Jump to content

Menu

Stuff on teaching reading


Recommended Posts

I totally agree about the expressive language part.

From what I have seen — this is often covered as part of comprehension.  So it’s like — if you know this is the issue, then what?  Where do you find resources?  

From what I have seen — a lot is done in the context of comprehension, because understanding and being able to express understanding do go together.  

But no, don’t get hung up on “does it mean he can’t understand things.”  I think go by interest/engagement on that.  

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

8 hours ago, Moved On said:

As for expressive language, I am going to keep bringing up procedural memory until you notice ?

Google says I've reached my viewing limit on that book, hehe. What are you wanting me to notice about it? Like I've read the definitions, but I'm not getting the connect you are, like what you're taking from it, how you're then applying that to your situation. I was reading about procedural learning last night in the Mindset Mathematics book too. In that setting, it seems obvious to me what the connection is, but I'm missing it here.

That's frustrating that you've had so many misses with therapy! And yeah, if they tie you to a required number of appts, that's hard. Some places here (not many but some) try to do that too. Stuff has to be really good when you're driving a long way. I've driven that far for PROMPT, but for OT, regular SLP, yeah they better be in the MIRACULOUS category for me to drive that far, lol. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

7 hours ago, Moved On said:

I don't see anything as, intervene, do xyz, boom, and we are done. I dig deep. I look at all aspects of their life, not just academic. I envision the future and what they might need, not be prepared for, etc. and I work on areas that I see they need or might need help in. 

Well it's not do you dig deep, does someone else not dig deeply. The reality is we have to *generalize* the skills. We need them to be able to use their language in all kinds of settings, not just in a worksheet. I think about that a lot with my ds, because I've used so many worksheets. They gave us a lot of structure to go through things very thoroughly, things that needed to be gone through that thoroughly, but then it's also essential to generalize and carry them over to lots of other settings. I think about it with sentence structure, where my ds has one type of sentence structure to use a particular type of word but might not use that word in ANOTHER sentence structure in a different location in the sentence! So then he's saying what he learned in a worksheet, which means it's only useful when the situation matches what the worksheet was.

That's why there's SO much farther to go and why I'm aggravated to the hilt when I can't find an SLP ready to think that hard. They're out there, but sometimes these large practices are gatekeepers, where some secretary or someone is deciding who sees whom. Even people who think they are expressive language experts aren't always up to it. I swear I think sometimes they go into the field because they HAVE the problems themselves!! Let's be real,it happens. 

This book is from 2016 but it intrigues me.                            Patterns of Power: Inviting Young Writers into the Conventions of Language, Grades 1-5                 It's ostensibly on grammar and aimed at ps teachers, but what I thought was interesting is this idea of exploring words and really dwelling on the meanings from each usage and location. I thought it could get into that idea of language flexibility and be something he could understand. Maybe he's not quite there, but I think he's close or will get there. So like they discuss articles and then he gives quotes from literature and has the kids discussing what does it mean to use "a" there vs. "the" or "an" etc. So rather than viewing it as correct/incorrect the way worksheets do, it would be exploring meaning of the choices. Now I know there are Critical Thinking workbooks that do that, because I did them with my dd. But really, those workbooks rely on inferences. I liked that with this the pace was slower and more driven by discussion. They also might be complementary, where we could do the discussion AND do the CT workbook pages. I did those workbooks alongside Writing Tales 2 the year we did that, so that probably tells me thought level. Right now ds is about to where he could do Writing Tales 1. I picked up the manual again, so it's on my docket for the year. I just want to do more foundational skill work with the pieces of narrative (description, listing actions, etc.) before we try to pull it into a whole.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

8 hours ago, Terabith said:

Well cool! You beat me because I wimped out and WENT TO BED rather than researching, lol. Now I'm all spunky with a whopping 8 hours of sleep. I may go back to bed though. I've been trying to get back into the gym the last two weeks (since my nasty round with the bronchitis that thought it would be better if I bled in the lungs and died), and I'm SORE! :biggrin: 

So I started at your link and rabbited a bit and found this encyclopedia of Zelda BoW that I think should lure him in if anything can. If he doesn't want print after he gets that, we're toast. I mean the kid spends how long thinking about this stuff and asking me to look up this stuff, lol. The library had the whopping $36 book, so we'll see. Should come in about when his glasses do, and he'll probably need them to read the dinky print, hehe.

Ok, this is fun! There's a Mouse Hiding In This Book! (Tom and Jerry)  I hadn't thought through it, but Tom and Jerry on tv has almost no *language*. They just use nonverbals, inference, perspective taking. So these books are picture books with a nominal amount of text, all in very large print speech bubbles, aimed at explaining what the characters are thinking when they do those things. That's actually pretty cool for him! So those are a definite win, definitely getting those, assuming the library has them. I wouldn't want to pay $9 a book for them, but for free that's a pretty cool thing to explore. He's had that issue where, when you pause and ask what the character is thinking, he just gives you a bunch of SOUNDS. He doesn't necessarily have the words. So anything that connects words and non-verbals is cool, and this is definitely language that would not be on speech therapy worksheets, lol.

I'm thinking this Tom and Jerry comic series by Matheny would be the next step, as the cells have 1-2 sentences, not too complex language. Tom and Jerry: The Makeover Takeover  I didn't realize this, but apparently T&J is aimed at preschoolers, so a lot of the books are either preschool language or lower lexile, being aimed at younger kids. So an older target audience would have more complex language, but for T&J they drop it down, making it PERFECT for our situation. He reads Calvin & Hobbes btw. I think he may have ran out or something, because I had bought him a number on kindle. I think he may just have been done with them. So maybe I shouldn't even bother with print? Maybe I should just buy the kindle versions. I really like BOOKS though and having books. But you're right, a lot of this stuff is free if you do the kindleunlimited. I've never signed up for that, hmm. I don't know, print vs. kindleunlimited. The KU would be affordable probably, so that's not the issue. Maybe I should just ask him, duh. It would be NICE if he had the aesthetic experience of turning pages in a book, but it's not an absolute dealbreaker. I just think it's easy to forget about digital stuff, where pretty books on a shelf lure you.

Edited by PeterPan
  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

MO, interesting find on that video! I hadn't thought to look for videos. She's definitely efficient and organized, and I agree the taking notes is really sharp. It might be she has forms in the book, since she's saying she circles things on her forms. The bummer (to me) is that the methodology still goes back to not teaching actual decoding. Like when she says reading "hug" instead of huge is a meaning problem, well maybe but it's also just the kid has been memorizing everything. Also the whole session was SO passive, oh my. Like brains totally turned off. I think as homeschoolers we do a lot more with turning brains on, interacting. It puts them on the spot, but it's why they go farther. A lot of what she was feeding them passively for expediency we would have done actively together in a one on one. We would have taken the time to ask what he thinks the book might be about, who he thinks the characters are, making smart guesses (our social thinking language!), etc. And to have someone look at all the pictures before they read, well that's engagement but it's also just blatantly covering up that the kids aren't understanding what they're reading, that they are memorizing instead of reading. 

So yes, interesting find! I like walking up to lots of ideas and methodologies and going ok this part and this part would really work for us. I think the part of her book that hits summarizing, etc. is going to be really useful and practical. Guess we'll see! For you, if your ds are really to go into Writing and Rhetoric, they may not need this. They may have zoomed beyond it, or at least maybe the older one has. Ds is making nice progress now, but we just had a lot of glitches with getting issues identified. And really, even a year ago he was not 100% intelligible. We had other things to work on. We're making progress relative to ourselves, and in some ways, as we work intensely, we're making really good progress! That's why it's so psycho to go to these people and have some not even see the issues, some be really worried, etc., lol. Anyways, I think we just keep moving forward. 

