Advice for mom of slow reader - testing indicates rapid auto

Well- it is hard without the other info from the testing but the ones you listed suggest that he is the sort of child who processes visual details slowly and takes extra time to take the walk around his brain to find the info he needs. So the recommendation for extra time is actually quite accurate… When you look for teaching methods you will want multisensory methods that allow new learning to be presented in small increments with lots of opportunity to practice to automaticity. Phonographix is a good place to start- but I would be inclined to actually tutor him with the program rather than simply apply the strategies. Don’t try to make him faster until you know he is comfortable with all the letter sound relationships he is learning and with applying them in the controlled stories.

He will need specifically oriented instruction for a while and will require accommodations for his rate of processing for a while also. I can’t really get into those without more info though- I wouldn’t want to be misleading. I am assuming his vision and hearing are okay?

Robin

Hi Maja,

My son has rapid naming problems also. If you will do a search on this board, either using my name or “rapid naming”, you can find some posts and recommended research articles on this topic. (may have to search back 6 to 9 months.) However, I haven’t found any specific reading program that addresses this issue.

NeuroNet is the only program that I found to have specific tasks to improve this. You can find more info on this at www.neuronetonline.com.

If you do find information in your search, please share it because I would also like to know.

Donna in MO

Donna, I assume you’ve read up on IM (interactive metronome) as well. It sounds from my superficial reading that they both try to get at some of the same internal timing issues. Can you shed any light on how they are the same, differ, overlap?

My son has done both IM and Neuronet. They are quite different. The audiologist who we did IM with has also been trained in NN (but is not who we have done NN with). She used the analogy of a cake—NN is the cake and IM is the frosting. NN is much broader than IM. IM is more exact than NN. In terms of timing, NN deals with finding your own rhythm for the most part and IM is keeping to an external rhythm.

They are both good programs. We turned to NN when my son scored so high on the IM pretest that the audiologist recommended we do other therapy first. We did NN instead of sensory integration therapy with an OT. We took a break from NN to do IM.

Interestingly enough, my son has been pretty stuck on the exercises NN uses to remediate rapid naming. His patterns were way outside the normal remediation. After IM, he made a big jump. I am hoping that he now will be able to achieve visual verbal integration.

Still, prior to IM, we saw much progress with rapid naming in reading both from NN and from using Great Leaps in school. NN helped quite a bit—went from 30 wpm to 70. The school then started with Great Leaps which further helped him with fluency.

Beth

I don’t know a lot about IM, but my dc will be doing it this summer. I am hoping that it will address her rapid automatic naming problems.

For now her speech and learning therapist is having me show about 30 picture cards to dd. We go over the cards first so that she knows exactly what is on the picture (some are confusing such as a picture of a furnace). Then I time her by flashing the pictures at her and she tells me what they are. The goal is to get 1 picture per second. I hope this makes sense.

I am hoping that IM will help her with timing as well as with her memory.

HTH,
Jan P.

I agree with Beth’s assessment of both programs.

My son did IM before I knew that he had a rapid naming problem. But after doing IM, my son was finally able to complete the timed math tests at school which he was VERY proud of. My son knows math and is good at math but always had difficulty naming off math facts quickly. So IM was a big help in that area and I would say that because of an improvement in this area that it also helped with general processing of information. I just didn’t have a pre IM and a post IM test for measuring gains with rapid naming nor was I monitoring this skill as I didn’t know that it was a problem.

Doing NeuroNet has also helped with the rapid naming issue. We just need get back and work on it more. That’s sometimes a challeng when you have a 12 year old boy who isn’t as concerned about not being to read quickly as his mother is.

Wish someone had that magic pill for this rapid naming problem;o)

Donna in MO

Jan,

I find this interesting. NeuroNet does this but while doing a motor task and a balance task at the same time. Thus, they want the goal to be 26 pictures in 30 seconds.

I hope you don’t mind me asking a bunch of questions.

When you are doing this, is your dd sitting, standing, or what? Are they pictures that your dd picks out or do you pick them out? How many sets do you go through a day? How long will you do have to do this to see changes? Will this transfer to reading?

Thanks for your answers.

