Reading Curr Options for Severely Dyslexic 8 yr old

[TammyB]

My sister-in-law just pulled her son from public school due to behavior problems stemming from his extreme frustrations in the classroom.  She has been researching curriculum options and is attempting to choose between Barton's and AAR/AAS.  I am familiar with AAS but not the others.  From the reading I have done I have gathered that they are similar but that perhaps Barton's has more review while AAS/AAR is easier to implement.  Is this accurate?  

 

Any advice I can give her on how to choose?

 

Thanks!

 

 

[PeterPan]

No, Barton will have a significantly slower pace and more detailed approach than AAS/AAR.  Since both will cost money, I see no reason to start with a product less likely to be adequate.  Barton is MADE for this and has everything she needs, with hand motions, non-sense words, better tiles (physical, not paper), etc.  Barton is what she wants.  Her resale value will be tremendous , so that her actual cost per level will be low.  

 

Tell her, when she orders, to order an extra set of tiles. That way she can keep a set when she sells her kit.  You will need them for the next level.

 

I have AAS1-6, btw, and used SWR and later AAS with my dd (not dyslexic).  When I realized my ds was dyslexic, I went immediately to Barton.  It's *that* different.  

 

As far as the behavior, did they screen for ADHD and ASD?  I just ask because my ds has ADHD/ASD on top of his SLDs.  He's super bright, but he's a challenge to work with.  It might be, depending on her mix, that she's going to need MORE than just a reading curriculum.  Student Screening  This is the pre-test for Barton.  Depending on the results, she may need to do LIPS first.  She also might want to work on working memory and/or get an OT eval.  OT, for my ds, makes a dramatic difference in his ability to work with me.  Given that ADHD is 60% comorbid with dyslexia, I would *not* assume there's only SLD reading going on.  

 

Has he had full evals to get *all* the disabilities diagnosed?

[FO4UR]

If he's severely dyslexic, I'd highly recommend finding an O-G trained tutor to help get you started with Barton.

 

 

 

[TammyB]

No, Barton will have a significantly slower pace and more detailed approach than AAS/AAR.  Since both will cost money, I see no reason to start with a product less likely to be adequate.  Barton is MADE for this and has everything she needs, with hand motions, non-sense words, better tiles (physical, not paper), etc.  Barton is what she wants.  Her resale value will be tremendous , so that her actual cost per level will be low.  

 

Tell her, when she orders, to order an extra set of tiles. That way she can keep a set when she sells her kit.  You will need them for the next level.

 

I have AAS1-6, btw, and used SWR and later AAS with my dd (not dyslexic).  When I realized my ds was dyslexic, I went immediately to Barton.  It's *that* different.  

 

As far as the behavior, did they screen for ADHD and ASD?  I just ask because my ds has ADHD/ASD on top of his SLDs.  He's super bright, but he's a challenge to work with.  It might be, depending on her mix, that she's going to need MORE than just a reading curriculum.  Student Screening  This is the pre-test for Barton.  Depending on the results, she may need to do LIPS first.  She also might want to work on working memory and/or get an OT eval.  OT, for my ds, makes a dramatic difference in his ability to work with me.  Given that ADHD is 60% comorbid with dyslexia, I would *not* assume there's only SLD reading going on.  

 

Has he had full evals to get *all* the disabilities diagnosed?

Thank you so much for all of this information!

 

I know my nephew has had extensive evaluations done, but I don't know all of the results.  I do know that he does have a sensory processing disorder.  I have passed along your information to her.  I think she is going to join this forum so that she can get information firsthand.  :)

 

Is there any other reading program besides Barton that she should consider?  

 

Thanks,

Tammy

[PeterPan]

The only reason to consider something different is if he's not actually dyslexic.  Well I say different, and I mean like not in the OG camp.  Within OG, it's nominal differences.  It's more like what can you make happen, rather than wow Wilson is so radically much better than Barton or traditional OG or the other programs, kwim?  