Is Writing and Rhetoric the CAP program? Does it start with narrative? If that's what it is, it looked good when I looked at it a while back. It's just not where ds is yet mentally. We're still living at that level of sentences. He can now make a really beautiful sentence to get out his thoughts about something. Like he said "At the fair I saw a man driving a gator [a utility vehicle] delivering ice to the stands." That's really good!!!!! Gorgeous language, all original, organized, purposeful, connecting thoughts. I was super pleased. Now think about how many of those sentences you have to have to get out a full narrative, and that right now it's a lot of work for him to get out ONE, lol. So me, I'm kinda like ok then let's work on one and build to two. Let's then build to three and be describing just the setting or just the characters or just the list of actions. We can't zoom that all the way to a full story yet, lol. But if we work intensely, we can make good progress. We made super good progress in 8 weeks of working insanely intensely, so we can make more progress. The challenge for us is getting distracted by these dumb therapies. The thing that slows us down now is the therapies, ironically. Like yesterday, we lost an entire half day for worthlessness. That was a half day that COULD have been spent working on language (or swimming or...). So more professionals are not always the answer. 

We'll see how today goes and see what is a keeper of the new things and what gets tossed. 

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 hours ago, Moved On said:

At the same time, I use and will be using curricula, and intend to start Writing & Rhetoric in the fall, which also incorporates comprehension strategies and connects them to writing. He has done a lot of writing through models on his own, it's his thing, which makes me think it will work well for him. So I don't really need the amount of handholding from other resources in our case. I like strategies books because they give me ideas on resources/ materials and strategies I can bring in when we need to build/ practice skills in a certain area and thus eliminate any roadblocks that may come up while using curricula. I also took a look at the description for Serravallo's new book and I won't be needing that one either. 

Yeah, I haven't looked at the newest Serravallo book yet, just saw the cover. What you're saying makes sense. I actually think the Strategy books are probably beyond us right now, that we're on more of a foundational level. That's why I'm not buying them. Where the Richardson books seem more foundational, meaning I'll probably get some good helps. And yeah, ds hardly connects with any curriculum. That was actually my big shock, when my gut said he was getting ready to be ready for any at all. I don't have numbers on that or some thought out thing, but it's pretty obvious when there's a shift from needing totally custom intervention because NOTHING FITS, to being far enough along that something fits and you can do a task someone printed somewhere, even with adaptation. He's not going to be one to do someone else's task or engage just because the book said now we're studying this. If we pushed that, it would just be a waste and forgotten. He's not that flexible yet and not that ready. But it's a good stage to be to when they are, definitely!!! I'm hoping we get there over the next year. I've got Writing Tales 1 in the wings, and that would be our first foray. The 3 book history series from Gander Publishing is amazing too. That came, and my dream is to go through that with him. I want to do some visualizing work first though. It's actually written to promote it, which is kind of cool, so working on the visualizing first would let him practice that tool.

The main thing is to stay energized. These drives just suck the life out of you with traffic and the strain. They're disruptive too. Guess we'll see what's worth it, sigh.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Your comments about writing just reminded me of something I did ALL year in my writing class. I thought it wouldn't take the whole year, but we ended up doing it a couple times a week. I printed out all of the V/V words (what, where, color, size, mood, etc) and put them front and center in the classroom. You could put them on index cards and spread them out on the table. OR just pick a couple to start with. Then, I put up a picture for the kids. Say, a black cat sitting on a fence. Then the kids used the V/V words to write descriptive sentences. For so many of them, they needed to see a picture, AND have the V/V words there, to write sentences. Even with that, they still needed a lot of prompting. It got a lot better as the year went on, though, and then they could write multiple sentences. We also filled out very simple outlines prior to writing sentences sometimes. Like - put cat in the center circle, then writing black, soft, cute, on a fence, etc. in the surrounding circles. Perhaps you could start doing that with your DS.

I found a list of writing skills, from most basic to complex. I really have no idea where it came from, but I'll try to scan it and put it up here. The earliest skills were something like labeling a picture, then writing a sentence about a picture, then writing a sentence without a picture, etc. It was helpful to me to see the very small incremental steps - writing challenges me because there is just SO much to do, and the books I see don't really give the big picture and then break it down. They just sorta jump in somewhere, but I really want to know how kids' writing should develop from the beginning all the way up to essays.

  • Like 2
  • Thanks 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 hours ago, Moved On said:

You notice she talks about using sentence starters to initiate the retelling and then asking them to share more to encourage them to continue? I mentioned that in another thread when I said how we started narrations when my son was younger. Writing and Rhetoric also uses sentence starters, and sentence starters are mentioned in other resources I own as well.  

ETA: Obviously, if she has them narrating, then she uses the comprehension skills to guide them towards narration. This is what I have done. I built on my son's expressive language throughout the day, tapping into his procedural memory, while the comprehensions strategies built on better comprehension while reading, which then built on the ability to narrate. 

Yikes! They desperately need posture, pencil grip, and handwriting guidance! 

Ok, so 7:13 in the video she finally transitions. The cards are a cool idea. I think another source was suggesting 5 fingers (always with the student, haha). And then at 8:22 she does what she's calling sentence starters. I try to be really careful about that, because it's a huge goal for ds to be able to answer in complete sentences. 

I'll keep watching. It's definitely interesting, but it's a mix. They spend so much time undoing the messes they create by not teaching normal decoding, mercy. Also, the lack of active participation and lack of language from the students is troubling. I think it's really easy to get caught up as teachers in the analysis or how we (they) sound, rather than making sure the STUDENTS are doing the learning. If the student isn't responding, who's really having a good time there and learning? :wink:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

57 minutes ago, Mainer said:

Your comments about writing just reminded me of something I did ALL year in my writing class. I thought it wouldn't take the whole year, but we ended up doing it a couple times a week. I printed out all of the V/V words (what, where, color, size, mood, etc) and put them front and center in the classroom. You could put them on index cards and spread them out on the table. OR just pick a couple to start with. Then, I put up a picture for the kids. Say, a black cat sitting on a fence. Then the kids used the V/V words to write descriptive sentences. For so many of them, they needed to see a picture, AND have the V/V words there, to write sentences. Even with that, they still needed a lot of prompting. It got a lot better as the year went on, though, and then they could write multiple sentences. We also filled out very simple outlines prior to writing sentences sometimes. Like - put cat in the center circle, then writing black, soft, cute, on a fence, etc. in the surrounding circles. Perhaps you could start doing that with your DS.

I found a list of writing skills, from most basic to complex. I really have no idea where it came from, but I'll try to scan it and put it up here. The earliest skills were something like labeling a picture, then writing a sentence about a picture, then writing a sentence without a picture, etc. It was helpful to me to see the very small incremental steps - writing challenges me because there is just SO much to do, and the books I see don't really give the big picture and then break it down. They just sorta jump in somewhere, but I really want to know how kids' writing should develop from the beginning all the way up to essays.

The SLP yesterday was asking me if I wanted EET, and I need to look it over. I think in a sense you were doing, expanding V/V into writing, is what EET tries to do as well. I like your idea too of getting out all the words and then organizing them into sentences. That has a lot of potential to hit our syntax goals too! We could play with it and see how many ways we could write sentences using those words, spin or roll a die for the target grammar pieces, etc. That would be REALLY COOL, love it.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well I got the cards cut apart to try the first task in the Word Callers book. We'll see how that goes! It's kind of cool, because they're having you sort words multiple ways at the same time using a grid. They have an assessment rubric too, so we'll see. It sounds very EF, because they're looking at whether the dc can be flexible and process for orthography AND meaning at the same time. Nifty.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

The EET website looks great to me.  

https://www.expandingexpression.com/

I mean — you would have to see how it goes and what she targets with it and everything, but it looks to me like it would check an expressive language block, and if he does summarizing with it (which is mentioned) then it would be checking that kind of “retell/summarize/main idea” box for common autism weaknesses. If not you can ask if there is a skill progression, and if he’s doing skills on the way to “retell/summarize/main idea.”  