Donna in MO

No magic pill or anything, but one thing that helps in general is overlearning. A lot of people and a lot of programs allow or encourage a child to move on fast as soon as a certain skill is at a barely passable level. Some kids continue to develop and master the old skills while learning new ones; others get totally lost.
You want to get a good phonics program with lots and lots of *varied* drill of the *same* skills, and a good reading program with lots and lots of *varied* presentation of the *same* vocabulary. I don’t know it in person, but I have heard that Orton-Gillingham programs have this kind of mastery practice. For myself I use the *old* Ladybird Key Words reading Books 1a and 1b to 6a and 6b, up to 12a and 12b for kids whop need even more help, recently reprinted by penguin uk (not their newer stuff which alas has lost all the value in trying to be modern) and I use the “Check and Double Check” phonics workbooks from Scholar’s Choice; as the name implies, every skill is taught several times and then checked twice and also reviewed later. You need to read the instructions out loud and follow them as written, but otherwise pretty clear.
The idea of this kind of overlearning is that the skill becomes automatic, like walking, and so the brain has room for other thinking. Most of the slow readers and weak readers I meet are lacking basic phonics skills and/or mastery, so every word they see starts up a long and difficult search through the memory banks; this is what to get away from.

I’ve looked at the neuronet web site and it seems like the providers are mostly in Florida so I ‘m guessing that’s how you were able to arrange it. (Maybe if I couple a trip to Fl . for neuro net with a trip to disney… : )

However I can get IM where I live, and possibly in the final 3 weeks of summer before my son returns to school . So I may just go for it. He’s done OT in the past for motor planning, and probably would benefit from a little more ,but this seems like a good opportunity to do something that won’t negatively impact his schedule during the school year, and may yield benefits as we roll out his other remediation in the Fall. Just thinking out loud, but always looking for advise…

I had his vision (just an optometrist) checked last year about the same time we had the testing done at school. It was okay. I haven’t had his hearing tested since he was a toddler. What sorts of hearing tests, if any, should be done?

Here are the scores I have from the tests administered by the school psychologist and the resource teacher. When he took the tests he was 7 yrs. 2 mos. Now, he is 8 yrs. 5 mos.

Woodcock-Johnson, Revised - Tests of Cognitive Ability

Cluster/Subset Score

Memory for names 103
Memory for sentences 75
Visual matching 71
Incomplete words 99
Visual closure 118
Picture vocabulary 132
Analysis-synthesis 106
Broad cognitive ability 105

Comments: These scores may be deflated, however, due to attentional interference and speed of response. He accurately matched the numbers, but his speed of doing so was slow. Consequently, his overall score may be slightly deflated, as well.

Matrix Analogies Test (MAT)

Score of 111 which ranks him at the 77th percentile and is on the high average range.

Silvaroli Informal Reading Inventory

Read 85% of the words correctly at the preprimer level,
Read 80% of the words correctly at the primer level,
Read 45% of the words correctly at the 1st grade level

Daniel kept looking at the picture and not reading. These attentional difficulties interfered with his reading accuracy. However, he as able to comprehend what he read at the preprimer and pimer levels, and his listening comprehension was adequate at the first grade level.

My comment. He does this a lot. I’ve come to the conclusion (but I could be wrong) this is an avoidance tactic. Reading is difficult and he doesn’t want to do it so instead of reading he looks at the pictures. He also stops when there aren’t any pictures. During the past year I switched from reading a certain amount of minutes to reading a certain number of pages.

Gray Oral Reading Tests - Diagnostic (GORT-D)

Comment. In all areas, he scored within the average range. A strength was deomstrated in the area of decoding. … On the paragraph reading subtests, even though Daniel’s performance was in the average range, it is noteworthy that he consistently obtained 0 points on the time it took him to read the passage.

Comprehensive Test of Phonological Processing (CTOPP)

Phonological awareness 109
Phonological memory 91
Rapid naming 70
Alt. phonological awareness 112
Alt. rapid naming 43

These are the scores on the testing. I hope it gives you a more accurate picture of his abilities. I realize test scores aren’t everything but maybe it will help you help me help my son. (This is coming from someone who was in AP english in 9th grade and ended up in remedial english in 10th grade because of test scores! The saga was one that has followed me clear through college and then some. I don’t want my son to have to struggle as much as I have.)

If I go through the Reading Reflex program, what do we do to practice plain old reading? Reading Reflex doesn’t have very many or very good stories. Any suggestions for a boy who loves non-fiction and science-fiction?

