Audiblox plus Phonographix

Re: It's okay to do both

The sight word exercise in Audiblox is actually designed to improve visual processing skills. The intent is to increase the field-of-vision and therefore reduce the number of saccades (visual stops) necessary to read a line of print.

If you notice confusion developing, or if you are really concerned about conflict, then I would just postpone the reading component of Audiblox until after Phono-Graphix is finished. You would only do it then if you suspect a visual processing problem while reading.

Mary

Re: It's okay to do both

The Lindamood-Bell LIPS program also uses both a phonemic (sounding out approach) and a sight word approach. There are many words in the English language that do not follow the code and can’t be sounded out and therefore need to be memorized as sight words. We can thank the Dutch who wrote many of our 1st dictionaries and the many other countries who contributed to the development of the English language for all the irregularities.

Lindamood-Bell/IdeaChain

Thanks MaryMN for your advice. After reading Ann’s message about Lindamood-Bell I looked up one of your older messages, Mary, on the Vegsource site where you mentioned IdeaChain. I went into the web site, and because my daughter has a problem with visualisation, mental imaging I thought this sounded interesting. Could you do Phono-Graphix and this at the same time (I don’t want to overdo things!) or to Phono-Graphnix and maybe IdeaChain later? As always, your advice would be appreciated.
Karen

Re: Lindamood-Bell/IdeaChain

Karen,

You could do both of these programs together also. It really depends on how much your child can deal with, and how much *you* can deal with. This can vary dramatically from family to family.

Since you are dealing with an 11yo, and you will also have help from a sped teacher, I think you could do Reading Reflex, Audiblox and IdeaChain simultaneously for two months without a problem. You would want to schedule time for all them 5 days a week. If you schedule each one for 40 minutes, with a 20-minute break in-between, you are done in under 3 hours.

The biggest problem is likely to be Audiblox, because the exercises can get boring after awhile. You might need to adjust your scheduling after a few weeks. You could look at doing each program for 30 minutes instead of 40, or breaking one or more of them into two 20-minute sessions. Don’t feel locked into what you decide beforehand. You will learn a lot as you go, and you have the freedom to individually tailor what you do to accommodate your child’s needs — what she can handle, what works most efficiently for her, etc.

When my daughter was 8-1/2, we made the most progress with Reading Reflex during Easter break from school. We did five 40-minute sessions per day in a row that week, and the gains were highly visible.

In terms of compatibility, all three programs would work together. You really don’t have to worry about conflicts. I would start with a fairly ambitious schedule because, if your daughter sees gains quickly, this provides a big boost to self-esteem and motivation. If instead it’s too much, then just cut back and adjust until you get to an optimal level for her. If it involves dropping one of the programs, fine. However, I found that I had a tendency to underestimate what my 11yo could handle. Usually the limitation ended up being *my* ability to handle the daily schedule, not hers!

Mary

No, it's not okay to do both

Karen, one of the tips for users of the Audiblox program, in one of the latest Audiblox newsletters, stated:

Although it does teach reading, the MAIN objective of the Reading Exercise in the Audiblox programs is to teach a proper technique of reading. Once the learner has mastered this technique, it be can be followed up with phonics instruction, if necessary.

One of the ingredients in this reading technique is to widen the learner’s recognition span (also called eye-span). When a person reads, his eyes engage in a series of quick movements across the page with intermittent fixation pauses. The more often the eyes have to pause for fixations, the slower the reading speed will be. The wider the recognition span, the less often the eyes have to fixate and the faster the learner will be able to read.

A learner, who is taught to read according to phonics instruction from the very beginning, is taught the exact opposite. He is taught to break up every word into small units, thereby narrowing his recognition span. This hampers his reading fluency, which in its turn hampers his comprehension. However, if one first teaches a learner a proper reading technique and only afterwards follows it up with phonics instruction, the learner will tend not to break up every word into smaller units. Of course, it is possible to unlearn this tendency, although having to unlearn a bad habit and then learn a good one is always more difficult and time consuming than learning to do something the right way immediately.

