Exactly.

He had fun today running around the room between the two vowel cards I had on the wall. I say "spit," he runs to "i"! 🙂

No, he wouldn't mind. And I totally agree with you about going as far back as necessary. I think a lot of teachers (myself included) can just feel that it's SO far to go back that it's just... too far. But if you don't go there, you can't move forward, and all of the "harder" stuff is just wasting their time.

Yes, good idea. We're focusing on short o and short i right now, since they are so different. He also does better reading and spelling with me than with his classroom teacher. Distraction is also playing a role.

And that's a whole different kettle of fish for me to think about!

I agree with this in general, but if it is taking tons and tons of drilling to remember anything, I think it can help. We don't read words from the end, but it's helping him map the sound of "op" with the letters o and p, so he can see "op" and just say op rather than o-p. So in the word mop, he can sound it out as m-op rather than m-o-p. We still talk about all the sounds, but just practice reading common word parts over and over in addition.

Good question, we'll know in a couple weeks after his testing! Can't wait!

This is exactly what I read this morning 🙂 I see many interventions offered for phonemic awareness, but I guess what I was not getting is that a good OG program is what targets orthographic mapping. I guess that should have been obvious 🙂

Good question - he makes the sounds accurately, but does not have a strong connection between which sound goes with which letter. For example, he'll say "fet, fat, fit," trying all the sounds.

I've got an 8 year old student with reading troubles, about to be evaluated for special ed. I've been working with him for a few months. He has GREAT phonemic awareness. He can do all of Kilpatrick's PA exercises up to his grade level with automaticity. However, he struggles to read CVC words, and has almost no "sight words." Even 'the,' 'if,' 'and' are not automatic. His consonant sounds are automatic, but his vowels are not. I'm sure that he has gotten his vowel sounds wrong half the time, and right half the time, so he has no clue which the right one is. Even if he gets the vowel sound correct, though, it's usually a struggle to blend a CVC word. SO. If phonemic awareness is not the problem, I'm theorizing that it's some kind of orthographic mapping issue. The psychologist writes "orthographic processing delays" on many evaluations, and I'd bet money she's going to write it on this one, but I'm at a loss as to what to do about it when phonemic awareness is good. She does not provide suggestions for interventions for orthographic processing delays. Is the intervention just practice and repetition till mastery, with a limited set of sounds, using letter tiles...or...? I could do LiPS with him, but his PA is already age appropriate. We have been working on common word parts (op, ip, ot, og, etc), and he has gotten faster sounding out words this way. Rather than saying h-o-t, he can say h-ot, if it's a word part that he has specifically practiced. Without evals it's guess work to some extent, and there may be more to the situation, but I could really use some pointers for now!

Well, my year has been pretty challenging so far. 10 year old boys + learning disabilities + mood swings = drama!! In a group of three, I've always got two sitting there like perfect angels, and one in a funk. And the one in a funk changes daily. Ugh. Anyway. The cool thing is one of my 5th graders, who is severely dyslexic, has improved SO much all of a sudden. We did LiPS all last year, and this year have been hitting Kilpatrick's phonemic awareness program pretty hard. Just last week, this kid FINALLY gets vowel teams! He's writing 'soap' as s-oa-p rather than s-o-p! He writes oi and oy correctly, and tells me why he's chosen one over the other! I don't know what's come over him, but something finally clicked. He is also writing much more fluidly, without having to stop and think about every darn letter. Oh, and we're reading a Tom & Ricky mystery (High Noon), and he can read 3 pages before needing a break. Yay!! Now, to figure out how to fix spelling 'robot' as 'r-oa-b-o-t.' 😂 We've done open syllables before, but he wasn't ready for them. Now he might be!

We do MAP testing, too. I've asked about the RIT score, and was told that it's an internal scale developed by the test makers. About MAP vs state tests... I think the state tests (at least here) are VERY difficult. Like, way more difficult than the MAP test. The state test format is also less kid-friendly than the MAP test (smaller font, longer stories, just overall scary looking). The kids are used to the MAP tests because they do them frequently, and they just don't start kids off in panic mode (in my experience). For my SpEd kids, the state tests were incredibly more difficult than anything they had ever encountered in class. Even for "average" kids, state tests are a LOT to handle. There is also some ability to guess correctly on all multiple choice tests. On the state test here, there are multiple choice questions, but also open response, and at least some part of the math test is open response as well. I have watched kids have no clue on a MAP question, and randomly guess the right one (there are 4 or 5 choices, so 20-25% chance of getting it right). Some kids here who cannot read ANYTHING other than CVC words in 2nd grade, for example, score in the 30th %ile on the reading MAP, just because they are smart and figure out a way to get the answer (matching a word in an answer choice to a word they see in the passage, for example), or because they guess correctly. MAP is really not that accurate unless you've got a kid who is on task, and really doing the work and not guessing. MAP does separate scores into different categories (numbers and operations, geometry, etc), so you can use the information to some extent to help guide individual instruction. We use MAP scores as PART of the IEP process, but the teacher's opinion and classwork are more important. I see kids blow off MAP tests all the time, OR guess right a lot, or know an answer but second guess and click the wrong answer. We're right in the middle of it right now, and I am OVER IT. Way too much testing for inaccurate results, if you ask me. The state tests are even worse... we don't even get results until the NEXT year, so it's not helpful AT ALL from a teaching perspective.

