Direction for next school year

[sixpence1978]

My DD (turning 8 in July) will be finishing up her VT this summer right before we start in for the next school year. I've been pondering for weeks now on which direction we should go, but thought I would ask you fine ladies for input as well.

 

Reading:

Her main struggles are vowel sounds and longer words. She did Abeka phonics for K, but it all went downhill after the long vowel sounds were introduced. For 1st (private school) she went through Saxon phonics and had nearly no problems with marking the syllables and vowels. She hit a roadblock about half-way through the year. She also was on the Accelerated Reader program, so essentially learned to read by sight. This year we have mainly just been doing AAS and gearing up for VT. For reading she seems mostly to need help with more advanced phonics work and to stop her from guessing or just plain skipping the word.

 

Spelling:

This is her toughest area. Again, vowel sounds and more advanced phonics are the problem here. If it is a phonetically spelled short vowel word, she has no problem. We made it through AAS 1 and about 10 lessons of AAS 2 this year. Granted, we cut back again for while she was in VT, but we were stalling out anyway. She is still struggling with when to use c, k, or ck, ing, ink, and occasionally putting that silent e at the end of the words. It seems like no matter how often she reads those work banks, they don't stick very well. She tested quite low for visual memory. I'm trying to decide if we should stick with it and add in more review (and variety) or to move on to something different.

 

Language:

She isn't doing terribly here. She made it through GWG this year with no issues (other than some retention). We will probably do it again for her next year. She does still have some language "issues" though in that she has trouble finding the words she wants to say. She seems much younger than her age. Articulation and understanding aren't really a problem though. It seems to more affect her output than her input.

 

So any suggestions?

[Dobela]

We started pretty much from the beginning again with phonics and I will begin spelling next year, again, using AAS. By starting at the beginning we were able to correct those gaps he still had. Your dd may have gaps from switching programs (I Know I switched several times and we had gaps from that).

 

A fun way to work on visual memory is the new Loopz game or the old Simon game.

[PeterPan]

Well we've trod your path, only with my dd 4 years older than yours, and I can only tell you what we're doing. AAS is good for going through things very carefully and getting the understanding. I think you might as well give up on spelling till she finishes her VT. Or I'll put it another way. Feel free to give yourself (and her) a pass on spelling till you finish the VT. No visual memory kind of makes spelling hard, kwim? I mean think about it, that relegates you to a Phonetic Zoo style, totally auditory approach. That's fine if you want to do that, might even be good.

 

I'm reading "Right Brained Child, Left Brained World" by Freed right now (after being pestered by multiple people about why I hadn't taken the time to and had given up on it so easily), and it has a lot of *different* (as in outside the box, unusual, different) type ways to approach spelling. My dd prefers to learn visually, had poor visual memory before VT, and uses her auditory by default to process instead of visual. What to make of that? Well what Freed says is that we need to engage their visual processing, the method that would actually be their dominant if it were working well. I don't know, haven't tried it yet. (Monday is coming.) Our VT wanted her to do more visualization for schoolwork. The Freed book actually shows you HOW to apply visual processing to different school subjects.

 

She has the rest of her life to struggle with spelling. She doesn't have to struggle right now, during VT. I'd get through the VT and then pick back up. Also, don't be confused and think any sieve brain on her part reflects a failure on your part or the curriculum's fault. Without going into detail (because frankly I haven't processed it myself), let me just say I got proved Friday, pretty conclusively, with our test scores, that sieve brains are sieve brains. Do what you can and keep doing it. Do dictation if you aren't. But don't beat yourself up for what doesn't stick. Their gifts are going to be elsewhere.

 

On the expressive language, try doing some things where she says the words to pictures (memory game cards work great for this) while playing with a fidget toy. I was really surprised how challenging this got for my dd. They can work on expressive language in speech therapy. I think it may be a combination of the dyslexia plus working memory. The fidget toy uses their working memory, and then when they try to do the expressive language task (that is already hard), they fail. You can do it with your word cards for AAS too. Just flash through them and have her read while she plays with a toy. I was surprised how much my 12 yo could stumble at something so simple. Yllek's ds has been doing speech therapy for this, so you could read her posts.

Edited June 4, 2011 by OhElizabeth

[chiguirre]

I'd take a look at Abecedarian. It focuses on vowel teams and really helped ds get over that hump. It also worked well for nt dd at the end of first grade.

[merry gardens]

My DD (turning 8 in July) will be finishing up her VT this summer right before we start in for the next school year. I've been pondering for weeks now on which direction we should go, but thought I would ask you fine ladies for input as well.

