If you had an hour a day for language arts...

[Kanin]

On 8/15/2019 at 3:39 PM, Pen said:

Sure, they may get faster at it.  One good Kilgallon sort of sentence day after day will add up though.

 

This is interesting... I just looked at the preview on Amazon, and it looks a lot like the book I love, The Writing Revolution. I was always wishing there was a workbook to go along with TWR, and this looks similar! Yay. Thanks. Ordered it!!

[Lecka]

Review is so valuable.  You don't have to just try to move through things.  That is also good, but so is review.  But things can be more solid sometimes at a lower level with more review.  

Like -- at some point there has to be just consolidation/practice..... I think it can be spread out or it can be later after going through more (but with less pausing/reviewing).  

It would be nice to just move through things and not have consolidation/practice/review..... but is that reality for a struggling student?  Not ime.  

I have a private theory this is why some struggling students who have never had a good program or someone to spend time with them, can go so quickly -- because they would have been fine with a good program or some time, and don't have such a need for consolidation/practice/review.  

Edited August 19, 2019 by Lecka

[PeterPan]

There is an older edition workbook floating around for Writing Revolution. Don't have a link handy.

On the Quizlet, I loaded the words, phrases, and sentences from Barton for the lesson we were working on, allowing us to drill to fluency in flashcard mode. Then they have games so you can practice spelling with raining letters, crosswords, matching, whatever. And the quizlet app comes in android, desktop, etc. too, so you can throw it on any device you have, even a $40 kindle fire. 

Edited August 19, 2019 by PeterPan

[PeterPan]

36 minutes ago, Lecka said:

why some struggling students who have never had a good program or someone to spend time with them, can go so quickly

Well fwiw ds went "quickly" only in the sense that we were working 2+ hours a day, intensely. We've had people on the boards do that, but it's not typical, lol. We also dropped other brain distractions during that, like speech therapy and gymnastics. I don't think we dropped the gymnastics completely, but we pulled back. We had been doing 2 hours of sport a day, sometimes 3, and we pulled back. And very little other academics. And no speech therapy. The brain only has so much energy to give, and we pick where to direct it. 

So his progress was in that context and it mirrors progress others have gotten when they've given significant time per day. It's not really something that is exactly balanced or healthy, lol. Other people make other choices. For where ds was, it was the right choice. It improved his speech to bump his phonological processing and working memory so much, and the SLPs were flabbergasted when we went back how much easier he was to work with. I think we had been literally motor planning words, individual words, because he didn't get the connection from word to word. So achieving reading was a huge goal. We also wanted it for leisure, which hasn't worked out so well, lol.

I think that's why ALL of us here are saying to keep really focused on that OG, because in reality that is where the magic is. And push into the classroom with Quizlet drills if you can. Seriously, we did those, just running through the entire set for the lesson, maybe 4X a day. Push that into the classroom and suddenly you've nabbed another 20 minutes of intervention.

[Lecka]

I was thinking of a little boy my oldest son was in pre-school speech therapy with.  He was foster-adopted and had been strapped into a booster seat for hours and hours a day for months (at least), and he was very delayed and in every therapy available in town.  OT, PT, speech, Headstart, etc.  

He made amazing progress and iirc was out of every therapy except PT in 18 months!  His parents were wonderful, too.  

I wouldn't call "2 hours a day" quick, that is 10 hours a week -- it's a lot of time.  It's condensed but it's still a lot of time.  

I did 2 hours a day of dyslexia remediation with my oldest son for a while, and...... it was both long and short!  It was a huge amount of time, but it was condensed in its way.  

That was over a summer and he was out of the lowest score range on the Dibels when he went back to school, but it was still -- he was not "caught up" like he just needed to catch up and then wouldn't need more extra help moving forward.  

I am a lot more about balance now, lol, but my context is a different child as well 🙂  

I don't think its realistic for everybody (every child) to do 2 hours a day.  

At the time I felt like I was only doing half as much as Lindamood Bell Centers!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  

That was what I thought was a good standard at the time.  

Edited August 19, 2019 by Lecka

[Pen]

1 hour ago, Mainer said:

This is interesting... I just looked at the preview on Amazon, and it looks a lot like the book I love, The Writing Revolution. I was always wishing there was a workbook to go along with TWR, and this looks similar! Yay. Thanks. Ordered it!!

 

If the first day of writing they brainstorm topics they could be interested in for a minute, then next 2 weeks work for 5 minutes or less daily on sentences modeled on the Killgallon examples all relating in some way to one or two of their own topics of interest (hobby, pet, video game...), you may be able to arrange some of the sentences thus created into a coherent paragraph during weeks 3 and 4 with a little revision, tweaking, connections added...

 

(I think it is a similar approach to TWR in that it uses complexity.  I think that for some kids that helps a great deal.  Creating a complex sentence, maybe with some complexity of thought, maybe even with some beauty to the language, is a whole different experience than the typical numbing approach of basic dull sentences that usually don’t express much.  And I think it supports reading too.) 

