Making a plan to help my kids progress in English...help, thoughts, ideas please...

[SporkUK]

This is likely more an anxious, not sleeping well brain dump than anything else, but this last several months to a yearish of doing anything English related with my older two had turned into what feels like a rodent on a treadmill - so little progress, in fact a lot seems to be going in reverse in many places... I'm hoping writing it all out will give me clarity and putting it here will mean other less directly involved cooler minds might have an idea I can't come up with. Or at least tell me it isn't as bad as my brain in the moment tells me it is. 

 

My older two, ages 11 and 9, currently do most of their English stuff together as the 11 year old has had language issues since before he was 2 and the 9 year old gets it more naturally and they prefer working together. Together, they are currently doing Words by Marcia McHenry, which at the current rate should be done by early May, Fred Schonell's Essential Spelling List [just began Group 2 this week doing one section a day rather than over a week, the end of Group 1 test puts their 'spelling age' around 8, with the 11 year old making far more mistakes in the word test, though in the dictation test they each only got 2 wrong, excluding punctuation/poetry formatting], and...WWE 1. In previous attempts, both struggled with the week 36 check. This year I bought the workbook on Kindle thinking I was missing something or pushing too fast on my own and we've been working through 2 days a day [so a copywork and a narration a day on top of their own reading and writing]. We're about to start Week 30 next week - and I still have to remind them to answer in complete sentences, and I'm still getting sentences in other work that isn't started with a capital letter or ended with punctuation, still days where I ask a question and get a blank stare. As an example, we did the Pollyanna section recently where I gave Nancy's name before the reading and it is said throughout but neither could remember it afterwards when asked. Really, whenever they hit a question in Words or WWE1 they don't know they freeze like rabbits in headlights and it's like pulling teeth to even try to lead them to an answer. 

 

Before Words, last September, we did the 40L Remedial Reading up to the first few Webster sections (the spelling differences was causing confusion). We did this because they kept guessing at longer words very badly [we did OnTrack Reading last year to help with this as well] - like no where phonetically close, like they read the first bit and fill in the rest with a word they know instead or gibberish. They're better now but this is still happening daily - just stumbling over the ends of words, turning them into mush or entirely different words. The tested reading age when we finished the 40L was Grade 5.2 and 3.9 respectively, this week they tested at Grade 5.5 and 4.2 [though when I did the Burt's reading test, the 11 year old got a similar result - 10 years, 2 months while the 9 year old tested in at 11 years reading age].

 

Before last year, I had very little concerns about English - they struggled with narrating things I read, but they could - and can - narrate and discuss chapters and entire books they've read. The 11 year old did The Hobbit when he was 8 - narrated each chapter in dramatic fashion and read the last one out loud to us. They read a lot [though they're favourite things to read over and over are the Horrible Science and the Horrible Geography books at the moment].  But then last year I found both of them struggling to read/pronounce longer words, that neither of them really seemed get why that word was said one way so I began down this what feels like a rabbit hole treadmill of programmes and products that inches them forward, but I feel like I'm missing something that will help it all click. Part of me is kicking myself for not continuing having them read outloud to me daily when they were younger so I could have caught it before it got to now where it seems so deeply rooted that a year of working on it diligently has made so little progress and everyone is frustrated with it. 

 

And that's before we get into penmanship which seems to have fallen apart this year. The 11 year old has gotten slower, harder to read, his writing seems to be getting bigger for no known reason, and it's just generally hard to read before getting into poor spelling and punctuation. The 9 year old is currently at the point where she is faster and neater usually but the neatness falls apart really easily if she's rushing through -- which is a lot -- and she's yet to find the balance. 

 

Slightly in short, I feel like I've missed something or somethings and now I have an 11 year old and a 9 year old who struggle to read or spell longer unfamiliar words after over a year of working on it daily or discuss details in short passages but can tell you about an entire book of their choice even an audio book they listen to while doing maths,  who keep forgetting basic writing rules and letter formation, and while I intend to finish Words, and hopefully WWE 1, in May because the language foundation will hopefully help them, I'm trying to come up with a plan for afterwards rather than jump into another programme with fingers crossed and have let it all out here as I'm feeling at the end of my rope and hope some idea or support will help me help them.  