Also, how much time should we spend each day? I have a difficult time finding large blocks of uninterrupted time. (I also have a 5 year old and a 15 month old who only takes a couple of cat naps a day?)

How do I find “controlled stories” that help him practice the skills being taught in Reading Reflex. I talked to a woman in our neighborhood who recently got a master’s degree in literacy. She gave me a list of guided reading books. It included the title and level. Would these be something worth trying?

Given that you’ve seen my other post containing his scores, what kind of specifically oriented instruction does he need? Or how do I go about determinging or finding out what specific instruction he needs?

Thanks for posting to this bulletin board. I’m grateful for all who are taking the time to help.

Thanks- it looks as though you have a very bright young man who is a somewhat deliberate processor. It takes him some time to find “stuff” and he is slow with processing abstract visual detail. Neither of these contribute to ease in acquiring basic reading skills unfortunately and I can easily understand why he is irritated and would rather do something else. The suggestion of memory issues in Memory for Sentences is probably from this slow processing- it takes him a while to process language oriented stuff so he cannot hold on to as much at a time. It doesn’t have the appearance of a real memory deficit to me though- more the impact of slow processing.

In order to learn to read he is going to need to learn to be fluent with those letter sound correspondances. This is going to be work for him and as you have found- he isn’t going to enjoy it much initially. On the other hand- he will learn them. I would work with phonographix with him for a while the way they tell you to- and let him self select his outside reading. The PG stories aren’t meant to be interesting- their purpose is to practice specific skills in a controlled way. If you let him choose what he will read- and continue to read to him-outside this skills practice then you will meet the other needs for interest. Gradually he will rely less on pictures and attack more of the text. But you are right- he needs to be kept engaged with stimulating material while he is practicing those basic skills. And I would tell him just that by the way- that these are skills/tools that he needs to practice to allow reading to become easier for him. About time- maybe twenty to thirty minutes or so each day if you can gather out that much? Or you could break it into several smaller blocks of ten or fifteen minutes.

Has he read Goosebumps yet? My son - also a SciFi fanatic- loved those- along with Animorphs. For read alouds we did the Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe and The Redwall books.

Good luck!

Robin

Maja,

You might try some meds for the ADD if you’re not already. It improved my daughter’s reading ability. She stays focused with meds. If not, she read a line and then start talking about remember the day we went fishing (like the character in the book) and blah, blah, blah. Just something I have notice. You may want to try meds and if there’s a problem it will make a night/day difference if not, no harm done.

Another thing is that if your child is bright he may be bored to tears with his reading level.

The evluator told us that my daughter’s comprehension level was “Little Women”, but her reading ability was below Pal the Pony (1st grade). Go figure!

Beth from FL

What made you decide on NN over SI OT?

Usually, and I stress the “usually”, the first thing that is done with IM is a “long form test”. This evaluation will give you data on how the child does with focussing and attention. With these numbers, the therapist will be able to “predict” how many sessions it will take to reach the child’s ending goal. (IM is a minimum of 3 weeks. I find the most need more than that.) It will also rate how the child does compared to others that are his/her age. Usually this is provided free (again I stress usually). So go have the evaluation done. (You may even ask if you can get that evaluation done now and then do the program when it best suits your schedule.) You can then decide if it’s right for the child or not.

Donna in MO

Hi Victoria,

I hear what you are saying but let me describe my son. My son does VERY well in math. He could read any number up to 12+ digits. He knows all his math facts if given time. But, put 24 numbers on sheet of paper and tell him to say them as fast as he can and you will see him really have to work his brain hard. Now, he can say them all, but not in the attoted time that is recommended nor can he say them better than my to my younger son and dd.

Now, put those same numbers on the sheet, make each number a different color. The task now is to name the number and the then say the color of that number before going onto the next number. Now he really has to work. He will say the number and the color pretty quick for about the first 3 or 4 and then the wheels really slow down. He will even pause and just look at the number and say 2 other numbers knowing that that isn’t correct before coming up with the correct number. It’s like all the information in his brain got in a crash with each other and the thinking traffic is slowed to a crawl.

When we first started this task, it will take my son about 3 minutes to complete. We since then have improved his speed but it’s still a struggle. Now put this task with letter sounds and it really becomes a painful chore even though he know his letter sounds!

