Think 12dd has dyslexia

[kareng]

My dd is 12 and has from the get-go been a slow reader. Currently using mostly Sonlight Core 6 with some Abeka. Reading continues to be difficult as does cursive writing and Math. I think she may be dyslexic. We are considering having her tested. Dd took the student screening on www.brightsolutions.us website of Susan Barton (Orton-Gillingham method). My dd was not able to determine how many syllables in words very accurately and had difficulty distinguishing different sounds from each other. Susan's recommendation is for Lindamood Bell tutoring. Really can't see how we can afford tutoring (A friend of mine has spent over $5000 on her son) but know that we need to do something for my daughter is stuck and very very frustrated. I've seen the following suggested in other threads - Explode the Code, Spell to Write and Read, Writing Road To Reading, Phonics Pathways, Sing Spell Read Write, Seeing Stars.

 

I'm looking for some way to work on her decoding skills without using something made for very young children. I think she's maxxed out her ability to move on and is not real interested in the normal school materials. Looking for something made for older children that she will not be insulted with but that will work on breaking down the sounds involved and work on auditory memory as well.

 

By the way, she is very artistic and not the workbook type of student.

 

Any thoughts on how to proceed?

[EKS]

You might want to take a look at REWARDS. It is targeted to middle schoolers and explicitly teaches how to decode multisyllable words. You can then follow up with fluency readings.

 

I am also using All About Spelling with my 13yo. It is made for younger kids but it is working for him. Another program to look at is Megawords, which is for older kids and teens. I will probably switch to that at some point.

[siloam]

My dd is 12 and has from the get-go been a slow reader. Currently using mostly Sonlight Core 6 with some Abeka. Reading continues to be difficult as does cursive writing and Math. I think she may be dyslexic. We are considering having her tested. Dd took the student screening on www.brightsolutions.us website of Susan Barton (Orton-Gillingham method). My dd was not able to determine how many syllables in words very accurately and had difficulty distinguishing different sounds from each other. Susan's recommendation is for Lindamood Bell tutoring. Really can't see how we can afford tutoring (A friend of mine has spent over $5000 on her son) but know that we need to do something for my daughter is stuck and very very frustrated. I've seen the following suggested in other threads - Explode the Code, Spell to Write and Read, Writing Road To Reading, Phonics Pathways, Sing Spell Read Write, Seeing Stars.

 

I'm looking for some way to work on her decoding skills without using something made for very young children. I think she's maxxed out her ability to move on and is not real interested in the normal school materials. Looking for something made for older children that she will not be insulted with but that will work on breaking down the sounds involved and work on auditory memory as well.

 

By the way, she is very artistic and not the workbook type of student.

 

Any thoughts on how to proceed?

 

A couple of thoughts.

 

First of all you can do LiPS at home. Not cheap but it falls well short of $5000. I have been using LiPS as speech therapy for my ds for about a year now, with good progress. Let me know if you have questions about it. (BTW it also shows up on Ebay now and then.)

 

I would advise against a vertical phonics program (SWR, WRTR, Phonics Road, Teach American to Spell and Read) because they cover multiple sounds and rules at once. They do work for some dyslexic children, but there is also a chance it will totally overwhelm them. My oldest two were already reading when they used SWR and they did fine with it. I tried it with my 3rd dd before she was reading strongly and she was in tears daily.

 

O/G programs are the best (IMO), but many o/g programs start like Barton's expecting the child to be able to hear sounds, and if they can't then working on it till they can. (I think I was told Prevent Academic Failure (PAF) doesn't require this, but I haven't seen it in person. Recipe for Reading has a program that goes before it that would teach this, but I can't remember the name right now, sorry.) Ok that sounds a bit tedious to me, though I guess it depends on how you work on it. We do play a lot of phonics bingo, and phonics go fish, but that doesn't exactly work on hearing separate sound in a word.

 

This is the one piece of o/g programs I am not sure I agree with. I have, for lack of owning anything else and not knowing any better, taught my dyslexic children to read using SL LA and the Get Ready, Set, Go for the Code books (also called pre-ETC books). SL covers one letter sound a week (note one thing at a time, building over time is very good for dyslexics). Then in week 6 they cover the first vowel and start building words. They have you do dictation with those words. Not knowing any better when my kids couldn't do dictation because they couldn't divide the sounds, like your child, I would just break the word down into the sounds for them. So if the first list was tab, tap, Pat, bat I would say /t/, /a/, /p/ for them while they wrote down each letter. After 36 weeks of this all my kids could segment words like Barton requires. Hearing syllables I didn't even try till later, and by the time they hit 2nd grade they could.

 

Now all my problems weren't solved by doing SL LA K (which isn't that babyish other than the K label and probably the readers that go with it). After 36 weeks my 2nd dd could spell very well but still couldn't blend-at all. My 2nd dd could blend a little. My ds is still a work in progress. He has a hard time writing so I did the words as trace work instead of dictation. He can hear the first sounds of words, and the last sounds now, but not middle sounds. He will be finishing the first round soon and will do a second this time doing the full dictation. With all but my oldest, who has the least signs of dyslexic, I have had to go back and do it again, though at that point I was often able to do it at double time (not sure if ds will be able to).

