Where to start w/16 yr old non-readers using PG

I have never taught using PG— have the book and am familar with the materials but not so much the test, I don’t know what that means. But I have worked with illiterate 16 year old high risk kids. I don’t think any but a couple were dyslexic and I worked with some no longer published Open Court cards. Anyway what I wanted to say was this: unless you can prove that they have certain skills (can they read nonsense CVC words? Can they read nonsense CCVC or CVCC words?) I say nonsense because I would want to be sure that they really know how decode before doing whatever it is. A lot of kids can memorize the CVC words, doesn’t mean they can decode anything.

If not you would start at the beginning. Many of these kids have huge gaps and nothing but starting over will help. I would give the kids a little speech before I started about how they are not stupid even if teachers have told them they are, and that for some reason or other they were not able to pick up the code (I didn’t use this word— wish I had had it). This worked very well. Even street smart tough inner city kids would work on simple CVC words and CVVC (Open court works a bit differently), etc. I did throw in some highly decodable bigger words — like I’d teach them “de” and then we’d do “detain”, “debate”, etc. I’d do a very little of this in each session. But basically I kept to the framework.

Most remediation approaches from Orton to LiPs have you starting at the beginning in most cases. Some things will go quicker for older kids. (And some slower.)

You might have to change some fo the approach a little. I’d do away with the pictures. I got a nice font that matches the font they use in PG and other early reading approaches, so I could rewrite the stories a bit keeping them decodable. (Ventura software offers such a thing.) I did some revision on the Open Court stuff. They had a little bit of phoneme awareness stuff that had the sound in a little story “OW. When the boy put his hand on the stove he said “ow. ow. ow.” I’d just say the sound and have them repeat it. I could have used a mirror, as some of the kids did have trouble with the phonemes. Since I had some ESL kids I pointed out where things were different than Spanish, for example many of the kids did not hear the “sz” or “z” at the end of plurals. This was useful to a lot of kids.

HTH,

—des (dez :-))

Hi Des,

Thanks for your reply. They both have trouble decoding and with nonsense words. One was very low on the phonological processing screening, blending 4 letter words, segmenting and code knowledge. The boy that scored the lowest I’m sure has some major vision problems. He tilts his head and closes one eye. His eyes seemed to “vibrate” when he looked at the words.

The other boy I think won’t be hard to remediate. I feel like I should start from the beginning of the Reading Reflex book but because of their age felt that it was a little juvenile for them. I’ll have to make some changes like you suggested.

I will be working with them one on one and not in a class. I’m looking forward to working with these fellows. I just hope I do okay.

Thanks,
Diane

Hi, Diane,

I go exactly by the recommendations at the bottom of the test page. It tells you what chapter to begin in depending on the test scores. The pink is not too juvenile if someone can’t blend or segment. You just can’t skip that step if they don’t have it. But more than likely, you can go through it fast, especially with the higher scoring child.

Good luck!
Janis

When the kids get motivated to read it is really something. That’s when they start getting a little success in something they have struggled with all their lives. Going thru easy CVC stuff is no issue. If they think it is too easy, I would throw in some nonsense words that might be parts of real words— for example “sec” is part of second, secretary, etc. (this worked well for me) as well as teaching them new vocabulary, there are some nice short words they won’t know the meaning of (not necessarily CVC), another thing was to do some compound words and prefixes/suffixes. I tell them ahead of time what the word is. The kids liked words like “webcam”, “website”, etc. I’d think up maybe three words for them like this.
You could even rewrite some of the stories to fit the “a fat cat” (say) pattern but would be higher level or even a bit of teenage type humor. You can’t expect much as you have only so much to work with. (Open court had no text like this to work with.)

If they objected that I was taking them all the way back, I’d say something like I am afraid you are missing little pieces. The kids, even the bad a** street smart kids were really fine with this. It’s amazing what a bit of success will do. One kid would absolutely badger me about when I was coming and working with him.

—des

Also Wilson Reading has some decodable Readers on the B level. I think you can get these separately. Some of the language, words, etc. are at a bit higher level. They talk about jobs, etc. and have no pics. Might work for you. I don’t think you have to buy everything.

—des