SRA Corrective Reading

It gets mixed reviews… but most of the people who have issues with its scriptedness have issues with almost all highly structured programs. They’re the very nice, hard-working people who just can’t believe that such a wonderful, enriching thing as reading should take work… it just isn’t fair.
Well, it isn’t fair, but it’s true, and plagues upon the perpetrators of falsehoods.
I used CR before O-G, and had a *lot* of success with it. Now, I *did* tell my students that we were going to try it and in three weeks they had veto rights on it. Doesn’t sound like you’re going to be in that position, but I would try to somehow give them genuine ownership in the process - that, I would suspect, is a critical ingredient. So I’d let them knokw that you really wanted their input on the program’s effectiveness (and therefore how much you were going to emphasize it or tweak it or whatever… though in fact I wouldn’t tweak) -= but NOT until they had done it, and done it AS PRESCRIBED — for three weeks.
I also managed to get 20 minutes or so w/ each of my kiddos individually and ran ‘em through a subtest or two of the Woodcock-Johnson, as well as the pretest for Corrective Reading, so that I could give them an honest measure of reading; I emphasized that this was their score on this one test of these specific decoding skills and that it had **nothing** to do with how smart they were or what grade they were in or what grade they should be in. (I called it “fourth grade level” and that sort of thing; I think I might now drop the “grade” from the whole discussion and just say “level.” The 1 on 1 honest discussion of something that they struggle with lets them know you’re not just a robot reciting a script and collecting your check.
It’s scripted and it’s strict. One mistake by *anybody* and bang! Back to teh beginning of the line. So you gotta enforce civility. I had my repertoire of responses but they all boiled down to “we’re going to do this, we’re going to do this right, and it will go faster and less painfully if you just cooperate and get it over with.” Basically I didn’t interrupt the lesson with a discussion of why we were doing it - anybody who wanted to do that could discuss it when we were finished, or after class.
My experience was that it is not multisensory enough for *some* students with significant auditory processing problems… I had one such soul. Rest of ‘em gained a good year in a semester… and that was after gaining three or four years in the previous 9. More importantly they could tell the difference.
I made sure that wasn’t *all* we did - I read aloud from a novel, which my groups loved (always surprises me a *little* that such things don’t violate all the “coolness” rules).
And mainly I pushed the attitude hard that I wasn’t a “special” or “remedial” teacher - we were just filling in a gap so they could get on with their NORMAL lives.
So post when you meet the live entities!

Oh, and it does ‘way more than discourage guessing… it sets up the students to guess and when they do, they have to go back & do it right.

I tell ‘em that I’m like a conductor or choral director and these are the songs they’re learning (and I asked their input on what cues to use for them to do the choral responses).

Let’s see, the othe rbig “getting used to it” thing was getting them to *wait* for the signal before shouting out the answer. Again, it’s like being in a chorus… it gives everybody that second to process things (and is a rather excellent diagnostic of sorts). However, it really takes PATIENCE :-)

>It gets mixed reviews… but most of the people who have issues with its scriptedness have issues with almost all highly structured programs.

Well one thing I have learned from Barton’s program is that once you know a scripted program, you can be much more flexible. Your own knowledge of it makes you more able to use it. The thing is I have had 100s of hours working Barton.

Funny thing though I read a few forums, and the across the pond teachers liked it much better than the American ones (at least that I read). To be fair, some of those American folks were WLites. They vastly prefer Read180!!! Another thing I thought was interesting was that the complained that the comprehension section didn’t contain actual reading (looks like a mix of vocabulary, parts of speech, finding facts and making inferences). Sounds like comprehension to me!!!

>They’re the very nice, hard-working people who just can’t believe that such a wonderful, enriching thing as reading should take work… it just isn’t fair.
Well, it isn’t fair, but it’s true, and plagues upon the perpetrators of falsehoods.

No, it isn’t. But it isn’t fair that these some of these kids can’t read as no one taught them either.

> I used CR before O-G, and had a *lot* of success with it. Now, I *did* tell my students that we were going to try it and in three weeks they had veto rights on it. Doesn’t sound like you’re going to be in that position,

No, I won’t.

>but I would try to somehow give them genuine ownership in the process - that, I would suspect, is a critical ingredient. So I’d let them knokw that you really wanted their input on the program’s effectiveness (and therefore how much you were going to emphasize it or tweak it or whatever… though in fact I wouldn’t tweak) -= but NOT until they had done it, and done it AS PRESCRIBED — for three weeks.

Sounds like a really good idea!