 

Reading:

Her main struggles are vowel sounds and longer words. She did Abeka phonics for K, but it all went downhill after the long vowel sounds were introduced. For 1st (private school) she went through Saxon phonics and had nearly no problems with marking the syllables and vowels. She hit a roadblock about half-way through the year. She also was on the Accelerated Reader program, so essentially learned to read by sight. This year we have mainly just been doing AAS and gearing up for VT. For reading she seems mostly to need help with more advanced phonics work and to stop her from guessing or just plain skipping the word.

 

Spelling:

This is her toughest area. Again, vowel sounds and more advanced phonics are the problem here. If it is a phonetically spelled short vowel word, she has no problem. We made it through AAS 1 and about 10 lessons of AAS 2 this year. Granted, we cut back again for while she was in VT, but we were stalling out anyway. She is still struggling with when to use c, k, or ck, ing, ink, and occasionally putting that silent e at the end of the words. It seems like no matter how often she reads those work banks, they don't stick very well. She tested quite low for visual memory. I'm trying to decide if we should stick with it and add in more review (and variety) or to move on to something different.

 

Language:

She isn't doing terribly here. She made it through GWG this year with no issues (other than some retention). We will probably do it again for her next year. She does still have some language "issues" though in that she has trouble finding the words she wants to say. She seems much younger than her age. Articulation and understanding aren't really a problem though. It seems to more affect her output than her input.

 

So any suggestions?

 

My son was very confused about vowels. He had phonemic awareness problems and confused the sounds of similar sounding vowels. LiPS helped significantly with that, and so did Barton. Barton is really slow to introduce long vowels. They build up several other phonics understandings before introducing long vowels. Silent e isn't covered until the sixth level in Barton. That slow approach to long vowels has been very effective for my son.

[sixpence1978]

She actually surprisingly always passes every phonemic awareness task I throw at her. I had to explicitly teach her how to rhyme, but she did get it. All the other tasks she does really well with.

 

We haven't actually gotten her in for any other testing other than the COVD evaluation. We might have to do that in the future.

 

We have mostly put spelling to the side during VT as well. I would review past information with her a couple times a week, but no new information was covered. We had put basically everything but VT and playing games to the side for the summer break.

 

I've done many questionnaires that show she is neither left-brained nor right-brained, but solidly balanced in the middle.

 

Thanks for the suggestions for word naming. Are there any fidget toys that you guys prefer?

[PeterPan]

thinking putty, sculpy, legos. Oh, these are amazing http://www.target.com/B-Pop-Arty-Funky-Pop-Beads/dp/B002YIRKKY

 

I'm not saying doing the picture naming and word reading will solve her problems, however it will give you a way that DEMONSTRATES it. I was surprised how much my dd stumbled with it.

 

If you want to save yourself some grief, go ahead and get the neuropsych eval now. We haven't done one yet, and, as michele found, there's a sense in which our work at remediation starts to mask the problems. And the reality is that I've spent a lot of time sorting this all out for myself, figuring out stuff the hard (painful) way that a neuropsych could have told us just by walking in the door. So you'll survive either way, but my hindsite is to do the eval now. If you schedule now, you probably get in right about the time your VT wraps up, which would be good timing.

[Misty]

Are there any fidget toys that you guys prefer?

 

I like fidget toys from Office Playground http://www.officeplayground.com/Fidget-Toys-C102.aspx

[PeterPan]

Just so you know, when I said fidget, I was using that term a little loosely. I'm just following in the vein of what Yllek has said, meaning a toy the dc can play with to use up some of their working memory so they have to stretch and self-regulate to handle the additional task you throw at them. If it's a regular fidget toy, that's more in the vein (my guess) of something they can already do while doing their schoolwork. The point of a regular fidget toy is to give sensory input to help them focus. I was using the term more generally and not as precisely, sorry. If you want to see their working memory get stretched, you'd need something a little involved that distracts them a bit.

[sixpence1978]

I understand. That's very helpful and I'm realizing how many things we already have around the house that would fit that need. I already have those Pop-Arty beads, silly putty, play-doh, legos, little bendy men, etc.

 

Thanks for the suggestion. It gives me something to try out. My DD loves variety, so any new things I can do with her are always appreciated.

[Ottakee]

Have you looked at the I See Sam books for reading? http://www.3rsplus.com or http://www.iseesam.com They move very slowly but really cover the phonics well and is a very systematic manner.

 

For Spelling, I haven't found anything that works as well as Apples and Pears Spelling.

[sixpence1978]

We do use some of the I See Sam readers. We currently have AR1, but she could probably move to AR2 soon. She doesn't particularly enjoy reading them, but we do pull them out occasionally. She does great with them because she is reading in context. Words out of context stump her more often.

 

 

I have also been eyeing Apples & Pears, but a part of me feels guilty for not sticking it out with AAS a bit longer. Silly, I know.