Suggestions for 8 yo struggling reader/AP/Dancing Bears

[faithmama]

I have an 8 yo that is a struggling reader.  He has spent 18 months in AAR and though he has improved...he hasn't been able to get to the next level.  My little guy is delayed and he is speech delays.  He has some auditory processing issues .  I recently started AAS with him because after talking with a tutor, she suggested that he really needs to have the spelling and reading going on to cement things.

 

Well, I am realizing with the phenomnic awareness exercises just how poor his is.  We are just doing the exercises that you pull a token for each sound you hear...good gravy.  He can't begin to hear all of the sounds in a word like swift.  Now I know why he was having such a hard time blending.

 

I am 99.9% sure he is dyslexic.  We are finishing up vision therapy which has been very helpful for him (he no longer gets tired reading or with looking at written work).  I have never switched phonics programs before but after all this time I think we need a different approach so I am going to try Dancing Bears and maybe Apples and Pears.  Any advice or experience with these?

 

I am thinking about doing LIPS or Earobics or something for the auditory piece??  

 

I have to be honest.  I am so so so tired of the OG method of tiles and flashcards and rules that no one remembers...lol ( I have 3 kids doing AAS and 3 doing AAR). 

 

Any suggestions?  Or maybe just encouragement? :) 

[FairProspects]

My younger son is like this but I guess my encouragement would be to stay with OG in some form. Maybe that is doing LiPS or Earobics and returning to OG, but our experience was that Dancing Bears was harder, not easier because ds couldn't blend and couldn't even hear the sounds he was missing. OG has worked the best for him because he is forced to hear and touch all the sounds. I do make him watch my mouth, I way overexaggerate the sounds, and I make him stop and talk me through his choices (eg. You wrote "thing" I asked for "think", do you hear a /g/ sound at the end of that word? Oh, you don't? What sound do you hear?  A /k/? An /nk/? What phonogram makes that sound? etc.). My son is working on Earobics 2 as well, but mostly slow and steady correction is helping him to progress.

 

:grouphug: It is very slow going and many days I think I'm going to lose it.

[faithmama]

My younger son is like this but I guess my encouragement would be to stay with OG in some form. Maybe that is doing LiPS or Earobics and returning to OG, but our experience was that Dancing Bears was harder, not easier because ds couldn't blend and couldn't even hear the sounds he was missing. OG has worked the best for him because he is forced to hear and touch all the sounds. I do make him watch my mouth, I way overexaggerate the sounds, and I make him stop and talk me through his choices (eg. You wrote "thing" I asked for "think", do you hear a /g/ sound at the end of that word? Oh, you don't? What sound do you hear?  A /k/? An /nk/? What phonogram makes that sound? etc.). My son is working on Earobics 2 as well, but mostly slow and steady correction is helping him to progress.

 

:grouphug: It is very slow going and many days I think I'm going to lose it.

Gah!!  Ok....thank you for that response.  I haven't read anywhere that DB didn't work for a kiddo. Does Earobics teach reading or just work on auditory skills?  I need to look at it again.  How old is your son?  yes.  I do feel like I'm going to lose it.  I have 3 kiddos I am doing OG with and to be honest....I was a HUGE adovocator for it, but now I hate it because I'm so flippin tired of it.  lol 

 

My son hates the tiles...which to me is the best part of using AAR as far as learning method. So I'm always forcing him to touch things:)

[FairProspects]

Do you have an iPad? When my ds is really sick of the tiles I let him do the work on the Sound Literacy app which also has moveable tiles. Sometimes making it digital makes it more fun. Ds is 7, almost 8 and he has a dxd blending glitch so I do empathize with the struggle. I get tired of OG too, but it is working so well for both kids that I really can't abandon it, lol.

[Wishes]

Another program I have been learning for the last two years is called "Wired for Reading" by Laura Rogan. It uses some elements of OG and other reading programs in relation to that. Parts that are different, or what I haven't encountered before, is using SLP techniques and methodologies to work through auditory processing (in a lot of ways this is where I have noticed a great deal of difference and success) and the use of a vowel key to work through spelling. She also uses stories and imagery to remember some of the rules and all my kids have benefited from that. I use the "Wired for Reading" program in conjunction with Dancing Bears and elements of LOE.

 

http://www.wiredforreading.com

 

[LaughingCat]

I think LIPS would be great for a child like this since it gives a 2nd way to know the sounds (through your tongue/lip position as you say the word).

 

Also Barton Level 1 is all about practicing the sounds and pulling apart the words. 

 

I love DB, and it clearly improved DD's reading- but it did not resolve all her reading issues.   We did Fast Track though so obviously DD could blend when we started it.  If you go with Dancing Bears, I would suggest always using the notched card (which was a struggle at my house - and I think I gave it up far sooner than I should have).  

[Storygirl]

I've working very slowly through Dancing Bears A with DD9. We started it because she is a word guesser who could not sound out words, despite years of using various phonics programs. The cursor in DB forces her to slow down and consider each sound individually, so that she can't guess. She's made improvements but still needs a different kind of remediation that will help her with learning the phonograms that she just can't seem to get no matter how much we practice them. DB hasn't fixed that.