To me, if my son, who loves numbers and would do math all day long, can’t read familiar numbers quickly, how can I expect him to read words quickly.

Have you taugh kids with this problem and if you have what did you find helped? Thanks for your thoughts!

Donna in MO

I think we have the same problem but I havent’ been told that by a professional. You should see the books he chooses from the library if I let him choose his books himself! There are times I find it very frustrating. I want him to choose his own books to read himself but the ones he chooses are way above his reading level and when I choose books for him to read he balks at reading them.

I like Robins suggestion of doing both though. I’ve been so caught up in just getting our son’s regular homework done on a daily basis that we haven’t done much reading to him although he loves it.

Leah,

We had done Fast Forward with my son and it had impressed on me the importance of daily work. The OT was fairly resistant to a home based program while Neuronet is organized around daily practice at home. We had no insurance for any OT work so that was part of my thinking too.

It was also the difference in the two providers. I felt like the NN provider really understood where my son was coming from while I felt somewhat out of sync with the OT. My son has auditory processing problems as well and his sensory integration problems are related. The NN provider is an audiologist. My preferences may not have extended to all OTs—just the one I was dealing with. But her practice anyway is the only one around here specializing in sensory integration.

Beth

I’ve worked with a kid who was diagnosed with Kleinfelter’s Syndrome and with his brother who was not diagnosed but had similar complex multiple disabilities. Both of them had problems similar to what you are talking about, not the same but in some ways worse.. In particular, they had real trouble with math because to do an addition problem you need to have three spaces in your memory, two for the addends and a place for the sum, and neither of them, especially the younger, could mentally keep three balls in the air at the same time.
The fact that your son is good at math is an excellent sign, something that tells us he has abilities waiting to be tapped.
The difficulty with the number/colour exercise does show a memory/planning difficulty. In fact I have a degree of this kind of problem myself and that number/colour exercise is very hard work for me. I compensate by being a very efficient reader and using other coping skills such as pointing with a finger and counting on my fingers etc. (Yes, I have an Honours BA in math, and yes, when doing anyt kind of matching exercise, including for example finding a month in a date, I still have to count on my fingers.)
None of this affects the suggestion I made above about overlearning. If a student can learn at all, and your son can, then overlearning stage 1 builds a good foundation for stage 2, and so on. A student with a memory/planning/organization problem can work around it a lot by moving as many skills as possible out of the conscious analytical thought processes and into the automatic reflex processes. This just leaves more room for concentrating on new and important ideas.
This is no magic bullet and no miracle cure, but better to be learning slowly and developing useful skills that will be retained than to move fast and stall out in failure.

Guided Reading refers to a whole language instructional concept using a variety of trade books and genres; whereas, controlled vocabulary focuses on practicing phonics syllable patterns and word families for which instruction has been given.

Guided reading is the whole language flavor of the month—or was so in my regular education classes. Those instructors didn’t like to hear about controlled-vocabulary remedial work.

Donna,
Usually the speech and learning therapist gives me 2 sets of cards per week to work with dd. Each set of cards deal with a phoneme, that is, all the cards have the same sound (may be initial, middle, or last) in the name of picture. For instance I may have cards with “f” sound: fence, feather, muffin, graph, etc. My dd is usually sitting down. I was never told to do this with her standing up or any other position.

She went in to start IM today (practice round). She will have to stand up to do the clapping if she continues to slump. I guess my dd wanted to sit during the session (I’m not sure for I was in another room). Her therapist said that she needed to have her body straight for the body’s signals (?) to go from clapping to brain. Sorry, I’m not up on all the neurolanguage talk.

I hope this makes sense. This is all new to me.
Blessings,
Jan P.

This is in regard to starting IM.

Testing for IM may not be free if the IM provider is a speech and learning therapist. More than likely he/she will want to do a pre-test for either motor processing or academics (using Woodcock/Johnson Test). At least this was my experience. I can assure you that it was not free or cheap ($200)!

My dd went to her first IM session today which was this long form test mentioned in earlier post. Her speech and learning therapist said that the normal amt. of sessions are three times per week for 5 weeks. I guess you could do it for three weeks if you go 5 times per week. My dd tested the lowest so she may have up to 8 extra sessions. This still cost me $65.00.

HTH,
Jan P.

