Just back from PG intensive in Orlando

Wow, that is amazing. Cheers to you and your son. What an awesome parent. Your son does not know how lucky he is yet to have a mom so dedicated to doing everything possible.

Michelle AZ :D :

What a Christmas present! Congratulations to you and your son!

Nancy

Yes, it’s that flicker of “hey, maybe, just maybe, I *can* get better at this” that rather changes everything.
Keep gently encouraging that flicker ;-) It’s the intensity that helped it catch — discuss that and p’raps you can be sure to buddy read (trade paragraphs) daily, since daily works best.

Hi Beth!!!!!
I’m soooo thrilled about your son and hopeful for mine! We are entering our 4th week at LMB on Monday and although I don’t think my son has made that type of leap yet, I’m hopeful we’ll eventually get there.

It’s nice to hear that all your effort and hard work has made a difference. Somehow we’ll both eventually get our boys to a good independent reading level. It’s encouraging to hear that yours is on his way!!!! :-)

Congrats to both of you! I’m delighted you went, and I’m so glad it helped you son so much. It’s truly amazing when they catch on, isn’t it?

Lil

Thanks everybody.

It truly is amazing when they catch on and I do think the intensive framework helps. The challenge is keeping up the learning.

Laura–At least part of the issues with my son was auditory processing. he did a bunch of exercises in therapy. I guess what I am thinking is that it might take more time working on orthographic processing. My son has had tons of auditory work and there just seemed to be some missing pieces which were relatively easily taken care of at this point (although I would never have figured out what to do). Interestingly enough, I was pretty convinced he had Seeing Stars type of problems, although the slt I spoke to at LMB told me he sounded as though they were auditory in nature.

Beth

Beth that is wonderful news. I think if a 10 year old can read a harry potter novel, then he is reading at grade level. We are no where near there , but that is the goal. Your years of hard work have paid off for your son!!!

Karen,

Well, he can read a few pages of the latest book but then the small print gets to him. There also is a difference between reading it to mom and being able to independently read the book. He is not there yet—not sure he ever will be. He still refuses to read anything on his own. Part of that is dependence—which may be the hardest part to break.

My husband read with him two days ago for the first time. He also read with our youngest, who is 6. His comment was that Nathan was decoding better, skipping less, and reading more fluently but that he saw almost the same amount of change in his brother, with whom he hadn’t read with in a month or so. I told him that a first grade normal reader makes a lot of progress without intervention but that you couldn’t compare the two. Nathan would not have made the same kind of progress without help. Sigh.

Beth

I know the limitations (all too well!) but it sounds like he’s really making great progress!

My daughter (also in first grade) is developing as a normal reader. What a difference! She can’t decode multisyllablic words like her brother , but she’s reading print everywhere she looks. And if you show her something once it sticks. We’ve got a 3 year age difference, but at this rate she’ll catch up by june.

My personal goal for my DS is for him to read for pleasure. Anything. No matter how slowly. his reading teacher says it will happen. We’ll see.

Happy new Year!

Beth and Karen,
I’ve found that any progress, even a little jump, is something to be thrilled about. The main thing is to keep the momentum going, and not be discouraged when our kids aren’t making the same type of leaps non-LD kids make. We just can’t compare them!

Although my son doesn’t automatically reach for a book to read, I do have him sometimes sit and silently read a chapter in one of his books (the Bionicle series). He doesn’t complain about it and will spend time reading it. He says it’s much easier to read silently than out loud (which is probably true for most people).

We just finished the 4th week at LMB. I think he’s beginning to make some visible progress. Sound/symbol/orthographic recognition is becoming a little easier. He still pauses once in awhile with simple words, but I do see him having an easier time, and sometimes having a much quicker recognition of multiple syllable words and sentences. I’ve talked with them at LMB about this. They said he’s making steady progress, but doesn’t always automatically use the skills he’s being taught. Unfortunately we only have one more week before he must return back to school. I really wish I could keep him out one or two more weeks. In fact, I think he might actually be able to make some good progress in automaticity and possibly even fluency if we had a little more time. Drats!!!

laura - is that you?