I used my Nutribullet to make pureed soups. Butternut squash + carrot + sweet potato is a current go-to! Also liking cauliflower + zucchini. I have an immersion blender but I hate it... it doesn't puree things like I thought it was supposed to. The Nutribullet pulverizes everything!

I once taught a Serafina. The name fit her perfectly! I've also seen it spelled Seraphina. I came across the name Petra years ago, and it's stuck with me 🙂

This is horrible! I would not want a school saying that to my kid! As an adult, I sometimes feel depressed about these things... I just feel downtrodden reading the news, bad stuff everywhere... but I was not aware of this when I was a teen. Maybe I was clueless, but I don't think it's the worst thing for young teens to be clueless! There is plenty of time for teenagers to mature and learn about adult issues. OF COURSE she doesn't know what she wants to be when she's an adult! Don't college students change majors like 7 times (I think I read that somewhere)? I do remember being stressed about that pre-college, but I was not as worried about it as your DD. I think it's terrible that the students are being pressured so much at that age. Maybe she would feel better reading about the costs of a lower-cost college, like a state school? I was dumb and picked an expensive private college, which I now regret, but I could have gone to the state college for almost nothing. And my grades weren't even close to stellar. I even feel this way about my own school, which is K-8. The kids in my cohort are being exposed to some heavy themes this year (human rights - or the lack thereof - immigration, death of a parent), and it just feels like there's a dark cloud hovering over the year. Maybe it's just me. But it definitely doesn't feel like the light and happy year that I remember last year. Anyway. That was long and rambling. But I wish there was a way for your DD to feel less pressure at school. Maybe if you get some "small" things taken care of - lunch period, maybe switching to a different Spanish class? things could feel better for her. I also agree with the people that say the administration and teachers need to know that all the pressure about grades, and doom and gloom about the future, is really impacting your DD, and other kids as well.

I like watching Toddlers and Tiaras on Hulu 😂 It's so bad and dumb, but I love it. There are also a million episodes. You could get the free trial of Hulu and cancel it when you're healthy again! DH and I are almost all the way through the Brady Bunch on Hulu as well.

Oh man, I have to wait till the weekend to read! It sounds like the book is shedding light on a lot of questions we've been discussing for a while.

Yeah, the list of contributors is impressive!

Yay!! Glad it worked out.

Holy cow, that's ridiculous. I bought it via a Facebook post from the Reading League, and got the Kindle version for $18.99. You almost gave me a heart attack, had to go look at my order!! 😄

Ruh oh, better get reading then!!

Wow, that's neat!

David Kilpatrick has published a new book, "Reading Development and Difficulties: Bridging the Gap Between Research and Practice." This is very timely, considering we were just discussing what to do with the most recent reading research vs. the programs available to practitioners. I haven't read it yet, but I downloaded onto my Kindle. His co-authors are from Texas A&M and the Florida Center for Reading Research. It looks great!

I've assumed that was RAN/RAS. This too, definitely. Well he hangs on SPELL-talk and is one of these who debates. I don't know, I just so live in the trenches (like you do), kwim? Haha, yep!!

Definitely, I thought that too when I was reading that section. It made me glad I was doing LiPS!! He specifically says that kids may need to use concrete objects to represent sounds at first (which made me think of the LiPS tiles or letter tiles), but then they should be able to do everything orally with no supports. I'm not exactly sure what he's suggesting really. On first read, it sounded like the level of intervention that some do (that I do with kids... memorizing all the spelling rules, exceptions, etc) is not necessary because the brain doesn't instantly access all of that instantly when faced with the printed word. Rather, a word or word part is either orthographically mapped and instant, or it's not. I wonder if that explains why so many dyslexics can become competent readers, yet still remain slow. And often have spelling that lags behind their reading - because they could apply the spelling rules if they really thought about it, but in real life, we don't think about it. I'm not sure. I gotta go re-read a bunch more times!!