 

Edited by Lecka
Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, PeterPan said:

The SLP yesterday was asking me if I wanted EET, and I need to look it over. I think in a sense you were doing, expanding V/V into writing, is what EET tries to do as well. I like your idea too of getting out all the words and then organizing them into sentences. That has a lot of potential to hit our syntax goals too! We could play with it and see how many ways we could write sentences using those words, spin or roll a die for the target grammar pieces, etc. That would be REALLY COOL, love it.

Yeah! If you turn that into a game, I'll buy it ? 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, PeterPan said:

Well I got the cards cut apart to try the first task in the Word Callers book. We'll see how that goes! It's kind of cool, because they're having you sort words multiple ways at the same time using a grid. They have an assessment rubric too, so we'll see. It sounds very EF, because they're looking at whether the dc can be flexible and process for orthography AND meaning at the same time. Nifty.

This book looks super. You'll have to report back and see how it goes. I love the idea of sorting cards, because it's reading and thinking, but may feel more fun/less pressure than a workbook page or something. 

With the V/V words and describing, you could also use a word bank to help your DS have words available to him. Or you could just stick with filling out graphic organizers for a couple weeks - get good at assigning words to the picture - and then move on to writing sentences. That's probably the way to go, now that I think about it. 

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Lecka said:

The EET website looks great to me.  

https://www.expandingexpression.com/

I mean — you would have to see how it goes and what she targets with it and everything, but it looks to me like it would check an expressive language block, and if he does summarizing with it (which is mentioned) then it would be checking that kind of “retell/summarize/main idea” box for common autism weaknesses. If not you can ask if there is a skill progression, and if he’s doing skills on the way to “retell/summarize/main idea.”  

 

That does look awesome! 

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

26 minutes ago, Mainer said:

Yeah! If you turn that into a game, I'll buy it ? 

There's a place that sells the dice already printed. I'll remember/find it. I tried making my own but they're ugly.

EET as a kit can be an excuse not to understand the deeper intervention. If I thought EET was great I would have bought it rather than spending 500+ on deeper things for each aspect. It probably takes things farther, which I can check, but we won't even be seeing this girl again. He ate her up and her skills were too low. She spent half the session saying no instead of engaging him. She wasn't ready, as a practitioner, to handle him. She was rigid, scared, couldn't think in her feet, timid. Toast. Unfortunately the worker has to be on their A game with him. I've seen secretaries, people with no training do better. So wasn't skillful to PLACE him in EET even if she tried. He would bowl over her and be bored.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

30 minutes ago, Mainer said:

That does look awesome! 

I think it could be with the right person, but it's still pieces. So some kids might need more work on those pieces than what the kit provides. What I see online is kids getting pieces and it still not resulting in anything useful, a whole. That's where I liked that you were making the tasks useful, toward s goal or context. 

Ill look at it again and see. 

Meanwhile in the Clarkson book chapter 3 (?) sorting ds TOTALLY bombed. He could sort by category OR initial letter but not two ways at the same time. She's saying that's EF and evidence based as linking to comprehension. It was bad enough I think we'll jump out and do it with pictures to work on flexibility and then come back. I need to read what she says but it was significant difficulty. I took the chapter to mean it came easily once they caught on. I think this is going to need some work oy.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Chapter 4, p39 if Cartwright--sorting by color/shape for flexible thinking did NOT bump comprehension scores but sorting *words* by sound and meaning did, go figure. 

Chapter 4 contains the intervention. Chapter 5 starts a new topic. My plan is to focus on 4 till we nail it. I wonder if going to 3X3 for analysis is valuable? Dunno.

Edited by PeterPan
Link to comment
Share on other sites

18 hours ago, Lecka said:

My point was more, that there’s not any one comprehension program out there, but sometimes it can be good to go with a quality program, instead of looking for “the one true program.”  Something that will check the block for “comprehension/expressive language.”  

 

19 hours ago, PeterPan said:

Yup. Mindwings has holes. I don't have to go through it page by page to know conceptually there are leaps, things where other programs are complementary. 

Combining the two comments above, nothing is really complete for everyone. Different people have needs that present differently, and those are different entry points.

I also think that different tools appeal to therapists, teachers, and parents with different strengths.

I think there are a million ways to think about this that doesn't have to mean a tool is deficient.

  • X tool makes a good spine
  • X tool breaks things into concepts 1, 3, and 5, and my kid needs 2, 4, and 6
  • X tool is more granular than what I need  [in this area...]
  • X tool is broader than what I need [in this area...]
  • X tool gives the big picture, but I need this detail
  • X tool gives this detail, but I need the big picture
  • It's easier for me to use Y tool and expand than to use X tool and get more specific
  • It's easier for me to use X tool and fill in the specifics than to use Y tool and expand on it

I would also note that the Mindwings line keeps expanding as people see new possibilities, develop more parts and pieces, ask for specific resources, etc., but they stick to a theme. This is just a particular way of going about doing their business and providing products. From what I can see, the market is full of linear, specific tools that lack a spine, and they are a spine that is slowly fleshing out potential other products you can use.

I am not trying to be an apologist for MW products, but I am trying to point out that there is something incomplete about every tool out there, and that they do have a coherent vision and purpose, they do base things on evidence, etc. If I were new and reading this thread, I would be demoralized, and I would also feel like if the Story Grammar Marker or other product from MW resonated with me, I must be deficient.

We needed a spine because the details weren't coming together on their own, and MW products are providing exactly what we need.

In regard to the bolded, Peter Pan, I think you tend to be a person who would rather take a tool and stretch it, and SGM is already stretched and waiting to be filled in (but yet more granular than anything I would come up with on my own because I am not an SLP, lol!).

16 hours ago, PeterPan said:

This is actually terrific analysis. You may be correct that that's what it's saying, because he seems fine with open-ended questions when I work with him.

He's also at the stage my dd hit ,where he retorts that if you want to know you can read it yourself, etc. It's not like narrative is just this perennially normal thing to do, lol. Their minds want to move on to something else. That's why I think if I have the really targeted analytical questions, we'll get somewhere.

So yes, that's what I think it is, in my own mind, that he understands but has to get it out. Now the practice getting it out IS essential, sure! But it's not the same as not understanding. And some of it is whether he sees where he's going or is intrigued. He is all about efficiency and social justice, and to him it's an injustice to interrupt something he wants to happen (his read alouds) with questions, lol.

Well thanks. I think that's a point well-taken that the issue is getting it out, not so much understanding. There's some issue with understanding, but more with getting it out. 

I would caution that you might be giving more prompts for open-ended questions than you realize, or you haven't topped out the level yet of what he can do independently. I am not trying to be bleak, but my son can do all kinds of things as a paired activity that he can't do solo. The whole "read it yourself" retort may or may not be age-appropriate, but it is a great way to hide the fact that it's hard or that knowing what YOU need to hear from him is a skill that's hard for him. 

Notice that doesn't mean that he doesn't understand it--that means that he has to have a filter for what the audience needs to know. That is somewhat theory of mind, somewhat central coherence, and somewhat knowing the main points and details. There is a certain set of things an audience ALWAYS needs, just like a sentence always have to have a subject, a verb, and a complete thought--EET and Story Grammar stuff are both using a set list of things to attend to so that you are including necessary elements. EET is more limited and concrete (but someone could take it a long way with effort). Getting IT out is intimately tied to knowing what IT is that needs to come out. From what a person understands, what comes out and what is extraneous and why? What does the other person know or not know? What makes the story interesting or not? All of those are elements of the IT you want to get out. Then, IT has to be strung together in a functional and/or pleasing way.

So, I agree that there is an element of "I understand it, but I can't say it." but I would run that through a filter of why can't they get it out--in my son's case, he's not sure what to include or not include, and he can't scale it. Thememaker/SGM stuff is really helping with this, particularly the critical thinking triangle. Yes, I am saying what I've said on other threads, lol! 

Seeing where it's going can be limited by a person's limited ability to take perspective, and a person's perspective informs their sense of justice. So, at some point, you have to find out if his sense of justice needs more fine-tuning, or if his sense of justice is being tripped because of a limited perspective. And then there is reading for fun should be fun, but I really think that's a separate discussion. 