i’m glad to hear your son is getting something out of LMB. We did as well…

If DS weren’t attending an LD school, I would have had him do LMB over the summer. Imagine what boost you could get out of 12 weeks!

part of my frustration is the fact that DS is n’t reading anything right now except word lists/phrases and simple stories from school. And this is what they want. Their philosophy is that you have to take kids like my son back to the basics, fill in the holes that they’ve learned to compensate for, and then build them up. This is the only way to build automaticity and fluency. In other words, even though he could “fake” his way thru grade level material it is n’t automatic. By going back to short /a/ sounds, for example, they can do that repetetive drilling, make it automatic, and go from there. Bear in mind they have him all day, every school day, for several years.

Its hard core orton gillingham , and the parents I’ve met of kids who have been there for at least one year are so happy. We just haven’t seen the breakthrough yet. He still avoids reading if he can.

Anyway, my next intervention I’m considering is neurofeedback so if anyone has any thoughts send them my way!

It may have been in part because this was a secondary school (6-12) but our students had a fair amount of reading required in English (which was separate from the OG tutorials, and there was an oral reading option until grade 9, then books-on-tape for those for whom the gap was too big). Fair amount for them, anyway — at least 2 books each year (and I may be misremembering; could be 2/semester).
We also incorporated structured, oral reading “From a book at their instructional level,” trading off the reading, every day. I think this is a wise way to insure that students miss less of the other benefit of reading as far as vocabulary development, comprehension, and hearing those strange things called complete sentences.

reading indepentantly and for enjoyment has happened here. The books tend to be thin and below grade level, but who cares. He enjoys reading and begs for new books!

Is he reading as carefully as I would like? PRobably not, but he is certainly getting more out of them than a year ago(more than a years progress by far)

The bad news? We have not been reinforcing the decoding and it shows. He was doing so well, I got sloppy(and I guess I thought it stuck)WE need to do the Sound REading disc on a regular basis next semester :(

He picked up addition and subtraction so fast AND they stuck. Multiplication and division will NOT stick and neither will the reading decoding skills. I don’t understand the difference!

I have to stay focused on the + because the - can wear me down at times

Sue,
I don’t want to misrepresent that quality of the work my DS is being asked to do. They read all day, and the reading includes short stories ( Merrill readers I believe they are called). But he’s not encouraged to read real books at home yet. That’s the emotional breakthrough I await.

He’s in 4th grade and just started at this school, so I know that as the work progresses he will be asked to read at home. They also believe strongly in reading aloud so all of his homework (primarly word lists and phrases) are read , repeated outloud to an adult.

marycas, very important point about reinforcing the decoding instruction. I have read a couple of articles lately where the child regressed in decoding ability because there was no practice provided to maintain the skills.

Janis

Karen,
I do have a good friend locally who had her son participate in neurofeedback. She told me he didn’t get too much out of it, but she knows someone else whose son made progress with it. So I think results can differ quite a bit.

I WISH my son could do 12 weeks at LMB. I’ve met a few of the parents there (one who lives only a few blocks away from me!), and I’m a little surprised by how many have their kids going there for long stretches of time or bring them back regularly. I am consdering having my son do a half day at LMB and then a half day at school (my son’s school would be agreeable to this because they’d get their funding). We’d have to do something like 7-11 at LMB then 12-3 at school. I’m not sure if my son could handle this, but at least it would allow him to “complete” the program.

Marycas,
I too have to focus on the + because the - can be somewhat overwhelming if I think too much about it.

Speaking about decoding regression, a couple of years ago when I originally did PG with my son (a one month “intensive” at home), he made tremendous decoding improvement. But over time, he did slowly lose it (and/or failed to progress). Unfortunately, I worked with him regularly and had him practice decoding. But, evidently, even this wasn’t enough. I’m convinced some kids really do need intense instruction and need it multiple times.

Beth and Laura-congratulations to your sons and you!!!
:)
I actually never saw a big leap in my son’s reading ability- but he never went through an intensive therapy….The major progress lately was due to VT manifested as reduction of headaches rather than progress in reading abilities.