> I also managed to get 20 minutes or so w/ each of my kiddos individually and ran ‘em through a subtest or two of the Woodcock-Johnson, as well as the pretest for Corrective Reading,

Well how it was explained to me was that there the first few days (?), we group them. Find out where they are and then place them.
So I don’t know how much one on one time I get, if any.
EVERYBODY gets my little thing about how they are smart, and so I prob. have that one. (It’s a script. :-))

> It’s scripted and it’s strict. One mistake by *anybody* and bang! Back to teh beginning of the line. So you gotta enforce civility. I had my repertoire of responses but they all boiled down to “we’re going to do this, we’re going to do this right, and it will go faster and less painfully if you just cooperate and get it over with.”

Might be one of the things folks object to. But I didn’t see anything that specific. Mostly, “I don’t want to work with a scripted program”. Wah wah. :-) (I have a friend teaching in reg. ed. and she has specific concerns, ie that she thinks an exp. teacher should be able to integrate subjects and so on. But she is not actually complaining about a program. And this is not special ed.) Funny thing, they liked Read180, which to my knowledge is kind of scripted as well, but has “dah dah” computers.

>My experience was that it is not multisensory enough for *some* students with significant auditory processing problems… I had one such

They do have a Wilson teacher. I am hoping the really dyslexic ones get that. I’m not sure if I will have anything to say about that. The school folks seem really really nice and open. They did say I could pull other stuff into it and so on.

I was hoping to pull some multisensory stuff in there, esp if I have any A level kids (there are four levels). I’m hoping though that I will not do the A level at all, if I can’t use OG.

> I made sure that wasn’t *all* we did - I read aloud from a novel, which my groups loved (always surprises me a *little* that such things don’t violate all the “coolness” rules).

Any suggestions on this. I think it is a good idea.
Other suggestions on other stuff to do. Anything— good books to read aloud would be great.

> And mainly I pushed the attitude hard that I wasn’t a “special” or “remedial” teacher - we were just filling in a gap so they could get on with their NORMAL lives.

This is good too.

> So post when you meet the live entities!

I will. I think I gave the wrong idea. I don’t hate high school kids. I actually worked with “bad boy” high school types at a charter school that had a lot of druggies, kids in kiddie jail, etc. But it was one on one or quite small groups. I am not sure about the discipline idea on hs. (except that you basically don’t put up with anything). I was told that the really bd kids are separated out, but that doesn’t mean there won’t be challenges, esp. as I am 5 ft. 1. It is not a particularly rough school— just your average city high school.

—des

If it’s “not particularly bad” then probably you get some administrative support. In my experience that’s the bottom line.
Generally it takes me a little while to convince them that yes, I expect them to **learn** something.
I usually bring in five or six novels taht I liked enough to stand reading aloud - say, Harry POtter (any of ‘em) if that’s culturally important … Chris Crutcher writes some really great stories with characters with interesting life settings; I get really, really tired of “teenage problem stories” when the problem is the story but his stories tend to be a *story* and, well, the characters happen to have some tough challenges. Sort of frames the problems in a “okay, deal with it and keep moving” attitude. I’m trying to find a copy of his latest, Sledding HIll, but I really liked IronMan and Staying Fat For Sara Byrnes.
If the kids are really limited in their language, though, he might not be a good choice - some of my guys would have been just befuddled by phrases like “sometimes I thought my parents were emissaries from down under” and athe like.
I just read “So Yesterday” and “Feed” this weekend; “Feed” (M.T. Anderson) is more famous but I never did really like those dark fatalistic stories - and the folks on the Child_Lit board said students tended not to care for it ‘cause the main characters were so incredibly uncaring. It’s set a little in the future… instead of the INternet on teh computer, hey, if your family has *any* money at all you get an implant when you’re very young and a constant “feed” of information and, of course, advertisements. The conflict happens when there’s a girl at the social equivalent of Fort Lauderdale who has only had hers for a few years, so she has the couth to be distressed at the societal and planetary costs of total consumerism. “So Yesterday” was ‘way more fun, with a lot of the same issues- this guy in NY City has the job to hang out and figure out what is “cool” and take digital pictures of it and send it to “a certain shoe manufacturere with a four letter name.” Turns out there’s this underground movement of pranksters who are trying to inject a little random chaos into the “focus group” culture, and it’s a book that has more layers so I’m going to go back to it. I’m sort of hoping it turns into a series :-)

Thanks, Sue. No, I don’t care for the teen as main character where the subject was kind of teen angyst either— shall I go to the dance, etc. etc.
I also thought of Rocket Boys by Homer Hickam (the one October Skies is based on).

What child-lit board? Maybe it would be good for me to join/look over.

Any other good (other) activities? I might have a book somewhere?? I also have some real life reading activities, which would be good if they are about B2 or C level (in corrective reading I mean).

