S/o of our intervening early thread, now talking about dyslexia

[PeterPan]

Ok, one person said this:

 

I could tell my son was struggling in preschool. I can’t tell you how many times I was told to just give it time. By the middle of kindergarten, if you asked him what the first sound in the word mom was, he would say p or q or k – he had no idea. (And his name starts with an M!) He didn’t know his letter sounds and reading was out of the question.

 

You can test for dyslexia at 5 – they just can’t tell you definitely whether the child is or isn’t – they will just say there is a high likelihood. In my son’s case, the tester said he was one of the more severe cases she had tested. We started Wilson (OG method) with him and by the end of kindergarten he was reading.

 

 

You know from my sig that ds3 (almost 4!) has verbal apraxia. There's no tune to his singing, and we're VERY SLOWLY working through a letter of the week study. I taught dd13 to read with SWR years ago, so I'm teaching him all the sounds (which he can say, we skip letters he can't do). However his phonemic awareness is pitiful. No ability to hear rhyming, medial sounds or final. He can, with maybe 60% accuracy get initial sounds on the letters we've worked on repeatedly over the week. It's really in the category of "Dear God, where is the processing on this?"

 

He enjoys what we're doing, and we'll plow on. I was just identifying with the way y'all were describing how your kids presented at age 5 with a dyslexia diagnosis and wondering if that's where this is headed. If we do Earobics and continue our current stuff and just work, work, work on the ability to hear the sounds, will there be MORE after that? I guess that's what I'm really wondering. What happens AFTER that? What else is going to be glitchy?

 

He's so adorable in every other way, the whole thing just amazes me. If you really OVER-ENUNCIATE the initial sound, he can get it a decent percentage of the time. If you just say it normally, he won't get the initial sound.

[eoffg]

Elizabeth, you said that he has 'no ability to hear rhyming', where I wonder if you are familiar with research by Prof Usha Goswami, who is the world's leading researcher into this, after nearly 20 years. Which I've been following for the past 8 years.

Here's a link to one of many articles on her research:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/06/110629083113.htm

[Heathermomster]

Have you read Overcoming Dyslexia by Shaywitz yet? Her book explains how sounds are stored in the brain.

 

DS really struggled with mapping the correct sound to the correct letter. Decoding crawled for awhile. Afterwards, things moved along fine, albeit more slowly due to processing speed and working memory issues.

 

Have you considered Lips training? I've been advised by an O-G to consider that for my DD.

[FairProspects]

Well, at 5 ds actually presented differently than PP. Ds could rhyme. He could segment. He never did pick up letter sounds on his own, but I began an O-G program with him and he learned the sounds very quickly and was blending CVC words within 3 weeks of starting K. Then nothing - no reading click, zero fluency, there was just no progress. He was reading CVC words at the end of the year about as well as at the beginning.

 

He also couldn't intuit anything language related. If a word had 4 sounds instead of 3, he floundered. He bombed the oral comprehension section of the ITBS even though I knew this was a kid who could discuss the motivations for Alexander the Great's rise to power when he wanted. Something about language was just really out of range from what I would have expected. He struggled to find words to express himself even though he had a large vocabulary.

 

So, I think dyslexics can present very differently at a young age. For ds, our biggest indicators were not letter sounds themselves, but failure to progress in reading, how hard he was working at reading (he once asked how another friend could read so fast), and difficulty processing language that didn't line up with our perception of what was really in his head - the word retrieval and memory issues.

[Terabith]

It's normal for 3 year olds to not be able to identify medial or ending sounds. That requires some manipulating of sounds in your head. I wouldn't worry about that.

 

Rhyming....can he say if words rhyme? Can he come up with rhymes?

 

I would work on the rhyming and the initial sounds. Lots and lots of nursery rhymes. It's definitely something to watch, but I wouldn't be *worried* yet. Three is pretty little. I'm really not trying to brush it off as "he'll grow into it." The rhyming and initial sounds are skills many kids his age can do, although there are enough that cannot that I wouldn't call it a problem yet. Also, I'm not sure how much intervention you can do at that age, other than learning the phonograms and continuing to work on the phonemic awareness, which you are doing.

[Lecka]

OhElizabeth, I can tell you about my son.

 

He had very poor articulation, a little late on all speech milestones, later it came out that he wasn't hearing all the letter sounds separately from each other.

 

A lot of things like he would say "wit." This could be: brick, witch, or anything that began with a consonant plus r, and ended with almost any consonant or digraph.

 

A lot of words might have been like homophones for him.

 

He is very much the kid I have seen in some videos on reading rockets, who does not hear the consonants in a way that they are very different from each other.

 

He got some really good speech therapy last year, and they taught him to tell apart the sounds, and taught him articulation. I think they spent probably 6 hours of therapy just on hearing s/sh/ch. (I was able to observe some during this time.) Telling apart g/d and k/t reliably took 3 years of speech therapy (at all times this was a goal, at all times it was not worked on in ways that would turn out to be effective.)

 

So now -- that is really pretty resolved. Rhymes are weak but better. He still thinks words rhyme that don't rhyme, sometimes, but it is truly showing progress just as he is reading more and I think continuing to internalize how sounds go together. B/c, he really only got to start doing that in the last 18 months or so, where other kids are starting that internalizing process at a younger age.

 

But at this point -- he takes more practice, but he is getting fluent, it is much easier than it was before.

 

At this point it looks like his problems with that were a roadblock, and with the roadblock removed, he is moving forward only a little slower than other kids who never had a roadblock. He is not having additional, new problems crop up. He is doing well.

 

His good speech therapy was very similar to samples I have looked at of Lips. I think a lot of his problems were auditory in nature, and then the articulation was partly something he would have anyway, and partly something stemming from how he heard words in the first place.

 

I have really looked hard at dyspraxia descriptions and I think that any motor control contributing to his articulation is minor and within a normal range.... it is just a complicated process for him anyway.

 

But.... we are doing fluency now, and he is doing good. He is not ready to move on in decoding. But -- this is totally fine, I even think it is good to pause for fluency instead of moving ahead in decoding (the reason I am doing it, lol). I think he needs the extra time for fluency, maybe more than other kids, but it is not a problem, it is not a frustration, it is something that he is successful at and can do very well -- maybe just slower than some kids, but not in a way that is any kind of problem.