To properly master this reading technique, it is important to display the word cards to the learner at the speed demonstrated on the Audiblox 2000 video. It is also important not to add new word cards if the learner is hesitant about any of the old word cards. If you are meticulous especially about the last-mentioned piece of advice, you will find that the learner’s ability to spell correctly will also improve dramatically.

Once a learner has completed Level 3 of the program, meaning that he can read all the yellow, white and blue word cards, you may consider doing phonics instruction as an alternative to the Reading Exercise. In other words, continue with Level 4 but replace the Reading Exercise with phonics instruction. If you wish to do this, we advise that you use a program such as AVKO’s Sequential Spelling Series. Visit the web site www.spelling.org/Catalogue.htm for details.

Mary, I assume you call Audiblox boring because of its repetitiveness (your message below). In the book, The Right to Read, the importance of repetition is explained in detail. In short, Audiblox uses repetition to automatize certains skills that are prerequisites to reading. In the good old days, schools placed great emphasis on repetition. Due to the influence of John Dewey, repetition was removed from the school system and is now considered to be boring and mindless. Unfortunately, automatization cannot take place without repetition, and is one of the reasons why so many children complete school without being able to read properly. This is concurrent with the latest neurological research. In recent years, neuroscientists have discovered that key synapses between brain cells can only be formed through repetition.

Karen, do your child a favor and continue with the boring program. My son’s reading was four years below grade level when we started, he is now two years above grade level. Also read Pat’s message, posted somewhere on this board, who had great success with her daughter. Audiblox is HARD work, but the dividends are most satisfying.

Btw, John Dewey was a socialist, and the greatest enemy of socialism was the private consciousness that seeks knowledge in order to exercise its own individual judgement and authority. High literacy gave the individual the means to seek knowledge independently, which was detrimental to the social spirit needed to build a socialist society. Removing repetition was one of the methods he used to erode literacy.

Re: How does Audioblox improve reading?

Did your child’s reading improve so much just due to Audioblox? Did he or she already know how to decode before doing Audioblox? I guess I am trying to understand how Audioblox could have such a dramatic effect on reading without teaching decoding. I can see how Audioblox could improve processing that would be interfering with fluent reading but my reading of the literature says that reading is primarily an auditory rather than visual process. I also have repeatedly read that kids top out in about third grade learning by sight alone. Your child obviously got beyond that level. How?

Re: How does Audioblox improve reading?

Just Audiblox, with a lot of help from their head office.

According to The Right to Read we read with our eyes, and therefore reading is primarily a visual process. I’ll summarize the theory to the best of my ability:

First, learning is a stratified process, in which one skill has to be mastered first, before subsequent skills can be mastered. If you miss a step, you won’t be able to master consecutive steps.

In any communication situation, of which reading is one, the reception of a message must take place first, before one will be able to decode the message. Decoding is defined in The Right to Read as the ability to decipher (understand) a message. Decoding therefore follows reception, which in its turn is followed by learning.

When reading, there are mainly two actions involved in the reception of a message: concentration and perception. Concentration is an act of will that cannot be automatized. But it is also a skill, and therefore has to be taught.

Because we read with our eyes, visual perception is considered to play the most important role in the reading act. Visual perceptual skills of importance include the ability to discriminate, synthesize and analyze in terms of color, foreground-background, form, size and position in space. While the ability to discriminate is important in both reading and spelling, the ability to synthesize is more important in reading, and the ability to analyze in spelling. These skills must all be automatized before a person will be able to read fluently.

The decoding of a message, the next step, depends on the following skills: a person’s ability to integrate the message that he is reading with his foreknowledge, his ability to classify objects, the Gestalt principle of closure and imagination. Only after a person has decoded a message can learning take place; the most important skill being memory. Memory, however, is also foundational to perception and decoding.

Last but not least, language is considered to be at the very bottom of this whole construct. If a child has a language deficit, his language ability has to be addressed too, otherwise he will not get the full benefit from Audiblox.

The Audiblox program develops and automatizes all of the above-mentioned skills.

Besides teaching a reading technique, through the reading component of Audiblox, the child overlearns a small number of words, which eventually carries over to the child’s general reading. I did not believe that it would happen but it did. It does not merely teach the ordinary sight reading method - not if you do all the blocks exercises and the reading exercise correctly, anyway.