My point by saying that, is if a second grader doesn't have the working memory to remember 3 sounds in their mind, continuing on in *any* traditional program, before that is addressed seems counterproductive. Hence, why they say use FIS or LIPS or something. Maybe our time would be better spent pausing something like Reading Mastery, or whatever "program" and just work on getting his mind actually ready to truly receive phonics instruction. This is what I was wondering, if anyone had ideas for what to do before we dive back in to a says /a/ a/ ah/ and what have you. I've done two levels with my oldest child, I know exactly how the lessons go. I don't doubt Reading Mastery is a good program, I just never considered it as a home educator because it's curriculum marketed to schools. So, if it's truly worth continuing, then I'll sign him right on up for virtual school through his district where they can keep providing the materials. I didn't expect Barton to help his language, no, not at all. I'm fully aware that comprehension matters or I wouldn't be worrying so much about my daughter too who has hit a wall with comprehension.

Worksheets for Reading Mastery. The printouts we have would likely only last a month or so, so I was wanting to start fresh. This would also ensure that I know what he's seen already and is capable of doing. Some of them work on wh questions though so I don't mind throwing it in for variety's sake. If he is not even ready for Barton, it would seem he's not truly ready for this either?

I just don't know. I was looking for something hands on like AAR/Barton with the tiles and stuff. I have a giant stack of worksheets they printed off for me and it felt like busywork since he could do it all no problem. I dunno, it's been a while since I looked through it.

Yes, I had a ton of "aha" moments while doing Singapore with my oldest. I've never been able to do mental math in my head in my life! And I made good grades in math. But I never felt confident in what I was doing unless I was explicitly shown the steps. Thinking outside the box would never have happened. So while I feel much more empowered after that experience, breaking things down so very small for him, is a little stressful! Not having the words to say gives me pause as well, I just don't want to assume things, I don't want him to ever feel bad for not picking up what I'm putting down. I'm hoping some mama intuition will just kick into gear here. I do still have the little clocks and things from DD so I should probably save my money indeed!

Idk, it may be working but it is mind numbingly boring lol! Worksheets for daaaaaaaaaays uuuugh.

Yes, numbers don't currently mean anything to him! That's nice to hear that it can be just autism, as sometimes I wonder does he even really have it, or if just has a bunch of LDs. So much of the "classic" signs he had as a toddler have fallen away. The video is set to private so I'm guessing I have to pay to view. With him not being in school now, I'll have to take over SLP type teaching too. I'm not sure that virtual therapy will be productive, though I'll look into it. The therapy he got at school hasn't been targeted at his actual language all year, just artic, 🙄so..we've got a lot of time to make up. But it was free so I can't complain.

Yes and no. So in Gen Ed they do the whole leveled readers thing that is purely whole word, meaning he has no way of advancing up the levels because none of it is decodeable, while simultaneously doing Letterland to teach phonics. In first grade, he began Reading Mastery in resource which from the handouts they sent during the pandemic closure, appears to be a somewhat OG based methodical program. He decodes CVC quite well. They were just moving to digraphs as school ended.

Ah yes, I forgot about this! I knew in the past that due to his age it couldn't really be determined reliably. He's 7.5 now. There's a speech and hearing center at the university near me that does a 3 hour long APD eval. There's another office who's eval is just 1.5 hours. Curious at what is so different between them. I could get him in to the latter very quickly.

So with his language, I can't seem to get it to come up on a standard eval now. He's been in speech therapy for years, but now they are only doing articulation which is so odd to me. His level of speaking isn't near a typical 7yo IMO. I can't ask him anything outside of what he sees in front of him, hardly. It's hard for me to pinpoint/describe the issue. He seems to understand sentences like that. So that's why I had assumed he was ready for AAR since he's had 2 years of intense reading instruction. I'll look on ebay again, it's tough to search for as I get a lot of music results lol. I don't really know how significant his dyscalculia is. I wonder if there is some assessment I can give him? I've got math phobia going on and I'm trying not to screw this up haha. I'll grab that ebook and dig in. If anything, it would buy time to save up after I've bought FIS, to throw down a lot for the RightStart manipulatives.