 

I am nervous about multi-syllable words, but he can "flex" for vowel teams fine, so I think he will be able to "flex" for syllable possibilities later on. I am drawing little lines to divide syllables for him a lot of the time, for now. I think it is a helpful support for now that he needs. In the next year that will be something to work on.

 

He is actually able to sound out quite a few 2-syllable words, ones that follow a pattern. The ones where you have to "flex" to see which vowel sound it would be depending on where the syllable break is are something he is very poor with right now. (Like, pi-lot, or pil-ot -- that is very hard.) "Flexing" is a word in Abecedarian that just means trying the different possible sounds, I don't know if that has another term in different programs.

 

But overall -- a roadblock for him, not something indicating that he would have that level of difficulty at every step.

 

He WAY had all the signs of a problem at age 5, though.... letter sounds, couldn't blend or segment, couldn't identify the first sound in a word, etc. However, he never mixed syllables within words, and I don't think he has any problem with word recall. It is more hearing the sounds, and hearing them individually, than anything else.

 

edit: for the comment on rhyming, I totally, totally have fallen sway to an opinion saying that blending and segmenting are the only skills really needed to start reading, and that rhyming is a developing skill, much later on the skill hierarchy. Another poster has mentioned that she went back and did some more formal phonemic awareness activites with her child later on, and did get him to the highest level of phonemic awareness, and that it did seem like a good and productive thing to do. So I have that in mind as something to do in the future, probably along with my younger kids doing phonemic awareness.

 

So I think, being able to rhyme, at some level, means the kid can rhyme, and shows something of what they are hearing and not hearing and manipulating and not manipulating. But I don't think it is as important as I used to.

 

If you search "phonemic awareness" on Amazon, that is what I am looking at for later... my son never, ever could get anything auditory-only ----- so all the nursery rhymes were great for his language development (which actually tested very high at the speech clinic), but I don't think it did anything, anything at all for his phonemic awareness b /c with the roadblock he had he was nowhere near that level of hearing that way. So I think it's a good thing to do, but OH I did it, and it happened not to help my son's phonemic awareness in any way .

 

As always -- I do used phonemic/phonological interchangably - -maybe I mean phonological, I don't know.

 

(Now my son does not have a dyslexia diagnosis, but if you are reading Overcoming Dyslexia, there is no way he doesn't/didn't have phonemic awareness issues. But I have read other books, and I am unsure about how he fits in with any other characteristics, at his current age.)

 

A while back I was down, b/c I thought early intervention would be a full cure. Now I don't think it is a full, full cure, but I am satisfied. But I think to some extent he is a child who really fits the "early intervention for phonemic awareness" model, though I don't think it will be as if he never was as bad as he used to be. But he is doing very well.

Edited August 24, 2012 by Lecka

[Carolina3]

My son didn't have verbal apraxia but he had no ability to hear individual sounds in words, isolate sounds, no rhyming skills, just no phonemic awareness skills at all. I did Earobics with him and that seemed to help a lot. Then we did some LIPS (which worked wonders!) and then I moved him to Wilson. I know in my son's case, the next hurdle after sounds was in his fluency. It took him a long time to get to the point where he could blend CVC words accurately. We had to remain at that level for so long that he got in the habit of sounding out every letter for every word. So fluency was our next hurdle.

[Carolina3]

for the comment on rhyming, I totally, totally have fallen sway to an opinion saying that blending and segmenting are the only skills really needed to start reading, and that rhyming is a developing skill, much later on the skill hierarchy.

 

That's what happened with my son. He couldn't rhyme until after he started reading. We still work on phonological skills and phonemic awareness but he's made tremendous gains in those areas.

[LaughingCat]

edit: for the comment on rhyming, I totally, totally have fallen sway to an opinion saying that blending and segmenting are the only skills really needed to start reading, and that rhyming is a developing skill, much later on the skill hierarchy.

:iagree: Me three :)

DD9 suddenly "got" rhyming by herself after a lot of phonemic manipulation practice (and no work on rhyming)- and phonemic manipulation is generally considered the "last" skill acquired

[PeterPan]

Ok, this is fascinating. What does LiPs do that Earobics doesn't? I just sort of naively assumed if I did Earobics, that whole aspect would be done, nailed, over with, and I wouldn't need anything else.

 

Yes, in the past I've read a lot of nursery rhymes to him, to the point where reciting them was calming to him (pre-speech, when he was little). Dd at this age seemed to enjoy and appreciate rhyming. Ds is blank. He'll repeat a sentence if you make it, but there's no word play, no understanding, no imitating on his own. I'm doing AAR pre with him, which is targeted at age 3-4 and by all accounts is age-appropriate and workable for most kids. He utterly flopped in the 2nd lesson on the phonemic awareness stuff, couldn't even get out of the box. So it's not really an issue of me being worried or jumping the gun. I've been told by the speech therapist he has problems and will (because it goes hand in hand with his speech problems, a known thing).

 

Yes, Lecka, you're exactly right that his speech and hearing are intricately linked. In the last few weeks I started to realize he can't *hear* the difference between /s/ and /sh/. So even though he can say /sh/ in a word with assistance (and occasionally on his own), there's not the auditory discrimination kicking in to tell him TO use it.

 

I have SWR, AAS, HTTS, and the other stuff I used with dd, but if Wilson or something more detailed is what it's going to take, that's what we'll do. Dd couldn't sound out words, so with SWR she spelled them, wrote them, and read them back. Then we put the words on flashcards for her to practice reading to fluency. So I guess you could say it was whole word with understanding. It worked well for her, but of course she couldn't sound out words and didn't have that kick in till VT. If a methodology like that can *work* with him, that's probably what I'll do.

 

Several of you mentioned fluency issues. By fluency you mean reading the words as a whole, not sounding out? Ie. like what I described with my dd using the words on flashcards? Hmm, so you're saying sounding out has been a bear and they still don't jump over well to just plain reading.

 

Sounds like I need to figure out what Lips will add and learn more about Wilson...

[Heathermomster]

Ok, this is fascinating. What does LiPs do that Earobics doesn't? I just sort of naively assumed if I did Earobics, that whole aspect would be done, nailed, over with, and I wouldn't need anything else.

