Help with fluency - does my plan sound reasonable?

and great leaps…but the reason I would work with Read Naturally is that the child is listening with audiotapes at the same time he is reading outloud. It is helping integrate the visual and auditory processes at the same time. This would help him with phrasing, sounding out and achieving the automaticity for fluency.

Does he have a hard time sitting still and listening to you read along with him? Perhaps you can get some of the easy disney books on tape and he can do those independently. Does he have trouble with keeping up with music, does he understand the words as they are being sung? Can he sing on key and with correct prosody?

This is great feedback. Let me answer your questions …

We tried books on tape last summer, but he loves hearing stories so much, and listening comp. is such a strength that he wouldn’t look at the text. His teachers this year say he is following along at school now, but I am concerned that if left to his own to listen to a tape he’ll stop looking at the book. He can sit forever if we read TO him, and he will sit and read with us (alternating) until he fatigues. We haven’t tried reading simultaneiously yet, but will this summer. Is that part of these programs?

I’m not sure about the music. He listens to current music in the car, and mangles some of the words, but then again some of it is hard to hear. I’d say he gets some, misses some. He can sing reasonably on key, but is not a rythmic person. (if you’ve ever seen that episode of seinfeld where elaine dances you’d know what I mean) His speech has normal intonation (not monotone) but is often too fast, but we think that is an anxiety problem. There is something a little off about his speech, but its not severe, but I suppose could be related to all of his fluency issues.

Any direction you can provide would be much appreciated. I really want to optimize the time I have him working this summer!

I am planning on using Phono-graphix in the Fall. Would you recommend Read Naturally to use along with it?

Just to give an accurate picture, since I posed the original question of this thread… my son’s decoding skills were tested at 2.1 at about the midway point of second grade. Spelling was only 1.4, but his phonemic awareness was 7.3. Reading comp. 4.3, but reading rate was 1.9 So you can see our confusion about why he is struggling with reading… its not a clear case of dyslexia so I am worried that OG alone will be missing something….
Thanks again for the advise.

I have used both of these programs. First, I would use PG then when the student is done with the program and is decoding on grade level, I start Read Naturally. Too many kids are good at auditory memory and if they aren’t close to decoding at grade level, they may just auditorially memorize the stories. This is how I do it and this is why. I’m sure that others do it differently but I wouldn’t run both programs at once.

Shay, if my son is already doing Orton work with a tutor would that cover the decoding aspect? What do you think of adding read naturally or great leaps in while the tutoring continues (which it will for a long time…)

I think I would let the tutor deal with this in the context of his OG sessions. She should be working on fluent reading of controlled text anyway- that is part of the lesson set up. I also would not worry that OG isn’t thorough enough- it really is and is designed for students with greater deficits than your son appears to have. The slow development of fluency is characteristic of students with slow processing speed- it isn’t going to go away quickly though it should improve. My guess is that he just hasn’t been at this “good reading behavior” stuff long enough to apply it independantly. That is okay- he is young and it will come. Right now you are doing the right thing! Relax… enjoy the summer.
Robin

Shay, I do not believe it is necessary to wait until decoding skills are on grade level, necessarily, if you are plugging the child into Read Naturally on his or her reading level. I do agree that overteaching the basic phonology is very important.

OK, your child might have a “rapid naming” deficit. This is extremely difficult to remediate, it is neurological. For example, research is showing that children who speak phonetic languages like Spanish or Italian do not have the phonological deficits we find in English, because there are multiple ways to spell each vowel sound and each vowel and vowel pattern can oftentimes represent multiple sounds; this is extremely confusing to dyslexic youngsters. Instead, these students manifest “automatic rapid naming” deficits. Now, the actual source of this particular deficit is up for debate and may actually involve several processes.

The only thing you can do for this deficit is use programs like Great Leaps and Read Naturally and use them for a long term. I especially like Great Leaps phonics and phrases sections. Very good for establishing automatic rapid identification of common words and syllable patterns. The 3 students I have with a severe deficit in this area do not make fast progress through the material, they move at glacial speed.

Thanks. Can you help me understand how I would know if he has a rapid naming deficit ie, what indicators might we see in the standard battery of tests, or what other behavious would indicate this? (His neuropsych. does believe his problems are neurological, and she has declined to define him as simply dyslexic or any other one thing.) And how is this related to word retrieval, if at all? We don’t notice him grasping for words, but perhaps that’s because he has a huge vocabulary and is very verbal so maybe the pauses aren’t that noticable. In the report on him she does say that given his excellent fund of information he performed lower than expected at identifying pictures of common objects. Is that a related skill?
Sorry for all the questions - we are just trying to zero in.

He might like the timing and improving his own reading rate…that is a part of Read Naturally. The students have to read along with the story while the tape is playing and they are timed for 1 minute or 2 minutes to figure out their Words per minute. I would work with teaching him music and lyrics that go along with body movements. If his speech is funny I would suggest that you have him checked out by the speech pathologist as well if you are eliminating problems..You may want to look into the book The Infinity Walk. It incorporates music and movement at the same time..

Also Sue Jones has a program called Tandem Reading that you may want to check out too.

There are a couple of tests which will identify this- probably the most thorough is the Comprehensive Test of Phonological Processing (CTOPP) which has a rapid naming subtest. The cognitive battery of the Woodcock Johnson III also has a rapid naming test. SLP’s typically give the CTOPP in our district but it doesn’t have to be.

Regardless however- the intervention you are using now is appropriate.
Robin

Automated rapid naming (RAN) is assessed on several different tests. No, you won’t notice in day to day conversation the difference in most children. They find words and speak just fine. The tests that are available require the individual to “read” a card with common items (colors, for example). They read across the rows, the colors repeat themselves. They are timed. The one I have given requires two differing subtests, one using colors and the other using numerals. Then the time is crunched into a standard score. Some of the neurological testing instruments have RAN subtests.

What causes a RAN deficit? This is being debated in the field. Clearly, to me, there is a visual component and clearly the visual input has to be relayed to the auditory to produce the response. There are researchers who absolutely insist that all RAN deficits and indeed all reading disabilities are in auditory processing. Then, there are those who believe that there is a definite visual component. Studies having the testee (a word?) identify the presence and location of things like a flickering light on a screen have found the dyxlexic population to do significantly more poorly than the nondyxlexic and to be related to RAN. A study concluded that the slowdown is probably not in actually seeing and perceiving (that was fine in dyslexics), rather in the judgement making. Tasks that asked the person to visually perceive and then respond whether it is one thing or another really separated the dyslexics with a RAN deficit from the “normals.” If you think about it, you can see how this judgement part would seriously effect reading success.

Thanks, I will look into all of these. He just finished about a year of speech/language work, mostly for co-articulation and a little pragmatics. Its just an indicator of the underlying (probably neurological) root cause.

If you are so inclined, you could also look at PACE. It really does help with processing speed along with the other processing skills.I am a provider, and I got into it for use with my own son. He did so well on the program, and all of the children I’ve worked with in the last year have made terrific gains as well. Here’s the website to get more info: http://www.learninginfo.com/ I don’t actually like the website very much, but you can get providers names in your area and talk with one of them personally. Good luck.