I can relate to what Donna said about her son. My daughter is the same way. I agree about the overlearning which I think has helped my dd this year in reading. What I worry about is down the road my dd will have to be evaluated by timed tests to get into college. If she can’t think quickly now, what kind of hope do I have for her in the future.

I don’t know if IM is a magic bullet, but I am doing all I can to help her in any way that I can.

By the way, I am going to look up those Key books you mentioned. I have one old one and it looks good. Thanks for the suggestion.

Blessings,
Jan P.

I observed my son doing IM and he stood the whole time—even when he did 40 minute exercises late in the program. You are to swing your arms in a certain way to clap on beat that would be difficult to do sitting down. I personally would talk to the provider and insist she stand. Otherwise, you may not see maximum benefits.

BTW, my rate included the pretest but I paid for a package of 15 sessions for $1200. Additional sessions would have cost $70/hour. So it may just depend on how individual therapists structure their fee schedule.

Beth

No promises, and no magic bullet, BUT overlearning and extensive on-level practice often lead to a good increase in speed.
The WORST thing to do is to focus on speed — this takes the already overloaded cognitive level and adds two more last straws of clock-watching and stress, usually causing total meltdown.
Focus on accuracy and comprehension and vocabulary development, no matter how slowly. For older students with counterproductive habits you may have to take away clocks and watches. You almost always have to tel the student to slow down and look at it again. Over and over and over. If you read ten words a minute and can only do two pages a day at first, or even less, OK — better to read two pages correctly than to rush through ten pages practicing all sorts of errors. **You learn what you practice.**
As time goes on, knowledge adds up and confidence and skills build, speed usually picks up wiithout any special extra effort.
This sounds close enough to the magic promises made by the fad teachers that I hesitate to say it, but honestly, nine times out of ten it works. To do any skill fast, first you have to do it right and then you have to practice until it’s automatic. You don’t even notice that you’re fast at sewing or potato peeling or tire-changing until one day a beginner says “Wow, you’re fast” and you answer “Years of practice, kid.” Well, much the same happens with real readers. The problem is people trying to find a shortcut to bypass the years of practice part, and like many shortcuts, you usually end up in a dead end, wasting much more time backtracking than you would have taken by following the main road in the first place.
Yes, timed tests do come up. But as I keep having to drive home to my students, which is better — answer ten questions and get two right and eight wrong, or answer only six questions and get them all right?

Maja,

I’m just a parent, not a teacher so I really don’t understand the scores. We had the WISC III done and the subtests are different. So I don’t know how to interpret his scores.

If he is struggling with the reading and you can afford it, I would look into LMB or some other Orton Gillingham based program. My daughter went from 34% to 87-93% in reading in about 2 years of 2x/wkly tutoring. She also went to sensory integration OT because of her handwriting and motor planning problems.

I though LD students got accommodations including extended time in college?

While talking to the school psychologist and the resource teacher I was told that since we have the “proof” that my son has a learning problem it can be qualified as a disability and we can demand more time for exams. If the disability laws they are talking about are federal then I’ll bet that it covers even timed tests for entrance to college and even more.

Keep in mind, I know nothing of your daughter’s exact difficulties but I know from experience that one can succeed in college even if one’s brain processes information slowly. As I mentioned earlier, I was in honor’s english in 9th grade and as a result of my test scores (probably timed) I ended up in remedial english in 10th grade. I had enough initiative to go to the school couselor and get myself moved into honors english in 10th grade. This was the beginning of a long struggle for me but I made it through college with an undergraduate degree in computer science and for me it was a major triumph. I took fewer classes than the average student and studied a lot harder but I did it.

During my college years I always wondered why I was never able to finish a test. If I had finished them I probably would have been a straight A student. I found that I did really well in classes where most or all of my grade was based on labs. I’ve come to the conclusion that this was because I could spend as much time as I needed to finish the work and be successful. As a result, I was successful.

I used to work for IBM and while there discovered that I was more successful as an employee in positions that were not driven by a time line (ie deadlines) but were driven by results.

I guess what I’m saying is that your daughter will have to learn to compsensate for her difficulties and learn to stand up for her rights but that doesn’t mean she can’t be successful.

Robin,

Thanks for the information. I think I now have a starting point for helping my son be a more productive reader. That is what I’ve been looking for. A place to begin. I struggled for the last year trying to work through the school but since my child didn’t qualify for special help I’ve been left to find it on my own.

