Barton

[momtotwo]

Thanks

Edited April 3, 2018 by momtotwo

[Splash]

I didn't use Barton but went to a private tutor and yes we stopped having her ready anything that wasn't assigned by tutor.  I think it took over a year before she actually handed her a book to read.  We used audio books and I read to her a ton.  Tutor didn't want her guessing and  developing bad habits.

 

 I will say this dd just turned 16 this month and just took the accuplacer for college classes.  She placed in college writing with a 6 and college reading, sentence structure/spelling portion was a bit weaker.  She is just finishing her freshman year of high school.  We did two and a half years of intensive therapy then continued at home with her education.  She originally tested in the 1% for her age or K 1st month at 8.5 years old even though we'd been working on her reading since she was 5.

 

[OneStepAtATime]

I can't find the thread right now, but if you search previous Barton threads you can find many people who have posted regarding this.  The reason Susan says stop is as the above poster mentioned, you don't want bad habits picked up or ingrained.

 

I have used this example before, since this makes the most sense to me.  Suppose you learned how to swim and taught yourself a particular stroke.  You use that stroke for years.  Then you decide you want to join a swim team.  The coach realizes that your stroke is inefficient.  It is really pretty poor.  The coach says you need to learn a different way of swimming to be able to swim effectively and compete with other swimmers.  Only you have all the muscle memory and brain connections tied into that other stroke.  The best, most efficient way to fix it is to NEVER EVER do the other stroke again.  Start from scratch.  Learn the new stroke. Rewrite your brain connects and muscle connections.  If you are doing the old stroke on some days and the new stroke on other days it will take a MUCH longer period of time to learn the new stroke and you may never get that proficient.  

 

What Susan Barton suggests is not doing any assigned independent outside reading until after Level 4.  The student can listen to audio books, do read alouds (and she strongly encourages those so the student is still being exposed to vocabulary, grammar, concepts, etc), and do the reading in the lessons and with controlled text readers until they get through Level 4.  Now, there is a caveat to that.  If your child voluntarily picks up a book and chooses to silently read it, o.k.  Don't discourage them from doing so.  Just don't assign any outside reading and don't have them read aloud except as required in Barton until after Level 4.  

 

One thing to keep in mind is that every child advances through this system at different rates.  Some kids can breeze through the first 4 levels in a year or less.  Others will take longer.  Usually, though, it doesn't take very long to get through Level 1 and 2 (maybe even less than a month, depending on the student).  They are extremely short compared to the other levels.  They are also extremely critical for most students, as basic and short as they may seem.  In other words, you aren't looking at waiting 4 years for your child to take on outside reading assignments.  Just 4 levels.

[momtotwo]

Thank you both. 

[imagine.more]

Yep we've stopped all other reading. Now that DD13 (6th grade) is on Level 3 I can't stop her from trying to read a few things but I always tell her to ask me and I will ALWAYS step in and read any words she cannot sound out easily using the Barton lessons. I read her math word problems aloud to her generally too. Like someone else said it usually only takes 2 years on average to get all the way through 4-5 levels of Barton. My DD has other learning issues and yet she's starting level 4 after 14 months using Barton, so not too bad really. We do literature read-alouds and such and we focused on Geography this year to avoid tons of history read-alouds :) Science is mostly hands-on, picture books read aloud, and lap booking. 

 

OneStep, I love your analogy about the swimming and muscle memory. It's so so true!

[OneStepAtATime]

We have had a similar experience to imagine.more so I maybe I should share a little more to clarify things.  

 

When my daughter started Barton she was really struggling.  She could decode Clifford and Black Lagoon books but she was in 5th grade.  School was a struggle every single day.  Reading and spelling were a huge, painful chore for her.  When we finally started homeschooling in 6th and eventually started her with Barton, she had already picked up some terrible reading and spelling habits.  It took quite a bit of effort to unlearn those habits.  Level 1 and Level 2 of Barton honestly took quite a bit of time.  She was resistant.  She didn't think anything would help.  She had a lot of bad habits to unlearn. Tutors hadn't helped.  The school hadn't helped.  My reading specialist mother who had taught in ps as a reading teacher for many, many years could not help.  She had basically given up on herself and on any system.

 

Even though it was a slow slog, we made it halfway through Level 3 and DD started to realize she was reading things, like closed captioning, street signs, etc.  She was decoding the controlled text readers with fluency.  She also was given a couple of criterion referenced spelling tests from a tutor friend of mine in another state.  She passed one test with 100 and the other with a 99.  She realized the system was working.  She got excited about learning again.  That Christmas she got the book Divergent for Christmas.  Any other Christmas she would have tossed the book aside without a second glance.  That Christmas, as soon as she opened the package, she curled up in a chair and started reading.  Were we through Level 4?  No.  We weren't even through Level 3.  But she was excited and enthusiastic and believed she could read that book.  She WAS reading that book.  I did not stop her.   :)

 

She still has decoding issues.  We have not finished Barton.  We ran into some snags tied to other learning issues she has, coupled with some family challenges that slowed us down.  But she is reading.   :)

[MyLittleBears]

We stopped. Ds is mostly through level four and we use the level 3 readers for review. Now I am actually having him read his math word problems because I realized he CAN read them (with help on the word types we have not covered yet) but was starting to use me as a crutch. He was getting a little lazy because I read everything to him. It is also critical for him to "figure out" the problems instead of mom pointing everything out and to follow the directions on the page.