[Arcadia]

I would get a thorough eye checkup for your 11 year old because of the penmanship issues. The penmanship issues of your 9 year old sounds typical of a 9 year old who just want to get it done to go play.

 

For vocabulary can you do the reverse? Pick books they may like that is above their vocabulary level and use that for vocabulary enrichment?

[forty-two]

I'm assuming by "OnTrack Reading" you mean the multisyllable chunking method? Was it effective? By which I mean that when you walk them through chunking a word that way, they can then read it correctly? (Not that they fluently apply that method in their own reading without your help, but that whenever they *do* apply that method - even if it's only when you explicitly have them do it in a lesson - it *does* help them read long words correctly.)

 

My oldest has struggled a lot with reading long words correctly, and with spelling in general. In her case, much of it was due to poor phonemic processing skills and difficulty breaking words down or putting word parts together. We have done lots of blending work to help improve her phonemic processing, plus using a visual color-coded marking system for spelling (based on Spelling You See's marking system) to help her visually see the details in words, and we're working through REWARDS, a reading program that teaches a chunking system to help break down and read long, unfamiliar words. I think we were over halfway through REWARDS before dd9 started applying it to her reading, and in general, whenever she stumbles on a word I have her go through the chunking method explicitly (pencil and all). And though we learnt the marking system in SYS, I have dd9 mark all her copywork in WWE (and chunk any long words). It takes a *lot* of practice, and any system we learn that seems to help, I extend and apply it to all our language arts work, to hit those weak skills at every opportunity and help her become automatic at using the new skills.

 

So if the OnTrack chunking method helped, I'd use it with everything else - bring it into Words and WWE and your spelling program. And bring the Words method (if it helps) into your other spelling and WWE. Anything that helps them read or spell - explicitly bring that into everything you do for LA - don't expect it to be mastered and to automatically transfer just by doing the program.

Edited April 3, 2016 by forty-two

[ondreeuh]

Honestly.... You described my 14 year old. He has had a language disability diagnosis since he was a preschooler and all of the issues you mentioned were /are a struggle for him, even inserting a known word instead of gibberish (he likes to throw in "ould"). We have tried every spelling program but his brain is resistant to learning and using spelling. His brother who is 6 years younger is a much better speller. I don't know what to tell you. He types his essays (and has the computer read it back to him) but it is hard for me to read his handwritten notes. Some times the error are phonetic, but most of the time not (like writing peachfully instead of peacefully).

 

The only thing that has kind of worked has been dictation from Spelling Plus. I am not doing any other kind of dictation with him; he just doesn't haventhe working memory to hold it.

 

We did get over the reading hump at least. We used Saxon Phonics Intervention in 5h and REWARDS secondary in 6th.

 

Your 11 year old needs an evaluation for dyslexia. Based on what you have written, I would say there is a 99% chance he has it. With a dyslexia diagnosis you are no longer looking at filling in knowledge gaps, but in retraining the brain. You are doing a great job!!! Sometimes a. Hi can do is inch forward and hope that they can get accommodations to do ok in the real world.

[forty-two]

I also wanted to say that I've felt the "throwing program after program at the problem to no avail" feeling - where dd9 successfully completed the program but showed zero improvement outside the program (or was too weak to even *start* the program that promised to work on that weakness) - and it was very frustrating :grouphug:.  In dd9's case, she had enough underlying weaknesses that no amount of programs for "typical kid weakness in this area" was ever going to solve the problem - they all assumed certain underlying skills were present that were *not* in fact present for dd9.  We had to look into more intensive programs/approaches that explicitly targeted those underlying skills (or deliberately worked *around* the lack of those skills) before we saw any progress. 

 

I second looking into dyslexia - idk if dd9's dyslexic (we don't have a diagnosis), but she has/had a lot of dyslexic symptoms, and we're making progress using dyslexic approaches.