It has been very gratifying to find that there are people who are willing to read about my problems and try and point me in the right direction. Thanks again for your responses. I’ll keep everyone posted on our progress.

My 10 year old son was diagnosed with Rapid Naming deficit two years ago (1%tile in rapid naming). He is in 4th grade — able to sound out 4th grade material, but reading 2nd grade material at a 1st grade fluency level (about 40wpm)

We have tried a number of programs:
PACE: no use at all; total waste of a summer
FAST FORWARD: some improvement, but not much
ONE ON ONE TUTORING: For several years, with increasingly good results.
RESOURCE ROOM: The teacher does sounds for signs, a phonics based program.

READ NATURALLY: Great program. I started him on it at home, and after I told the Resource Room teacher about the program, she bought it for the school.

GREAT LEAPS: I like the program. My son finds it a bit too tedious and boring, but if you can get your child to do it, I’d highly recommend it (reasonably priced, too)

CONCEPT PHONICS: sort of like Great Leaps, but no stories. Really boring (according to my son)

RAVE-O: pilot program in Boston area. Developed by Dr. Maryanne Wolf of Tufts University. She promises a public version sometime soon (this year?) but I haven’t heard anything official. Dr. Wolf REALLY understands the speeded naming deficit and her program attacks it. If the program is available, it would be GREAT.

In the meantime, after reading her articles in the Journal of Learning Disabilities (summer 2000), I adapted some of her ideas to use on my own.

I purchased a card “game” called Professor Wahoo’s Wacky Word Lab. (trendenterprises.com or 800.328.5540 ) (highly recommended) This is a card game with two different sets of cards. One set of cards includes word “onsets” (all the consonants which can be at the start of a word, plus all the blends which can be at the start of a word (st, sp, sl, th, pl, kn etc etc). The other set of cards are the “rimes” (the second half of simple words, such as ong, and, all, ame, old, ash, etc etc). There are instructions for several games, but we came up with our own variation. You can vary the game in any number of ways, combining one card from the onsets and one from the rimes. (Our favorite was devised by my son, who, when reading the newly formed word decides if it is a “real” word or a “wacky” word and real words get a tinkle from a pretty bell and the wacky word gets a gong type bell. (He enjoys the physical hands on part of learning, so the bell ringing, though annoying for the adults, provides the “play” aspect he needs.) And if the child (or adult) reads the word correctly and correctly determines if it is real or wacky, he/she gets a chip (or penny or toothpick or whatever counting object). Also, one adult keeps a list of the wacky words and the child writes down each of the real words. Also, if it is a real word, the child tells us what it means and uses it in a sentence (and the adult fills in if the child can’t think of a definition and the adult also provides secondary meanings for the word (multiple meanings are important in the RAVE-O curriculum to establish multiple brain pathways to retrieve a given word.)

We also use onset/rime dice. We have large rubber type dice (1.5inches?) (more suitable for younger children or others with visual challenges). One set of colored dice has a consonant or a blend with which to start the word and other set of different colored dice has the rimes. (There is also an option for a third set of colored dice with endings). (I obtained them from Resources for Reading www.abcstuff.com 1.800-ART-READ; this business started as a resource for the Reading Recovery method – but don’t be concerned – they do carry suitable products because regardless of what I think of Reading Recovery, the one thing they do well with is teaching “chunks” (and some of these are onsets and rimes!)

I have recently found smaller standard size dice (probably more suitable for older children) that also provide the onset/rime combinations. Each set ($4.95) of Word Family Dice has either onsets or rimes (each set in different colors has 12 dice with 120 stickers from which to choose. You stick the little pre-printed sticker onto each face of each die (and then I applied a coat of clear nail polish to each face of the die since I’m sure the little white sticker will get dirty and start coming off without some kind of top coat over the sticker). So you buy two sets – “Short & Long Vowel Rimes” and “Letters and Blends”. From Creative Teaching Press www.creativeteaching.com

I also have “sliders”. You’ve probably seen these where two pieces of heavy paper are folded in such a way that the top piece has the onset (initial consonant or blend) and the piece that slides has the rimes. As you slide the two papers past each other, you create new words with combinations of onsets and rimes. I bought mine from Resources for Reading 1-800-ART-READ or www.abcstuff.com.