Any books, websites you can recommend. I will definitely want other activities for these kids (and myself).

Any first day suggestions?

Thanks,

—des

Hi, des,

Well, this is ironic, but I took Corrective Reading Decoding training a couple of weeks ago!

I do think it is for kids who are truly LD. It provides the repetition they need which regular phonics programs do not. However, as you mentioned, a few very dyslexic kids may need even more (like LiPS). But I think most of these good programs, properly implemented, will reach most LD kids. Sally Shaywitz does recommend the REACH program, which CR is a component of, in her book Overcoming Dyslexia, by the way.

Now, that said, you need training to do Corrective Reading properly. We practiced and it was more difficult to do that you’d think. The pacing and signaling are essential to keep the program moving. Fortunately I work one-on-one, so I won’t have to do all the signaling. But you do have to keep the pace brisk if you want to complete the lesson in an hour. And that is the recommended amount of time to complete a CR Decoding lesson, one hour a day, four days a week. There are things that we learned in the training that are not explained in the book. Just because the program is scripted does not mean it is easy to do. In fact, it is hard to do which is why you get complainers. The complainers of scripted programs just dont want the hard work involved!

Another part you need to learn is how to do the points system. That is a built in motivational factor. I just think people are insane to think they can hand someone a scripted program without training. It shows ignorance on their part. Direct instruction is a very research-validated method, but it requires training and preferably coaching at the beginning to be done right. So, I am hoping they are offering you training. And if not, insist on it.

Janis

Thanks Janis, I’m guessing that it woudl be good for LD kids who are not severe dyslexics? I did see Corrective Reading in Sally S’s book and also Read180, which I found surprising.

Yes, I hope they give me the training!! And I will definitely opt for it if I have a choice and ask about it if they don’t mention it. It does sound complex. I will be working with groups of 8, which is kind of middle of what they describe as workable (there are groups as large as 11-15).

I would agree partially with the assessment that those complainers didn’t like hard work. In fact, some of the complainers had the most illiterate board you can imagine— full of netspeak, very poor sentences, very many misspelled words, etc. etc. It was kind of surprising.
I’m sure some people miss all the free flowing good times they have with WL. Moat’s book compares a WL class with a Phonics based (regular ed) class, and gosh darn it sounds like more fun. (I think the Phonics based one could have been more fun with some work.There’s that work word again. :-)) I know a teacher (reg. ed) that dislikes the lack of ability to integrate subjects, but this is a very intelligent woman who is not complaining about the program or no WL (which she describes effectively in nonverbal ways :-)).

I have learned from Barton that it IS hard work. THey only thing really easier is prep time(or was in Barton anyway).

I’d be awfully interested in sharing ideas of extra things to do, if there is time. I did see interesting discussions from across the pond, so I might look these up again.

—des

You’ll have to report on how it goes, des. I think I am going to try Decoding B1 with a boy this fall (may have already told you that). But I’ll be doing the program content without the bells and whistles which will be easier for sure. I am anxious to see whether he’ll make any gains with it.

Janis

Well, as it turns out I don’t have to use it. I am workign wtih two other teachers, and we have pretty well decided to scrap it. (We’ve neatly filed all the books. :-)). I have been pretty well OG “brain washed”, and I find the scope and sequence bizarre to say the least. (“me” is taught in the first lesson in Book 1 of the first book). So Janis, you’ll have to tell us how it goes. :-)

—des

My son’s middle school decided to place him in Corrective Reading last fall. As a Phono-Graphix tutor, I had never heard of it. I asked around on my various tutor list serves and got some excellent suggestions especially about the importance of placing a student in the proper level of Corrective Reading. My son is hearing-impaired and is borderline grade level; I reviewed all the levels of Corrective Reading and where they had placed my son. It was much too easy for him! He liked the teacher and liked having an easy class (but absolutely agreed with me that it was not challenging). The next level of difficulty was taught by a teacher that I don’t respect and even that would have been too easy for him. They didn’t offer any higher levels.

So all I know is that having accurate assessments of student’s knowledge is important and placing them in the right level is extremely important. I had to pick my battles last year and this was one I avoided!

We have been assessing the kids today and the end of last week, and I have to say that if some of these kids had SRA it didn’t do many of them much good. I feel, after looking thru the books, that the sequence is bizarre. Maybe I’m so used to OG, but in lesson work of book A there was the word “me” (this wasn’t with “be” or “he”), but with more logical words. Somewhere in the middle of book A, they start teaching blends but they have not yet taught /th/ and /sh/. There were some other odd things as well.