 

That will be fun if she comes over to the boards herself!  My ds has verbal apraxia, SLD reading/writing/math, SPD, ADHD-combined, ASD, just keep going with the list, haha.  Even though he has SLD reading, once we got the decoding working (with LIPS and then Barton), it turned out his language issues were holding back his comprehension.  I wrote Barton, and she said that was common with ASD.  I'm not sure there's really a perfect answer on that.  Our np (neuropsych) did the CELF5, which is a detailed language test.  Sometimes the ps does it, and your SIL may have had this done.  The CELF showed that, at least for my ds, his comprehension at the single sentence level was extremely poor (28th percentile), which they considered a consequence of EF (executive function) deficits.  Just wait, everything is EF, lol.  

 

There are comprehension extras to go with Barton, but I decided (and this is controversial) to pause Barton and do extensive work on that sentence level comprehension.  See he was in Barton 4 but not able to comprehend anything he was reading.  He could decode, but he couldn't read!  So instead we're doing a grammar processing program from Super Duper that specifically targets the things that were low in his CELF testing.  And now, after several months of that and getting about half way through the book, HE is picking up the Barton 3 supplemental readers and trying to read them on his own!  So I *think* it's working.

 

But let's be honest.  Most kids with only dyslexia don't have comprehension issues.  Most kids with SPD and more complicated diagnoses are going to have more issues going on.  And there's no one answer, one program you buy, because it's a complex situation.  So she's going to start with a good program that will be part of what she needs.  Then she'll hit a wall, realize her dyslexia program maybe isn't going to hit hard enough x and that she has a hole there because of EF deficits and the other diagnoses, then she'll get another thing to fill that hole.

 

To me, what doesn't make sense is to spend 2 hours a day creating custom word lists.  I don't have time for that.  Barton is open and go.  But it's true I had already done similar (lighter) programs, so I knew where it was going.  If she wants to get OG training, more power to her.  But you know, as far as improving her life, Zones of Regulation training would help her more.  Going to workshops sponsored by SocialThinking.com will help her more.  Any of the OG family of products will help her with decoding.  Her real challenge is going to be the behavior.  My ds was bolting, hiding under beds.  He needed visual schedules, environmental control.  Does her state have disability funding?  Can she get help?  The more I do this, the more I appreciate a team approach.  If I had enough funding, I'd probably hire more things done.  As is, right now our funding is just enough to cover speech therapy and OT.

 

I got a lot of useful ideas on room organization, etc. from this site http://www.autismclassroomresources.com Also she has a TPT store with affordable kits you can print and use.  They're AWESOME.  I'm assuming his IEP says something with schedules.  I've homeschooled, um, well I'm in my 12th year now, and for me these kits were immeasurably helpful.  The free articles are good too.  She co-authored a book on environmental control.  We're doing a lot of things with the OT to get his behavior under control so he is in "ready to learn" more often.  You made the comment that his behavior was because of the SLDs, but probably not, not if he has SPD.  He's going to need some OT and techniques.  The goal is to get him in "ready to learn" which, if you look at Zones of Regulation, is green or maybe sometimes blue or yellow.  My ds is not in ready to learn if he's in blue.  If my ds goes yellow, we have to do something from keep him from going to red, which means he just left ready to learn.  So you can see that you'll have your Barton and try to do stuff, but it's going to take time to get his body calmed down to where he's in ready to learn.  There are token/reward boards on her TPT site, and she could use those for Barton.  When we were making a really aggressive push, we did 4 sessions a day.  You could use Reeve's token charts for that.  I rewarded more heavily, so it was do 4 sessions, get the reward.  (we did 4 a day, so it was a nice reward every day)  I think I'm going to start rewarding independent reading, now that he's making an effort to do that with the Barton books.  

