Jump to content

Menu

Barton Nonsense words question


Pen
 Share

Recommended Posts

In the thread re the 11yo, when I wrote about the issue of nonsense words and Barton, someone, OhElizabeth ?, commented that nonsense words are not actually as necessary to the program as I had thought they were and can be skipped.

 

And yet, when I just looked back at the Barton scope and sequence it looks to me like the whole first level is nonsense words based.  

 

Also it seems to use those nonsense words in the first level with a pretty quick presentation of a number of different patterns in the first several lessons (far more different patterns than with High Noon's early lessons, by comparison, which gives a number of lessons just on CVC pattern real words before introducing other patterns).  

 

It seems like a lot more is being "thrown at" the student right at the start, than was our experience using High Noon.

 

For those of you who have used Barton, could you please clarify and explain?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I didn't use Barton really but I purchased Level 1 and watched the videos.

 

Okay, my understanding is that it is very important to use the nonsense words for kids who have memorized many CVC words or word families like -at or whatever.

 

You need to see if they are just remembering or if they are really sounding out (blending).

 

My son at the time didn't know any CVC words --

like he was assessed as knowing 17 words including a and I.

 

So to me it didn't make sense for us personally to use nonsense words.

 

But many kids have memorized the word families or words, without learning to blend, and then no sense words are very important.

 

That is my understanding.

 

I think it is a lot to throw at a kid who doesn't have any kind of base of sight words.

 

For a kid who does -- I don't think so. Also I think older kids have a better concept of "we are sounding out nonsense words here" than little kids do, and I think that is something to take into account.

 

So that is the rationale and pros and cons as I understand them.

 

I know from OT testing that visual memory is a weak area for my son; but for some kids it may be a strong area and carry them through without actually blending for quite a while -- that is my understanding, also.

 

Edit: for example, I used Abecedarian Level B with my son, but other posters here have said their kids easily memorized the words presented without really learning what they were supposed to learn, and so it was not a good fit for them. That was not my experience, but I can see how it could be that way for kids who could pick up individual words fairly easily but still were having trouble with blending.

Edited by Lecka
  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I missed the thread about the importance of nonsense words but I am in level 7 of Barton so I have been using it for awhile.

 

Level 1 is all about training the child to actually pay attention to the sounds rather than sight words. It isn't like they are memorizing the nonsense words but rather learning to simply listen for the sounds in a spoken word or break a written word into those sounds. That is its whole purpose.

 

The hand motion are fabulous for a kid who struggles with words. As you get farther along the fact that you don't have to insert words with directions into the middle of sounding out a word is a good thing.

 

I do think the nonsense words are important in the first few levels because by the time a kid is 11 they probably have been exposed to enough CVC words they will have many memorized. I quit using them about level 5 because there was enough real words that were unknown to my child that I was still sure that he was sounding things out. If I see a level doesn't have enough practice for him or has all familiar words than I can go back to nonsense words. There is also the fact that even if he has doesn't get a lot of nonsense words in the upper levels he has already formed the habit of sounding things out from earlier levels. Remember this was not really made for pre-schoolers but people are usually found to have Dyslexia after they have already struggled with reading and it can be used even for an adult

 

I would say nonsense words were super important in at least the first three levels. It may be more than that depending on the age of the child, their exposure to other words, and their ability to lose the habit of sounding the words out.

Edited by frogger
  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

As frogger said, Level 1 is about training a child to try and break down the sounds they are hearing into individual sounds then learning to manipulate and rearrange and reassemble those sounds.  There are only 5 sections but each section covers several different ways to break apart and reassemble specific sound combinations (only cvc word patterns).  A child is only hit with a ton of things at once if the tutor goes too fast.  DD had to go through each of the 5 sections veeeeeerrrrrrrrryyyyyyyy sllllllloooooooowwwwwlllllyyyyy.  It took a lot of time.  An NT kid could probably do Level 1 in an afternoon.  DD did it in maybe a month or two (or three?).  I don't remember clearly anymore.  I know it took a long time.  We did lessons daily and moved incredibly slowly.  DS blew through it in a week.  He wasn't having nearly the trouble DD was with hearing and breaking apart and reassembling the sounds.  Of course, DD had been in school longer so maybe part of the issue was it was taking her longer to unlearn bad reading practices and learn more efficient ones.  Also, the school they attended was all sight word based, not phonics, so at that point she had had 7 (4k-5th) years of useless sight word based instruction.  That absolutely played a factor.

