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  1. #21
    niccig is offline Clean Sweep forum moderator
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    Quote Originally Posted by sste View Post
    Nicci, did he take the c-top? Or some other that you rec? My sister was mentioning the ctopp to me. There are some phoneme awareness issues -- he is fine on rhyming but not on sound discrimination and parsing syllables I don't think. I know the SLP has done some sort of evaluation and I am going to talk to her on Monday. He def. has a documented phonemic awareness issue -- I think fairly moderate.

    I just don't see why anyone wants to offer him a NON-phonics based program?!? I think part of the issue is that RR is title 1 and that came through the teacher/RR program and his IEP team didn't even know about it in advance.

    As for me, I am super-upset because both of my siblings were dyslexic and my sister has lifelong, serious, and limiting self-esteem issues as a result. My brother never learned to read and I believe his lack of literacy was a factor in his death a few years ago. I am actually having flashbacks over here.

    My sister who is now a reading specialist and Wilson trained is voting for us paying for private Wilson or OG tutoring five times per week, possibly six. Ideally during school with him pulled out for an hour. My family is nothing if not intense. She said wait 4 weeks while I search out a tutor, get the four assessment measures showing minimal progress after 20 lessons, and then pay for our own tutor *while* we are arguing with the district to have the one OG/Wilson tutor come to our school esp for DS. She thinks most of the year will pass before we sort out the district doing anything satisfactory, even then they may only give him 2-3 sessions. Her feeling professionally and from her own experiences was that in terms of achieving lifelong speed and fluency we need to act aggressively while his brain is as young/plastic as possible. She feels like she is corrected and reads well but she will never read quickly because she didn't get the right treatment young enough. And she thinks we need to act before he develops a self-image of himself as low achieving which is absurd but a clear risk.

    Unfortunately I don't have the time (work FT, two other kids) or really the right kind of relationship with DS to work with him on reading on that level of intensity. He fights us whereas he is highly compliant to outside therapists.

    Thanks again everyone, just very this weekend.
    DS took the Phonological Awareness Test 2 (PAT-2). The Comprehensive Test of Phonological Processing (CTOPP-2) would be similar test. DS tested fine on some subtests, but was very low in others. Like your DS it was discriminating sounds, segmenting and blending sounds together and syllable awareness. The key for us was not looking at his overall score, which was in the low normal range, but to look at subtests he did poorly in - these were all the key areas for reading. He saw a SLP grad. student at our college for 2 semesters working on this, but we saw improvement in just 1 semester. I did a presentation on phonological awareness, all the research says it is an area that many children respond quickly to intervention. Some children though do need more intervention and phonological awareness deficit can be part of dyslexia or other learning disabilities. For DS, it seemed to just be the PA. While he was working with the SLP student, I was going back over a phonics program with him - it was old school, pen and paper and it worked for him as focus was on blending and that's what he struggled most with. It was done like this:

    Write c - c sound is /k/ (the soft /s/ sound was explained later)
    Next line, write a - a sounds is /ah/
    Next line write ca, it is cah
    Next line write cat, it's "cat"
    Then repeat for another 20 words or so. Then we read the reading book for that vowel sound. Then moved on to next sound.

    I found that DS would try to guess the word, so breaking it down like this meant he couldn't guess.

    His reading quickly improved after we did speech tx and the phonics for about 6 months. Then I had him see a reading specialist for about 6 months to make sure there wasn't anything else going on. DS just started 4th grade and his reading test put him at 4th grade 6 months. He told me he couldn't read the entire passage to answer the question in time, it's done on computer and is a timed test for each question. I know his reading rate is still a little slow, so I think he would have tested higher if he had more time. I'm hoping his rate will continue to improve. One disadvantage - DS now spells everything phonetically and gets upsets that the spelling doesn't match the sounds.
    Last edited by niccig; 09-22-2014 at 11:16 PM.

  2. #22
    sste is offline Diamond level (5000+ posts)
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    Thank you Niccig, this level of detail is really helpful. Westwood, I started googling private schools -- the thing about DS is one never knows so I feel like I should give it this year. We went through an entire fire drill, we were told there was a very significant likelihood he was mentally handicapped at 1.5 years, I cried a river, and then between 24-26 months he gained thousands of spoken words and ended up way ahead verbally and cognitively by all the EI measures. He has a very odd developmental pattern.