 

Yes, in the past I've read a lot of nursery rhymes to him, to the point where reciting them was calming to him (pre-speech, when he was little). Dd at this age seemed to enjoy and appreciate rhyming. Ds is blank. He'll repeat a sentence if you make it, but there's no word play, no understanding, no imitating on his own. I'm doing AAR pre with him, which is targeted at age 3-4 and by all accounts is age-appropriate and workable for most kids. He utterly flopped in the 2nd lesson on the phonemic awareness stuff, couldn't even get out of the box. So it's not really an issue of me being worried or jumping the gun. I've been told by the speech therapist he has problems and will (because it goes hand in hand with his speech problems, a known thing).

 

Yes, Lecka, you're exactly right that his speech and hearing are intricately linked. In the last few weeks I started to realize he can't *hear* the difference between /s/ and /sh/. So even though he can say /sh/ in a word with assistance (and occasionally on his own), there's not the auditory discrimination kicking in to tell him TO use it.

 

I have SWR, AAS, HTTS, and the other stuff I used with dd, but if Wilson or something more detailed is what it's going to take, that's what we'll do. Dd couldn't sound out words, so with SWR she spelled them, wrote them, and read them back. Then we put the words on flashcards for her to practice reading to fluency. So I guess you could say it was whole word with understanding. It worked well for her, but of course she couldn't sound out words and didn't have that kick in till VT. If a methodology like that can *work* with him, that's probably what I'll do.

 

Several of you mentioned fluency issues. By fluency you mean reading the words as a whole, not sounding out? Ie. like what I described with my dd using the words on flashcards? Hmm, so you're saying sounding out has been a bear and they still don't jump over well to just plain reading.

 

Sounds like I need to figure out what Lips will add and learn more about Wilson...

 

I didn't teach Wilson...I hired that out. As I recall, Wilson taught and used symbols to indicate CVC words and short/long vowels. DS marked up plurals, silent e words, multi-syllable words,....just all kinds of stuff to read. There's more..I'm not doing the program justice. After the word was marked up, he'd practice reading the words until he knew them without the markings..

 

When I refer to a fluent reader, I mean a reader who can read a sentence smoothly, without stumbling or mispronouncing.

Edited August 24, 2012 by Heathermomster

[LaughingCat]

Fluency is generally defined as speed too - a slow reader who does not stumble or mispronounce (or sound out words for that matter) is still not considered fluent. The expected speed is usually defined in words/minute and the number goes up with age.

[Lecka]

Yes, my son didn't like any of the little pre-school or toddler books that had word-play. He didn't really like Dr. Seuss. Even now I try to look for books like that to give him exposure.

 

Unfortunately I don't know everything my son did at private speech. But, one thing, is that they talked about how sounds were formed, and he was to look at the teacher's mouth, and she could draw a picture for him that linked his mouth position to the picture. (Like a cave to show his mouth would be open for something.) Back at EI speech he had hand movements to link his tongue or lips to the phonogram, that they did when going through phonograms.

 

So, do you remember he tried HearBuilder whatever (supposed to be like Earobics) and couldn't do it? I think it is b/c it was auditory only. He needed the scaffolding of there being a visual component he could start to link to the sounds. (Also the component of the shape and position of his mouth, whatever that is called, which of course he didn't know either.... other kids might already know that shape/position and have it available as something to link sounds to, but if that is not reliable, that is not a reliable foundation for learning.)

 

So I know one time, he did a word sort, and at the top, there were the phonograms written also, and below them a picture showing what his mouth would look like (I swear I remember one was a cave and one was a straight road, something wacky but it helped my son to remember I think).

 

I know s/sh/ch were 3 the same for my son, too.

 

But, overall, I would say that Lips has a multisensory possibility, or a possibility beyond just auditory input, to help. That is what distinguishes it. My son didn't actually "do Lips" but he had prompts and scaffolding that was not just: auditory done slowly and clearly and over-enunciated. The auditory scaffolding did not seem to be sufficient. Still good things to do, though.

 

For "word automaticity" I use the definition from Wiley Blevins, which agrees with Overcoming Dyslexia. Basically, you have correctly sounded out the word correctly so many times that you can recognize it automatically. This is presumed a function of sounding it out correctly x number of times (x greater with a struggling kid).

 

(Of course this doesn't apply so much to some words on the Dolch list.)

 

So further as kids successfully sound out and blend they will start to automatically recognize syllable chunks, consonant clusters, etc.

 

But in theory this all requires successful left-to-right sounding out.

 

Elizabeth, Wiley Blevins does not think VT is hooey, unfortunately Sally Shaywitz does. But you could just disregard some parts. I don't agree 100% with every statement she makes. But Wiley Blevins's phonics books have similar explanations.

 

Then on to traditional reading fluency, where there is so many words read per minute, and punctuation is observed, and pauses are where they should be, and intonation is how it should be..... for that I think there are a lot of resources, and it is the usual of repeated reading, reading together, pre-reading for your child, all that stuff, and it seems like we are doing very mainstream fluency activities. My son is actually probably going to make the chart of "words per minute, Fall 2nd grade, 50th-75th percentile." So he is not doing bad -- but with us following public school, 2nd grade is when you work on fluency at reading level (my son is at I but goal is L) and at school they just slowly add in more and more multisyllable words and kids magically read them (I am not expecting this to happen with my son -- there will be home supplementation, lol). But he is working on fluency by reading out loud very easy books, and me helping him with things that are a little hard, etc. Actually the same things other parents do!

 

Also, my son went to private speech starting summer after K, he was a little over 6. It was hard for him!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I don't think he was pushed inappropriately, either. It was just hard. Now, he is a little immature, and he had struggled some and failed some at public speech, so I think that left him with some negative associations and fear of failing. But I kind-of shudder to thing of a younger child starting, just b/c it was so rough for my son. But he did great actually in the sessions, just a lot of weeping before and after and some behavior issues. I don't have really good memories. But I think maybe you would just be very gentle and give lots of chances for right answers. Who knows, though, maybe it was just a thing with him. However, it was all worth if for him to have more intellegible speech!!!!! It was a wonderful improvement in his life and a little bit of behavior and pouting are nothing to it (I mean, he might be upset 15 minutes prior and 20 minutes afterward, and then be worn out from it the rest of the day).