 

Also, absolutely the hand gestures introduced in Level one were a huge help here.  Otherwise the kids would get bogged down with too many words from me trying to move us through the lesson.  This was especially helpful to already have established when we hit the higher levels.

 

I found the nonsense words critical for my kids but at Lecka mentioned regarding kids who have never been exposed to sight words vs. kids who have, my kids had already been in school for several years and had already picked up bad reading practices.  The nonsense words were critical for helping me determine if they were truly understanding the rule and internalizing its application (not memorizing).  I have no idea how necessary they would be for a child who has never been down that path.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I find the nonsense words very important. They teach the child to slow down and decode from left to right. It makes the child apply the rules without having familiarity with already knowing the words from practice. It also prevents kids from guessing the end of the word based on decoding the first half - you can't guess nonsense words, therefore learning to read the whole word.

 

  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I find the nonsense words very important. They teach the child to slow down and decode from left to right. It makes the child apply the rules without having familiarity with already knowing the words from practice. It also prevents kids from guessing the end of the word based on decoding the first half - you can't guess nonsense words, therefore learning to read the whole word.

Ah, this too.  The nonsense words forced my kids to slow down and actually read the word in front of them instead of guessing based on the first couple of letters.  It was a game changer here.  Both kids are MUCH more willing to slow down and actually sound out a new word and do it successfully.  I attribute that not only to Barton in general but to the use of nonsense words in particular.

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Ah, this too.  The nonsense words forced my kids to slow down and actually read the word in front of them instead of guessing based on the first couple of letters.  It was a game changer here.  Both kids are MUCH more willing to slow down and actually sound out a new word and do it successfully.  I attribute that not only to Barton in general but to the use of nonsense words in particular.

 

And see I didn't have to have that. I had complete control, and he couldn't do anything without the LIPS faces early on anyway. We were modifying the whole way, dropping letters he didn't have, expanding and applying to more complex situations (because he wasn't going to generalize them on his own like Barton assumes), etc. We just modified so much that, for us to drop a column here or some of the words there, it's just a nothing. I'm still very careful that the EFFECT is solid and that skills are getting nailed.

 

I really don't get why this is an issue for the OP. Are you worried Barton is not good?? As long as your kid is reading and you're happy, there's no issue. I don't think we're talking about bad programs vs. good programs here. 

 

The other thing to remember is that Barton is actually meant to have some flexibility for more experienced teachers. There are side notes in the margin, so more experienced teachers are often teaching from that, not the scripts. In other words, it's NORMAL for people with more experience to come in and make it fit their particular situation. I have a background in linguistics and have participated in my ds' speech therapy for years. It was logical I would make significant modification.

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I agree with OhE, I don't see this as a bad program approach vs. a good program approach. Pen I hope that isn't your concern because I don't think either program is bad at all.

 

 

It seems to me from all the zillions of posts I have read since stepping into the world of dyslexia that there is more than one way to skin a cat. High Noon sounds like a great program. So is Barton. And Wilson. And many others that people have used to help their child.

 

Let's face it, with any kid but especially for kids that are wired a bit differently, it is challenging to find the path that will really fit a particular child. Any program, no matter how great, may need modifying to fit the specific needs of that child. Goodness knows my two Dyslexic kiddos have frequently needed very different modifications...

  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Also it seems to use those nonsense words in the first level with a pretty quick presentation of a number of different patterns in the first several lessons (far more different patterns than with High Noon's early lessons, by comparison, which gives a number of lessons just on CVC pattern real words before introducing other patterns).

 

It seems like a lot more is being "thrown at" the student right at the start, than was our experience using High Noon.

 

For those of you who have used Barton, could you please clarify and explain?

I just realized I only answered one of your questions. Regarding the quick presentation of material, I must add that it takes us about a week to do a lesson once we got to the upper levels. We don't do one lesson a day although we did go faster through the first level since my son knew all his letter sounds already. The lesson just means a new skill or chunk of material to work with not something to be completed in one sitting. Barton slows it down by doing a variety of things with each chunk of material so a child can really get it down. In future levels you will have many more sections from teaching it, to having them read words made from tiles, and then nonsense words, to having them spell with tiles, then doing the whole process on paper, then moving it to phrases, and then reading whole sentences, writing whole sentences, and then reading whole stories. So you will be covering the same material in progressively harder ways so the child can really get it down without feeling like he is stuck doing the same thing over and over.