On being intrigued--I think for kids that are far enough along to go along without needing to be cajoled, being intrigued is kind of limited. There are many things I have to do that aren't inherently intriguing, but there are things that are intriguing, but I don't know enough about them to be intrigued. 

Why am I harping on this? I think that when we're talking about kids who have known limitations in these areas, these things can be a false positive for skills that don't exist if we are not careful. These are things that were "evidence" that my son could do things he can't do. There's been a lot of wasted time because we chalked up missing skills to some explanation like, "He'll do it when he's interested." "He seems to be able to answer those questions with me." Etc.

1 hour ago, Mainer said:

Yeah! If you turn that into a game, I'll buy it ? 

Pinterest has a lot of stuff on the EET. MIndwings has tons of games.

  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, kbutton said:

The whole "read it yourself" retort may or may not be age-appropriate, but it is a great way to hide the fact that it's hard or that knowing what YOU need to hear from him is a skill that's hard for him. 

Oh definitely, I was not clueless about that then or now, lol. 

1 hour ago, kbutton said:

run that through a filter of why can't they get it out--in my son's case, he's not sure what to include or not include, and he can't scale it. Thememaker/SGM stuff is really helping with this, particularly the critical thinking triangle. Yes, I am saying what I've said on other threads, lol! 

That's really exciting!! I had missed how SGM/Thememaker was working out for him. That's really, REALLY exciting. I was going through MW for their sale this month, to see what else I should order, and Thememaker isn't even recommended for ds' age. Like even if he had all the language in the world, it's not developmentally appropriate yet or necessary. So to me I'm just sticking within the listings for his age and going can he do well and comfortably and pleasantly the things that he's supposed to be doing for his age/stage. Then we'll cross the next bridges, lol. We have plenty of work to do right within his own age/stage.

1 hour ago, kbutton said:

his sense of justice needs more fine-tuning

Bingo. That's why we're starting the counseling now. I haven't given the psych any directions at all. I just said we needed to get in his head, and she knows what we want. And I view that as a long-term thing, that she's gonna start getting in his head and we're gonna keep working at it from lots of ways for a long time.

1 hour ago, kbutton said:

things can be a false positive for skills

You're telling the woman who just let go ANOTHER SLP for that, lol. And today they were like wow, are you sure, maybe give her another chance? Nope, sorry. Right now skills are put up or shut up for me. I make no assumptions any more, because too many odd holes turn up. Like he should, in theory, be able to sort two ways, but today he couldn't. He can sort 1 way, but not by 2 parameters, lol.

1 hour ago, kbutton said:

Pinterest has a lot of stuff on the EET. MIndwings has tons of games.

That's a good idea... And I did want to ask you what EET does *beyond* the listings for each bead. Like once you've done that, where does it go? What are their goals with it after that? 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, PeterPan said:

That's a good idea... And I did want to ask you what EET does *beyond* the listings for each bead. Like once you've done that, where does it go? What are their goals with it after that? 

I am not sure. It was a natural fit for one of my kids, and he didn't need more than just a nudge with it, so it wasn't a focus for long. The other is doing better with MW because he needed more abstract and less concrete. I know they do use it for describing things, and you could probably write a paragraph about a concrete topic from the EET. 

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thank you guys for all these resources!  My kid doesn't need them, but for teaching, I need to get better at teaching comprehension skills.  I've always been really good at teaching decoding and fluency, but very meh on teaching comprehension, because it came so naturally for my kids (and frankly, for most of the kids I've worked with).  I mean, when they aren't great at decoding or not fluent, their comprehension stunk, but once that got better, the comprehension piece just fell into place once they weren't using all their mental energy on mechanics.  So I don't have a lot to offer kids who can read the words but don't comprehend.  Definitely need to improve that skill set!  Some of these books look awesome!

  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 hours ago, kbutton said:

I am not sure. It was a natural fit for one of my kids, and he didn't need more than just a nudge with it, so it wasn't a focus for long. The other is doing better with MW because he needed more abstract and less concrete. I know they do use it for describing things, and you could probably write a paragraph about a concrete topic from the EET. 

See that's what I suspected, when I looked it over, that EET is great for the audience it's really useful for and not enough for the kids who need the components expanded for them to click. So that makes sense that those kids that it's really ideal for would get it, click, and take off. And it equally makes sense why a kid like mine would need explicit steps for every last piece, every connection, everything, sigh.

He really enjoyed his new people at the autism school today. He fed off their energy and had a great time. I think we're gonna try to consolidate workers. They're going to line us up with a different SLP to see if we can still make it happen. That appt should be next week, so we'll see. It's kind of frustrating to lose so much time going here and there, but actually he had a great time today and found it so stimulating, I think it was a good thing and worth the disruption. 

Tomorrow I'm gonna try to begin the intervention the Word Callers book suggests for the meaning/orthography flexibility. I'm fascinated by this idea that improving that could improve comprehension. At least it's concrete and not torturous to work on. They make it sound like the intervention should go quickly. I just need to read and get up to speed.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Terabith, make sure you catch Word Callers: Small-Group and One-to-One Interventions for Children Who "Read" but Don't Comprehend (Research-Informed Classroom) That's the one I'm using with ds right now, doing the assessments. She has another book Executive Skills and Reading Comprehension: A Guide for Educators that people also talk about. 

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

PeterPan, it was a long day of 3 optometrist appointments (mine included), then picking new frames and ordering the glasses, shopping for clothing (back to school sales), grocery shopping, and other errands. I am beat! I just wanted you to know that I'll be back to reply, likely tomorrow. I'll try to open that book from Google Books (it's only a page long) and just type out what I want to quote. The book is extremely pricey and I do not recommend it to anyone. Although, after going over the toc I decided to add it to my future purchases list, when I am ready to spend the asking price ? that is, because I'm a psych geek like I have said before. I only linked it for that one page for you (pages 193-194 on autism). Anyway, it may get lengthy going into it and I'm nursing a migraine. It's also pretty late and I need to head to bed. Back hopefully tomorrow!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

PeterPan — this is my impression but I think it’s worth asking what other people see.

I totally get what you are saying about looking at things like EET and thinking it looks too advanced.

However — it (or maybe not EET specifically, but any of the “lets look at the big picture” comprehension things) is *always* going to look too advanced, until you actually start it.  

There will be some tiny beginning level to get started (again I don’t know EET specifically).  

But it’s like — it’s a category within language, and I think it’s important to get started with it on some level.  It’s really possible you are but using other things.

From what I have seen — a lot of things start with character and setting.  VV has describing setting.  MW has describing setting (with the 5 senses).  Common Core has “identify the setting” and “describe the setting” kinds of things very early.

And then identifying and describing characters is also very early.  

And then that is a building block to move forward from, and maybe you look at this kind of thing and it doesn’t look too advanced.

The thing is — kids who are using *words* can do things with identifying character and setting.  They can be working on word-to-sentence and describing things.  It’s also a way to generalize expressive language. 

So it’s hard to say — but there are very good language things to do that are targeting other language areas.  But this is one where it does tie in, and kids have to start somewhere/sometime.  

I totally get looking at it and thinking it will seem babyish or stupid, and not seem to have a big pay-off, that is what I thought when my son had character/setting goals in Kindergarten.  I thought “what’s the point” about them.  But it grows from there and there is a lot of language/comprehension to come from it.  

I don’t think it’s something where you necessarily do a big chunk of focus for a few weeks, it’s more the kind of thing where it’s “drip drip drip” and you could do 5-10-15 minutes a day, and then it gives a way to talk about people and places you go, and that is generalizing the language and concepts.

And then it gives a lot of synergy for conversation and talking about things he does. 

Anyway I think doing word sorts is *also* very good, it sounds cool.  

But I think this kind of thing might be missing. 