 

http://www.amazon.com/Phonics-A-Z-Grades-K-3/dp/0590315102#reader_0590315102 Oh, I just looked, and the "search inside this book" feature has Wiley Blevins's whole introduction. The little graphic for "the connection between decoding and comprehension" is what I go by for the decoding --> fluency.

Edited August 24, 2012 by Lecka

[FairProspects]

The fluency problems for ds were both in sounding out words much, much longer than would be expected and in struggling to read sentences. Because of all the dyslexic errors, he would read "was" as "saw", leave out small words like of and to, and words would morph like from sheep to sleep. He also skipped over possessives. When you have this much trouble reading, you just struggle to get to a fluency level where you can comprehend what is going on because you are missing so many small clues. He could easily decode 4th-5th grade words in isolation, but missed so many contextual clues in sentences he couldn't read fluently at all.

 

Ds would also give up on multi-syllabic words and just skip over them, although this is going better now with the attack strategies from Rewards, and I think he may finally break the 4th grade reading slump this year.

[Carolina3]

Yes, LIPS provided a visual for my son to understand sounds. Wilson provides a systematic, multi-sensory curriculum for his reading instruction.

 

 

The fluency was actually facilitated by the tutor and taught to me. We started by having my son read a sentence to himself and then read it out loud, pointing to each word as he said it so he wasn’t just memorizing the sentence and saying it back.

 

 

After doing that for a while, we switched to having him read a sentence without pre-reading but not letting him sound out any words aloud – he had to do it in his head.

 

 

Wilson teaches scooping sentences so the next step was to get him to read with inflection and scoop (say the sentence) properly. We would scoop the sentence for him as he read so he knew the right places to pause and then eventually he started doing that on his own.

 

 

We would also play a game with him where we would push a car as he read the sentence. If he paused, the car would stop and we would get a point. If he got through the sentence without pausing to sound out words then he got a point. My ds is very competitive so anything that can be made into a competition works great with him :001_smile:)

[PeterPan]

Oh dear, you just opened up a whole new can of worms. Are you for real that he might not have any inflection when he reads? Wow, had not thought of that. But it makes sense. If the child doesn't have tune when he sings, why have inflection when you read? Wow. So that explains how much farther Wilson takes it. I was just pondering tonight whether I should sell all my AAS stuff. I guess I'm just going to have to wait and see the extent of what he's dealing with. The types of things you're describing are similar to what I did with dd, but it wasn't HARD for her or tedious.

 

Ok, well now I get it. I'll just watch. I should go look and see when you begin Wilson. Does it have some kind of pre-K level or start at K? I consider him K3 this year, because he's turning 4 this fall. We're doing letter of the week stuff and trying to hear the sounds. It's a convenient foil to do fun stuff and have themes, and whatever sticks sticks. So if there's a typical K4 program or pre level from Wilson, I would do that a year from now. If not, we'll just plow on. I'm calling him by the later grade (K3 when he turns 4, etc.) precisely because I foresee problems. It's just surreal to be on the front end and not know what's coming. I guess no one really knows and you just sort of grow into it and respond to how it goes and what you see. Now I'm understanding why programs like Wilson and Barton can be gold though. That's breaking down steps that were easy for students for whom SWR or AAS was a fit.

 

I'm back, and I'm confused. If your ds is 6, what of the Wilson materials is he using?? What I saw said 2nd and up. Then there's Fundations...

Edited August 26, 2012 by OhElizabeth

[Carolina3]

Yes it's definitely been a huge learning experience for me! My son is actually 7 now - need to update my sig - but we started when he was in kindergarten. The tutor did Fundations with him. It's very close to the regualar Wilson curriculum but it has puppets and is laid out as a classroom curriculum rather than 1-1. I don't think they have any pre-K material but you're doing exactly what I did with my ds. I would have him air write letters while saying the signs (we would of course have a contest to see who could get their finger out of their holster and air write the letter first while saying the sound.) We would also write the letters in shaving creme, sand, on the table, etc - all the kinesthetic things they suggest with OG.

[Mandamom]

Ok, one person said this:

 

No ability to hear rhyming, medial sounds or final. He can, with maybe 60% accuracy get initial sounds on the letters we've worked on repeatedly over the week. It's really in the category of "Dear God, where is the processing on this?"

 

Keep working on the initial sound until he's more consistent with it. I've worked with some students where it took a month -- using manipulatives and then working without the manipulatives -- before we were ready to move to the final sound. We moved to the final sound and that took a while but not as long. It can take a while. Patience :)

 

 

He enjoys what we're doing, and we'll plow on. I was just identifying with the way y'all were describing how your kids presented at age 5 with a dyslexia diagnosis and wondering if that's where this is headed. If we do Earobics and continue our current stuff and just work, work, work on the ability to hear the sounds, will there be MORE after that? I guess that's what I'm really wondering. What happens AFTER that? What else is going to be glitchy?

 

difficulty with fluency as described further in the thread; slow reading; difficulty learning new words (weak visual memory); difficulty in math; poor spelling; sequencing; directions are all areas where he may face some problems if he has dyslexia.

 

Although keep in mind that he's probably pretty bright, fantastic spatial/art abilities, curious, big picture kind of person, creative.

 

So, even though you and he may be facing frustrations as you move through this difficult time allow him time to use his strengths, too. You'll both enjoy the benefits.

[Mandamom]

edit: for the comment on rhyming, I totally, totally have fallen sway to an opinion saying that blending and segmenting are the only skills really needed to start reading, and that rhyming is a developing skill, much later on the skill hierarchy. Another poster has mentioned that she went back and did some more formal phonemic awareness activites with her child later on, and did get him to the highest level of phonemic awareness, and that it did seem like a good and productive thing to do. So I have that in mind as something to do in the future, probably along with my younger kids doing phonemic awareness.

 

So I think, being able to rhyme, at some level, means the kid can rhyme, and shows something of what they are hearing and not hearing and manipulating and not manipulating. But I don't think it is as important as I used to.

 

Where I teach rhyming is number 7 on the phonemic/phonological awareness chart. Well after identifying initial blends. So, I agree with you wholeheartedly.

 

 

 

As always -- I do used phonemic/phonological interchangably - -maybe I mean phonological, I don't know.