You all were so amazing with my 10yo DD last week. I already feel so much better about this school year with her. I thought that I'd settled on AAR for DS7, but I gave him the Barton pretest today and...well..total bomb. 😭Syllables were probably our only bright spot, as he just missed the first 3 til we got in a groove. I didn't even finish part C as, he was getting tired (though we had breaks between each section), repeating back the wrong sounds while touching the tiles, and he never once matched the color to the sound if they were the same. Suddenly, I'm back not knowing what on earth to do.😟 I see Foundations in Sounds is a new thing since I bought Barton years ago. It is very expensive, and I'm wondering if there is anything at all I can possibly do otherwise before starting Barton 1? If you have used Foundations in Sounds, how did it go? He had school evals at the end of K (just basic WISC, CELF, and some ASD specific ones so they could decide how to classify him.) I thoroughly regret it as he lost services (that's a whole thread in itself, I disagreed with his IEP). I guess at that age the overall expectations are low enough per the %iles (despite what the district actually expects of kids) that he only qualified for SLD math. They decided to continue reading pullouts anyway judging from his performance in resource. It's pretty evident that if he were tested again he would qualify with both as he hasn't made much measurable progress. They also completely took away his (unmet) language goals. For math, I had chosen Rightstart. Is one edition preferred over another for struggling kids? I watched some Ronit Bird videos, and it was like watching my son with math. I gathered that Rightstart is a similar approach but more scripted? I really need something systematic to walk us through this. Or should I just stick with the Ronit Bird stuff completely? Both? I got him a handwriting book from TGATB, as it needs work too, but I wonder if we should go ahead and start a typing program now? Any and all help is appreciated as I try to figure him out!

Stimulant! We were working off of the recommended ones from the gene testing. Also, my mom has ADHD/Anxiety and has tried a few things. Turns out, the same anxiety med my mom is on works way better for DD than what she was on before. Serious, night and day difference. So we figured we'd see if the adhd med grandma is on would follow suit since it was also on DDs "green" list haha. Her being so bubbly and easygoing during our little mini assessments yesterday, seriously made me wonder if that was it.

Wow! That's an amazing difference. Yes, our current pediatrician is really great. We did do GeneSight testing, and she's really wonderful about us working with us as a team to get at the most pressing problem first (her anxiety) and then see if meds for adhd are even necessary. We just started one, so I'm very curious to see if there's any change next month when we really start getting to work again. And now she's old enough and has the words to tell me how she feels on it, and if we track back off of them she has the words and power to tell me, "Hey you know, school is way harder now without this, I'd like to take them again" etc.

That's exactly where we are. There were hints of it as young as 6, she took some computer diagnostic through our pediatrician and despite being totally comfortable on computers she showed *no* attention paid to it. So bad, they asked for a retest with her sister in the room so she'd be as comfortable as possible. Still bombed it. But she was doing life fine and I couldn't see medicating her. She told me a few months ago that she'd be doing math and then get distracted and forget what she was supposed to be doing. In a span of just like 10 minutes? I think it's starting to frustrate her. I will look into this. The beauty of knowing all of this now, I can educate myself and be ready for DS coming up behind. Surely he will need all of these same interventions, and likely more since he has even more language issues on top. So even if any of it becomes "overkill," it's ticking every box to make sure nothing is missing and I'm 100% ready to roll with DS come 4th/5th. After 3 years in public, and now being a full year and half behind his peers, I just don't see that public will serve him well anymore at all. They don't acknowledge his language difficulties and I can see future gen ed teachers not having one iota of time to explain directions to him over and over and over.

Sorry this! The exact categories that were "below average" on the CELF were: linguistic concepts, word structure, understanding spoken paragraphs and word classes. The range was the 5th-16th %ile. The analysis was very back and forth. For instance they would say she demonstrates understanding based on a language sample, yet during testing she missed the concepts. Using "until, unless, all but one, before/after", and then "neither nor, and either." With structure, she it was irregular plurals, and irregular past tense words, particularly when she was drawing and describing a picture. I don't know where she stands now, as I was honestly surprised by some of this! In just casual conversation, I don't notice it, but then again I'm not sure what they were looking to hear. Oh and of note her "sentence comprehension" was actually above average on the CELF. So interesting.

