronted with the orthography making the connection between what she hears and the letters in print could very well be where she is hanging up. The LAC for some children can be very abstract as they don’t understand how to manipulate the blocks and can’t make the connection that each block represents a phoneme. I would also recommend a speech and language evaluation.

If she is spelling very phoneticially then that tells me she can make some connections to what the words sound like but she doesn’t have a visual memory for what they are supposed to look like. She may not know all the vowels and the various ways that they are spelled. For instance, the ai in said is pronounced differently that the ai in sail. ea in read can be pronounced two different ways with a long e and a short e sound. weight and way both have a long a sound but they are spelled differently There are lots of inconsistencies with the how the words are spelled and the sounds that you hear.

I would go for the private tutoring and also ask her if she uses Read Naturally so that she can increase her knowledge of the sound symbol relationship. I like Read Naturally for developing fluency in reading and to practice their reading in context. Read as much as you can with her and ask her questions to make sure that she understands what is going on. Do lots of phonemic awareness games. Reading Reflex has puzzles with manipulative letters in it that help train a child’s phonemic awareness.

Phonics ability and awareness comes at a level above the auditory discrimination level. The ability to hear the differences in sounds PRIOR to connecting the sound to a symbol has to come before any work with phonics. For instance some kids can’t consistently hear the difference between the short vowels “u” and “e”. Or “i” and “e”.Most kids do it naturally. Some don’t. No amount of phonics work will remediate the auditory discrimination level. I suspect that the LAC test showed your child to be struggling at the auditory level. The LMB “LIPS” method remediates this level more thoroughly than any other program out there. If you can’t find a tutor you can afford, look into taking the LMB program offered for trainers at a regional center. The LIPS program is a 2 day course. When I took it, there were a small number of parents also taking the course so they could work with their child. It’s not hard to teach.

Also, it usually takes only a few months for a child to move through the LIPS program at the auditory level. Basically, it combines auditory discrimination work with phonics work into a seamless program. But the inital work is largely auditory discrimination. You might not have to have your child tutored for a very long time in this method. I’d suggest that after the LIPS program, you can continue the work yourself with Reading Reflex which is very good but not as comprehensive at the auditory level.

Our school gave a similar test - it was called The Phonological Awareness Test (assuming maybe same thing as yours?). DD scored average to above average in all categories except deletion.

I had an earlier test from a reading center that showed otherwise and also the Gibson Cognitive test (PACE) and it showed her ONLY weakness was auditory processing/word attack.

Since I had 2 outside evaluators tell me there was a problem and I have since learned not to trust my school - I ended up getting trained in PACE/Master the Code and we are doing the program right now.

My advice is to get a couple other outside tests done and don’t put all your weight on the PAT? Write a letter to the school (put it in writing) that you are concerned with the PAT results because you have had 2 other tests(get a 2nd one done) that show results otherwise and you request that the school revisit this - that you believe they are not addressing the right problem areas and that your child needs to have phonological processing addressed in IEP. I am finding I get much more response when I write a letter. Also, copy the district SPED ED person.

Our progress with PACE so far? We have almost completed all the auditory processing exercises in the PACE program and are over halfway done with the other PACE exercises. We have just started MTC - working on the second level.

She has not had any problems with the Base code/Auditory Processing in PACE. She is even mastering deletion (AAD) now. However, since we started MTC(which is basically the same exercises except they start introducing the advanced code) - she is having problems- right off the bat??? The sounds represented by 2 letter symbols followed by a vowel are harder for her? (ex. quin, shox, chez etc.) She knows the sound in isolation, but when you put it in a word, the vowel sound she will guess at and get wrong -instead of blending it. It’s obvious to me that even those simple advanced code symbols are not automatic for her. (Note: she can still get the drills with the metronome, but I have to slow it way down from the speed she was at with PACE AP exercises. Not having that extra beat of thinking time is throwing her off and putting her in the guessing mode.)

With my dd, I believe her biggest problem is that she can’t remember the sound/symbol very well(‘naming’ in general is a problem for her -effects her whole expressive language)- her discrimination is good. I also think that she is not ‘integrating’ her visual memory and visualization well - I use to wonder if she even had any ability to visualize. Now I am learning that she does visualize well - she just doesn’t tranfer it?

I can’t say we have seen any real ‘changes’ from the program yet - some real subtle ones. I’m still hopefull - we are just now hitting the areas that are challenging to her and I think it’s addressing alot of her weaknesses. We will continue it to the end.

P.S. as for the school - beware that you may get what you wished for. Our school has since included more phonological processing into dd’s program (they claim they are doing Lips). However, what it is turning out to be, is once a week the specialist comes into the classroom and spends time during writing period with dd ‘tapping’ out sounds as she writes. Since they are helping other kids too - I figure she gets maybe 10min. max, once per week - one on one help. This is completely worthless when you are trying to improve cognitive abilities.