 

I think you meant phonemic if you were working with individual sounds rather than rhyming or syllables. :)

 

 

 

A while back I was down, b/c I thought early intervention would be a full cure. Now I don't think it is a full, full cure, but I am satisfied. But I think to some extent he is a child who really fits the "early intervention for phonemic awareness" model, though I don't think it will be as if he never was as bad as he used to be. But he is doing very well.

 

I think you are right. Those who are remediated early definitely do better than those who aren't but the dyslexic tendencies sticks around for life on some level. You might not see it most of the time but it will still pop up (usually spelling, memory and slow rates of reading). It sounds like you are doing a fantastic job!

[merry gardens]

Ok, this is fascinating. What does LiPs do that Earobics doesn't? I just sort of naively assumed if I did Earobics, that whole aspect would be done, nailed, over with, and I wouldn't need anything else.

 

...Yes, Lecka, you're exactly right that his speech and hearing are intricately linked. In the last few weeks I started to realize he can't *hear* the difference between /s/ and /sh/. So even though he can say /sh/ in a word with assistance (and occasionally on his own), there's not the auditory discrimination kicking in to tell him TO use it. ...Sounds like I need to figure out what Lips will add and learn more about Wilson...

LiPS was developed by a speech therapist. It teaches how the tongue, lips, vocal cords, etc. move to produce the sounds--even if a child already makes the sounds correctly. Knowing how the different sounds are produces--and that there is a physical difference--helps in recognizing the sound difference. If he can't yet hear the difference between /s/ and /sh/, the difference can be clearly seen and felt. LiPS works on those phonemic awareness skills until they are automatic.

 

Elizabeth, I suggest you pick up a LiPS manual. It's a great program!

[Mandamom]

>>>>>I was just pondering tonight whether I should sell all my AAS stuff. I guess I'm just going to have to wait and see the extent of what he's dealing with. The types of things you're describing are similar to what I did with dd, but it wasn't HARD for her or tedious. >>>>

 

I think you should wait. I think a lot of what you did with your daughter was right on track. I think with your son you might need to go a lot slower and deeper until it is more automatic.

 

From the little bit I've seen about AAS you might be able to use it -- it is O/G based. I thought I read somewhere (maybe on this board) that AAR starts a little lower than AAS so that might be a better option.

 

Wilson is another O/G program -- just a different slant than AAS/AAR.

 

Some of the programs I don't like they like to teach too many sounds at one time (A says apple, ape, about, etc.) rather than focusing on just a says apple and mastering that before moving on. Some kids are okay with that but those with more severe cases of dyslexia are not.

 

Throughout this thread there are a lot of the O/G methods mentioned, scooping, air writing, salt trays, tracking/pointing which you can use with Wilson or with another program if you choose a different one. That's the neat thing about O/G.

Edited August 26, 2012 by Mandamom
I made a complete mess.

[Mandamom]

Yes it's definitely been a huge learning experience for me! My son is actually 7 now - need to update my sig - but we started when he was in kindergarten. The tutor did Fundations with him. It's very close to the regualar Wilson curriculum but it has puppets and is laid out as a classroom curriculum rather than 1-1. I don't think they have any pre-K material but you're doing exactly what I did with my ds. I would have him air write letters while saying the signs (we would of course have a contest to see who could get their finger out of their holster and air write the letter first while saying the sound.) We would also write the letters in shaving creme, sand, on the table, etc - all the kinesthetic things they suggest with OG.

 

I love using Wilson and it sounds like you had a great tutor :)

[PeterPan]

LiPS was developed by a speech therapist. It teaches how the tongue, lips, vocal cords, etc. move to produce the sounds--even if a child already makes the sounds correctly. Knowing how the different sounds are produces--and that there is a physical difference--helps in recognizing the sound difference. If he can't yet hear the difference between /s/ and /sh/, the difference can be clearly seen and felt. LiPS works on those phonemic awareness skills until they are automatic.

 

Elizabeth, I suggest you pick up a LiPS manual. It's a great program!

 

Well what we're doing with PROMPT for our speech therapy overlaps with that. He's getting the physical input on his face while he says the sound. I try *not* to do our speech therapy techniques in our school time, but it is something I pull out on occasion. For instance when he was learning the 3 says of "a", his vowels weren't accurate. I could actually move his jaw and get them accurate, till he heard them and connected everything.

 

I'll keep my eyes peeled for a manual. Always good to learn!

[PeterPan]

Janice, I got AAR and tore it apart and rearranged it all to make it useful to us. Her methods with the puppet are delightful, but it was WAY too hard, right out of the box. Like in lesson 2 they're already supposed to be rhyming, and it's pretty complex. Sigh. So that's why I don't think any of AAS is going to fit him either. I took dd through AAS as a brush-up after VT, but I just don't know about ds.

 

So no, I don't know that I'm saying he'll be dyslexic. I just know he's not considered developmentally delayed and that he has differences in his phonemic awareness from the norm. We're just having fun with it. (letter of the week, theme ideas from the MFW K5, worksheets and Ziggy stuff from AAR pre) I do have him learning all the sounds for each letter, because I figured he might as well. However once you hit 3 sounds for A, that went over his head for identifying in words. When it was just two sounds and they were voiced/voiceless (/s/, /z/) he actually seemed to be cool with it and could hear them both. So even though I'm having him *memorize* all the sounds, we're only really trying to *use* the first.

[Mandamom]

[quote name=OhElizabeth;4245666Janice' date=' I got AAR and tore it apart and rearranged it all to make it useful to us. Her methods with the puppet are delightful, but it was WAY too hard, right out of the box. Like in lesson 2 they're already supposed to be rhyming, and it's pretty complex. Sigh.

 

 

I'm glad you told me about the sequence. I've looked at the website to get that info and could never find it. I was hoping it was going to be a better program than it is especially for the more severe dyslexic who doesn't need too much info thrown at them at one time.

 

So no, I don't know that I'm saying he'll be dyslexic. I just know he's not considered developmentally delayed and that he has differences in his phonemic awareness from the norm. We're just having fun with it.

 

That's the best way. My ds6 is diagnosed with apraxia, (PROMPT speech) and he has a lot of the dyslexic tendencies. My mom and dh are both dyslexic so he comes by it naturally. Technically he's reading above level which disqualifies him from a dyslexia diagnosis but the tendencies show up in a lot of places. He is very frustrated by the whole learning to read thing.

