Need help re: high-school subject written at 3rd grade level

First of all, I think I would work on trying to remediate his reading problems rather than merely finding books at his level. It is not too late. You may have luck with Reading Reflex (almost wrote reflux here :-)).
I’d try that first. If that is not workable, you’ll need to look into something that takes training.

Since you are an SLP, you should look into Lindamood Bell’s excellent program LiPS. (www.lblp.com/) It does require training and maybe MUCH more than this kid needs but would be a useful addition to your arsenal.

There are hi-lo books, one such thing is the books/CDs from Don Johnston-
www.donjohnston.com. I think that resourceroom.net has a list of other sources.

Still this kid needs most of all to remediate his reading problems so he doesn’t need these all his life.

—des

Thanks for the suggestions Des!

I have already looked into LindaMood Bell and don’t think that there’s anything there that is going to be appropriate for this student.

I believe that I failed to mention that this student is a 15-year old significantly-visually impaired student. I suspect that the nature of his visual impairment has led previous teachers to “give up” on teaching him to read. His beginning Braille skills are coming along and he can read at about the 2nd-3rd grade level in Braille. We (school staff) are really struggling to teach this student all of the life-skills that he will need to be as independent as possible.

Thanks again for you help!

I would make every effort to keep his reading level from holding him back and keep the content separate from the reading skill. (There are, however, hi-low publishers including nonfiction, in the “links” section of my site — linked below.) Sounds like his language skills are depressed all around so straight books on tape at grade level would probably be too big a jump, but hearing the language would be a big help.

Yes, I think books on tape is a great idea. And I certainly wouldn’t want to leave the kid behind as per intellectual skills (or make him try and read it). But I do think that the kid should be worked with as per reading. Why is he doing braille, is he visually impaired?

(BTW, I have heard the thing about braille and dyslexic students, not sure to what extent I buy it and how useful it would really be, since there isn’t that much out there in braille.)

—des

I agree totally — reading shouldn’t be abandoned.

Braille & dyslexia — bottom line is for most of ‘em it would be one *more* layer of learning. You still have to connect the symbol to the sound — so if a kiddo has trouble with the phonemes, braille won’t help unless the kinesthetic memory is ‘way better than other channels. It woudl also require pretty good fine motor skills.
But this particular student has low vision, too, just to complicate life.

(that was me…
gotta get the auto sign in thing reset ;) ‘cept I”m afraid I’ll get teh 404’s again…)

Oops! Missed the visual impairment. “Saw” the braille and I had heard some people have tried this for dyslexia (uh without vision problems). I have never heard of something like OG for visually impaired though. Don’t know what approach I’d use! I guess that all this could be adapted.
In any case the talking books are a great idea. He should have no trouble qualifying for them.

BTW, Sue you hardly need to sign in and say yep that was me. If we see a erudite, succinct, great answer to some question and it says “guest” well we just know. :-)

—des

Kill the kid!!!!!!!!!!!! KILL ITTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT!!!!!!!!!