Barton

[Jess4879]

I was going to start a poll, but there were too many options to include, so I thought I'd post like this.  :) 

 

For those who use/used Barton:

 

What age did you start?

What level(s) of Barton did you complete? 

If you are still using the program, do you plan to complete all levels?

When you stopped Barton, what level would you say your child was reading at?

Do they enjoy reading?

What programs did you try before Barton and for how long?

 

Inquiring, as we are researching programs for youngest at the moment. 

 

 

[OneStepAtATime]

I was going to start a poll, but there were too many options to include, so I thought I'd post like this.  :)

 

For those who use/used Barton:

 

What age did you start?

What level(s) of Barton did you complete? 

If you are still using the program, do you plan to complete all levels?

When you stopped Barton, what level would you say your child was reading at?

Do they enjoy reading?

What programs did you try before Barton and for how long?

 

Inquiring, as we are researching programs for youngest at the moment. 

1.  Age:  11 and maybe 8 1/2? 9?  DD was 11 but DS did not pass the screening so he did LiPS first.  I don't remember exactly how old he was when we moved him to Barton.

 

2.  DS made it through Level 4 but ran into snags because of vision and auditory processing issues. I turned him over to a specialized tutor for a summer to get him over the hump.  We redid Level 4 and stopped.  He reads at grade level.  He is a 2e kid with tons of different strengths and weaknesses.  Barton helped but was not as good a fit for him as for DD.

 

DD is still going.  We are on Level 7.  She intends to go all the way through.  She reads at grade level and spells well now (spelling was horrible all the way through 5th grade in brick and mortar and she could barely read Clifford books in 5th).  DD may not love the lessons but she absolutely appreciates what Barton has done for her.   We both recognize what a phenomenal improvement this program provided for her.

 

3.  I wouldn't say either of my kids does a ton of pleasure reading (at least not like I did as a kid), but that is more to do with personality.  DS reads a lot in areas of interest.  For instance, right now he loves preparing modules for doing Dungeons and Dragons.  The words in the books are pretty complex and it takes a lot of research across multiple manuals.  He reads those all the time.  He prefers audio books for pleasure reading.  

 

DD does read some in her room before going to bed but during waking hours she much prefers to be doing art projects or writing stories or poems or swinging, or watching documentaries.

 

4.  Programs we tried before Barton...well, the list is long and I don't remember all of them anymore.  We also tried specialized Dyslexia tutors.  Except for the one we found 4 hours away in another city that used Barton as a spine, no one we used helped.  They made things worse.  We did try some of Wilson but that was borrowed and I really didn't understand what I was doing at the time.  All About Reading went to fast and made too many leaps.  Normal reading programs had never helped DD.  Both kids were in school for several years and we did not have dyslexia on our radar when DD floundered with reading.  Sylvan did not work.  The teachers at school couldn't help.  The private tutors couldn't help.  The stuff I was using at home didn't help.  Only Barton actually helped.  But I did not work through every dyslexia friendly program.   There are many out there that are well done.

[PeterPan]

I was going to start a poll, but there were too many options to include, so I thought I'd post like this.  :)

 

For those who use/used Barton:

 

What age did you start?

What level(s) of Barton did you complete? 

If you are still using the program, do you plan to complete all levels?

When you stopped Barton, what level would you say your child was reading at?

Do they enjoy reading?

What programs did you try before Barton and for how long?

 

Inquiring, as we are researching programs for youngest at the moment. 

 

1. age 5/6 (I forget, I think newly 6, right after his diagnosis)

2. 1-4

3. own 5 and all the Spelling Success games. He does really well with the games. We had to pause to work on language and behavior issues because of his autism.

4. midway through Barton 4 he was decoding at a 3rd grade level and reading (read a sample, answer multiple choice questions) on a 6th grade level. He has a high vocabulary, so that bumps up his comprehension. We had testing done on that, because we knew he *could* read but he was not choosing to read. We think it's the combination of his language issues due to autism, etc. It's also just plain fatiguing to him to read. If he's strongly interested, he can pick up and read things (emails, environmental print). He reads Calvin & Hobbes for pleasure now but fatigues with anything beyond step readers. We're currently doing immersion reading on the kindle while we work on language and comprehension issues.