 

Anyway, definitely check out LIPS it is a great program.

[Tokyomarie]

I think you are right. Those who are remediated early definitely do better than those who aren't but the dyslexic tendencies sticks around for life on some level. You might not see it most of the time but it will still pop up (usually spelling, memory and slow rates of reading). It sounds like you are doing a fantastic job!

 

Absolutely, the dyslexic tendencies stick around. My son never had formal evaluation for dyslexia when he was early elementary. It wasn't until he was in high school and I felt "stuck" and unable to move him forward in his spelling and written expression skills (amongst other things) that we finally bit the bullet and scheduled a neuropsych evaluation. I had decent lay-level skills for teaching a child with language-based learning challenges that I had learned from working with my middle child and those skills stood me in good stead for my son's early years.

 

At this time, those who do not have strong training in dyslexia and the various presentations that older dyslexics may have will try to deny that my son is dyslexic. He reads with very high level comprehension. But his word level decoding skills, spelling, and reading fluency, while technically in the average range, show a 2-3 standard deviation gap with his reading comprehension. His written expression skills have been severely impacted, though he is now on a strong upward curve in development. Rote memory will never be strong, though maybe is better than before.

 

OTOH, reasoning & spatial skills are exceptionally strong.

[PeterPan]

Janice, why did I not realize your ds has apraxia! I so lose track of people. Well how awesome. Sometimes it's a very lonely, odd diagnosis. Anyways, you found Lips necessary *on top of* PROMPT? That's what I've been trying to figure out. So what did you do on the walk up to him learning to read (age 4, 5, etc.)? The main thing his speech therapist said was not to do any letters that he can't pronounce, to shove them to later, and to do Earobics. I have it and haven't gotten it loaded up on my computer yet. Actually, someone just gave me the idea that I could load the OS and the software (because I have to go back to Snow Leopard on my mac, seriously) onto a thumb drive. So I just have to figure out how much room that will take and whether it can actually work, then I don't have to partition my hard drive to run Earobics. Sigh.

 

You know the real problem with disabilities is that sometimes you get so caught up in how they are in the moment that you lose track of where they would/could be with a little help. Ie. you don't realize how far behind they've gotten or how much they're diverging from their peers because you're just used to them. And that's bad with speech, because it means I could be treating him very babyishly or holding him back, not even realizing it. So it's so important to doing the things that let him go forward and progress and grow up.

 

Whatever, that's a total rabbit trail. But it would be so easy just to enjoy his littleness right now and NOT work on auditory processing and NOT work on phonemic awareness. But in reality, that's holding him back and keeping him little, when he has the ability to do things as I toss it to him. He just can't progress on his own somehow mysteriously, without any help. But we love the little age. It's going by very quickly... :)

 

And for the record, I DON'T rush my kids. If anything, I try to pickle them and preserve them in the moment a little bit too much. :)

Edited August 26, 2012 by OhElizabeth

[PeterPan]

Janice, about AAR pre, I want to be clear that it does NOT have them learning all the sounds. That's me and my idea, because I taught dd with SWR all those years. AAR pre has a really unusual presentation, which I think you can see from the toc if you find it somehwere. She goes through all the letters, in order, 3 times, covering upper case, lower case, then main sound. There are also Ziggy activities (phonemic awareness). Ziggy is such a delight and well done. For my ds, the Ziggy activities were totally out of reach as presented. What I did was outline them so I could see what categories she was hitting and what games fit each category of phonemic awareness. So now I have a list of Ziggy activities and games if I want to work on initial sounds or rhyming or final sounds. That way I'm in the driver's seat but we're still having the fun of it. I also rearranged it sound we're doing all 3 worksheets for the letter in one week to fit with our letter of the week study.

 

It's kind of an odd way of using it, but I do like it. Ziggy has been a wonderful addition to our day, and we use him for other things too. So I guess I'm making of it what we wanted and don't really have a clue how it works out for other people with other types of kids.

[PeterPan]

Marie, how did your ds's reading issues affect how you taught him in the elementary and middle grades? I've wondered how different it will be, because did a lot of reading to learn when she was little, just reading history by the hour. My gut says we're looking at a very different progression.

[Tokyomarie]

Marie, how did your ds's reading issues affect how you taught him in the elementary and middle grades? I've wondered how different it will be, because did a lot of reading to learn when she was little, just reading history by the hour. My gut says we're looking at a very different progression.

 

My son was not a reasonably fluent reader until toward the end of 4th grade. After that, while he liked to read, he still tired easily and didn't read books at his level of cognitive ability.

 

I read aloud all of my son's books in content areas until he was about 8th grade. Now, to some extent, that was part of my normal teaching philosophy. We were a SL family for many years. Also, I cut my teaching teeth on Gladys Hunt's Honey for a Child's Heart which emphasizes reading good literature aloud to children. I met Gladys & her husband, Keith, when I was in college. I was introduced to read alouds before I even had children by listening to Keith do great renditions of Winnie the Pooh and The Chronicles of Narnia.

 

My son also watched a lot more videos and TV shows like Animal Planet and History Channel than I allowed for my daughters. He picked up an enormous amount of basic knowledge through these shows. Between reading aloud good fiction and non-fiction and watching these shows, ds's vocabulary became well developed, which is often not the case for dyslexic students who don't have as much support.

 

Experiential learning, while good for all students, plays a huge role in the education of a dyslexic student- going to museums & zoos, getting out in nature (this one, I admittedly didn't do enough of) and accompanying mom and dad on errands all help the student to build knowledge effectively.

[PeterPan]

Interesting, thanks for sharing!! :)

[Beans27]

My dd had apraxia also and is dyslexic. She was in ps and they gave ger speech therapy and Wilson reading. When she hit the wall in 4th grade, they agreed wIth me that she needed Lips.

 

Looking back, I would have started her on Lips in K, definitely!

 

Not sure how much they get from earobics. My dd did better with fast forword. Expensive but I really saw a difference with dd's APD.

 

HSing this year because I'm not happy with how slowly the ps is working on her reading and dyslexia.

[Lecka]

If you do Lips, I would want to talk to the SLP.

