intervention question for dyslexia

My son moved 3 grade levels in reading in 6 months with PG.

I would recommend buying the book and doing the tests with him to see what area he has difficulty with.

I actually stopped using PG after he made such great gains. I noticed he backtracked recently on a few of his segmenting and phoneme awareness skills.I blame the guessing that is encouraged at school. I pulled that old tatered book out and started to go things over again.

I also like the lips workbooks for teaching visualization but the biggest bang for the buck is surely PG.
I like the way they teach multisyllable words a little better.

Linda,
My son is doing the same thing and I’m thinking the school must be responsible for this too (or his memory?).

I recently pulled out PG and have started using it again. I also made flash cards of all the “sound pictures” (I have my son tell me all the different sounds each can make).

One reason I’ve held off on ordering Seeing Stars is that I thought it might be too similar to PG, but if it has more helpful techniques for working on multisyllables (along with directions on teaching “symbol imagery”?), then I should probably order it.

Just how similar, and how different, are they?

Laura, I’ve been trying to sort out the same questions. I am doing PG, so if we go ahead and go to Lindamood this winter break I am hoping he’ll be past most of their Lips program, and ready for seeing stars. I think its the next step beyond the basic code. I figure alot of repetition even of things he theoretically already knows won’t hurt - looking for some automaticity here.

We have used a combo of LMB with a one-on-one tutor, PG at home, and Earobics both at home and as part of our son’s speech/language program at school. We have watched, as have both the LMB tutor and his speech language pathologist, for signs of him becoming confused, but so far, that hasn’t happened.

He is continuing to make good progress, so I can’t really isolate which program is the most effective.

My husband (also a teacher) and I continue to be frustrated at the all the guessing the schools encourage both of our third graders to do. It really interferes with the very systematic reading methods we are trying (and spending a lot of money on) to instill. And they have a terrific teacher (and a great one last year, too), but unfortunately, we have an entire generation of teachers who have been taken in by the WL myth.

I believe that every parent, whether with a learning-disabled child or not, should be using PG! It’s a great program. The other book, “How to Increase Your Child’s Verbal Intelligence” has also been of great help to all three of our boys.

I think seeing stars is better for the multisyllable prefix and suffix stuff.

You can order just that workbook for I think about $6. If you did PG I wouldn’t order all the workbooks. I would just stay with reading reflex to empahsize all the sound pictures and do the activities that practice segmenting and blending. The reason that I like seeing stars is that it gives a workbook style approach to teaching the multisyllable stuff. We do a page a day.

PG explains this well but I found it hard to teach from the book.

My son also has problems with reversals and I plan to try visual perception skills excercises in “Helping Children Overcome Learning Difficulties” by Jerome Rosner. These are peg board designs that slowly increase in difficulty that the child has to copy. We are doing Lindamood lips with great success, but this is not a quick fix. We have invested over a 120 hours and he is not at grade level but has gone from being an none reader to reading simple chapter books. We have also done FFW, Lexia and Vision Therapy.

I am interested to read the comments re: backsliding after doing PG. My son is doing the same thing since school started, and I have been thinking of doing PG again. I was thinking I must have done something wrong - or my son’s APD was really getting in the way more than I thought.

I have been curious about the Seeing Stars program - does anyone have any more information about that? I read a post about a specific workbook for multi-syllable words - what was the name of it?

Thanks,
Lil

One way that PG is different from LiPS and O-G programs is that there isn’t as much stress on automaticity built into the program.
There is a program specifically designed for learning more advanced multisyllable words — a post-O-G program — called The Word WOrkshop. (Http://www.thewordworkshop.com :)) I really like it — but it is new territory, not review. It teaches strategies for high school & college words (like serendipity and ornithology and compassionate) that work a little better than the strategies that work fine for important and apartment and forensic.
I believe lots of folks also use Megawords from EPS (http://www.epsbooks.com) for practice — I know that was one of the sources I used to make up lists of multisyllable words for my students to practice. (My main source, though, was literature.)

Sue,

We are going through the multi syllable material in the Advanced code manual for PG. My son is doing really well with it. In reading I notice that he doesn’t get how to divide words like serious—basically when a vowel is the syllable. Wondering what you’d recommend as followup. I have some of the Seeing STars materials plus the manual but think I didn’t buy the one workbook with multisyllable words (couldn’t imagine him ever doing them then). Or would you go to one of the sources you mentioned instead. He is only in fourth grade so some of the words you mentioned aren’t even in his vocabulary.

Or do you have any ideas about how to teach a word like serious….

Beth

I’ve noticed that about PG as well. We are working our way quickly thru the code. Much of it he;s already seen at school or with his tutor. We are thinking about doing LMB not to teach the code which he has down fairly well, but just to bang it into his brain again in an intensive fashion.

But as we read thru school assignments I am using PG to do error correction. Eventually this stuff will stick - its just takes him longer.

My son is six and we are using Pg, he knows the sounds but seems to blend them really slowly! I am not sure how to help him increase his speed!?

K.

Would he/they qualify for OT at school? This should help the spacing problems with handwriting, also AT can be very useful while their handwriting is improving. Unfortunately, my daughter age 10, still writes “vocab” as “vocad” so part of it never disappears completely. Handwriting without tears is a very good program.

I’m not a big fan of the Davis Method. I think a few have used it with some success, but I side the Victoria and those nasty four letter words: Time and Hard Work. :-)

Leah,
When your child reverses her letter such as vocad for vocab, is it counted as wrong or are points taken off? My son’s spelling test last week had 3 words that were spelled correctly excluding the fact that he reversed one letter in them “b” for “d” (desk was spelled besk). When it is so obvious that the letter was reversed (sounds are completely different), I’m not sure that it should be counted completely wrong. This happed with math also. He did three digit math correctly, except the “ones” were in the “hundreds” and “hundreds” were in the “ones” spot. (381 became 183).

He is going to begin OT this month at school. What is AT?

Annie,
In the vision therapy, did they work with your son on reversals? Was it strictly vision or did they include OT type of exercises as well?

ok I give up I know all the other programs but what is pg ?

I am going to take a stab in the dark and say that whomever referred to PG was talking about phonographix. It is from the book Reading Reflex, you can visit their website at http://www.readamerica.com

I use it with my six year old. I don’t know if I could give an accurate description of what it is. It is a lot of decoding skills, auditory learning, it works very well!! There is probably another parent here who could give you a better description!

K.