This makes a lot of sense! Thank you for pointing that out.

Yes! In talking with her more, she reads *really* fast to herself. So like on one section of the 100 vocab, she read the directions to herself and then was confused. It was 6 very short sentences. I had her reread it again out loud and it was better. I then, had to draw her attention to the word bank she was supposed to use because she just started trying to think of things off the top of her head. Then she did the activity fine. Funny, she completely misspelled kitchen (critken), and when I asked her what the word said, she corrected it perfectly. I think I will have her read out loud more if only to help her slow down. Also funny, the sentence was "Everything is packed except for a few things." She got really insistent that the sentence was wrong. "You can't say everything and then say except. That's not everything." As she was finishing up, I guess she couldn't stand it and marked out the word "everything" and wrote "A lot" on top of it haha. Man, I wonder how often she's nit picking the wording of what she's reading and then losing the entire point! I'm looking at her testing and it's strange. On the TAPS-3, she was above average in auditory comprehension, but then on the CELF, auditory recall was a source of difficulty unless there were pictures to go alongside. Her relative weakness was noted as sentence memory and word memory though they were in normal limits. Same with working memory being a relative weakness on her WISC. Idk, I'm curious now to test her again lol. I'm curious how she would do with meds on board. I thinks she's come a long way with maturity, and as we've gotten her mental state a little better, that would likely reflect in her work. I've never seen her so animated completing a worksheet lol. Over the summer, she's come alive more and I wonder if that will allow her to show her true abilities. Though with everything going on in the world, I'll probably just stick with my gut for this year and focus on this and see if things improve. Oh so the exact categories that were "below average" on the CELF were: linguistic concepts, word structure, understanding spoken paragraphs and word classes. The range was the 5th-16th %ile.

Oh interesting! I didn't make her answer back in sentences. She would think out loud and say things like, "well, you can peel an egg if it's been boiled and you have to take the shell off, so yes" lol. Or she'd laugh and say, "Um, no you can't hear a picture!" I was impressed with some of her word choices too, like for dime she said, "A dime is currency." I dare say she enjoyed this activity. Perhaps I will do what you suggest and it could be even just a warm up sort of thing before we do stuff she definitely doesn't want to do like reading. Some quick "wins" for that growth mindset eh? Hehe!

I'm watching the Mindwing webinar recording (so sad I missed the discount!) and my goodness I feel so much more empowered to tackle this. Even giving suggestions for questions each time we read through something. I've never been sure that I'm actually asking questions the right way. I want to be sure, I just need the ASD set and then maybe a manipulative like stamps? We went through the AAS placement, and while she doesn't know some of the advanced phonograms, she spelled every word in the test correctly. I'm not sure that spelling/decoding is something we should spend time on? Correct me though if I'm wrong! We also did the first section of the 100 vocabulary link with labeling categories and she did great. Should we still continue with the other sections or is that enough of a clue to see she's got this part down? She also did ok with the Super Duper sample. So maybe she could be ready for a curriculum with writing, while I use this to work on reading comprehension/narration? And yes, I did see the Evan Moor recommendation, it seems great 🙂

Happy to ditch that, she hated it so much haha. I didn’t know a measurable way to reinforce comprehension though. I love what you’ve said here, seems like we’d have a much better time. I’m thinking of getting the sequel to the Wild Robot since I know she at least enjoyed that story read aloud and it is technically below her level. So maybe that’ll go over well. I’m not sure about any of her level at this point, the more I think about it the more I question everything. 🤣

I appreciate that too. Last year, it was a victory to get her out of bed some days. I made her go to a small art coop and even though she likes art it was a struggle. We worked through anxiety/depression issues and have finally landed on the right medication I think that has lifted the fog so we could even really start learning again. I’m trying to make up for lost time but I do need to let go of some pressure.