 

We had a small problem with people not using consistent cues or prompts (or whatever) for my son. Mainly -- when he went from the hand signs he made for phonograms in EI, that he was taught linked his hand motion to his tongue or lips or something... to Zoo Phonics, where the motions were just related to the animal that was linked to the phonogram. It was not helpful to him.

 

So, I would want to know if the SLP used different terms or pictures etc. in her practice, and then use those same terms and pictures, not have him doing one at home, and then another at speech. (If you were observing his speech, and waited to do sounds in Lips until they had come up in speech, this might not be necessary.... and if you look at Lips, you might find that the benefits are built into his speech already, or that you might try to add only one aspect to what was already done in speech... I looked at Lips and did decide I was very satisfied with the speech therapy my son was getting was a satisfactory approximation to me, and maybe even better for him b/c it was individualized to his articulation problems.)

 

I also had a meeting with my SLP and her supervisor, where we talked about how he was 6 and in 1st grade, and ways to support him as a reader... which mainly meant using phonograms and picture cards with words. (They sometimes actively don't do this, b/c they don't want kids reading when they should be listening, but they thought it was a good time for him.... I think that could be very individual... and if they want him to sort picture cards by the first sound, of course the word can't be printed under the picture, in case that sounds like a crazy thing, to not have phonograms or words on picture cards .) But it was like there were some extra things they did with older kids, that they would not do for younger kids in speech for articulation in general. But I bet they would add that stuff for a younger child at the parent's request.

 

Thanks, Mandamom, for thinking I am doing great. :) I always think people on this board sound very good, myself!

Edited August 26, 2012 by Lecka

[EKS]

When my son was in 5th grade (after having been evaluated by several professionals and getting several diagnoses that held part of the truth but not all of it), I read the book Overcoming Dyslexia. It described my son's issues completely!

 

When my son began to speak, it was in his own language. The words were consistent, meaning that he used the same word each time for whatever it was, but the words were completely different from the actual words. He also spoke relatively late, though not late enough to warrant an evaluation according to the pediatrician. He spoke significantly later than my younger son (whose first word came at 10 months).

 

In preschool, he had problems remembering names, never learned songs or rhymes, and generally seemed not to know what was going on. He had huge problems learning the letter sounds (he went to a Montessori school from age 3 through 1st grade). By the end of kindergarten, with the extreme one-on-one tutoring of his teacher (who I now see probably has dyslexia herself), he understood letter-sound correspondence (but didn't know all of the letter sounds) and could very haltingly sound out some CVC words.

 

He couldn't remember sequences--counting from 1-10, days of the week, months of the year, the alphabet--things that other children seemed to take delight in reciting. He had (and to some extent still has) persistent mispronounciations, "bizagna" instead of lasagna and lessont for lesson, for example, and he continues to say "mar" instead of more.

 

What helped him was consistent instruction and *lots* of practice. Way more practice than a typical learner. Like 10-20 times more (I'm not kidding). All the other interventions helped (VT, OT, Earobics, Audiblox), but I really believe that it was the hours put into practicing reading (and then writing) that did the most good.

 

Things that hang on to this day (he is 16yo now): He reads slowly, has odd spelling issues, and can write coherently only about things that he deeply understands. He requires extended time for testing.

[PeterPan]

EKS, thanks for sharing that. And you're so right, that on some of this it really is patient repetition, working to get the connection made. And you've reinforced what I was thinking, that I want that neuropsych eval when he's a little older. If there's stuff going on with processing speed or working memory or whatever, I want to know and not just be guessing or dealing with the effects of it. It's probably going to be a necessary step for us. Dh thinks it's crazy to say that so far in advance, but I really don't think it's fun to teach against something when you don't know WHAT IT IS. He'll turn 7 the fall of his 1st grade, so that's when I'm thinking.

 

Well this has been fascinating. It's one of those threads I'm going to look back and read and reread over the next couple years!

 

Lecka, that's interesting about the different approaches clashing and being confusing at times. Hmm. Up until this point, I have actually sat in on all ds's therapy sessions, so I know exactly what she's doing. Whether that will continue, don't know. He's at the age where he's using it to play games and not get down to work. But yes, I see what you're saying that it would be confusing to present things different ways.

Edited August 26, 2012 by OhElizabeth

[Mandamom]

If you do Lips, I would want to talk to the SLP.

 

We had a small problem with people not using consistent cues or prompts (or whatever) for my son. Mainly -- when he went from the hand signs he made for phonograms in EI, that he was taught linked his hand motion to his tongue or lips or something... to Zoo Phonics, where the motions were just related to the animal that was linked to the phonogram. It was not helpful to him.

 

So, I would want to know if the SLP used different terms or pictures etc. in her practice, and then use those same terms and pictures, not have him doing one at home, and then another at speech. (If you were observing his speech, and waited to do sounds in Lips until they had come up in speech, this might not be necessary.... and if you look at Lips, you might find that the benefits are built into his speech already, or that you might try to add only one aspect to what was already done in speech... I looked at Lips and did decide I was very satisfied with the speech therapy my son was getting was a satisfactory approximation to me, and maybe even better for him b/c it was individualized to his articulation problems.)

 

I also had a meeting with my SLP and her supervisor, where we talked about how he was 6 and in 1st grade, and ways to support him as a reader... which mainly meant using phonograms and picture cards with words. (They sometimes actively don't do this, b/c they don't want kids reading when they should be listening, but they thought it was a good time for him.... I think that could be very individual... and if they want him to sort picture cards by the first sound, of course the word can't be printed under the picture, in case that sounds like a crazy thing, to not have phonograms or words on picture cards .) But it was like there were some extra things they did with older kids, that they would not do for younger kids in speech for articulation in general. But I bet they would add that stuff for a younger child at the parent's request.

 

Thanks, Mandamom, for thinking I am doing great. :) I always think people on this board sound very good, myself!

 

 

:iagree: OhElizabeth, LIPS is great but your SLP might have some suggestions how you can integrate the two. LIPS will help develop the auditory piece (phonological awareness)/visual while PROMPt is developing the motor/speech piece and I think the two can be integrated carefully together -- hey maybe that's the next program that needs to be developed.