5. We worked significantly on RAN/RAS, which made fluency come pretty well for him. When someone can read fluently, it's a lot easier to enjoy reading, kwim? Barton does not include RAN/RAS drills, and we KNOW their rapid naming will be low in dyslexia. It should be in your CTOPP scores. 

6. Before Barton we did the Bob books, I See Sam, some SWR (huge flop), AAR pre, and then LIPS after he failed the Barton pretest. His phonological processing was so poor, we couldn't get out the gate with any reading program. After he failed with AAR pre, which is really nicely done, I realized we just had to admit it was an SLD and move over to stronger tools. Oh, we also did Earobics, which is software for phonological processing.

 

My ds was on the young end of things for Barton. I think you'll be fine with an 8 yo. Have you done the pre-test to see if he needs LIPS/FIS first? My personal opinion on programs, and this is just my opinion, is that all the programs you're probably considering (Barton, Wilson, etc.) are good and that it's more just what you feel comfortable making happen. It's hard work, and it can be very fatiguing for the kids. As long as somebody is doing it and they're comfortable using the materials, it will probably pan out in the wash. I don't think there was anything radically better about Barton than Wilson or this or that. Barton was fully scripted and readily available and it worked. If you have a tutor who does Wilson and want to use them, use them. If you can get OG training and want to do it that way, that's fine too. They'll all work. The main thing is the person has the time and is committed to the hard work. It's really not for the faint of heart.

[Jess4879]

1. age 5/6 (I forget, I think newly 6, right after his diagnosis)

2. 1-4

3. own 5 and all the Spelling Success games. He does really well with the games. We had to pause to work on language and behavior issues because of his autism.

4. midway through Barton 4 he was decoding at a 3rd grade level and reading (read a sample, answer multiple choice questions) on a 6th grade level. He has a high vocabulary, so that bumps up his comprehension. We had testing done on that, because we knew he *could* read but he was not choosing to read. We think it's the combination of his language issues due to autism, etc. It's also just plain fatiguing to him to read. If he's strongly interested, he can pick up and read things (emails, environmental print). He reads Calvin & Hobbes for pleasure now but fatigues with anything beyond step readers. We're currently doing immersion reading on the kindle while we work on language and comprehension issues.

5. We worked significantly on RAN/RAS, which made fluency come pretty well for him. When someone can read fluently, it's a lot easier to enjoy reading, kwim? Barton does not include RAN/RAS drills, and we KNOW their rapid naming will be low in dyslexia. It should be in your CTOPP scores. 

6. Before Barton we did the Bob books, I See Sam, some SWR (huge flop), AAR pre, and then LIPS after he failed the Barton pretest. His phonological processing was so poor, we couldn't get out the gate with any reading program. After he failed with AAR pre, which is really nicely done, I realized we just had to admit it was an SLD and move over to stronger tools. Oh, we also did Earobics, which is software for phonological processing.

 

My ds was on the young end of things for Barton. I think you'll be fine with an 8 yo. Have you done the pre-test to see if he needs LIPS/FIS first? My personal opinion on programs, and this is just my opinion, is that all the programs you're probably considering (Barton, Wilson, etc.) are good and that it's more just what you feel comfortable making happen. It's hard work, and it can be very fatiguing for the kids. As long as somebody is doing it and they're comfortable using the materials, it will probably pan out in the wash. I don't think there was anything radically better about Barton than Wilson or this or that. Barton was fully scripted and readily available and it worked. If you have a tutor who does Wilson and want to use them, use them. If you can get OG training and want to do it that way, that's fine too. They'll all work. The main thing is the person has the time and is committed to the hard work. It's really not for the faint of heart.