 

The first level is different because there is less to work with but the important thing is that you don't move to the next lesson until they have the first one down. A sample lesson may be do the easy levels of lesson 1 A-C and the next day do the harder words of lesson 1 A-C. Only you know how fast your child will go through them. If you need another day you could go down a column so that you are getting some easy and some hard words. Honestly, all the lessons are pretty much working on the exact same skill just at harder levels. It is harder to hear a blend then a cvc word for example so it is progressive.

 

 

 

If you find your child is able to perform the skill on day one by all means just move to the next lesson even the same day. I would make sure he does some harder words first though. So if he is getting it quickly skip to the harder words.

Edited by frogger
  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

And see I didn't have to have that. I had complete control, and he couldn't do anything without the LIPS faces early on anyway. We were modifying the whole way, dropping letters he didn't have, expanding and applying to more complex situations (because he wasn't going to generalize them on his own like Barton assumes), etc. We just modified so much that, for us to drop a column here or some of the words there, it's just a nothing. I'm still very careful that the EFFECT is solid and that skills are getting nailed.

 

I really don't get why this is an issue for the OP. Are you worried Barton is not good?? As long as your kid is reading and you're happy, there's no issue. I don't think we're talking about bad programs vs. good programs here. 

 

The other thing to remember is that Barton is actually meant to have some flexibility for more experienced teachers. There are side notes in the margin, so more experienced teachers are often teaching from that, not the scripts. In other words, it's NORMAL for people with more experience to come in and make it fit their particular situation. I have a background in linguistics and have participated in my ds' speech therapy for years. It was logical I would make significant modification.

 

 

We live, IRL, in a sparsely populated rural area. Some people  here know that ds was remediated as to reading and have asked me about it from time to time.  I want to be able to answer better with regard not only to programs we did try, but also with a little more understanding if I mention ones we didn't, such as Barton, Edmark, etc.   What we used did work extremely well for ds. But I don't think every program is equally suitable to every child.

 

My prior  sense about Barton had been that nonsense words were integral to it--until you had written that they were not necessarily required and could be skipped if desired.  I was trying to understand that better.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well see I've been curious what instruction High Noon includes. How do they handle helping kids with phonological processing deficits? Those are the crux of dyslexia, and all I've really caught onto about High Noon is that it included stepped readers. Did it also include some kind of drill? What about exercises where kids add/subtract sounds (elision) to words? Barton includes a LOT of work on phonological processing.

 

I've assumed there's some in High Noon, in a tm or something, but I don't know. I can tell you that my ds NEVER would have learned to read if his entire exposure and process was words over and over, no matter how stepped. He could not wrangle at the word level, because had to back up and do so much work at the sound level. We did a ton with minimal differences and chaining. (bat, change the /b/ to /k/ and what do you get, etc.). For him, phonological processing was very hard. I tried the I See Sam books with him (carefully stepped, highly decodable), and he'd read the word a ton of times and then have NO CLUE what the word was. So clearly, for him, he was not going to read his way out of dyslexia, even with highly decodable, stepped readers.

 

To be clear, Barton encourages people to use her program exactly as written. I'm not the norm for users, and what I do/did is NOT the norm. Most people simply pick up Barton, use it, and it works. That works especially well as an approach if you're using it with the target age (3rd grade +) and with the most normal, intended market (dyslexics with no ID and no language disabilities). My ds has autism, was young for target age, and has speech AND language issues. But that's not the norm. Barton STRONGLY encourages people to use it as written, all the components, and use it straight. And personally, I don't see what the nonsense words are a big deal. They're there as a way to work on phonological processing. They're fine. If a student really has some cognitive rigidity and that really bothers him, a person using Barton could adapt. You can adapt anything if you want to enough. For me, Barton gave me so many tools overall that it was worth it even when adapted.

 

Barton has samples online. Personally, I get so many programs in my head, so many paths and ideas, I've given up trying to be too helpful. You could mention what you used, what you've heard other people using a lot, and leave it at that. People sometimes find really non-traditional paths and make it work. 

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well see I've been curious what instruction High Noon includes. How do they handle helping kids with phonological processing deficits? Those are the crux of dyslexia, and all I've really caught onto about High Noon is that it included stepped readers. Did it also include some kind of drill? What about exercises where kids add/subtract sounds (elision) to words? Barton includes a LOT of work on phonological processing.