 

As far as OT, my ds gets Zengar neurofeedback, BalavisX, RMT for retained primitive reflexes (he had a bunch), Therapeutic Listening (she give this to us to do at home), and kinesio taping.  Each thing seems to give us 10% improvement.  I like to say my boy is held together with duct tape, lol.  We've had threads on the taping with links.  The brand we're using is Rock Tape.  We're doing so many things, it's sometimes hard to know what does what.  We've added them a bit at a time though, so that's why I'm saying they're all 10%, 10%, 10%.  He was not continent during the day, and now he (for the most part) is.  That came with the Therapeutic Listening.  It's funny because people think of it for little kids, not older ones, sometimes.  Well he's 7 and it has been AMAZING for us.  It calms him.  He has literally stopped wetting during the day.  So if it's one of the things the OT just has lying around, ask for it, kwim?  Our OT had the headphones and cds, so it was just a matter of asking her for it.  We do it at home.  

 

My ds is crazy, crazy, crazy for his kindle.  Like he runs this thing hours and hours and hours every day.  I load all kinds of stuff onto it, so he listens to kid books, adult fiction, adult non-fiction, college lectures, you name it.  The kiddie lit is good for helping them process life and social situations.  The college lectures are things like Teaching Company courses (Great Courses).  You just never know what kids will like!  Also, when his reading comes in, he'll be able to use it for immersion reading.  You can also do immersion reading with the kindle app on an android table.  He can also work on typing and improving his ear reading speed using non-fiction.  

[MerryAtHope]

Marianne Sunderland who wrote Dyslexia 101 has a blog, Homeschooling with Dyslexia that you might want to check out (they have 7 kids with dyslexia). In this post she shares her top curriculum picks, and here's another one, The Ultimate List of Dyslexia Resources. She talks about Barton, All About Reading, and some others on both of these.

[FO4UR]

 

Is there any other reading program besides Barton that she should consider?  

 

Thanks,

Tammy

 

 

Orton-Gillingham only took my son so far.  (I did SWR for 2.5 years a program derived from Spalding which is derived from O-G.  Midway through that time, I began studying O-G further and tried doing a more pure O-G with him.)  We came to a point where he knew the phonics forwards and backwards, and he could do the lessons well. But he still was not reading beyond a kindergarten level.

 

I switched methods completely and tried Dancing Bears Reading from Sound Foundations in the UK.  He learned no new phonics in DB (It is all there..he just had retained it from his years of SWR.), but he began READING!!!  DB hits an element of visual processing that O-G and Spalding misses.  If you know you are dealing with visual processing quirks, use DB.

 

A pure O-G is better for a child who either lacks phonics instruction or has auditory processing quirks.

 

jme.

 

 

 

 

ETA:  Aside from the actual reading lessons, keep all other schoolwork in a mode that is easy on the brain.  I found that a vital element in getting my dyslexic reading was to halt grammar/Latin/worksheets of all kinds.  Reading took everything out of him, so I had to cut back to make headway. A year of nothing but Dancing Bears, copywork, and oral math for "school" did the trick.  We covered all else through read alouds, documentaries, games, and real life.

 

Lots of documentaries and read alouds!!!  Keep his vocabulary growing and his interests alive!  

[Pen]

I don't think AAR would be a good choice for a severely dyslexic child, because it is not particularly designed to help with that. 

 

I think Barton could be a good choice, but that it is not the only choice.

 

Some others that I found in various places including Sally Shaywitz's book, and as recommended by a reading specialist I spoke to, included Language! and High Noon. We used High Noon successfully.

 

 

[OneStepAtATime]

I agree, with severe dyslexia AAR/AAS may not break things down enough.  Barton is an option if they pass the student/tutor screenings.  High Noon is also an option.  As Pen mentioned, she used that program successfully.  Wilson is another option, although getting training seems to work better for home implementation.  Having never used it personally I cannot attest to that one way or another but that is what I have heard.  I did look into it, though, and found Barton to be easier for home implementation by a layman.

 

I am using Barton.  Great TM, training DVDs, lots of support from Barton herself, etc.  But make sure they can pass that screening.  If not, hiring help to get through something like LiPS first may be the best option unless they are really good at tutoring using programs that are not especially layman friendly.

[PeterPan]

Btw, I just want to toss this out there, not that it matters, but I've never used High Noon, DB, etc. to have any opinion of them.  I know it seems sort of imbalanced when I talk Barton.  I just know nothing about the others to say anything about them or compare or anything.  That's interesting that Shaywitz is recommending them.  I got her book through the library a while back and skimmed it.  We're just pretty complex and it wasn't what I needed at that time.  