The RAVE-O curriculum also mentions Bingo, and I would also think you could make up some cards to allow for a memory concentration type game and also some kind of Old Maid game, using cards with onsets/rimes. (you would have to make these up, as so far I haven’t found anyone who makes these kind of games with onset/rimes.)

Hope some of the above helps. Kathleen

These are the kids I work with all the time. Sometimes the kid is just fatigued and won’t try any more, but I have often had luck with approaching them on their own intelligence level and saying straight out “Look, this is pretty silly repetitive stuff, I totally agree. It’s just exercise, for practice, like sports or music. We’re going to work through this basic review and master it as fast as we can and move on to things that are interesting and fun. The sooner you put your energy and intelligence into getting over this hump, the sooner we can do things that you’d really like to do.”

re extended time for testing: it depends.
It depends whether the child is officially tested and labelled LD, it depends whether the parent and student *want* the child to be singled out as LD, it depends whether the teacher and school can accommodate reasonably (in many of my classroom situations there were so many other constraints of class changes on the bell, buses morning and night, etc., that it was physically impossible to extend time in any reasonable way — the only way was to have the student miss two classes to take one test and thus fall further behind every time, it depends on whether teachers use pop quizzes or in-class assignments, it depends on whether you go to a private school that is not as much bound by such rules, and it depends whether the student wants the SATs labelled as non-standard, and so on.If it is possible to get up to a level where you can do timesd tests with the class, it’s a heck of a lot easier. If that isn’t possible, then investigate your options.

and I hope he does well. I will look froward to hearing how it goes:)
Robin

Thanks Jan for the info. That’s interesting. I will have to try this with my son. If I can add one more question to my last hundred, do you have a picture with the word under it or just the picture?

Unless a child can not stand, IM is done in the standing position for ALL tasks. The more the body has to work the more neurons are recruited. You want that brain working as much as possible during this program. You will get the most out of it. Sitting in a chair just does not require the vestibular system to work as hard.

Donna in MO

If you find out that RAVE-O is available to the public, please let us know on this board. I would be very interested in seeing the program.

Donna in MO

I teach college and have occasionally have a student self identify as LD. Mostly they have asked for extended time on tests. Usually that can be accomodated within the normal classroom situation because typically my exams don’t take the entire time anyway. I know other faculty who have the students take exams in the office for disabilities where they are allowed extended time.

I have heard of students being provided with notes as well but have never had that situation personally.

Beth

The cards only have pictures on them. Here are samples of what I have now:

J sound:
orange, stage, refrigerator, judge, bandage, bridge, garbage, badge, giraffe, jacket, jar, vegetables, birdcage, banjo, jacks, pajamas, jet, fire engine, jeep, soldier

hard g sound:
jug, egg, hamburger, goose, girl, kangaroo, ghost, gum, tiger, dragon, wig, pig, frog, gate, gun, eagle, wagon, log, guitar, organ, leg, goat, alligator,flag

The pictures are about 2” by 1” and are glued or stuck to index cards (on the blank side). I am sure these pictures (really illustrations/in color) must have come from a book for all the pictures have little numbers by them. I’m sure you could make them up yourself.

HTH,
Jan P.

I homeschool my daughter and for now her end of year testing is by use of the Brigance Test (oral/not timed). She is only entering 4th grade, so she has plenty of time until college. I have not had her officially labeled learning disabled. She is not in the school system, so I don’t worry about it. I am just concerned where this is going to lead her down the road. She has been through two Fast ForWord programs and is about to start Interactive Metronome. Hopefully these things will help her as well as continuing with a good phonics program.

Thanks again,
Jan P.

I see what you mean about reading speed. I play the piano. The first time that I play a piece I do it slowly. I practice and practice the piece until it can be played at the appropriate speed, played accurately, and played with expression. I guess you could apply the same principle to reading.

Thanks again,
Jan P.

Hi
My 10 year old son has dyslexia - subtype-rapid naming deficit.

We have done much to help him (see my post about a week ago).

He enjoys the High Noon book series. These are little chapter books with good stories (mysteries, travel) but with controlled level words. Although my son can decode at the 4th grade level, for fluency practice, we buy the books at the second grade level so he can zip along and build confidence.

www.highNoonBooks.com

or 800.422.7249 They will send a catalogue (and sometimes a sample if you ask nicely!)