Something that is common with autism, I don’t know if your son is like this, but it can be hard for kids to really notice other people, notice what they like and don’t like, notice how they respond to certain things, etc.  Well — noticing is a first step, and describing is a first step, to ever get into “knowing your audience” kinds of things or “tailoring your message to the audience.”

That is being talked about for middle school/high school, but it has to start somewhere with internalizing “this is something to pay attention to, it matters.”  

So maybe he can already identify some descriptions of a character, or character traits, and then compare/contrast two characters, or predict how one or another character will respond.  Or maybe he doesn’t notice those things.  

But the problem is if he doesn’t notice it, then you have to start somewhere.  If he doesn’t have that kind of language, you have to start somewhere. 

And I think it’s very possible to keep going up in other language areas and not have balance to this, and then in the mean time, time passes by without starting to internalize “I should notice these things” and in the meantime I am not sure that you are going to get to a point with other language things to suddenly go “oh now we can jump in on this.”  I think it’s a “start where you are and probably at a low level” thing all of it’s own. 

I’m not sure how far you went with Talkies/VV (am I remembering that?) but that is an entry from the word level, so it’s not too advanced.  

And then if you look at things like what Mainer did with the writing —————— that is “drip drip drip” through the year, with it being a short time every day, but seeing progress over the year.  And the kids probably improved their spoken narratives with that intervention, too, if they had needs like that.  But anyway — it’s “drip drip drip” but her students will be having it every year and it really does add up.  

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 8/14/2018 at 4:11 PM, PeterPan said:

Yup. Mindwings has holes. I don't have to go through it page by page to know conceptually there are leaps, things where other programs are complementary. I have high hopes for this Richardson stuff. The outline of her approach to summarizing was solid, and I think it will explain why people are doing MW/SGM pieces and not having them come into a whole. I think the SGM was still too linear, rather than going at it conceptually.

Thanks! We've made SO much progress, especially the last 8 months, I'm really not freakish. It's turbulent while you're learning something new and getting your assumptions kicked around and your mental hair dissheveled, lol, but it will settle back down. Just because we haven't accomplished something YET doesn't mean we WON'T. It just means we haven't done it YET. I have actual confidence that we'll be able to get where we want to be. I think if we stay calm and protect our time together and don't waste time driving to therapies with people who AREN'T GOING TO ACCOMPLISH ANYTHING, we'll get where we need to be. The single most valuable person to him continues to be ME, and it's astonishing how hard it is to find people who get that. A laundry list of workers, all working at half level, would not get him to the same place. They might get some kids somewhere, but they wouldn't get HIM somewhere. He has signficant potential and needs workers who are ready to step up to the plate. The PhD OT we saw today was ready to step up to the plate. The SLP was an utter flop, not ready to work with him, not ready to work this hard, not ready to step up to what it really takes to work with the hardest clients.

I need a nap. I just get so tired. I try so hard sometimes. (whine)

 

I am going to have to go back-and-forth while replying so bear with me!

First, I just wanted to say that when I liked the above post it was not for the MindWings comment. Like I said before, the only thing I can say about MindWings is that it is not the way I approach things. I cannot express an opinion as to whether it has holes or not. I just skimmed through most of the other posts but I believe that someone said that you will not find the "perfect" program/ resource. I firmly believe that! It is not possible to find something that will fit the needs of each individual child perfectly. Their development is not only atypical but their need for compensations clearly shows that they do not follow a typical developmental tranjectory. One example is in procedural memory deficits (no, this is not all I am going to say about procedural memory). They affect SLI, autism, etc. For kids that it affects language, it affects syntax. These children then compensate by using their declarative memory

Quote

Nevertheless, evidence suggests that declarative memory can at least partly compensate for these grammatical deficits in SLI, for example by storing complex forms as chunks, or learning explicit rules (Ullman and Pierpont, 2005).

 

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3664921/

Notice how it states "partly compensate" Compensations will not lead them down a path of typical development. This is why I use a multitude of resources. This is why I say, I don't believe in do x.y.z and boom, problem solved. Like Barry Prizant advocates, I look at each of my boys as a whole. I factor in their labels and where the weaknesses stem from. Yes, we all look at things differently and I look through the prism of psychology. I do not believe that the label "autism" encompasses everything. I believe some here believe that. These kids have several to many things going on. Like PeterPan loves to say, it's like peeling back onions when it comes to the layers of what can be affecting each child. Not everything stems from autism, even if it is found in some kids on the spectrum. So you can choose to look at kids with expressive language deficits as a group and follow a process which will bring them to the desired developmental path; and hopefully it will! I choose to find the underlying reasons, and studies have shown procedural memory deficits in kids with SLI and autism is an underlying issue. This is why they are not naturally picking up grammatical structures. Teaching grammar and syntax taps into their declarative memory. They store information as chunks (Notice the link to what you have been seeing, PeterPan?), which means that the comprehension does not run deep. It means that they associate a meaning to this chunk and don't know how to manipulate it and change it based on what they are trying to say. 

Edited by Guest
Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 8/15/2018 at 5:12 AM, PeterPan said:

Well it's not do you dig deep, does someone else not dig deeply.

 

When I share how I approach and view things I am not comparing myself to others. I have said this before! Comparing myself to others or my kids to others' kids is not my thing. We all view things through our own prism. There are many and variable reasons for my way of thinking and it's not something that we need to go into, but when it comes to how I approach things with my kids, my prism is highly affected by psychology. It is why I have made a study of it. 

Quote

The reality is we have to *generalize* the skills. We need them to be able to use their language in all kinds of settings, not just in a worksheet. I think about that a lot with my ds, because I've used so many worksheets. They gave us a lot of structure to go through things very thoroughly, things that needed to be gone through that thoroughly, but then it's also essential to generalize and carry them over to lots of other settings. I think about it with sentence structure, where my ds has one type of sentence structure to use a particular type of word but might not use that word in ANOTHER sentence structure in a different location in the sentence! So then he's saying what he learned in a worksheet, which means it's only useful when the situation matches what the worksheet was.

 

If you noticed my last comment in my previous post it might give you an idea of why you are seeing what you are seeing and why the generalization becomes an issue. 

Quote

That's why there's SO much farther to go and why I'm aggravated to the hilt when I can't find an SLP ready to think that hard. They're out there, but sometimes these large practices are gatekeepers, where some secretary or someone is deciding who sees whom. Even people who think they are expressive language experts aren't always up to it. I swear I think sometimes they go into the field because they HAVE the problems themselves!! Let's be real,it happens. 

 

This is from what I had linked in the book by Ullman. I found a PDF with the same information. Here's something I want to quote from it at this point. It may help you understand why you are having issues finding SLPs to deal with what you are seeing.

Quote

Most research on language deficits in autism has focused on the pragmatic difficulties found in the disorder – that is, impairments in using and interpreting language appropriately for the social and real-world contexts in which utterances are made (Tager-Flusberg 2000).

However, evidence suggests that autism may also be associated with abnormalities of grammar, as well as non-linguistic functions that depend on the procedural memory system (for reviews, see Ullman 2004; Walenski et al. Under Review; Walenski et al. 2006). High-functioning individuals with autism may  Michael T. Ullman show syntactic abnormalities in both receptive and expressive language.

 

Here's a link to the PDF:

https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/4a68/c5ee4d60e329ebf460a03702a56bb8a4867c.pdf

If you analyze the info on autism (pages 141-142 in this PDF) it may blow your paradigm on quite a few things. 

Look at this for example:

Quote

Both the acquisition and processing of both motor and non-motor sequences have been reported to be abnormal.

 

Now think of your son's apraxia. See where the breakdown in brain function happened and see how this also connects to what you are seeing with expressive language. They are linked to procedural memory deficits.

I was going to go into further analysis, but I think I have said enough. Like I said previously, if you analyze the information found here you can see tons of links to much of what you are seeing. 

Now, what do you think helped your son when it came to PROMPT? When you work on him with PROMPT, you are training his muscles and working with procedural memory. This is why PROMPT has been so effective ? You could say I trained my son's language "muscles", just like you trained your son's facial muscles to remember the movements they needed to form letter sounds. I just chose to work on the area of deficit, instead of just using his declarative memory. He was already making his own compensations through declarative memory anyway. 