    POSITIVE UPDATE on my end: The school district director of special ed actually phoned me over the weekend as she heard I was upset and also some law now requires a faster IEP meeting within 10 days of requesting an LD evaluation. So, we are now all meeting on Friday with the idea of fast tracking evaluation. She is in agreement that evaluation is the next step and she very much felt, like I do, that we need a targeted intervention. She was not high either on reading recovery for DS after I explained that we appear to have a phonics/phoneme awareness issue. Her view was that is has worked in our district and I think that is because our district is incredibly economically diverse with about 20% of kids coming from serious poverty--for which an "enrichment" model reading recovery program might work for those kids. Acc to special ed coordinator, contrary to what the reading specialist told me there are other programs -- there are both Wilson and SLANT (??) programs in our district, those specialists would need to come to our school but that didn't seem to be a major issue.

    The one thing is that I got the vibe there are more Slant trained staff or better availability of them. I think it is hard and expensive to find people with the full wilson training. Slant is a program that is an offshoot of Orton Gillingham, I think it may be mostly used in my state and less so nationwide. I would much prefer Wilson as there is more of a track record behind it AND I can hire my own Wilson tutor for the summers and breaks, I won't be able to find a slant tutor too new of a program.

    Anyone heard of or know anything about Slant?? I
    ds 2007
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  3. #23
    niccig is offline Clean Sweep forum moderator
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    I don't know anything about SLANT.

    At least from my experience with DS and with the research I did on phonological awareness (PA) for a class, and caveat that I'm not an expert, I would want time with the SLP on PA in conjunction with the reading program. I may be showing bias to SLPs as I'll be one soon (), but PA falls within the SLP scope of practice, as they're the sound/language experts. From my research, children with poor PA in 1st grade are still struggling with PA in 4th grade and still struggling with reading. I don't know how much reading specialists know about PA and how to plan intervention, so I would want someone who knows this area. Some children learn PA on their own and don't need help, and some children need to be taught PA explicitly. DS's therapy was identifying sounds in words, manipulating sounds - you never say name of letter, you say the sound eg /c/, /a/, /t/ is /cat/. Now take off the /t/ and put a /p/, what's the word? It's /cap/. Now it's your turn.

    I also found that I had to teach DS all the phonics covered in school as he didn't understand it until his PA improved. It makes sense, you can't match a letter to a sound (phonics) if you haven't mapped and can identify the sounds in the language (PA). So I would want both PA intervention with a SLP and reading instruction with reading specialist. He may not need to see the SLP for too long, there's research on improvement in PA in short periods of time. I've got an article that gives a good overview of PA and how intervention should be carried out, PM me and I'll send it to you.

    Honestly, my PA wasn't that great until I started my program to be a SLP, phonetics was a very difficult class for me. I was an early reader, but I was a sight reader (I've got a very good memory). My sister said she wasn't reading until 4th grade and only because my mother spent a lot of time with her, and my father was thought to be dyslexic. I'm thinking my side of the family struggles more than others do with PA and we need it to be taught to us.

    Oh, and my professor said that issues with PA can cause problems later as kids' get into upper elementary/middle school due to increased complexity in the reading level. So, it's something to keep an eye on.

    Reading is a very complex cognitive task, and your DS may need help in other areas of reading and not just PA, so get a complete evaluation done. For my DS, PA seems to have been the missing piece, and once he worked on that, the other pieces all fell into place.
    Last edited by niccig; 09-22-2014 at 11:49 PM.

  4. #24
    sste is offline Diamond level (5000+ posts)
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    Nicci, thank you so much. I really appreciate this, the whole thing has been so emotional for me because of my own family history on this and also all of DS's interests are startlingly academic and I see this as a potential barrier to pursuing them.

    DS works with a SLP (she seems very good and we have heard great things about her from other parents) twice per week in a group of 3 students. While sound discrimination is a part of that it seems to me alot of the focus has been on output. I just emailed her asking if she had administered the pat-2 or ctopp-2 and if not if she could. I explained what you and indianamom noted - - that we may need to attack this on both fronts. I think she is going to be very open to a PA approach and also she has a very special relationship with DS, they both love words.

    When you say you say the sound instead of the letter what do you say for letters that have two sounds like c or the vowels? Is there a chart somewhere I can get the letter sounds from?

    In more positive news, or mostly positive, DS has in the past four days had a FIRE LIT UNDER HIM! His classroom teacher who I do not love and DS rightly described as "impersonal" took his Magic Treehouse book out of his bookbin and said it wasn't the right fit. We haven't talked to him about it but DS knows, he always knows, and he is pretty sad he is having reading problems. He told me about, said I couldn't talk to the teacher but a sad thing happened at school, his voice was shaking as he said, "And I love magic treehouse." So, of course, I ran out and bought 14 magic treehouses and now DS is begging me each night for our special reading time in my bed -- he reads to me for about 5 minutes and then I read 20 minutes of magic treehouse. I have him read certain words from MT which to DS is esp delightful since his teacher said he couldn't read it. From what I can tell from our reading time, what is killing him is that: 1) he doesn't know short or long vowel sounds and I think you are right, he is not discriminating them; 2) he reverses b and d; 3) he sometimes tries to read words from right to left. However, after a few days I noticed he has started memorizing words by brute force and his recall on that seems very good, much better than I initially thought. Hopefully some combo of memorization + SLP + Wilson or Slant will work (slant has actually checked out positively in general, our therapist knows one of the program's pioneers and is checking with him/her to assure it is the right fit for DS). It is good we are catching it early I hope.