I had her do Reading Eggspress for a few weeks to see about that very thing. It's a lot of read and answer questions over and over. Some of that was nonfiction. She struggled. I don't think she ever got 100% on the questions, just did well enough to pass. She would have to go back to the text over and over and sometimes just guessed. I know multiple choice isn't the greatest but when I would sit down with her and see the answer fairly clearly in front her, she didn't understand until I either rephrased the question and/or read the text back to her. I do tend to be pretty animated with read alouds and stop often for us to discuss. She seems to hang right in there with me during those times and some stories we've read had her bringing past experiences and making connections. I don't believe I've just read a passage cold and asked questions, not in my nature, but I'm going to do that this week with a mix of book levels to see how she does. I wouldn't be surprised if I've been compensating for her without even realizing it. Hmm decoding longer words, I'll have to see. I feel like she perhaps has built up a massive store of memorized words. I should probably throw some nonsense words at her to be sure?

That's absolutely it, I spent all of 2nd and 3rd insisting she needs help and it was so hard to prove. When we got to TEACCH for her eval it was a breath of fresh air, they immediately "got" her and even asked her to come back to talk with a new pysch they were considering hiring and are using her artwork to help with some of their programming for teachers Yes, eliminating as much language as possible seems to be the name of the game with math! The more I asked, the more I explained, she shut down. She *can* explain with things like c-rods, so I know it's all in there. She does enjoy games, and I'm going to see about making sure she can do some math puzzles games too for some fun. Absence of structures..yes yes..I follow. As soon as she's up and fed, we're going to try some of the 100% and do some cold reading aloud/questioning. I even grabbed an AAS placement test. Then I'm going to listen to the webinar as much as they'll allow (yay bluetooth headphones) and then sit back down tonight and see where we stand. I'm hyperfocusing on having one kid sorted a week so hopefully by August we can actually start school lol. Thank you so much for talking this out with me, having some direction on where to get started has helped tremendously.

Yes, the benefit to having all of my kids showing various learning difficulties is that usually one change we make or area we focus on helps the entire house!

Well technically yes, this is the first time I will have all 4 of my children, at home, and school age. I started off my WTM years with just my girls in K-2. They were a breeze then, though my oldest seemed to have dyslexia, we did Barton 1, but also vision therapy for a few months and made huge gains. She still prefers to listen to audiobooks, but she can read/comprehend well enough that I'm not worried about her now rising 7th. She will be doing her public school's distance learning unless we determine it to be subpar and we decide to fold her in with us. My 10yo DD will be in 5th, 7yo DS (asd/sld math/sld reading/lingering language issues) is in first, and my soon to be 5yo (some funky speech, mostly artic now) will be doing a K primer of sorts as I red shirt him until traditional K in public post covid. If the last couple months of the school year was any indication, with 2 of 4 doing distance learning, my 10yo working with me, and my littlest running around just..yea...it will be a bit challenging. I myself have ADHD and an autoimmune disease, so I'm already hitting a mental wall. DS7 is so distracted always requiring so much redirection, I hope I have enough spoons left to even deal with the next kid haha. My 10yo and I were home solo for 4th with the rest at school, so I decided to let her "unschool" somewhat after a *very* stressful 3rd grade. We used Singapore which I adored with my oldest, and well, she has great number sense but has a very difficult time explaining her thought process with math. In fact, she kind of can't?😳 If I ask her to explain too many times or write it all down, she's in tears. I'm sure you've got some thoughts on that part haha. BUT, I'm only one person and I can already see that trying to do an intensive math/reading program with both of them while keeping the house afloat, and my youngest from harming himself unsupervised, will just be..a juggling act to say the least. I went through a TT lesson and it seems like a way for her to keep progressing without needing me to be arm and arm with her and still parent. I have a dream that something like TGATB would work for science and history as a family, but it's likely just that, a dream haha. Honestly talking to her, you wouldn't really know she had any issues at all. She presents so close to NT, I don't think she scripts that much, she's level 1 (aspie basically). She has quite a big vocabulary. I think that she spells fairly well for her age. But I will look at that again, since I don't really have much to compare her to, perhaps it's not as good as it should be. Letters and stories she writes are pretty legible. I would love to use something that combines typing and spelling. I think I was looking at Touch Type Read Spell. Anything I can use that hits a lot of areas simultaneously would be nice. I was going to do EIW because we've not done a formal writing program at all and the reviews from parents with kids with dyslexia were positive. Again, having her watch a video and work through some things independently would be nice. I'm fine holding off on that though until I know more about where the holes are. I used to know how to chunk quotes but the forum looks totally different now ugh!