Although he had made progress and can handle reading at his school (which is not much I think when compared with regular 6th grade). He only reads magazines at home- and even that not much, but he at least looks through his “Boys Life” and “World”. I am not sure he will read for pleasure- at least I do not see this happening soon :(

Ewa

Hi Ewa,
Our “leap” in progress is actually not that big! But we were at the point where my son was having an impossible time making any type of progress whatsoever so I’m just thankful for anything.

My son still avoids most reading. Tonight I happened to have one of my daughter’s books lying around (a fairly difficult one) and asked my son to try reading just one paragraph so he could practice some decoding. He complained, hedged, read one line and then continued to hedge some more, and then told me I wasn’t his mother any more! Very exasperating!

Also, tonight he wrote a letter to a friend of his who lives in another country. In spite of LMB, he still made many of the same simple spelling errors (which I helped him correct). So although I do see progress, there’s still a lot of problems…. We still have a long way to go.

Laura,

My son still avoids reading everything too. I frankly am not sure that will ever change.

And he wrote a letter to Santa Claus that my six year old would have spelled better!!!

I think you just have to look the jumps you can. My son is decoding much better but he still is a far cry far cry from a normal reader. He still reads pretty choppy.

Hopefully, you see your son having made enough progress that you can build on it. That is what I can see with mine. I could never have got him this far but he isn’t there yet.

Beth

Beth,
I think you’re right. Also, as skill develops, sometimes there’s the problem of automatically using these new skills. For example, while driving in the car I asked my son to spell a few words. He seemed to have a little easier time with this and also caught an error. I think the physical act of writing just adds another step and he’s not automatic enough yet to do this easily.

We just have to keep building from where we are and hopefully, eventually, we can get them as close as possible to “normal” reading. I keep thinking about that statistic someone pointed out awhile back. Something about the average person reading at a 4th or 5th grade level (newspapers are written to a 6th grade level). I keep telling myself, if I can just get him there we’ll be doing okay.

Beth and Laura, since my son is older than yours’ sons I will try to give you some hope. My son is spelling much better this year than for example 1 or 2 years ago- when I thought there was no light in the tunnel.

He also spells better verbally than while writing which confirms Laura’s observation that combining the act of writing is overwhelming. Nevertheless, I see progress. I very rarely see my son typing, so I do not know how well he spells while using a keyboard.

Since I am a horrible speller in English and I had survived thanked to spell-checkers, I believe that once my son gets to the point that he can recognized enough words “by sight” and will work efficiently with MSWord I will be very happy.

My major worry now is that he still guesses while reading and I wonder how does he know that he misreads something. Unfortunately, my observation suggests that, on occasions, he does not know and he just “skips” comprehending sentences that “are weird”. Once prompted, he will finally decode, but…I cannot be there forever to prompt him.

Ewa

Ewa,

I think you are right about the spelling. My nonLD 13 year old daughter, who was a horrid speller, has become much better in the last few years. I think a lot of it is spell check. She is slightly dysgraphic and has typed everything for the past couple years. Typing seems to correspond with her improving her spelling.

I keep telling my son that his goal is to become a good enough speller for spell check!!!

Beth

EWA-

my son is the same way about skipping ‘weird stuff’. With homeschooling this year, virtually everything we do involves one of us reading aloud and my stopping him to make him decode when he says ‘masm’ for “mannerism’ and keeps right on going. What I am realizing is that ‘mannerism’ is just as unreal to him as ‘masm’. His vocabulary is quite weak even though the schools tested him within the average range for this skill. In his defense, if he stopped at every word that was ‘weird’, he would be stopping all the time! Even words he can decode easily may not yet be definable for him(‘spouse’ for example-he had no clue about meaning even though he decoded nicely)

I think it is going to be a long haul for my guy-so many skills are intertwined and we ‘fix’ one only to realize another weakness

But he WILL, on rare occasion, STOP himself and go back when something is wayyyy obviously out of whack. That is a start-6 months ago, nothing made him even pause(I’m like-how can he possibly think thats correct????)