Edited by Guest
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Procedural memory is implicit memory (I have no clue, just googling here), so any sort of naturalistic approach to language development that results in them retracing steps and connecting the dots could, in theory, be tapping into it. 

For ds, he has made leaps I *haven't* explicitly taught by working on totally *different* categories of things. So I think there's some deep developmental stuff going on there. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

9 minutes ago, Moved On said:

You could say I trained my son's language "muscles" just like you trained your son's facial muscles to remember the movements they needed to form letter sounds. I just chose to work on the area of deficit, instead of just using his declarative memory. He was already making his own compensations through declarative memory anyway. 

Honestly I have no clue what you're trying to say. Procedural memory is implicit memory, not something taught explicitly. So you're saying you worked with him on language via naturalistic methods and he inferred something? I have no clue what you mean.

10 minutes ago, Moved On said:

It may help you understand why you are having issues finding SLPs to deal with what you are seeing.

They have no clue because they're being told to treat 100 kids for 30+ different things and they don't have time or funding to become expert at things. The one I saw this week was a novice, totally green. These SLPs need specializations, like MDs, and they need to have TIME to develop expertise. Instead they're like GPs, trying to treat all kinds of stuff. That's why they defer to kits, because they haven't read the research, aren't experts in xyz. They're learning on the fly, just like we parents are. 

And the irony is that all I WANTED was somebody with an ability to have a conversation. For real. If she had been competent to engage him in conversation, I would have stayed. That alone would have satisfied me. But then we go back to the problem that people sometimes major in what they're WEAK in, and she was so timid, so whatever, she couldn't sit down and have a real conversation with a 9 yo boy. Freaked her out and she hid behind worksheets and kept saying no, no, no. That's certified SLP by ASHA. 

So I'll try one more time, but this is why I get tired of it. 

And no, I don't see how the fact that this brain scan difference is there is leading to a METHODOLOGY. You talk about PROMPT, but you know how much these (remove not nice words) people slam PROMPT? For real. They look at all the tom dick and harrys with level 1 (nothingness) training and say that's what it is, conclude the results are found there, and go back to, what by the Ullman hypothesis would be DECLARATIVE learning instead of procedural. For real. That idiot SLP literally sat there telling my ds (in so many words) that he was DEFECTIVE, that he "needed therapy" and that by gum he better KNOW why he's there and think about it and talk about it and let it stamp like an A on his forehead!!!

THAT is the current philosophy being taught to SLPs. They aren't all like that, but I've actually run into several that do this. They sit there going oh, he needs to KNOW why he's there and articulate it, blah blah. And here I am with this really nice, naturalistic approach that we keep building him up, help his brain connect the pieces, and he gets there, no trauma, no drama.

That SUCKS to treat people that way. My boy is not DEFECTIVE, and he does not need to have an "I'm broken so I go to therapy" mindset. Like what in the world, he needs conversation help because he's broken???? Really??? Can't we just say we're all growing and we have friends and we practice to get skills we want??? Oh no, we must glorify the sainted SLP.

I'm telling you, I left so red zone, so red zone. And I'm upset because they want me to schedule a session with a different SLP there (who may be better), and I don't know what we're running into. Some of the people could be really good, but this really big in the head, I'm so sainted and you're so defective thing is just outrageous. Almost anybody else in that building had more conversation skills than that SLP, but I was supposed to pay her $140 an hour because she had a certificate. Seriously.

I'm on a rant.

We all know people with autism suck at learning things through implication. What's not showing up there is WHY. I've seen blogs talking about chemicals missing and how they're using alzheimers drugs to fill in those missing links chemically and BOOM the kid's IQ and ability to learn goes up dramatically. The blog is Epiphany, and the guy is so technical you can hardly read it. I just don't know how I'm supposed to translate the about procedural memory being involved into an action plan, and I don't have an explanation of what caused it not to be functioning well in the first place. It seems to me that anything that helps the concepts unfold naturalistically or by retracing steps that would have happened developmentally would play to that.

Well I need to go do some of the Cartwright exercises with him and see how they go. I'm actually curious to see what it brings. I just think it's ironic that the steps they want wouldn't have been possible if I hadn't done all these other things first. And the other thing is that really he wasn't even capable of doing these things into somewhat recently, because he needed the convergence of articulation, etc. skills. I was talking with someone elsewhere about their dc with significant apraxia and SLI, and the dc can't do what my kid can. And it took 8 years of knock your gut out, just doing it and doing it, to get it to that point.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 8/15/2018 at 8:26 AM, PeterPan said:

Ok, so 7:13 in the video she finally transitions. The cards are a cool idea. I think another source was suggesting 5 fingers (always with the student, haha). And then at 8:22 she does what she's calling sentence starters. I try to be really careful about that, because it's a huge goal for ds to be able to answer in complete sentences. 

 

This is sentence starters for initiating narration. Not speaking in complete sentences. You are confusing therapy with a reading lesson. Her role is not to do therapy. Her role is not to work on expressive language. This is reading intervention. She starts a sentence and then lets the kids take off with it. Then she encourages them to carry on. There are writing resources that use a similar approach with story starters. 

Quote

I'll keep watching. It's definitely interesting, but it's a mix. They spend so much time undoing the messes they create by not teaching normal decoding, mercy. Also, the lack of active participation and lack of language from the students is troubling. I think it's really easy to get caught up as teachers in the analysis or how we (they) sound, rather than making sure the STUDENTS are doing the learning. If the student isn't responding, who's really having a good time there and learning? :wink:

 

I can't speak for how they teach reading. The video is not enough to allow me determine that. However, think of how challenging it is to keep up with five kids while teaching at theh same time. This is why I said that group setting have some weaknesses and cannot focus on areas that most likely need therapy. 

As for the participation, we do not really know if these are kids that she has regularly worked with or if they were chosen for the video. Then think of how the kids are feeling having cameras on them while doing a lesson. You have to always look at the whole picture.

Edited by Guest
Link to comment
Share on other sites

38 minutes ago, Moved On said:

Here's a link to the PDF:

https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/4a68/c5ee4d60e329ebf460a03702a56bb8a4867c.pdf

If you analyze the info on autism (pages 141-142 in this PDF)

So this doc, remember a hypothesis that has had further research since then, hits a ton of categories, including SLI and autism. It's kind of weird that they say telephone numbers are declarative memory and should be intact in autism (and declarative should be intact to their minds for SLI), but telephone numbers are specifically on developmental forms and something ds was noticeably behind on. 

The interesting contribution there is the connection of the FOXP2 gene and the Broca region. But again, the generalizations don't even seem to fit ds. Or, the better take away would be that therefore ds has *more* going on than those two things. We're waiting for our SPARK results, so I guess we'll see what they find. Maybe they'd turn up an explanation.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I worked with my son based on what he was trying to say, guiding him to organize his own words. It is why I don't give him scripts from the Linguisystems materials. I ask him the questions and he comes up with his own complete sentences at this stage. I also build other lessons into it. I will write his sentence and have him identify nouns, verbs, prepositions, etc. I use curricula and that incorporates working with explicit memory. It took a while to build my approach but it all started with The Teaching of Talking by Mark A. Ittleman.  I also helped him analyze the scripts he was repeating, or using his answers and guiding him how to change the wording, I taught him to break down and manipulate the chunks, etc. The way I approach things incorporates both explicit and implicit memory. 

Edited by Guest
Link to comment
Share on other sites

17 minutes ago, PeterPan said:

So this doc, remember a hypothesis that has had further research since then, hits a ton of categories, including SLI and autism. It's kind of weird that they say telephone numbers are declarative memory and should be intact in autism (and declarative should be intact to their minds for SLI), but telephone numbers are specifically on developmental forms and something ds was noticeably behind on. 