    Oh and DH and I ordered this book -- in addition to our therapist who is at a major center we consulted with literacy how and they suggested a bunch of resources. Did you think well of this one? http://www.academictherapy.com/detai...%5Bbob%5D&TBL=[tbl]

    Will PM soon, thank you again!
    Last edited by sste; 09-23-2014 at 11:46 AM.
    ds 2007
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  5. #25
    inmypjs is offline Sapphire level (2000+ posts)
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    I agree that SLPs can be very helpful with PA issues. A good friend is a certified Wilson tutor and an SLP - and she says this all the time, that schools need to be using SLPs more for reading problems. Do be aware that both the Wilson and Barton programs explicitly and sytematically teach PA (sound to symbol correlation) - not just phonics. So unless your child has other speech or extreme auditory processing issues, additional work with an SLP shouldn't be necessary if you do one of those programs as they were meant to be done - systematically, from start to finish. PA deficits are one of the hallmarks of dyslexia, and OG programs like Wilson and Barton are recommended precisely because they address that issue. I also wanted to say that the development pattern you described - of late and sudden burst of speech development - are also very common with dyslexia. So not weird to me at all.
    Last edited by inmypjs; 09-24-2014 at 12:57 AM.

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    SnuggleBuggles is offline Black Diamond level (25,000+ posts)
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    Totally OT (well, kind of), at open house last night they said they used OG for reading. I thought it sounded familiar up thread. The teacher is incredibly passionate and well informed about it. She talked for a good while and said she could have gone on for hours.

  7. #27
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    However, after a few days I noticed he has started memorizing words by brute force and his recall on that seems very good, much better than I initially thought.
    I don't know if this will make you feel better or not, but my older DD became a fluent reader before she really learned phonics. She was a sight word reader and had an incredibly large memorized vocabulary. She could read Magic Treehouse from sight words before she was directly instructed in phonics. She did eventually learn phonics, so I'm not saying that isn't important, but your DS wouldn't be the first kid to learn to read from sight vs. phonics if it comes to that.
    Beth, mom to older DD (8/01) and younger DD (10/06) and always missing Leah (4/22 - 5/1/05)

  8. #28
    inmypjs is offline Sapphire level (2000+ posts)
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    Quote Originally Posted by SnuggleBuggles View Post
    Totally OT (well, kind of), at open house last night they said they used OG for reading. I thought it sounded familiar up thread. The teacher is incredibly passionate and well informed about it. She talked for a good while and said she could have gone on for hours.
    So jealous!!!! And that is awesome.

  9. #29
    niccig is offline Clean Sweep forum moderator
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    Quote Originally Posted by sste View Post
    Nicci, thank you so much. I really appreciate this, the whole thing has been so emotional for me because of my own family history on this and also all of DS's interests are startlingly academic and I see this as a potential barrier to pursuing them.

    DS works with a SLP (she seems very good and we have heard great things about her from other parents) twice per week in a group of 3 students. While sound discrimination is a part of that it seems to me alot of the focus has been on output. I just emailed her asking if she had administered the pat-2 or ctopp-2 and if not if she could. I explained what you and indianamom noted - - that we may need to attack this on both fronts. I think she is going to be very open to a PA approach and also she has a very special relationship with DS, they both love words.

    When you say you say the sound instead of the letter what do you say for letters that have two sounds like c or the vowels? Is there a chart somewhere I can get the letter sounds from?

    In more positive news, or mostly positive, DS has in the past four days had a FIRE LIT UNDER HIM! His classroom teacher who I do not love and DS rightly described as "impersonal" took his Magic Treehouse book out of his bookbin and said it wasn't the right fit. We haven't talked to him about it but DS knows, he always knows, and he is pretty sad he is having reading problems. He told me about, said I couldn't talk to the teacher but a sad thing happened at school, his voice was shaking as he said, "And I love magic treehouse." So, of course, I ran out and bought 14 magic treehouses and now DS is begging me each night for our special reading time in my bed -- he reads to me for about 5 minutes and then I read 20 minutes of magic treehouse. I have him read certain words from MT which to DS is esp delightful since his teacher said he couldn't read it. From what I can tell from our reading time, what is killing him is that: 1) he doesn't know short or long vowel sounds and I think you are right, he is not discriminating them; 2) he reverses b and d; 3) he sometimes tries to read words from right to left. However, after a few days I noticed he has started memorizing words by brute force and his recall on that seems very good, much better than I initially thought. Hopefully some combo of memorization + SLP + Wilson or Slant will work (slant has actually checked out positively in general, our therapist knows one of the program's pioneers and is checking with him/her to assure it is the right fit for DS). It is good we are catching it early I hope.