That made me realize he is capable-that brain isnt on some track it cant veer off of-he just has to pick up enough vocab to have a realistic idea of when to veer ;)

ONe of the big surprises to me as a teacher was that so many of my students did not see connections between parts of words they knew and what they meant, if it was a new word. Thus, even if they knew what “manner” was, “mannerism” would simply have no meaning, as a new word. I think this is one of those skills that unnecessarily separate the high achievers — I’m not even sure I picked that up intuitively, because soembody just might have told me about it and showed me a few at the right time. But it is a skill that can be taught, especially with prefixes and suffixes (like “un-” and “-ism”).
I found that it really helped to start with really easy prefixes (“un” and “less”) to teach the process with easy to handle concepts. Word parts are a great way to build vocabulary.
I’d link to my “word parts” page but I’m about to go change its name… I’m getting web design advice and it’s painful :)

I think this will work :)

http://www.resourceroom.net/readcomp/wordparts/index.html

Well, at least it’s prettier than it was…

Sue- thanks for hints. My son is taking “morphographs” this year in his school, which is exactly teaching him morphology. I hope this will improve his decoding skills- I think it really helps with spelling- this is actually a spelling class- i.e. all homework, quizzes and exams are for encoding. I am trying to help him realize that with a new word on many occasions he already knows either the root or suffix et.c., but I think it will take time to sink in.

I notice that it is easier for him to blend multisyallbic words if we start from the last syllable and add on from the end rather than from the beginning (which is actually VERY true for me) any comments?

Marycas- yes, I agree that the low load of reading causes severe vocabulary problems. Since my son was initially tested 5 years ago we heard he has average language skills, i.e. there is no problem but I believe there is a problem because mentally they are more tired while reading so the average vocab. is not enough to provide the extra boost in decoding- what I mean is realizing easily whether that word (in terms of meaning and as a part of language- like adjective, or verb) fits into this place in the sentence/story et.c.

Ewa

>I notice that it is easier for him to blend multisyallbic words if we start >from the last syllable and add on from the end rather than from the >beginning (which is actually VERY true for me) any comments?

Ewa, you might be interested in Word Workout for your son. I have it but haven’t used it with anyone yet, so can’t totally vouch for it. Thought it might be a good follow-on to Rewards from Sopris West for multi-syllable word attack skills.

The reason I mention Word Workout is that unlike Rewards — which has the child sound out each syllable in order from left to right — Word Workout encourages looking for end parts and beginning parts for sounding out an unknown word. I’m not sure I agree with this philosophically, as it seems better to me to always encourage left-to-right decoding, but it might work well with your son’s style. It is said the CD can be used independently, but I’m not so sure of that.

Anyway, website is http://www.thewordworkshop.com if you want to check it out.

Nancy

Yes, you can use the CD separately. Basically the CD includes auditory reading of the words so an independent learner can get teh right answers reinforced. (I really appreciate that it *doesn’t* try to do fancy stuff, doesn’t try to “teach” — but provides that valuable option. )

Oh, but… I suspect it would be good for your auditory learner (like me ;)) — the visual / visual-kinesthetic person is going to want to be working with more than headphones and a keyboard.

Beth,

I am new to this website. We just found out a few months ago that my 2nd grade son is ADD, LD, and has Anixety Issues. Can you please tell me some information about the PG. I have no idea what that stands for? I also don’t know what the LMB is? We live in Orlando, so I was interested in your post.

Thanks

Earlier this evening I had my son read a page from an old text book (Macmillan, Secrets and Surprises) and he only made two errors on the page (wow!). 5 weeks ago (before Lindamood-Bell) he would have made at least one error per sentence, so this really does seem to be a remarkable change. Also, his fluency and speed have definitely improved.

My son is still dyslexic. I can hear it in occassional pauses, but gosh, he’s much closer to sounding like a “normal” reader.

Laura,

That is so wonderful!!! I think it just takes so much for some of our kids!

Beth

Guest:

PG stands for phonographix. The method of reading is also known by Reading Reflex. Carmen and Geoffrey McGuiness, the developers, are the authors of a book by that name. You could pick up the book at most book stores. They have a clinic in Orlando area—in Altamonte actually—where I took my son for what they call a PG intensive. They also do tutoring after school.

Lindamood Bell is another company that has reading programs—a very good one also. It has two components—LIPS and Seeing STars.

Beth