Trouble with teaching to read

[cseitter]

My DS (6, 7 in the fall) has Sensory Processing Disorder; Mild/Moderate Receptive Language Disorder;Severe Expressive Language Disorder. He is receiving speech and occupational therapy services.

 

I have been trying to teach him to read for the past 2 years at his insistance. He cries because he can't read and his sisters can. I have tried many, many different programs (HOP, PAL, OPGTR, Blend Phonics, Reading Reflex, now we are on Barton Reading and Spelling Level 1 I bought for his older brother that is dyslexic)

 

His problem is is short term memory can not hold a third sound, which is my best guess. He knows ALL the individual sounds inside and out but when it comes to blending them he can't get the third sound. B-A-G becomes B-A-T or some other random sound. He is a very visual learner and he can learn sight words or at least the shape of the word. I am at my wits end on how to help him.

 

I have given breaks, different programs etc. He loves to be read to and loves books and he so wants to read!

 

Any suggestions on how to get him to grasp that third sound? Any programs, curriculum, websites, etc that you suggest would be appreciated! I am a researcher at heart and love to learn about new things so send them on! :)

 

When I had him tested i was told to watch for an LD so I am aware that it is possible he is dyslexic.

 

Thanks!

[Lecka]

There is a method of teaching blending where you have them blend b a to ba. Then ba is one sound and they store it as one unit.

 

Then ba g should be blending two sounds.

 

So it makes me wonder if he could do it that way, and if you could teach him that way.

 

That was a recommendation that didn't work for my son. He just had some very fundamental problems with learning to blend and segment.

 

It is a fundamental problem for a model of dyslexia if you read Overcoming Dyslexia.

 

I used parts of 4 programs for my son, one of which was Barton level 1.

 

He did well with letter tiles and doing things where you have tiles and change one sound, like go from bat to bag and see if he can tell to slide away the t and slide up a g. Or model it for him.

 

My son had particular problems with short consonants at the ends of words -- so maybe see how he does with consonants he can hold like m (mmmm), s (sssss), that helped my son at some point.

 

It was just very hard for a long time though.

[Lecka]

Also maybe ask his speech teacher if he can distinguish all the sounds easily. If there are some that he can't tell apart well then that might be something the speech teacher could help with.

 

My son worked on it in speech.

[Ottakee]

Check out www.3rsplus.com or www.iseesam.com This is the ONLY program that worked for my 2 girls---and I am a special ed certified teacher and we tried lots of other ones.

 

if you google I See Sam you might find the first 2 sets of books free online to print out as they are in public domain now.

[merry gardens]

His problem is is short term memory can not hold a third sound, which is my best guess. He knows ALL the individual sounds inside and out but when it comes to blending them he can't get the third sound.

If you think his memory is a contributing factor to his reading struggles, perhaps besides just working on reading, do some activities with him to improve his memory. Did your slp or other specialists he worked with in the past ever evaluate his short term memory? If not, maybe you can ask them to and look to them for some suggestions. Is that something they can specifically work with him on? Linguisystems has some wonderful materials for improving memory. A lot of children's songs and games with repetition, (like Old MacDonald) also can help improve memory. You can work to help improve his memory by simply playing with him.

 

We used programs for dyslexia, like LiPS and Barton. Did he pass the Barton screen? Barton 1 works with two sounds before it moves onto three. Was he able to blend and isolate two sounds? And if you are still trying Barton 1, I'll tell you one trick that helped motivate my struggling reader: candy. Yes, sometimes instead of using the Barton colored tiles, we used colored candy, like M&M's or Skittles. Since it's the third sound that gives him the problem, maybe try a piece of candy to represent the third sound. Special or unusual things, along with taste and smell, can all help make something more memorable. I'd let mine eat the candy when we were done working with it.

[ElizabethB]

School Phonics is currently on sale. It starts with long vowel blends, you could skip those with more than 3 sounds and work on words like oat and pea and eat. The teacher's manual has a lot of ideas for the sale price. I normally recommend just the workbooks, but for $7 the manual is worth it. The workbooks are normally cheap and are even cheaper with their sale.

 

http://www.didax.com/shop/searchresults.cfm/Keyword/School%20phonics.cfm

 

[SonshineMama]

 

We used programs for dyslexia, like LiPS and Barton. Did he pass the Barton screen? Barton 1 works with two sounds before it moves onto three. Was he able to blend and isolate two sounds? And if you are still trying Barton 1, I'll tell you one trick that helped motivate my struggling reader: candy. Yes, sometimes instead of using the Barton colored tiles, we used colored candy, like M&M's or Skittles. Since it's the third sound that gives him the problem, maybe try a piece of candy to represent the third sound. Special or unusual things, along with taste and smell, can all help make something more memorable. I'd let mine eat the candy when we were done working with it.

 

That was my first thought - I wonder if he needs to back up and use LiPS or another program focused on sounds retention. My son was working on SO many things and we need to back up and work on just auditory discrmination.

[PrincessAriel]

My dd took forever, about 8-9 months, to blend three letter words. ABeCeDarian Level A, helped some and then using Funnix, which is computer based and color coded in early levels, is what got her reading in the end. Also with Funnix, it took me out of the picture a bit as the "teacher" is a voice on the computer. I sat next to her and monitored her work and that really worked for us. We had both been pretty frustrated by that point so it worked well.

We had tried Barton but she hated it and cried trying to use it and I didn't really care for the training videos (put me to sleep:()

Good luck to you!

[CraftyHomeschool]

My son had the same problem at that age, my first suggestion is (and I am not a professional, this is just my humble opinion) #1 he may not developmentally be ready for reading and #2 he may need a more OG/hands on approach. With my son we had to do TONS of phonemic/phonological awareness work (probably 6-9 months of just that, no “reading instructionâ€). Some of the things we did where working with sound "tiles" (small plastic disks) on the table, I would write a simple CVC (such as cat) on a white board and with each sound he had to move a tile down, so for cat he would say /k/ and move one tile, /a/ and move a second tile next to the first and then /t/ and move a third tile next to the other two, then I would model how to blend it together until he got the hang of it. I would lay out three or four colored sheets of paper and say a word, say dog, he then had to jump on one sheet of paper for each sound. I would say dog and he would say /d/ and jump to the red paper, then /o/ and jump to the green paper, then /g/ and jump to the blue paper. We used lots of games, such as “I spy something that starts with a /k/ sound†or “ends in a /s/ sound†or “makes the vowel sound /o/†and then based on the clue he would run around the room and find that object, I would continue to give him hints about what I wanted him to find if he couldn’t figure it out but only sounds or letters so he had to really think about it. Maybe you could write out on a small white board the word he actually said and compare that with the word from the book, then he can “see†the difference between what he is saying and what is written, say the word in the book is bat and he says bag, write it on the board and see if he can tell you the difference. Hopefully those ideas help, it’s tough but just remember he will get through it. :grouphug: