My 10 year old daughter has been identified as “at-risk” in school. She is in the 5th grade and is testing at a 3rd grade reading level. She was previously in a private school that provided some level of individual attention. We work with her at home and over the summer. She is a good student in terms of attitude and effort. Her teacher has stated that she has a confidence problem when working on her own and needs reassurance but she does try hard. We have requested testing through the school. Some of it has been completed and we have requested additional testing in specific areas which is in progress. Her results (values around 100) on the WISC-III were below average based on percentiles. An eye doctor has identified a focus and tracking problem. We are pursuing that.
The school says that based on her test results so far, she does not qualify for any additional help. As a result I am frustrated because she obviously needs help and I don’t know where to turn. In my opinion she had gotton special attention in the past so it seems to me that we need to try something different. We have not had an IEP yet. I suspect that I will be told that she is performing to ability level and I should just accept it. It seems to me that someone with reasonable intelligence should be able to perform at grade level (with extra effort). This doesn’t seem to be working in our case. Am I wrong in thinking that? Any ideas?
Thanks,
Rhonda
I would recommend that you either buy the book “Reading Reflex” and use that approach to tutor her at home, or find a certified Phono-Graphix tutor (this is the methodology used in “Reading Reflex”) for her. Remediation with PG averages about 12 hours with a certified tutor. For someone already reading on a 3rd grade level, it might be only 6 or 8 hours. This is a very efficient method of teaching reading, and most kids (90+%) do very well with it.
My own daughter had both phonological issues (which PG remediated) and vision issues (severe developmental vision delays including slow focusing, small field-of-vision, tracking, binocularity, etc.). If you haven’t already done so, I would recommend visiting sites such as http://www.childrensvision.com and http://www.children-special-needs.org for information about developmental vision problems. It sounds as if you may have already found a developmental optometrist, since focusing and tracking problems have been identified. My daughter’s problems were so severe that vision therapy alone was not enough. We had to follow up with cognitive training (we did PACE, but Audiblox is good also) in order to develop her visual processing skills to the point where she could process text fast enough for fluent reading.
If I had relied on the school for help and advice, my 11yo would not be reading on an ending 6th grade/ beginning 7th grade level today. (Exactly three years ago she was reading on a preschool level!)
My advice is to invest your time and energy directly into remediation.
Mary