 

If you really can't afford LiPS you could consider buying the SL LA K with the Pre-ETC books and work though it and see if you have the same success as I have. If you can call doing it twice and having them blending and hearing sounds success. It is definite progress, but it is not quick progress. To be honest I am considering PAF myself, and I own the Seeing Stars manual, but I can't decide if I should just do what I have been doing, and include some of the Seeing Stars ideas (I have read about 1/3 of the book, so I need to do more reading before I decide), or if I should buy the rest of Seeing Starts and do that whole program, or if I should buy PAF (because it uses ETC, which I already own) and use that.

 

BTW Seeing Starts has a focus on teaching the child to see letters/words in their head. If your child is already able to do that then you would probalby want to use a different o/g program. I bought it because my 3rd dd is a very poor speller and doesn't see words in her head.

 

You might be able to make AAS work too. You would just go in and sound out 4-5 words for her a day, and wait for the ability to hear individual sounds to click. In the mean time you are also working on spelling and learning spelling rules. The advantage to using a full o/g program is that it will have readers that go hand in hand with it where AAS doesn't. Full o/g program usually have more multi-sensory work too, and while your dd is a workbook gal she probably needs more. Dyslexic children have too many problems with recall, they need to build multiple paths in the brain and store the information in multiple places. When you use multi-sensory methods you do that. You store visual information in one place, kinesthetic in another, and auditory in another. You also create more pathways to that information. Thus if one pathway is blocked due to a processing issue going on at the moment if they have done multi-sensory work then they should theoretically be able to access the information from another part of the brain, on another path. That is why o/g methods are recommended for dyslexic and other LD students and why they work. It isn't that other methods can't work, just that they often take longer, and at time can cause recall difficulty.

 

Let me know if you have any qustions. Other O/G program you can look into are: Wilson Reading, S.P.I.R.E., and Horizons Reading. I know there are also others beyond these.

 

Heather

[LizzyBee]

LiPS can be used at any age, and as Heather said, you can buy the clinical kit for $350 and use it at home. It helped my dyslexic dd tremendously even though we only did the first couple sections of the program. It continues to help me know how to help her with articulation errors. It was worth every penny. I've not seen anything quite comparable to it.

 

We are using Barton Reading now and it is fabulous. If you want an OG program that works and is easy to use, I highly recommend it. You only have to buy one module at a time, and then you can re-sell it to help pay for the next level. They have a high resale value; someone in a yahoo group I'm in said that's she's spent a net of only about $50-$75 per level. It was originally written for adults, so it's not babyish at all.

 

Something else you could try to improve auditory discrimination is Earobics. It's a software program that you use at home.

[ElizabethB]

She can try my online phonics lessons.

 

Also, Recipe for Reading by Traub and Bloom, all you need to make your own OG program for $25.

 

Here are some free phonological awareness ideas:

 

http://www.welltrainedmind.com/forums/showpost.php?p=1191907&postcount=20

 

Also, as my dyslexia page explains, syllables can be helpful for a dyslexic student and Webster's Speller may helpful.

[siloam]

LiPS can be used at any age, and as Heather said, you can buy the clinical kit for $350 and use it at home. It helped my dyslexic dd tremendously even though we only did the first couple sections of the program. It continues to help me know how to help her with articulation errors. It was worth every penny. I've not seen anything quite comparable to it.

 

I would have to agree with this. I use the labels clues about how the mouth forms the letters all the time with my ds. My 2nd dd has a horrible time hearing the difference between short i and short e as well as a few other sounds, so I am taking her through lips so I can use the same cues to help her learn the difference and give her hints on those bad days when it just isn't clicking. I'd spend the money again in a heartbeat.

 

Heather

 

[merry gardens]

 

...First of all you can do LiPS at home. Not cheap but it falls well short of $5000. I have been using LiPS as speech therapy for my ds for about a year now, with good progress. Let me know if you have questions about it. (BTW it also shows up on Ebay now and then.)...

My child couldn't pass the Barton screening either. I'm doing LiPS at home too. Wonderful program! If kareng only wants to use LiPS up to the point where she can start with Barton's program, she might try just getting the manual and some of the manipulatives (like the static clings and perhaps a few others) rather than buying the entire clinical package.

[kareng]

Thank you everyone for your comments and input. It has helped me sort through some of the complexities of what to do.

[Renee in NC]

Just another idea - there was no way I could afford LiPS, so I kept looking. When I bought All About Spelling this past spring, my 8yo could not segment sounds in words. Now, after working in Reading Reflex for awhile, he can.

 

The AAS/RR combination with Explode the Code is working fairly well.

[Mom-ninja.]

Just another idea - there was no way I could afford LiPS, so I kept looking. When I bought All About Spelling this past spring, my 8yo could not segment sounds in words. Now, after working in Reading Reflex for awhile, he can.

 

 

I use ABeCeDarian which is based from Reading Reflex and it has turned my ds into a reader.

 

I also use AAS.