 

I suspect she needs LiPS or something similar. We're still working on figuring her issues out.

 

I did try AAS with her about a year ago and dropped it very quickly, because she absolutely could not memorize the phonograms and the rules. We did not get very far, and perhaps if we persisted it would have worked for us, but I just thought that for a child who has trouble memorizing, it was torturous. We may decide that something with an O-G approach is what she needs, no matter how slow and difficult it is. Until we have her evaluated to target what her specific issues actually are, I'm planning to stick with DB.

 

By the way, she is entering third grade and reading on a third grade level now (after a long struggle reading below level). But when she has to sound out even a simple word, she still struggles, so DB level A is hard for her.  We are starting CLE Reading third grade. She can read the stories, both to herself and aloud, and can answer the comprehension questions orally, but she cannot spell first grade words. I'm sure she is dyslexic, though we don't have a diagnosis yet.

 

I don't know if that helps, but it might give you a picture of what DB looks like at our house. It has helped her with the word guessing but has not helped with mastering the phonograms.

[faithmama]

Thank you so much for all your responses! Story girl...I would be thrilled if my son (who is technically in 3rd grade) could read third grade readers!!!! He can't even read first grade ;(.

 

He doesn't have a problem memorizing. However we've only ever used aar. I think that is where I went wrong . It's an awesome curriculum! But I felt like we shouldn't stray away from it at all. He had no problem with sight words ....but he was Hardly ever introduced any. The ones he was taught ...he knows. Because he struggled with aar ...he was not introduced many phonograms. Aar had a very slow scope and sequence so if you get stuck ...you can't progress ;(((. Anyway... He knows ch sh ck ng nk ee ( I taught him that outside of aar;).

 

It never occurred to me until a few weeks ago that our problem was guessing....and I only discovered that when I came across this cursor card idea. He definitely has phenomic issues still...but I'm anxious to see how db helps him. I think I'm nervous because I marry curriculums ;). I never feel like i should go beyond them...and I wonder if that hurts him. I probably should try this in conjunction with something else. He loves abeka readers...he has the early first grade ones but he hasn't been able to read them without guessing because I haven't taught him those phonograms. He's fantastic at reading within context because if the Picture clues and clues within the sentence.

 

Would love to hear how you use db with cle!

 

I

[Storygirl]

I think DD9 would probably be called a stealth dyslexic by some -- she is reading well enough that it masks her underlying problems. She always read way below age level until last school year, when her independent reading skills jumped forward, even though her phonemic skills and phonological awareness did not. She can read many words in context that she cannot read or even sound out if written by themselves on a flashcard. Last fall (at age 8 and entering second grade), she was struggling at a first grade level even though we'd been working on reading since she was four or five.

 

I don't think DB made the difference for her in making that jump in reading level. I'm not sure what did -- she just could read better suddenly. When my older daughter learned to read, she went from sounding things out to just suddenly being able to read, as if a light went on (she was five). I think that light just went on for DD9 last year, at age 8. So three extra long years of both of us learning to read before she could do it, compared with her sister. Her struggles with reading (and spelling and memorizing math facts) has always been out of line with how smart she is.

 

Context is everything for her. Words in a story make sense, because she understands what the sentence should say next, and the words just flow one to another. She also gets a lot of information from illustrations. I used to cover up the pictures in our BOB books and other early readers, because she could "read" the page with the pictures showing but could not read it without pictures. I had a hard time convincing others that she is a struggling reader, because she could pick up a Henry and Mudge book and get all the words right, even though she can't remember all of her letter sounds. In the DB books, she can read the stories easily, but the drill pages are very difficult for her.

 

I do think DB helps with her word guessing habit. She now understands what I want her to do when I tell her to sound a word out. Before we started DB, she could not seem to focus on one phoneme at a time in a word and sound it out, and she is doing better at that skill now. She can stop and try to work through the word. But she still can't remember what "ai" is supposed to sound like (for example). We're plugging away, but I suspect she is going to need something else to help her learn the sounds. I suspect some auditory issues that will need to be addressed in a different way.

 

About CLE and Dancing Bears... I am not integrating them in any way. She is going to do the CLE reading along with her two brothers (it involves reading stories in the reader and doing workbook pages that address comprehension, inference, and other reading skills). We've only done the first lesson so far.  I have to help her with the writing and spelling. I want these areas of her reading to continue moving forward even as we figure out how to address her weaknesses. Then she will do the DB lesson with me by herself at another time of day to work on those decoding skills.

[Pen]

I think it would help if you could get a better handle on what the problems are with some evaluation rather than just guessing.

 

Aside from that, with regard to the issue of learning rules, we used High Noon which is a program that did not rely on learning rules.

[Ottakee]

Dancing Bears helped here.

 

In addition, you might want to look at the I See Sam book for reading real (and fun) stories.  www.iseesam.com and www.3rsplus.com  They even have an ipad app and you can find the first 2 sets to print out for free.  These books are the ONLY thing that got my girls reading.

