My child is in first grade and has a severe attention problem. She also has had difficulty learning to read. She has been successful at learning to read/memorize whole words on the classroom word wall. Decoding has been very difficult for her. I’m afraid if she continues to rely only on the word wall, she will have great difficulty figuring out new words and eventually she will get further and further behind. (She is also in speech/language.)
Any suggestions of ways that I can help her? Any ideas of things that have worked for other children like this? I am desperate for help for my daughter.
Re: memorizing whole words
There are many different programs out there that purport to teach children how to decode. Each one has its supporters. Your daughter is still very young and I have seen children gone on to become competent decoders as they get older.
Have you had her tested?
Until you know for sure whether or not she’s going to be able to decode, you can always fall back on the tried and true reading out loud to her. That never hurts to help any child develop their own reading skills. You can also rent/buy books on tape and let her listen to the tape while reading along in the book. The tape will cue her on the words she doesn’t know and possibly help her to add to her word bank.
Good luck.
Re: memorizing whole words
Bethany —
Please go to the International Dyslexia Association website www.interdys.org and see if their information hits home with your daughter. In first grade, children with attention issues and the inability to “naturally” pick up decoding (it may or may not be taught in her class) are at risk for life-long reading problems. The sooner parents find help the better. Never minimize your daughter’s struggle. It’s better to get more qualified help than she may need than to get too little and have your child fail. Reading disorders come in varying “strengths” — when interventions intended for children with the more severe reading disorders are used for children up the scale, results are found. Don’t necessarily go for the “minimal” effort and don’t buy into this “try this and see if it helps.” That wastes precious time when getting testing and appropriate tutoring or teaching is possible, but potentially not in your daughter’s school building (as it was not in ours.)
National Institute of Health statistics show that children who do not get timely — earlier the better — intervention for reading disorder symptoms (and you’ve already listed two) are at tremendous risk for educational failure not to mention a host of other negative outcomes. See the National Institute of Health’s reading research sites — available at NICHD at www.nih.gov.
I am a parent who has ‘been there done that’ with nothing to sell.
Linda Harmon
South Bend
The Phono-Graphix approach is really good for teaching decoding skills. You can buy the book, Reading Reflex, for $16 at the bookstore and tutor her yourself, or you can hire a PG tutor. Website for this method is http://www.readamerica.net
Has she had a complete speech and language eval? One of the tests is for auditory processing (SCAN). If she fails that screening instrument, you should get a CAPD eval by an audiologist who specializes in this area. You can find CAPD audiologists at http://pages.cthome.net/cbristol/. The reason I mention this is because attention problems can be a sign of auditory processing disorders, which are associated with difficulty learning to read. A lot of children with CAPD never get diagnosed properly because the problem is mistaken for ADD or ADHD. If there are auditory processing problems, a CAPD audiologist can make recommendations about appropriate therapies, academic approaches, and accommodations. This eval is often covered by medical insurance, so you may not want to wait for the school’s eval. Usually the audiologist’s office will be able to advise you about medical coverage. Just be sure you get a CAPD audiologist (regular audiologists don’t have the training). If you have a choice, an audiologist associated with a major medical center of university is often the most up-to-date.
If she does have an auditory processing disorder, you may want to take a look at NeuroNet therapy, http://www.neuroacoustics.com
You may also want to take a look at http://www.interactivemetronome.com, which is a therapy that can help attention issues and PACE (http://www.learninginfo.com), another therapy that tends to improve attention significantly.
The “LD in Depth” section of this website, especially under “assessments” and “IEP”, has very useful information about how to work with the school effectively.
Mary