    Oh and DH and I ordered this book -- in addition to our therapist who is at a major center we consulted with literacy how and they suggested a bunch of resources. Did you think well of this one? http://www.academictherapy.com/detai...%5Bbob%5D&TBL=[tbl]

    Will PM soon, thank you again!
    With the PA intervention, DS just stuck with the short vowels first and "c" as /k/, I did tell him that "c" can also be a soft /s/ sometimes, but we would learn that later on. You really need to figure out what areas of PA he struggles with, hence having that evaluated. It wasn't all areas of PA for my DS. You would sound out the sounds, never ever say the letter names. PA is all about sound discrimination. I never wrote anything when he did his PA homework, it was all verbal. DS concentrated on segmenting and blending sounds and IDing syllables. Then once he got those areas, he moved on to manipulation of sounds to create new words. Poor kid had mum as SLP grad student, so I would make him blend/segment road signs as we drove the 45 mins to/from speech therapy.

    Once DS had been getting some PA intervention, I used this phonics program with DS, http://blendphonics.org/ It was free and it made sense to me with what I've learned in grad. school. I'm not a reading specialist, so I needed something I could understand and implement. I started DS with the short vowels and did one-two sections a week, depending on how many words it was. It's not an OG program, but it's focus on one sound at a time, how it taught blending of sounds, and the high number of words you practice with, worked for my DS. I found we did the first 3-5 words in each section together, then he got it for the rest of the words. I then had him read the reader book for that vowel sound/blend of sounds etc.

    We were lucky that DS was in private school at the time and there was no embarrassment for him not reading as well as other kids. The teacher had no idea PA was a problem for him, still think she *should* have known, but at least DS didn't feel negative about his reading issues.

    Oh, books that are easier than Magic Treehouse are the series of Zac Powers, boy spy. It's by Australian publishing company. Each series has different levels of reading difficulty. I think the Spy Camp are the easiest. Here in the US you can only get them on kindle I believe. Big writing, easier words, shorter chapters. DS moved on to these after the Bob type books and before Magic Treehouse. I'm kicking myself as I donated those books to DS's school library. Ugh...should've kept them!
    Last edited by niccig; 09-25-2014 at 01:39 AM.

  10. #30
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    Quote Originally Posted by inmypjs View Post
    I agree that SLPs can be very helpful with PA issues. A good friend is a certified Wilson tutor and an SLP - and she says this all the time, that schools need to be using SLPs more for reading problems. Do be aware that both the Wilson and Barton programs explicitly and sytematically teach PA (sound to symbol correlation) - not just phonics. So unless your child has other speech or extreme auditory processing issues, additional work with an SLP shouldn't be necessary if you do one of those programs as they were meant to be done - systematically, from start to finish. PA deficits are one of the hallmarks of dyslexia, and OG programs like Wilson and Barton are recommended precisely because they address that issue. I also wanted to say that the development pattern you described - of late and sudden burst of speech development - are also very common with dyslexia. So not weird to me at all.
    Good to know that Wilson and Barton teach PA explicitly and systematically. I agree that SLPs should be used more in schools for PA - DS's teachers at time had no idea what I was talking about. The research I did for a paper showed that many teachers think PA and phonics are the same thing! I think SLPs should be doing inservice on it more in schools. With all I did with DS, I'm considering doing further study to be reading specialist. I feel it will mesh well with my SLP training. DH and DS would kill me if I continue studying past May 2015 (my graduation date), so I may put the idea on back burner for a little bit. Finish off SLP grad school, work for a bit, then think about it.



    Quote Originally Posted by egoldber View Post
    I don't know if this will make you feel better or not, but my older DD became a fluent reader before she really learned phonics. She was a sight word reader and had an incredibly large memorized vocabulary. She could read Magic Treehouse from sight words before she was directly instructed in phonics. She did eventually learn phonics, so I'm not saying that isn't important, but your DS wouldn't be the first kid to learn to read from sight vs. phonics if it comes to that.
    Yep, I was a sight reader. I didn't learn phonics in school at all.

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