 

I've assumed there's some in High Noon, in a tm or something, but I don't know. I can tell you that my ds NEVER would have learned to read if his entire exposure and process was words over and over, no matter how stepped. He could not wrangle at the word level, because had to back up and do so much work at the sound level. We did a ton with minimal differences and chaining. (bat, change the /b/ to /k/ and what do you get, etc.). For him, phonological processing was very hard. I tried the I See Sam books with him (carefully stepped, highly decodable), and he'd read the word a ton of times and then have NO CLUE what the word was. So clearly, for him, he was not going to read his way out of dyslexia, even with highly decodable, stepped readers.

 

To be clear, Barton encourages people to use her program exactly as written. I'm not the norm for users, and what I do/did is NOT the norm. Most people simply pick up Barton, use it, and it works. That works especially well as an approach if you're using it with the target age (3rd grade +) and with the most normal, intended market (dyslexics with no ID and no language disabilities). My ds has autism, was young for target age, and has speech AND language issues. But that's not the norm. Barton STRONGLY encourages people to use it as written, all the components, and use it straight. And personally, I don't see what the nonsense words are a big deal. They're there as a way to work on phonological processing. They're fine. If a student really has some cognitive rigidity and that really bothers him, a person using Barton could adapt. You can adapt anything if you want to enough. For me, Barton gave me so many tools overall that it was worth it even when adapted.

 

Barton has samples online. Personally, I get so many programs in my head, so many paths and ideas, I've given up trying to be too helpful. You could mention what you used, what you've heard other people using a lot, and leave it at that. People sometimes find really non-traditional paths and make it work. 

I've been curious about High Noon, too, and have always appreciated Pen being so willing to share.  Thanks Pen!  :)

 

FWIW, having talked to Susan Barton, I don't agree with the statement that she wants or expects all people to use her program exactly as written without deviation.  What she recommends is that people that have never used an OG based system not start tossing out pieces just because they don't understand them.  

 

For instance, I am a very verbal person.  I am used to talking my way through things.  I had a hard time wrapping my head around the hand gestures in Level 1.  Also, DD was a VERY resistant pre-teen who was convinced that everything we were doing was going to fail (thanks to 7 years of formal schooling in a brick and mortar with very little forward reading progress) and felt that the hand gestures were childish and stupid.  I did not emphasize the hand gestures.  It was not a battle I was willing to fight, especially for something I saw little value in.  It ended up bogging us down.  I blamed the program.  However, I talked to S. Barton to try and get some clarification.  She explained in more detail why I should incorporate the hand gestures.  She was right.  100%.  And DD agrees.  I needed to shut up so DD could focus on the sounds.  Hand gestures allowed us to communicate without my prattling on and preventing DD from really listening and hearing those critical sounds.  

 

Barton and I have conversed a few times.  She made it clear that I should absolutely feel free to adapt the program in whatever way I felt would help my kids.  She does recognize that each child is different.  She just wanted me to be certain I was not tossing out vital pieces of the program, or radically changing important components, based on a lack of understanding as to why they are there in the first place.

 

 

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

High Noon (from samples) looks a lot like what I did with my older son, he was just younger at the time. I got an impression it would be better for a little older kids.

 

My younger son needs to mainly have vocabulary words he knows and that limits things a lot. But he has comprehension issues that need to, if not come ahead or decoding, at least they are equally important with deciding. Like -- having the word "jig" when he is never going to hear or use that word -- it is just very, very confusing for him. There is no simple one-time explanation of "it means dance."

 

I also am one to think different things make sense for different kids.

 

I am reading him Nate the Great right now (exciting!!!!!!!) at the same age I had read the first two Harry Potter books and was into the third book, with my older son. Their comprehension is just not on the same level.

 

They have also made different kinds of progress in speech therapy. My older son was always very, very frustrated and would get upset. My younger son's attitude is 100 times better even while he is making slower progress, and he doesn't have such a sense like he is bad at things. It makes a huge difference and I feel like things can take longer without him becoming unhappy, where with my older son it was more like we had to get through things so he would quit being unhappy.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well see I've been curious what instruction High Noon includes. How do they handle helping kids with phonological processing deficits? Those are the crux of dyslexia, and all I've really caught onto about High Noon is that it included stepped readers. Did it also include some kind of drill? What about exercises where kids add/subtract sounds (elision) to words? Barton includes a LOT of work on phonological processing.