I have seen the SRA assessment, and basically they have the kid read and then count the no. of words they read in X minutes. If the kid has fluency issues, they might rank lower than they should be. They start teaching fluency at B1 or something but they don’t separate out kids who have special fluency problems. Might be what happened to your son. The SRA test is quite quick and dirty, imo. We will have the kids pretty well divided up as we are doing the Brigance and some other stuff as well.

I would NOT use it with low level kids. Maybe the highest level kids? I don’t know. I’m not too impressed, but didn’t have much time to go thru the book. We do NOT have to do SRA with them.

—des

You don’t keep track of errors, too??
(Most of my guys had one or the other holding them back - speed or accuracy)

Yes, you do keep track of accuracy. But my point is that IF the main problem WERE fluency, I am not sure how well it would separate that out. (Might apply to DIBELS too, btw).

(I have a student in Barton, in book 4— multisyllable words, etc. that would be in Book 1, if I did a strictly timed test. I can work on fluency and advance him in phonetics skills.)

—des

I have found Corrective Reading to be highly effectrive even with the MOST severe, treatment-resistant, “dyslexic” LD kids, and also with low-IQ kids. Lower performers need to be in a smaller group, however — no more than 4 or 5 (3 is best). For best results, additional work in fluency building is recommended as well. Its effectiveness does depend on the teacher’s skill at error correcting, pacing and so on. Going too fast or too slow are both deadly, and a forgiving attitude towards kids’ mistakes comes back to bite the kid later on.

A plus is that the materials, even for complete beginners, are not at all babyish looking. Keeping it engaging and rewarding for students is the most challenging part but as they start to progress the students really like it.

Susan S.
Ontario, Canada

If I were not trained in an Orton based system, I might like it as well. It has a successful (at least to a moderate extent) with most kids, even high schoolers. However, I am maybe “brainwashed” ala Orton based. I do not think that the program is very logical in some ways (like the aforementioned “me” in lesson one, and that kind of thing). I also think that the sequence is just plain odd. You have multisyllable words, ing, etc in the same lesson which I found to be sort of mismatched. IMO, it is programmed reading ala the old Distar, and not really as systematic or sequential and not at all multisensory. Of course there are several good programs out there that aren’t multisensory, and I dont’ think all kids need it.

BTW, I think the kids do seem to like the SRA better than OG. There is more of a “buy into thing” with high schoolers and OG. If they buy into the whole concept, which one can explain without much difficulty, then it will be successful with them. I don’t think they exactly have to buy into SRA as they use behavior mod to make it work (points and that sort of thing). OTOH, the teacher who has been there the longest said there are just some kids who dont’ want to be there and it doesn’t much matter what you do. Even so I have seen some of the kids buy into OG.

Makes me really really believe in early intervention!

—des

Des,

I am going to have to say that Corrective Reading is structured, systematic, and multi-sensory, judging from my training. CR has oral/auditory work, visual, and kinesthetic (writing). It involves a lot of repetition which most LD kids need. I am aware of other programs that introduce the long e sound early because of the frequency is is used in words. Orton programs don’t always work with all children because they tend to be more rules based. And that can be too much of a memory load for some kids. That’s why it’s really good to be trained in more than one program.

I’m just starting a child in CR Decoding B1, and he most definitely has a fluency disorder. But I can’t make any firm conclusions about the program until I take him through this level. I am certainly glad to have age-appropriate material to use, however. Susan S. who replied has extensive experience with CR and several other decoding programs, and she is actually the one who prompted me to take the training.

Incidentally, the fluency level on those placement tests is not demanding at all, that I think any child who places in a lower level due to taking more than the time allotted really NEEDS the lower level.

Just have high expectations that the program will work if used as designed, and I think you’ll have a better outcome than you think. Susan doesn’t exaggerate. And that’s why I trusted her judgment.

Janis

It wasn’t the earlier intro to long “e” that I was talking about. I wouldn’t mind where you introduced vce as long as it looked logical, but to put “me” in the first lesson with CVC words seem strange. I haven’t looked at too many of the levels, more A. But that’s what I thought about A.

I don’t know about the kinesthetic aspect. If you say that makes SRA multisensory, then what makes it more multisensory than any other program? Most programs use writing.

I’m not using it. If I would be trained in it, it might be another, but they aren’t doing training so I would NOT be trained in another program. I think it is good to be trained in different programs, but that isn’t what they are doing.

BTW, I don’t agree you have to pound kids over the head with rules in OG. I don’t care if he kids know it is syllable division rule 1. It is logical to divide words in certain ways.

But I agree there are other valid approaches than OG, just that I don’t know them. I don’t think you get the whole jist of things reading the manual.

—des