The interesting contribution there is the connection of the FOXP2 gene and the Broca region. But again, the generalizations don't even seem to fit ds. Or, the better take away would be that therefore ds has *more* going on than those two things. We're waiting for our SPARK results, so I guess we'll see what they find. Maybe they'd turn up an explanation.

 

PeterPan, this is why I look at all the labels involved. Some of what you are seeing is affected by the ADHD as well. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

43 minutes ago, PeterPan said:

We all know people with autism suck at learning things through implication.

 

You are overgeneralizing here. This is NOT the case with everything. As you can see from Ullman's report and from studies I have linked at various times, this is NOT the case with everything. There are actually areas of strength in ASD that are not found in the NT popullation. And it was not taught explicitly! 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Moved On said:

I worked with my son based on what he was trying to say, guiding him to organize his own words. It is why I don't give him scripts from the Linguisystems materials. I ask him the questions and he comes up with his own complete sentences at this stage. I also build other lessons into it. I will write his sentence and have him identify nouns, verbs, prepositions, etc. I use curricula and that incorporates working with explicit memory. It took a while to build my approach but it all started with The Teaching of Talking by Mark A. Ittleman.  I also helped him analyze the scripts he was repeating, or using his answers and guiding him how to change the wording, I taught him to break down and manipulate the chunks, etc. The way I approach things incorporates both explicit and implicit memory. 

That's interesting!! I remember you (or someone, probably you) mentioned that book. Our library has it, so now I can read it. Some things just aren't the right time and we pass on by an circle back later. :)

1 hour ago, Moved On said:

PeterPan, this is why I look at all the labels involved. Some of what you are seeing is affected by the ADHD as well. 

That's why I thought it was interesting that they were mentioning a part of the brain. This reading comprehension stuff in Word Callers is supposed to be all EF too. They lay a lot to EF I think.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, PeterPan said:

That's interesting!! I remember you (or someone, probably you) mentioned that book. Our library has it, so now I can read it. Some things just aren't the right time and we pass on by an circle back later. ?

 

I am the only one to have ever mentioned Ittleman's book on here. I have deleted it since. I raised a lot of eyebrows at the time. And that's just a mild way of putting it! I'm sure some people in this thread or reading this thread that were involved in the discussion, remember! You had said you read the first and last chapter and decided that you were already doing similar things. Note, the book is for people with aphasia. So, you might look at it again and again feel the same way. I connected the dots between my research and what Ittleman was doing. I can't promise you that you will see it the same way as I did! 

Edited by Guest
Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, PeterPan said:

That's why I thought it was interesting that they were mentioning a part of the brain. This reading comprehension stuff in Word Callers is supposed to be all EF too. They lay a lot to EF I think.

 

Of course! Procedural memory is directly linked to EF. Think about it! I have linked info in the past on that. And, Asperger's is not affected in language by the way. That's the difference between AS and ASD. My oldest picked up grammar naturally. He has only had a weakness in writing. That has to do with structuring and organizing his thoughts. It has to do with planning. This is where the ADD kicks in with him. 

 

Edited by Guest
Link to comment
Share on other sites

And just to clarify, what I described that I do with my son is not what you will find in Ittleman's book. The way I approach things is a combination of my research, reading, tips and strategies I have found, and largely my own. I have brought all these things together to cater to my own specific child and what I felt he needed. You will not find the process of how I do things in any book. Ittleman's book was something I stumbled on during my research on procedural memory. It was my starting point while I continued researching and tweaking and adding to what I was doing with him. I am still refining it to this day. There is a lot in that beautiful little mind of his and I (through much prayer) have tried to crush any obstacles that get in his way. So, this is something you may have to come up with yourself for your own child. 

Edited by Guest
Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Moved On said:

You had said you read the first and last chapter and decided that you were already doing similar things. Note, the book is for people with aphasia.

Oh who knows, I probably am, lol. I've been around the block a bit. We've only put $80k+ into ds' speech therapy... I haven't tallied it, but when you do the math on the averages, that's where it has been at. And actually, I think aphasia was on ds' original paperwork from 8 years ago. At the time it caught my eye because it wasn't the exact term I was expecting. I still have that paper and came across it again, so I'm not crazy there, lol. I think she said sometimes they put it with a certain term for coding for insurance purposes. 

I don't use the term aspergers about anyone in my family, even though a psych tried, because I agree it doesn't make sense. It's DSM4 anyway and we did everything under DSM5. Ds' scores on the ADOS put him more in the traditional autism range, and no one of recent has tried to use the term aspergers with him. I think at the time it was bandied about, he was 6 and the discrepancies were less obvious. His expressive language was bad enough in April that we went ahead and bought LAMP when it went on sale. Now we've really come to the other side and are looking more hopeful, but that's where we were. And I agree that people using terms like that early on with us were a mis-direction that slowed down the identification of the language issues.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well we started the exercises in chapter 4 of Cartwright's Word Callers today. We were grouping picture and then word cards in a 2X2 grid to work on flexibility, dealing with multiple parameters (orthography and meaning), and being able to get out the reasoning. He seemed to have advanced in his thinking from the assessment activities yesterday, so he was faster and closer today. The book gives point levels for how completely the task is accomplished, and he's now at the point that he just has to calm down and get it out. So he's able to group them accurately without in-between steps or major errors like going diagonally, but it's a challenge to hold all that in his mind and get it out. I suspect tomorrow he'll get it there, no problem. We'll see, but that's how his trajectory looks. 

Chapter 5 covers ambiguity, homonyms, multiple meanings, etc., and I need to see what is out there. The book gives links, but I'd like something more thorough or systematic. I'm not sure it's a topic you accomplish so much as you dribble and keep working on, seems to me. Chapter 6 then goes into summaries and visualization I think. I think this is the kind of thing where we could do chapter 4, go somewhere else and work on other things, then come back. Things like homonyms and ambiguities are nice, but I'm not sure there gonna be a lot of bang for my buck or MAJOR, lynch pin, pivotal things to work on. At this point I'd like major things. We'll see. 

The Jan Richardson books came today, so I can start reading them.

 

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

57 minutes ago, PeterPan said:

Oh who knows, I probably am, lol. I've been around the block a bit. We've only put $80k+ into ds' speech therapy... I haven't tallied it, but when you do the math on the averages, that's where it has been at. And actually, I think aphasia was on ds' original paperwork from 8 years ago. At the time it caught my eye because it wasn't the exact term I was expecting. I still have that paper and came across it again, so I'm not crazy there, lol. I think she said sometimes they put it with a certain term for coding for insurance purposes. 

 

Actually, I had linked you an article recently that shows that most therapies focus on explicit, not procedural memory. There are very few therapists that even attempt to treat through procedural. Also, Ittleman's approach is unique as he designed it so that even a carer can work with the person and help stimulate communication. It does not say anywhere that he stimulates procedural memory. I used elements of his approach and incorporated it with my own. 

I had no idea you had aphasia mentioned. It has never been mentioned for either one of my two. The link is the part of the brain it affects. There are similarities in how it affects language, which was why I used the resource, regardless of that fact that it was not written for children on the spectrum.

Quote

I don't use the term aspergers about anyone in my family, even though a psych tried, because I agree it doesn't make sense. It's DSM4 anyway and we did everything under DSM5. Ds' scores on the ADOS put him more in the traditional autism range, and no one of recent has tried to use the term aspergers with him. I think at the time it was bandied about, he was 6 and the discrepancies were less obvious. His expressive language was bad enough in April that we went ahead and bought LAMP when it went on sale. Now we've really come to the other side and are looking more hopeful, but that's where we were. And I agree that people using terms like that early on with us were a mis-direction that slowed down the identification of the language issues.