 

I've assumed there's some in High Noon, in a tm or something, but I don't know. I can tell you that my ds NEVER would have learned to read if his entire exposure and process was words over and over, no matter how stepped. He could not wrangle at the word level, because had to back up and do so much work at the sound level. We did a ton with minimal differences and chaining. (bat, change the /b/ to /k/ and what do you get, etc.). For him, phonological processing was very hard. I tried the I See Sam books with him (carefully stepped, highly decodable), and he'd read the word a ton of times and then have NO CLUE what the word was. So clearly, for him, he was not going to read his way out of dyslexia, even with highly decodable, stepped readers.

 

To be clear, Barton encourages people to use her program exactly as written. I'm not the norm for users, and what I do/did is NOT the norm. Most people simply pick up Barton, use it, and it works. That works especially well as an approach if you're using it with the target age (3rd grade +) and with the most normal, intended market (dyslexics with no ID and no language disabilities). My ds has autism, was young for target age, and has speech AND language issues. But that's not the norm. Barton STRONGLY encourages people to use it as written, all the components, and use it straight. And personally, I don't see what the nonsense words are a big deal. They're there as a way to work on phonological processing. They're fine. If a student really has some cognitive rigidity and that really bothers him, a person using Barton could adapt. You can adapt anything if you want to enough. For me, Barton gave me so many tools overall that it was worth it even when adapted.

 

Barton has samples online. Personally, I get so many programs in my head, so many paths and ideas, I've given up trying to be too helpful. You could mention what you used, what you've heard other people using a lot, and leave it at that. People sometimes find really non-traditional paths and make it work. 

 

 

I've been curious about High Noon, too, and have always appreciated Pen being so willing to share.  Thanks Pen!   :)

 

FWIW, having talked to Susan Barton, I don't agree with the statement that she wants or expects all people to use her program exactly as written without deviation.  What she recommends is that people that have never used an OG based system not start tossing out pieces just because they don't understand them.  

 

For instance, I am a very verbal person.  I am used to talking my way through things.  I had a hard time wrapping my head around the hand gestures in Level 1.  Also, DD was a VERY resistant pre-teen who was convinced that everything we were doing was going to fail (thanks to 7 years of formal schooling in a brick and mortar with very little forward reading progress) and felt that the hand gestures were childish and stupid.  I did not emphasize the hand gestures.  It was not a battle I was willing to fight, especially for something I saw little value in.  It ended up bogging us down.  I blamed the program.  However, I talked to S. Barton to try and get some clarification.  She explained in more detail why I should incorporate the hand gestures.  She was right.  100%.  And DD agrees.  I needed to shut up so DD could focus on the sounds.  Hand gestures allowed us to communicate without my prattling on and preventing DD from really listening and hearing those critical sounds.  

 

Barton and I have conversed a few times.  She made it clear that I should absolutely feel free to adapt the program in whatever way I felt would help my kids.  She does recognize that each child is different.  She just wanted me to be certain I was not tossing out vital pieces of the program, or radically changing important components, based on a lack of understanding as to why they are there in the first place.

 

 

High Noon (from samples) looks a lot like what I did with my older son, he was just younger at the time. I got an impression it would be better for a little older kids.

 

My younger son needs to mainly have vocabulary words he knows and that limits things a lot. But he has comprehension issues that need to, if not come ahead or decoding, at least they are equally important with deciding. Like -- having the word "jig" when he is never going to hear or use that word -- it is just very, very confusing for him. There is no simple one-time explanation of "it means dance."

 

I also am one to think different things make sense for different kids.

 

I am reading him Nate the Great right now (exciting!!!!!!!) at the same age I had read the first two Harry Potter books and was into the third book, with my older son. Their comprehension is just not on the same level.

 

They have also made different kinds of progress in speech therapy. My older son was always very, very frustrated and would get upset. My younger son's attitude is 100 times better even while he is making slower progress, and he doesn't have such a sense like he is bad at things. It makes a huge difference and I feel like things can take longer without him becoming unhappy, where with my older son it was more like we had to get through things so he would quit being unhappy.

 

I've tried to find Barton samples online, but only ever found scope and sequence...or maybe that is all that will load given my computer / internet situation.

 

 

High Noon is most well known, probably, for its hi/lo Readers material--which some people use stand alone or while or after doing other reading programs. Some are also suited to ESL readers. And I got a few English/Spanish readers thinking they might be helpful with Spanish.  It is one part of the Academic Therapy Press materials, which has a lot for teachers and students facing a range of LD type issues, sort of as Language! is one part of Sopris.