 

My personal opinion is use something meant for dyslexia and something that gets done.  Because if it's not getting done, it's not getting done.  And if it's not meant for dyslexia (which many of the streamlined programs are NOT), then it's not as thorough, nitpicky, and careful not to make assumptions or leaps as other (more typical) curricula will be.  Those leaps are fine for a lot of kids.  That's the reason Barton costs so much.  It's not that she's trying to make tons of money.  It's just that each level is SO detailed.  Your AAR/AAS manuals are very thin.  A single Barton manual will be 2 inches thick!  And it would take several levels of Barton to equal one of AAR/AAS!  That's a serious, serious difference.  Not bad, just different target audience.

 

Whatever, just wanted to explain that I'm not *trying* to be ungracious about the other programs.  I just honestly don't know anything about DB, HN, etc.

[Pen]

To clarify, it has been a long while since I read Shaywitz, my recollection is that HN was specifically mentioned with regard to their hi/low readers. Language! was recommended and described to some degree in the text, not just something to be found in the resources sections, and, as I recall, Language! was one of the programs that Shaywitz researched/tested (whereas HN intervention program was developed after the research and based on findings).There are many programs mentioned in Shaywitz (and maybe more now if there are revised editions or updates on her websites perhaps).  HN was recommended by a reading specialist as her favorite for high interest/low level type students, which fit my ds. From the time of her recommendation to my ordering was probably less than 2 days.  As soon as it arrived, we got started. It worked, (not instantly, but over the course of a year or so) and that was the thus the end of the search for us.

 

So, in reverse of many other people here, I know Barton exists, and a friend of my son's family was using that while I was using HN so I know a tiny bit of comparison, and asked if I could see their materials at one time, but no personal experience.  Language! I got some parts of, and was leant other parts by the reading specialist, and we actually used most of the first level main book, though not the rest of its full LA program, so I have much more personal knowledge, but not as full as with HN. And I was not really even paying much attention to other programs as possibilities.

 

I guess the point I was wanting to make is that there are many possible programs for dyslexia, some may be ones none of us here have tried or perhaps even heard of, but I would be looking at Barton versus, maybe, some other program intended for kids with dyslexia.  If the only  two choices are Barton and AAR, for a child with severe dyslexia, I personally cannot see how AAR makes sense. 

[PeterPan]

Pen, that's very interesting, thanks for explaining that.  I had never really thought about hi/low readers.  I know they're out there, but just hadn't thought about them for ds.  It strikes me though, as I'm reading your explanations, that the needs of the dyslexia community probably are not *homogenous*.  My ds had EXTREME problems even getting out the gate with reading.  He takes to Barton well and absolutely had to have that level of detailed discussion.  Then you have people who come on the boards saying xyz got their kid reading and it's still crunchy.  Those people's need is definitely different, even though they're getting the same label.  And I think even within kids who do Barton you have different paths.  Ds is taking the path of serious comprehension issues.  

 

So I think there's lots of room for that customizing and targeting exactly where your dc is struggling in the mix.    

 

And yeah, I got Shaywitz from the library.  Probably was somewhat of an older version.  She had all these recs, but they were things largely marketed to public schools, seemed like.  I could be all wet on that.  It's just when products are marketed like that they get really expensive.  But that HN might actually be interesting for ds at some point.  Thanks for explaining it a bit.

[Heathermomster]

OP, I feel like SandyKC's blog might benefit you.

 

My vote is for whatever Shaywitz recommends.  I don't believe that AAR would be enough for any reading SLD without major modification and addition..

[Pen]

 

Pen, that's very interesting, thanks for explaining that.  I had never really thought about hi/low readers.  I know they're out there, but just hadn't thought about them for ds.  It strikes me though, as I'm reading your explanations, that the needs of the dyslexia community probably are not *homogenous*.  My ds had EXTREME problems even getting out the gate with reading.  He takes to Barton well and absolutely had to have that level of detailed discussion.  Then you have people who come on the boards saying xyz got their kid reading and it's still crunchy.  Those people's need is definitely different, even though they're getting the same label.  And I think even within kids who do Barton you have different paths.  Ds is taking the path of serious comprehension issues.  