 

We then added the Dancing Bears and later Apples and Pears Spelling,

[ElizabethB]

I would try something like LiPS, phonics is not going to work well until phonemic awareness is fixed. Also, if speech therapy is not going well, you might need another therapist. I have a friend with a child who had speech apraxia and until she worked with a therapist who knew what to do for apraxia, he was not progressing. After the switch, he made quick progress and now speaks normally, but the underlying language processing issues made phonics harder to learn, I used marked print and a lot if repetition with him.

 

This website might help, it helps some of my students with underlying speech problems to see and hear the sounds being made so they can see the differences.

 

http://www.uiowa.edu/~acadtech/phonetics/#

 

Also, my phonics lesson 6 shows the difference between voiced and unvoiced consonants and explains some of it, I would watch it with him. It is only 12 minutes long, but you might want to pause it in the middle and take a short break.

 

If you watch through my spelling lessons, I teach several things that may be helpful for you to explain some tricky phonics related things that well be helpful for working with him, the spelling lessons cover in 2 hours what my phonics lessons cover in 10 hours.

 

Also, I really like these charts for students that struggle with sounds, they are arranged in phonetic order so also helpful for underlying speech problems:

 

https://www.phonovisual.com/products.php?c=1

 

The small charts are fine for homeschooling.

[ElizabethB]

I've working very slowly through Dancing Bears A with DD9. We started it because she is a word guesser who could not sound out words, despite years of using various phonics programs. The cursor in DB forces her to slow down and consider each sound individually, so that she can't guess. She's made improvements but still needs a different kind of remediation that will help her with learning the phonograms that she just can't seem to get no matter how much we practice them. DB hasn't fixed that.

 

I suspect she needs LiPS or something similar. We're still working on figuring her issues out.

 

I did try AAS with her about a year ago and dropped it very quickly, because she absolutely could not memorize the phonograms and the rules. We did not get very far, and perhaps if we persisted it would have worked for us, but I just thought that for a child who has trouble memorizing, it was torturous. We may decide that something with an O-G approach is what she needs, no matter how slow and difficult it is. Until we have her evaluated to target what her specific issues actually are, I'm planning to stick with DB.

 

By the way, she is entering third grade and reading on a third grade level now (after a long struggle reading below level). But when she has to sound out even a simple word, she still struggles, so DB level A is hard for her. We are starting CLE Reading third grade. She can read the stories, both to herself and aloud, and can answer the comprehension questions orally, but she cannot spell first grade words. I'm sure she is dyslexic, though we don't have a diagnosis yet.

 

I don't know if that helps, but it might give you a picture of what DB looks like at our house. It has helped her with the word guessing but has not helped with mastering the phonograms.

Besides the phonovisual charts linked above, I also have some color coded charts here:

 

http://www.thephonicspage.org/On%20Reading/Resources/PL26VowelChart.pdf

 

My phonics lesson 26 explains the charts. I made the ou ow red for my apraxia student who could not remember ou to save his life. "red, blood, ou ouch." After dozens of times with the color version, he could remember it in the black and white version.

 

Using the charts to look up the sounds for a few months during reading without pressure and a bit of review on them daily helps.

[faithmama]

thank you so much for your responses.  My son is not in speech therapy.  I have 4 kids and do 4 therapies...he did receive it for years...but for now we are taking a break...there is only so much time and money:)  I am considering LIPS, but I will need to do it myself at this point.   but don't get excited about it because it seems overwhelming. 

 

My son has been late in developing overall....but continues to make progress.  Last year he stuggled to write 1-100, county by tens, or fives or twos...now he does it without thinking:)  and he can write them without thinking:)  and really the only thing I did was give him time:)

 

I am blessed because he has no problems memorizing any phonogram I've taught him.  we started dancing bears and he did fabulously.  he hasn't had any wrong yet 4 pages in:)  He learned 2 new phonograms and a sight word and the next day he still remembered them....so we will see what happens as things progress.

 

I do believe he needs more help in phonemonic awareness and now that I realize this...I think that will help a ton!!  I am speaking with my daughters therapist (yes...you have to prioritize when several kids need therapy)  to see if she recommends earobics or hearbuilder.  we are going to start there at least. 

 

again....I think my biggest mistake is not straying outside my previous curriculum at all.  I did waste time because he could have at least been learning the non phonetic sight words.  anyway....starting DB feels like a breath of fresh air.  for him and I!    I know it will not eliminate all of our problems but at least it's a place to start! 

 

and as far as aas.  I am in the process of deciding what to do about it.  it has nothing to do with my son but my other kids.  they know every sound of every phongram without issue.  they get all of the main words spelled correctly...but no one remembers the rules!  at all!  trying to decide if a rules based curriculum is really the way to go with my crew.  we will see.  aagh.  This is when I wish I only had 1 kiddo to focus on ...lol

 

As my husband faithfully and frequently reminds me....10 years from now this will all be a distant problem:)

[ElizabethB]

All but 5 of the 220 Dolch words are phonetic with a few rules, here is the list with the rules and why you should not teach them as wholes by sight:

 

http://www.thephonicspage.org/On%20Reading/sightwords.html