 

What we mainly used though, was the HN Intervention Program, which has Teacher Manual and Student Books and Workbooks for the main intervention program.  I think I put links as found by googling in the 11yo Aussie with reading troubles thread.  Maybe I'll find and post them again.  It has scope and sequence and also samples available online. Though I cannot now seem to get the HN samples online either, so maybe again it is an issue with my own computer /internet.  But we did use the HN samples and placement materials before placing order.  Yes, it works on phonological processing, has drill materials, comprehension questions and exercises, etc.

 

I agree with Lecka that it is probably better suited for somewhat older kids (I'd say 8 probably a pretty minimum age for HN and maybe older even more suited).  It was also according to the reading specialist who recommended it, her favorite for quite smart kids with Major Reading Trouble.

 

High Noon is fairly "a la carte."  It is possible to buy just readers in small sets, or just the intervention program parts, or added materials for specific problems or more intense work where more intense work is needed.  

 

There are only 2 major levels HN intervention program is divided into. Level 1 which teaches reading letters and letter sounds and one syllable words in a variety of different ways and with different types of exercises, and Level 2 which teaches reading multisyllabic words.  Each level is divided into 65 lessons, as best I recall.  The basic program already has reading passages as a part of itself. My ds needed the extra sound out chapter books in addition. This is significantly different, I think, than Barton with 10 levels.

 

The sound out chapter books don't start to fit in until some number of lessons through the intervention program.  Some of the readers continue on well past the sound out chapter book level, such as providing US History in hi/low forms. 

 

What are the Barton gestures?

 

The HN program we used starts at the level of letters and their sounds (separated into more than one lesson) and moves on from there.  Interestingly even though ds had spent time at Waldorf where they did massive amounts of work with letters and sounds, like say, for S wriggling full body all over the class in S shapes and making "ssss" sounds, painting their own alphabet books, etc. etc. etc. I discovered when we started HN that he did not even know his letter sounds despite all that multisensory approach.  

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

This is what I had googled for the other thread...   I don't know if it will actually work as a link.  The basic website is http://www.highnoonbooks.com 

I cannot see Barton samples at this time, but from scope and sequence, it appears that the programs cover things in a different order, in addition to HN not having the nonsense words focus.

 

High Noon Reading Intervention Program

Two Levels Cover Grades 1-3 Reading Skills

Easy to use, High Noon Reading Intervention supports rapid development of skills in phonics, vocabulary, spelling, fluency, and comprehension. Two levels cover grades 1-3 reading skills, with flexible entry points and frequent assessment giving teachers flexibility to design the course of intervention to suit the particular student.

More Information / Samples / Purchase

 

I

 

 

 

 

Teachers Edition: 
For each level, this guide provides everything you will need for planning and teaching the program. Each four-page lesson plan includes reduced pages from the Student Book and Workbook. Lesson steps are listed and scripting is provided to model the teaching of new concepts. Review of the "teaching" script is the only preparation suggested for each lesson, and this can be completed in about five minutes. 

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

 

What are the Barton gestures?

 

 

Well, without going into a ton of detail basically the hand gestures replace some verbal instruction.

 

For instance, lets say I need to say a word I want them to listen to then the student needs to repeat it back to me.  Instead of saying those things, I have a gesture I use.  I make that gesture and then say the word and the student knows when I make that gesture they need to listen to me say the word and watch my face/lips as I say it.  Then I gesture to them when they need to repeat that word.  When they see the "repeat this word back to me" gesture they repeat the word.  If I feel we need to do it again, I don't say let's repeat.  I simply repeat the gestures.

 

With DD especially this was a HUGE help.  She has low processing speed.  If I am continually talking, giving instructions, her brain power is taken up with too many words she has to hold onto and process.  She can't focus on the actual word/phrase/sentence we are working on.  Even with DS it helped.  He is highly verbal.  If someone else is talking that triggers a whole cascade of thoughts that he has to share.  If I limited my words more to just the bare minimum with most communication being by hand gesture it kept him more focused on the lesson at hand.

 

Plus, I tend to babble if things get too quiet and I am worried.  Trying to help my kids learn to read worried me.  I would get nervous if they didn't answer right away, if there was any sort of pause.  I wasn't giving them enough time to focus and process what was being asked of them.  I would start babbling and filling their head with all kinds of other words instead of the one they were supposed to focus on.  The hand gestures broke me of that very distracting habit.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

 Share

×
×
  • Create New...