 

Where do you find RAN/RAS drills?  Is that like rapidly naming colored dots, etc? 

 

[TheReader]

I was going to start a poll, but there were too many options to include, so I thought I'd post like this.  :)

 

For those who use/used Barton:

 

What age did you start?

What level(s) of Barton did you complete? 

If you are still using the program, do you plan to complete all levels?

When you stopped Barton, what level would you say your child was reading at?

Do they enjoy reading?

What programs did you try before Barton and for how long?

 

Inquiring, as we are researching programs for youngest at the moment. 

 

We started last summer, when ds was 11  yrs old/5th grade.

 

We are currently midway through level 3.

 

We definitely plan (at this point) to complete all levels. 

 

We haven't stopped, but his reading level is.....I don't know. He can follow subtitles on most movies w/o us reading to him, at this point. He can read on his video games w/o being read to. He maybe could, but we haven't had him, read books on his own. He is functional, though, and can read, copy words in school, etc. He doesn't stumble over any words in the current level of Barton that we're on. 

 

He definitely does not enjoy reading....yet. I have hope that maybe he will; he very much enjoys read-alouds/being read to, and he's insanely creative and makes up stories (and has from a very very very young age) so I hope once he has the ability, he'll have the enjoyment as well. 

 

We tried a LOT before starting Barton. He was dx'ed with dyslexia at 7.5 yrs old, and we had to go wayyyy back to the beginning and start with Earobics software for phonemic awareness before we could even try letter sounds (we had, when he was dx'ed, been doing the pre-Explode the Code books off & on for 3 yrs, with zero progress/retention in all that time). We spent 6 months to a year on just the Earobics, mixed with a very basic use of All About Spelling just working on tapping the sounds/segmenting words and games like alphabet bingo/letter sound bingo. A full year just on phonemic awareness and some very basic letter sound work. 

 

We used AAS mixed with Spalding/Writing Road to Reading (loosely, because I found it a royal pain) for a while...maybe another year? And just kept working on letter sounds, and letter sounds, and letter sounds. 

 

We tried the IEW PAL program (I forget what it stands for), because it mixes sight words in and because he was so.very.bored. as a 10 yr old (9 or 10) just drilling letter sounds and decoding cvc words. He lacked motivation and so was getting frustrated and feeling more and more dumb. So even though it isn't the recommended approach, we tried that. And he actually was reading with it, and when he more or less got done-ish with it (it's kind of a blur now...) we just started reading. We started with the BOB books, and then leveled readers, and just....had him read. So that was all from about age 10 to 11. I think. 

 

In that time frame, we'd been waiting on a repeat evaluation, which finally happened, when he was (at that time) able to read Level 2 readers but in short bits at a time. So, he could read Amelia Bedelia or Frog & Toad, but a few pages would max him out. We'd spent a year getting from "I know my letter sounds and how to blend them into a word..." to being able to do that, but it was still a big strain for him. 

 

At his repeat evaluation, which was actually to see if he had autism or not, the evaluator (an autism specialist, not a reading or education specialist) said it was the worst dyslexia she'd seen in a kid his age. :sigh: She acknowledged and praised his progress, and acknowledged the fact we'd not lost any ground (he had, from the 1st eval to the 2nd, progressed the same number of years of progress as how many years had passed), but said we HAD to find something better to get him help. 

 

At which point we finally started Barton. We were able to skip Level 1, and start with Level 2, which still took a few months. Then we started Level 3 and we're about half done. It was taking him about 2 weeks (5 days, but for various reasons that took place over a 2 wk time period) to finish each single lesson....now it's taking him half that, so I imagine we'll go faster through the rest of it and likely need to order Level 4 by September. 

 

Some/maybe all of the programs we used are likely effective for a kid w/o dyslexia &/or a kid with only dyslexia and not all the other stuff that my DS has going on. But for all that my boy has going on....Barton has been, if not a literal life-saver, a very literal "literacy-saver." 

