After a busy week, we finally had time to sit down last night and do the Barton screening - he passed! The RISE test looks like it would be far too difficult for him. We talked about and played around with some reading last night, and he was able to read 23/92 of the Pre-K/Kindergarten Dolch sight words. I noticed, though, that he has an excellent short term memory - when we went through the lists, he wanted me to tell him the words he didn't know. When we finished, he went back and read the words again with only a few errors (swapping 'what' and 'white', etc). We tried the PAST, and it was interesting. He was good with syllables. At the onset/rime level, every single word took him a long time to figure out, but he always got there in the end. He couldn't delete/substitute phonemes at the beginning or in the middle of words, but found it much easier to delete/substitute ending sounds. PeterPan - All the info and questions you posted earlier are so helpful! I'm using them as a guide as I think this all through. It is a lot, but I'll get there. The audiologist report seems to just be a screening and all results were "within normal limits". I suppose I don't have specific concerns about APD and I haven't noticed background noise being an issue. I do sometimes wonder whether to blame ADHD vs. teenage brain vs. something else when we miscommunicate or have other tiny issues. His speech/language seems entirely normal and age-appropriate to me, but I do think an SLP assessment would be helpful. My younger child's SLP recommended a larger clinic nearby that would have more testing materials appropriate for his age. I have a phone call set up for Monday with one of the SLPs to see if they'll take him, then it will be 3-6 weeks for an appointment. One of the reasons we are considering a new psych assessment is that his 2017 assessment includes a lot of qualifiers - "should be interpreted with caution", "may be an underestimate of his abilities", etc. because of his attention/anxiety/behavior during the testing. So, I'm not sure how much to read into the old scores. Working memory was his lowest, which does seem accurate though. I will! He uses audio books for school, but doesn't listen to them for fun. He's a podcast kid.

Please don't quote this - A piece I really wasn't sure about posting is that he has a severe trauma history and wasn’t removed permanently from that environment until he was 11. He attended at least five different elementary schools, missed months of school at a time, and had emotional/ behavioral issues, to put things very mildly. When he moved in with a relative, it took at least a year for those issues to settle down. So, he started Sonday in 6th grade, but there is definitely a question around how engaged he was during 6th and even 7th grade. He did have delays outside of academics, but has caught up in all those areas. He’s also working close to grade level in math, whereas reading is the one area where there hasn’t been any perceptible progress. ElizabethB, PeterPan, Mainer - Thank you so much for the LiPS/blending discussion! I will have to come back when I have more time to go through all your specific recommendations. I do have the Kilpatrick book and the LiPS manual. I'll order the mouth pictures - is there anything else that would be useful to have?

Okay, wow! This is so helpful. So, he saw an audiologist through the school system in 2017, but I'm not sure exactly what they tested. I know he was referred by the school psychologist who diagnosed the SLDs and that no new diagnoses were added after the audiology appointment. APD is something I've been wondering about and I don't have any evidence that he's actually been tested for it, so that seems like something we need to cover right away. The psych report from 2017 does include CTOPP scores (low, I'll have to check for exact scores), but no other language scores besides a few subtests on the WIAT. As far as I know, he hasn't seen an SLP since he was 5 and at that point his receptive and expressive language were average. He did have mild articulation delays that improved by the end of kindergarten. His previous school diagnosed the SLDs in 2017. Last month, the high school determined that he is still eligible for an IEP and denied our request for a reassessment. I don't think we have any grounds for an IEE because we don't actually disagree with the 2017 assessment results, and I really don't have any interest in starting a legal battle with the school district. We can afford another psych assessment if it's necessary, but I’m not sure it would give us any valuable information. He definitely does not have ASD or FASD. Pulling him out completely is on the table, but I would be much more comfortable if he could still attend at least for electives. He plays on the school soccer team and is trying out for basketball, so failing a class and becoming ineligible for sports would be a huge blow for him. He also loves his PE and art classes and I'd like for him to keep attending those. There isn't a dyslexia school within driving distance. I have the time to do online training, but wouldn't be able to travel for training any time soon. I can definitely make 2 hours/day to work with him – I’ve been spending more than 2 hours doing homework with him!

No, but that is something we can do. He knows letter names, no problem. He knows most letter sounds, but they don't seem automatic. He doesn't know a few consonants (q, x, y) and seems very confused about vowel sounds. Digit span was his lowest score when he was tested, but I'm not sure how many digits he can actually remember. I'm sure there's an online digit span test somewhere, so I'll try him out.

TL;DR - What program would you use to teach a 15-year-old to read? His diagnoses are ADHD and SLDs in reading, writing, and math. My husband and I recently became guardians of a young relative who turned 15 last month. We’ve had a close relationship with him for the last three years and know that he’s a bright and capable young man, yet he can read fewer than 20 sight words (yes, no, the, etc.) and can’t decode at all. He was diagnosed with ADHD and SLDs in reading, writing, and math in 6th grade and received intervention throughout middle school. They used the Sonday System at school and he’s also worked with a handful of different tutors as well. More than one stopped tutoring him because of his lack of progress. He started high school last month with an IEP that allows every imaginable accommodation, but he’s drowning in his academic classes and his “reading intervention” class is not actually teaching reading. We’ve spent the last two months trying to work with the school to get him the help he needs and haven’t gotten any closer to a solution for him. I’m going to have to teach reading at home and may very well end up homeschooling him before the semester is over. I homeschool my younger children, including one with special needs, and have a background in primary/elementary education, but I really feel like I’m out of my depth here. He desperately wants to read, so the last thing I want to do is get his hopes up and then see him discouraged if he isn’t able to learn. I’m using Bearing Away! from Dancing Bears/Sound Foundations with my younger child and I’m tempted to try it with him. At the same time, it seems far too simple to work for a student with a severe SLD. I also have the LiPS manual and several other phonological awareness resources though I’d like to have a plan for where to go after one of those before we begin. I have looked closely at Barton, but I’m worried that it’s too similar to the Sonday System, which clearly didn’t work for him. What other reading programs/resources can you recommend? What would you be looking for when choosing a program for him?