 

That comment was not aimed at you. It was a general comment. But, since you mentioned it, realize that the PROMPT therapists gave your son so much functional language that at that age it could have given the impression of Asperger's. Remember, the psychs are human. They can make mistakes too. When a child has had therapies from very young, plus the limited time spent on the evals, it can lead to misdiagnosis (although, misdiagnosis is not really the correct term here). Attwood says that children that have had therapies from very young and are HF can come really close to presenting like Asperger's. This is why, some, support the new DSM. But again, the severity/ support levels are really individual to the psych as well, and they are not all interpreting them the same. For me, the only reason distinguishing between AS and ASD matters is because I believe that there are differences and have seen it with my two. When I use this information (although old now since the new DSM) it helps me get a better idea on how to approach things. 

Edited by Guest
Link to comment
Share on other sites

14 minutes ago, Moved On said:

there are differences

Oh my yes! I've been in a number of autism schools here, and the breadth is WIDE in how it presents. We'll go in, with my ds with his gifted IQ, lots of chatter, athletic physique, and there will be a dc who is the total inverse, same diagnosis. It's just crazy. And yes, support levels and severity are not actually the same, which is really confusing. Someone can have a more severe presentation and need less support. Support levels are a snapshot to communicate, and really they do help. Like when we hang with level 2 kids, granted there are differences, but still there are similarities. They bumped my ds to 2, and you could say well he's not the same. But actually his support needs are significant. They're partly significant because he's trying to do so much and partly because it's just inherent to him. When people aren't prepared to provide that support, it can actually turn and get dangerous pretty quickly, like with that dingy SLP who was not prepared to handle him. If I hadn't been there, she could have turned it south pretty quickly on her own and had a dangerous situation. She wasn't prepared to handle him and wasn't mentally equipped to problem solve and be flexible and have contingencies. 

And yes, that's pretty much what happened. We were doing so so much therapy, just trying to have him be intelligible for the psych, that it shifted how he presented. But fortunately with enough more psychs and time, we got it sorted out. It was just a mess. We should have brought EI in at 18-20 months and he would have been diagnosed then and been done with it. All the mess, all the expense, all of that was because we didn't. It was a huge mistake. And we were told stupidity like it's just apraxia, pure apraxia never happens but he's clearly the poster for it, blah blah. All this crap from non-experts (non-psychs) that we allowed to delay us. It's our fault. It would have been a long, sucky journey anyway, even if he had been diagnosed. Think about if they had tried to do ABA on him. They would have been wanting output he wasn't ready to give. Now at least he's ready to give it, and it feels very NATURAL the way we're doing things. We just keep pressing on, like ok you're ready to do this so let's go DO it. When we see the opening, we're really doing it.

Our behaviorist is really of the opinion that we're ok, that we're on track, that we're meeting him where he is. That's why I resist this idea that the sky is falling, that nothing will work out, that I'm doing a terrible job, blah blah. We've done everything he was ready for the best we could. The behaviorist's take is that some things that seem late sometimes come together surprisingly well when the dc is really READY. And when I pick who to listen to, that's going to be who I listen to, because she has seen him, worked with him, and is staking her professional reputation on giving good advice. And to her we're on track and just need to keep working intensely and giving him rest periods to apply/generalize/grow/broaden with the skills. She likes what we're doing.

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Ok, so I'm reading on another list where they're discussing "guided reading" and apparently there's more to it than what I realized. They're saying it's evidence-based for K-2 but used to avoid give explicit (de-contextualized) decoding instruction. So by guided, they mean putting the kids into a context and then guiding them, in that context, through a list of cuing methods, to work on comprehension and decoding. Never nonsense words and the goal is in context, with the blend of cues (phonics, semantics, syntax, pictures, paragraphs, etc.). 

So with that explanation, it makes SENSE why Jan Richardson is doing so much reading for them in the video clue MO gave, because literally she never had as a goal that they explicitly decode everything on the page. Also, I'm going through the RISE book by her, and the phonics method they're endorsing is rime (word families) plus beginning and then guessing by context. That's their methodology. Now the RISE book itself has a TON of great stuff! But like I suspected, the phonics instruction is entirely bunk. It's a blend of look at some parts and guess, never explicit instruction, because they want to "guide" them into reading somehow, woo-woo. And to be an equal opportunity knocker, I'll point out that other word family approaches (BJU for instance) are implicit phonics too, meaning they don't teach the sound-orthography correlation outright but want the dc to figure it out for themselves implicitly. 

There was also this curious comment, I'm not sure how precisely, technically made in the place I was reading, that reading is developmental. So yes, if you think is developmental (a natural phenomenon, something they grow into and discover), then that would explain why guided reading and guessing and implicit phonics instruction would make sense. But when you get your head on straight and realize that only the phonological processing was developmental, that once you move to orthography it's unnatural, man-made, and has to be TAUGHT, then you see why they're screwed in the head. Their whole foundation for why they're doing it, how they expect the dc to learn, is messed up. Anything involving orthography is unnatural and not developmental. That's linguistics 101. Actually I don't know where I learned that, but it's just real basic stuff.

So anyways, I indeed started reading at the BACK of the RISE book. I like it a lot so far, except for all the guessing and implicit phonics and mess. But for comprehension, for organizing all these things we *know* but don't necessarily have in one place as a toolbox, it's REALLY SHARP. The entire appendix (half the book? it was a lot) is cards that I'm hoping come as a pdf. I haven't figured it out yet. She gives planning forms where you then mark out which tool card (module) from the appendix you're using for what reading. Really sharp, really organized, really practical. I think the cards/modules are arranged by order of development of the skills, but I'm not sure. I'll need to read the front of the book to figure that out, lol. That's my project for the next couple days, along with cleaning the house for company. I've got on my power shoes, so we'll see, lol.

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I thought she was great in the clip as well, very energetic and on task and just... on top of things. So much of teaching depends on the energy and focus of the teacher, which is great and not-great at the same time, since most adults are chronically sleep deprived! Anyway. I didn't like the guessing in the clip, either - like, oh, if you see a blend B-L, then you say BL and then you can guess the rest. Although she has a good point that if a student is monitoring for meaning, they very well may be able to guess the correct word. Not so good for learning to decode, though.

I always find it curious that my dyslexic students ARE often monitoring for meaning, so if the word is "sea" they might likely substitute "ocean, " even though the words are nothing alike in spelling. And then there are the dyslexic kids who are decoding poorly AND also not monitoring for meaning. 

Those cards sound interesting. 

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I really wasn't paying too much attention on the decoding/ reading part of things. I had to walk away and come back several times. With the boys, three pets, the house, cooking, the garden, homeschooling, therapies... it's extremely hard to be in one place for long. I am always focused on 2 or 3 or more things at once.

This was a video of a second grade group. I'm old school and an early reader. By second grade I was reading in three languages. My oldest was reading in two languages many grades ahead in English by age 5. In 4th I think it was, I gave him the passage tests on ElizabethB's website and he was decoding at a 12th grade level. My youngest I haven't given any of the passage tests so far, but again by age 4 he was decoding grades ahead. I had tested him on Elizabeth's word lists when he was little and I can't remember how many grades ahead he was decoding. This is not a brag! It's just to explain that I don't really notice things that don't affect my children so I really missed that part it seems. Since I have put a lot of emphasis on proper pencil grip, posture, and letter formation however, that was one thing that did stand out for me. That would be worked on separately from the reading lesson though. Another thing that was amusing was how much better the boys' grip was versus the girls. Usually it's the other way around. This made me wonder if the kids were even from the same school. Anyway, just some unrelated observations. 

PeterPan, since you had said that your son is decoding many grades ahead, I figured you were only focused on her approach to comprehension. This was another reason why I didn't pay close attention to that aspect of the video.

Edited by Guest
Link to comment
Share on other sites

And here are some of the issues I was trying to point out in group reading when there are other kids in the class. Listen to the racket going on from the various activities by various students separate to the group. I have sensory issues and always ran into class first at the beginning of the year to get a front row seat in front of the teacher. That noise would have been a serious focus issue! I feel really bad for the ADHD and autistic kids that have to try and focus in this noise!

ETA: Not the right video. Let me try again!

 

 

Edited by Guest
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

 Share

×
×
  • Create New...