[TheReader]

Where do you find RAN/RAS drills?  Is that like rapidly naming colored dots, etc? 

 

 

We used things like flash cards, crayons, colored cards, number cards, even objects in the room. The goal was to improve how many he could rapidly name in a 2 minute time period, so I had a different set of cards for every day. 

[PeterPan]

You can google site search. I've shared a dropbox link in the past and I'm terribly lazy. You can make the pages yourself too. And yes, totally agree it can be colors, numbers, whatever. Think, Talk, Laugh!: Increase Verbal Processing Speed and Language Organization Skills This book also includes RAN/RAS work. There's even RAN/RAS software.

 

We went to a PT who had pages mixing colors and shapes. You can also do directional arrows. You can bring metronome work into it and midline work...

[caedmyn]

I was going to start a poll, but there were too many options to include, so I thought I'd post like this.  :)

 

For those who use/used Barton:

 

What age did you start?

What level(s) of Barton did you complete? 

If you are still using the program, do you plan to complete all levels?

When you stopped Barton, what level would you say your child was reading at?

Do they enjoy reading?

What programs did you try before Barton and for how long?

 

Inquiring, as we are researching programs for youngest at the moment. 

  I start with one at age 8, one at 11, and one at 6.

 

  8 year has finished level 4, 11 YO is almost done with 5, 6 YO is partway through 3.

I plan to go through level 8 with them.  I may or may not do 9 & 10 with the 11 YO.  

The 11 YO is mildly dyslexic and already loved reading.  Her multi-syllabic word fluency has improved a lot.  The 8 YO does enjoy reading but it's still fairly hard for him even though he's improved a lot, and he doesn't read very much on his own.  The 6 YO has never been very interested in books or audiobooks/read-alouds.  He's slightly more interested than he used to be.  He's still an extremely slow reader.

 

Before Barton, I'd used 100 EZ Lessons for the older 2 and the 11 YO also went through a phonics program at the school she attended K-2.  8 YO also did almost a year of Explode the Code and one of Don Potter's reading e-books.  Both kids used Abecedarian for a few months and made some progress with it, but then stalled.  I did a little bit of 100 EZ Lessons and a little bit of Abecedarian with the 6 YO and then halfway through his K year decided I might as well move to Barton since the others were doing it and it appeared he was dyslexic also.  He had to do LIPS too because of auditory discrimination issues.

[caedmyn]

Double post

 

Edited July 27, 2017 by caedmyn

[Lecka]

I am someone who ordered Barton level 1 and got a lot of ideas, but didn't use it.

 

My son ended up spending about 8 months (iirc) having speech therapy 5 days a week for "phonological processes." Then once he learned to blend things were still hard but they were do-able. Learning to blend was really hard for him and took a lot of time.

 

He could read (at all) part-way through 2nd grade. Towards the end of 3rd grade he could read chapter books.

 

Pretty often through 4th grade I would see him have a lot of glitchy, fudgy, sludgy, slushy mistakes, where he would just misread a word and then get stuck on it and have a hard time starting over without making the same mistake, but also knowing he was not reading the word correctly. If he got anxious with this it would escalate. But he was really doing pretty good even with that.

 

In 5th grade this really got better.

 

He just finished 6th and I am not seeing it anymore. He sounds good reading out loud. (Edit I should add he had a lot of trouble with reading in a monotone and not paying attention to punctuation and did a lot in 3rd grade to work on fluency.). He tested at reading level Z at school.

 

Somehow he is also a decent speller now, he knows all his math facts, and his handwriting has come a long way.

 

Edit: I think Barton would have been a good choice, I think I was overwhelmed by it while he was in speech therapy, but I think if we had started it a little later it would have worked well.

Edited July 27, 2017 by Lecka

[City Mouse]

I was going to start a poll, but there were too many options to include, so I thought I'd post like this. :)

 

For those who use/used Barton:

 

What age did you start?

What level(s) of Barton did you complete?

If you are still using the program, do you plan to complete all levels?