[Mandamom]

>>>>>Janice, why did I not realize your ds has apraxia! I so lose track of people. Well how awesome. >>>>>

 

 

It is so easy to lose track of posters here with the sheer number of them. I read a lot here but don't post very often. Awesome isn't a word I've heard to describe apraxia LOL but I know what you mean :tongue_smilie:

 

 

 

Anyways, you found Lips necessary *on top of* PROMPT? That's what I've been trying to figure out. So what did you do on the walk up to him learning to read (age 4, 5, etc.)?>>>

 

I didn't have to do much for the reading. He is most likely 2e as his older sister was reading chapter books by the time she was 4. He started getting frustrated at 4 because he wasn't reading but by 6 he kind of started picking it up on his own. We started working on the O/G sequence (at 5.5) using salt tray and putting phonemes together and it started falling in place for him. He took some quick jumps in reading so he was reading at a higher level than i was working with him. He's now reading above level. His phonemic awareness is surprisingly pretty good.

 

He has a LOT (more than normal told to me by 2 O/G trained people) of reversals for his age/reading level. He can spell cvc words but each letter is written backward. He is always asking which letter is b, p, d, q and he has some word reversals, too. Again, some of this is age appropriate but given his history I think he would have been reading much earlier like his sister had it not been for the dyslexic stuff going on with him.

 

>>>> The main thing his speech therapist said was not to do any letters that he can't pronounce, to shove them to later, and to do Earobics. >>>>>

 

I almost started him on Earobics but I didn't have a computer that I could use at the time for it. I hear good things about it so hopefully you can get it on a thumb drive easily.

 

I have worked with a couple of students with apraxia (one has never been in a good speech program and he's 11 years old and about 80% intelligible) and when I started working with the reading (O/G) we have seen some speech improvement.

 

I have also seen it with my ds6 -- actually the other day he read a word and said "oh I thought that there were other letters in it" Because of his articulation he had been saying the word wrong. After reading the word he realized how it should be said. (i.e. melk is really milk but I don't remember the word he was using)

 

If your SLP says to wait than maybe you should, especially because yours is still pretty little.

 

 

>>>>>You know the real problem with disabilities is that sometimes you get so caught up in how they are in the moment that you lose track of where they would/could be with a little help. Ie. you don't realize how far behind they've gotten or how much they're diverging from their peers because you're just used to them. And that's bad with speech, because it means I could be treating him very babyishly or holding him back, not even realizing it. So it's so important to doing the things that let him go forward and progress and grow up. >>>>>>

 

I've seen this especially those with speech issues because they sound babyish and so people treat them as younger and less capable than they are. Striving to let them be independent is a good thing so that they come across as capable as we know they are.

 

>>> If anything, I try to pickle them and preserve them in the moment a little bit too much. :)>>>>

 

Awesome quote!!

[PeterPan]

Yup, that's why I started pursuing the reading and pre-reading stuff for him, even though I consider him K3, because I read the comments about the reading reinforcing the speech.

 

As far as the reversals, my dd had them in K5 and they seemed to drop off when she started sculpting. I think that's one thing the Davis method is really right about, that they need to feel it and see it and make those connections in the brain. Later, when we had her eyes checked by the developmental optometrist (age 10, turning 11), we realized she had extremely poor visual memory along with everything else. But like you're saying, she read well and like the wind. Anyways, might be a couple things to check. She used to sculpt a LOT.

 

Just for your trivia, our SLP (PROMPT certified) has been working with a teen who started off totally non-verbal. He actually has speech now with prompting and has just begun to be able to initiate speech. Just totally blows my mind that someone for whom there seemed to be NO HOPE is now getting the chance to speak. Just goes to show it's never too late to go back and do PROMPT and working on that wiring.

 

Your mention of independence as maturing is interesting. This past session, the SLP suggested I stop coming in the room so ds can't play off us but has to deal with her directly. I think she's right. We've been doing therapy 2 years, and he's finally to the point where it's time. I really liked being in there and hearing what was happening and knowing his progress, sigh... And he does have other things he does that are big kid things. But anyways, yes you're right.

Edited August 26, 2012 by OhElizabeth

[merry gardens]

I'll briefly summarize my own experience with earlier intervention vs. later intervention for two of mine.

 

ds 13, showed signs of sound confusion in pre-school. (I thought it was cute. :o What did I know?) Reading with phonics went slow. I added in Dolche sight words and his reading progressed. He reads well, but there were some stubborn things that just would not go away, like problems with spelling, etc. Sang off key but had singing lessons that focussed on ear training and it corrected that. Reads above grade level.

 

ds 11, more serious problems with speech--very hard to understand yet he could physically produce all age appropriate sounds. Saw a slp and didn't qualify for speech therapy at age 4 or 5 and again at age 7. Reading problems right from the start with phonics. Tried sight words, but nope, that didn't help. Tried various methods suggested for dyslexia. After all that still was barely reading. Eventually turned to LiPS at age 8 after he failed the Barton screen. Dramatic change! We turned a corner and have been making slow but steady progress ever since. Reads at grade level now.

 

 

ds 11 clearly has more severe dyslexia, but in learning about dyslexia I began to suspect his brother might have it to a milder degree. I decided as long as I have the materials I'd use them with ds 13 too. Shock! He barely passed the Barton screen! He's been exposed to LiPS, but not until he was older and we just barely covered it. This past spring I took him to an audiologist. He has sound discrimination problems. He often supplements his hearing with lip reading--so I didn't realize the extent of the problem until he was in the sound booth. Ds 11 with dyslexia that was remediated at a younger age with LiPS and Barton no longer shows any problems distinguishing sounds. DS 13 has a diagnosis of mild apd; he does not have a diagnosis of dyslexia but several of the recommendations for his apd overlaped with materials also used for dyslexia.

 

That's a brief summary of the differences between my experience with early vs. later remediation. Obviously, I left out numerous details. But basically my child who struggled most but who had early intervention now has stronger skills in the area than his brother, who didn't struggle as much but who had intervention much later.

[Lecka]

A lot of things sound like my son, too.

 

Merry, I also think the sound discrimination issues are remediated now. It is a really nice difference! Sometimes it seems like it might be my imagination, so I am glad someone else has seen the same thing.

 

My son did a lot of copying other kids when he couldn't follow oral directions, prior to his private speech.