 

So I think there's lots of room for that customizing and targeting exactly where your dc is struggling in the mix.    

 

And yeah, I got Shaywitz from the library.  Probably was somewhat of an older version.  She had all these recs, but they were things largely marketed to public schools, seemed like.  I could be all wet on that.  It's just when products are marketed like that they get really expensive.  But that HN might actually be interesting for ds at some point.  Thanks for explaining it a bit.

 

 

 

 

I definitely think that dealing with kids with "dyslexia" is variable--and perhaps may be variable even for the same kid at to what might work at a particular moment or stage for that child. For all we know there could even be points that a child is able to move forward and any of several programs tried at that moment might be the one to work, whereas the same program tried a year earlier might have been a failure.

 

Programs even when targeted to children with dyslexia are designed to meet different needs, including as you point out, ones that are more adaptable to public school use versus home use, also ones that are more suitable to younger or older students, ones who have severe decoding issues but not comprehension issues, or the opposite, or both--and so many more factors can enter in to what might work better or worse for a particular child.

 

Of note, I do not know how old the child the OP is writing about is. But my son was already 9 when I finally realized that the wait and see or he is just a late bloomer with regard to reading was not getting him anywhere other than depressed and pulled him out of school and went after answers and interventions. That is a big difference from your son at 7 and with whom you have already been doing reading intervention for awhile. In addition, my ds had extremely, extremely, severe decoding issues coupled with some vision, hearing, and speech issues and some fluky memory (can memorize some things with amazing ease, but others it is almost impossible), and some SPD type issues, but did not have comprehension issues, and these differences between our boys also may be significant in what program would be a best fit. A bright 9 year old who has been sat at the "slow kids" table at school and feels he cannot read and will never be able to learn, is in a different situation than a 7 year old, any way I look at it. And a program that had a mature look, older characters in its stories, and was geared to the hi/lo type kid in content was a good fit for my ds. Possibly your son will still need something like that when he is 9, but there is also a very good chance that by that point your son will be farther along and reading.

 

The OP's nephew was mentioned to have been pulled out of school and to have some SPD, two factors similar to my ds, but otherwise not much info is available on his situation. She asked if there were any other programs to consider, so I was trying to reply to that question, particularly with regard to what had worked for my ds, but more generally to say that yes, there are other programs. Quite a few.

 

I think we parents are apt to feel extremely grateful to whatever it is that worked for our own dc. and to recommend that. At the same time, I think a helpful take-away is that there are quite a few options, so do not lose hope if one does not work.

[Ellie]

I know many people whose dc were very successful with Spalding.

[PeterPan]

What is the big differences between Spalding method/WRTR and AAS? - K-8 Curriculum Board - The Well-Trained Mind Community

 

And just to reiterate what most junkies already know, Spalding was specifically attempting to streamline OG methodology to make it fit non-SLD children.  It makes no sense to use it with SLD children, because it's MISSING so much that would benefit them.  It's not meant for that.

 

I began with WRTR and used SWR with my dd for years.  I recommend these programs ALL THE TIME. But to gloss over the differences and what's missing (or contained only implicitly, rather than explicitly, a distinction important for SLD kids) is to do people a HUGE disservice.  

 

If it were *my* friend and they walked up saying my budget is $30 or $100 and I need to help my dyslexic, I'd say go get Moats, one of the books that actually goes through the entire big picture of OG. There are texts like that.  When people buy SWR (where Sanseri actually says dyslexia is our fault and caused by poor instruction), they're MISSING non-sense words, syllabication rules, working memory work, multi-sensory instruction, work on fluency, all sorts of things built into complete OG programs.  Non-SLD kids are typically fine without all that.  The parent then doesn't even know what they're missing but just sits there trying and trying.  And like I said, I wouldn't let my friend do that.  If it were my friend, I'd buy them something with complete tools.