When you stopped Barton, what level would you say your child was reading at?

Do they enjoy reading?

What programs did you try before Barton and for how long?

 

Inquiring, as we are researching programs for youngest at the moment.

My DS has not been diagnosed with dyslexia, but did have a diagnosis of a learning disability in reading. He also has some vision problems separate from the LD. He is a public school student on a 504 plan.

 

Started Barton with him the summer after 5th grade. He will be starting 10th grade in a couple of weeks.

 

He has finished through level six. We do plan to continue, but high school was a big adjustment for him,and we stopped when he finished level 6 in January. He went through the first 2 levels quickly even though I discovered that he could not really rhyme when we started.

 

Since he still has to complete public school work, and I work full time, it takes a while for us to get through a level, and we take long breaks after a level is completed.

 

He does not really enjoy reading, and he does not read for pleasure, but the reading that he does is much easier for him. He can read short passages that are on grade level, but his reading gets worse the longer the passage. Books/novels require audio support.

[Iris25]

We started Barton with ds at age 7. He goes to a tutor for this 4 times per week now, and I do bits and pieces to reinforce what they cover on the other days. He was diagnosed with dyslexia at age 7. We took him out of public school mid- way through second grade and started Barton right when we started homeschooling.

It has been about 1 1/2 year now and he is a little more than halfway through level 4.

We are planning to complete all the levels.

He is not really reading outside the tutoring, since he is not yet through level 4. Still not enjoying reading yet, though his decoding has improved a lot and fluency has also improved.

He loves being read to, and audiobooks.

He did LIPS for about 3 months twice a week with an ed therapist before starting Barton.

[ncaip]

We started at age 8 and have been using the system since October, 2016.

We are on level 4 lesson 5. 
My goal is to make it all the way through level 10. 

My child is entering third grade and is reading just a little below grade level.  At the end of second grade he was reading about 78 wpm (benchmark for second grade is 82 wpm).  The improvement we saw after getting through level 3 was dramatic.  He attends public school and his standardized testing scores for reading increased 22 percentile points between winter and spring testing.  He does not enjoy the Barton program, but like others have said he is starting to see how great it has been for his reading ability. 
He still does not enjoy reading yet (hopefully someday), however he loves audio books.  Learning Ally has been an awesome thing for him. 
We haven't used anything at home besides Barton.  They use Reading Horizons at school and I feel Barton has been a far superior program, which is why I began supplementing at home. 

[Julie of KY]

I was going to start a poll, but there were too many options to include, so I thought I'd post like this.  :)

 

For those who use/used Barton:

 

What age did you start?

What level(s) of Barton did you complete? 

If you are still using the program, do you plan to complete all levels?

When you stopped Barton, what level would you say your child was reading at?

Do they enjoy reading?

What programs did you try before Barton and for how long?

 

Inquiring, as we are researching programs for youngest at the moment. 

 

Started Barton at age 8 with daughter; 6 with son.

 

14yo dd - on level 9 (after taking a break and just enjoying a lot of reading); 10yo - reviewing previous lesson now and soon to start level 7

 

I do plan on completing the levels. While my daughter took off in reading after level 7, it was obvious as we worked on level 8 she needed the teaching - though it was so much easier. I plan on finishing the levels with her as she still needs that incremental teaching for new words. My son is harder to teach than her so I imagine we'll do all the levels as well.

 

My daughter took off with reading after level 7 and quickly got to grade level. She is "slower" than her peers, but enjoys it and probably reads a whole lot more for fun than her peers now. Due to the speed and difficulty, she still does much of her school reading as listening to audio books.

My 10 yo is not an independent reader YET, but loves to co-read with me and practice.

 

I tried various things with my daughter, but none directly targeted at dyslexia before starting Barton.

[TABmom]

I'm not the OP, but I'm in the same position and I really, really appreciate everyone sharing here. It's really helping me think through things.

[Teri H.; Oregon]

16yo 11th grade