A friend has a 7-year-old son in 1st grade. He was put into Reading Recvoery in the middle of the year. The reading teacher says he will be in a regular classroom next year with paraprofessional support instead of Reading Recovery. (He is not Special Ed or 504.) The reading teacher suggested an eye exam which did show that the child is tilting his head. The doctor gave my friend some exercises for him to do.
When I read with him I notice the following things:
1.) He reads certain words incorrectly. For example, he is likely to say “car” for “cat” or “home” for “house.” He may also say “shore” for “beach.”
2.) He (mostly) reads each word separately or hesitantly, i.e. he is not fluent or smooth.
I suggested that my friend ask the teacher for an evaluation for a reading disability. The teacher said she didn’t know what my friend meant!
My research thus far (if I interpret it correctly) says that reading deficits (without a specific diagnosis) stem from deficits in word identification and lack of phonological awareness. I suggested that she use picture flash cards (to help with the word identification) and phonics flash cards.
Does anyone know of any free online tests I could use to at least get the ball rolling? Shouldn’t the school test him for LD? Thanks for your help!
Re: Reading deficit diagnosis
I would strongly suggest you read the book Reading Recovery by Marie Clay so you can see for yourself what the child was subjected to. There is no explicit teaching since the theory is that the child must explore and learn for himself. Ask the teacher to explain what “roaming in the known” is. It will be an eye opener. I sat in on a session once. The child did not know that c sounds like /cuh/ and the teacher was not allowed to tell him. They will tell you there is phonics in there but not what most of us think of as phonics I can assure you. It’s self exploratory- ie figure it out yourself- hey if the kid could do that he wouldn’t be in remedial reading would he? In this particular case, I found the teacher had such a poor grasp of phonics she was doing more harm than good during the very short short beat around the bush “phonics” portion of the lesson. Alot is done with picture and context clues which are encouraged over than sounding out which is a last resort, so it is not a bit surprising that he is making the kinds of errors that he is. By the time I left the session I was sick. What I saw bothered me for weeks. I would suggest a very inexpensive little paperback book that can be found in many libraries. It is called Reading Reflex by Carmen McGuinness. I think it is where you need to start. There are lots of tests to see where his decoding is breaking down. From there you might investigate Hooked on Phonics which is nothing but word lists like cat, bat, hat, sat that keep getting progressively more difficult. There are 6 whole books of word patterns so the child should be able to read at quite an advanced level by the time he completes them all. My kids both liked it. Along with that you will need some type of progressive story books for comprehension. Primary Phonics is a good inexpensive series but only goes to the 2nd grade level. If problems continue don’t forget to explore hearing/eye problems .
Re: Reading deficit diagnosis
I was reading this reply and getting ready to post and say get Reading Reflex when, there it was!! My suggestion for books is to join reading a-z.com This website costs $49.99 but it has over 250 books and loads of other resources. There are decodable stories, read aloud books, phonics readers and leveled books all the way up to 5th or 6th grade level. The books are good, lots of nonfiction and he can keep them to read over and over.
Nan
Re: Reading deficit diagnosis
I would just add that I have read research that syas Reading Recovery is NOT an effective program. I would not have my child in there!
Yes, do have her try Reading Reflex.
Janis
One place to begin is to assess phonology skills. Get to Sue’s website, resourceroom.net (I think) where you can find some lists of nonsense syllables. Selecting from these, construct a list of nonsense syllables and present to this child. This will tell you whether or not he can decode. Knowing how to decode and then applying known skills to reading is sometimes another thing entirely. This would be a good place to start. If the child CAN decode, he may still have an LD, perhaps not a phonological processing deficit.