Edited August 19, 2019 by Pen

[PeterPan]

Sure, syntax drives thought, but look at the point where she was having to intervene, at the word level, with vocabulary (categories, attributes, functions, etc.), semantics. 

The narrative/expository levels and language levels will connect and MW has that in their materials, what you need to teach to help them get to the next level of narrative.

Edited August 19, 2019 by PeterPan

[Kanin]

27 minutes ago, CuriousMomof3 said:

I can think of one kid I tutored years ago, 2E kid with ASD/ADHD who came to me because he was reading at like a first grade level in middle school.  He had been given a dyslexia diagnosis, so I started him on Wilson.  During our second session he said "Wait a minute, the letters and the sounds go together?  People think of the sounds and figure out the words?" and I said yes, that was the general idea.  So, by the next session he had figured out all the letter sounds by noticing the first sound in words he had already memorized and figuring it out. That kid, with 30 minutes of reading tutoring once a week, went from first/second grade level to 6th grade level.  But that's not because I'm an amazing tutor for dyslexic kids, it's because he was never dyslexic in the first place.  It's because at the age when they teach those concepts, he was disregulated that he didn't pay attention.  

I've experienced this, too. Boy, the difference between a dyslexic reader and the boy you describe. I had a similar experience with a student this year, and I couldn't believe that after 2 exposures to a sound combination, for example, she HAD it. No review necessary, HAD it. 

[Kanin]

1 hour ago, PeterPan said:

Sure, syntax drives thought, but look at the point where she was having to intervene, at the word level, with vocabulary (categories, attributes, functions, etc.), semantics. 

True - I've got a couple kids there, and a couple kids not. Will be interesting to see how things go this year. 

[Kanin]

2 hours ago, Pen said:

 

(I think it is a similar approach to TWR in that it uses complexity.  I think that for some kids that helps a great deal.  Creating a complex sentence, maybe with some complexity of thought, maybe even with some beauty to the language, is a whole different experience than the typical numbing approach of basic dull sentences that usually don’t express much.  And I think it supports reading too.) 

This intrigues me, because you're right, so many struggling writers have to make do with dull sentences just because they can't spell the words they would like to use, or because it takes them so long to write anything that they just go with what will be fastest, etc. All of my dyslexic writers have loved writing or dictating stories. Writing Wilson-esque sentences has got to drain all the fun out of writing! None of my students see writing as an art, more as a chore, but maybe this year will change that 🙂 

I had these boys last year, but it was mostly triage. Now we can dig in more.

[Lecka]

57 minutes ago, CuriousMomof3 said:

Absolutely, as a teacher, every year I'd get kids coming in where the issue was either because no one had taught them, or the issue had been that they were so disregulated as younger kids that none of the instruction had sunk in.  Once you got them in a learning situation and engaged in instruction, they would move through material so fast. 

I can think of one kid I tutored years ago, 2E kid with ASD/ADHD who came to me because he was reading at like a first grade level in middle school.  He had been given a dyslexia diagnosis, so I started him on Wilson.  During our second session he said "Wait a minute, the letters and the sounds go together?  People think of the sounds and figure out the words?" and I said yes, that was the general idea.  So, by the next session he had figured out all the letter sounds by noticing the first sound in words he had already memorized and figuring it out. That kid, with 30 minutes of reading tutoring once a week, went from first/second grade level to 6th grade level.  But that's not because I'm an amazing tutor for dyslexic kids, it's because he was never dyslexic in the first place.  It's because at the age when they teach those concepts, he was disregulated that he didn't pay attention.  

 

This makes so much sense.  

[PeterPan]

2 hours ago, Mainer said:

Writing Wilson-esque sentences

Does Wilson include writing?? It doesn't make sense to limit composition to Wilson except as a spelling exercise.

[Kanin]

1 hour ago, PeterPan said:

Does Wilson include writing?? It doesn't make sense to limit composition to Wilson except as a spelling exercise.

It doesn't include original writing, just dictation. I'm just saying that the kids, on their own, are only able to spell boring sentences, and they tend to write the shortest sentences humanly possible. I think they would be surprised to be expected to write a complex sentence. But with a model, like the elementary Kilgallon book that Pen linked, they could do it. 

[Lecka]

A lot to think about here, I’m getting good ideas, too 🙂

[Kanin]

On 8/19/2019 at 6:50 PM, CuriousMomof3 said:

I wonder if you could use the writing portion of the time to teach "into" the classroom curriculum. 

Possibly - I'm already going to be in their classroom for another hour a day doing science/social studies/projects with them. I could use their classwork with me, but I'd rather keep it separate, only because time is so short. I often end up working on assignments during our separate time, which I don't love, but it has to happen sometimes. 

[Kanin]

On 8/19/2019 at 6:50 PM, CuriousMomof3 said:

For example of what I mean, let's say they have an assignment to research an animal, and write a trifold brochure about the animal with a cover, 4 sections that each have a question, a paragraph answer, and a picture, and a back cover with a bibliography (usually just a list of titles in 4th grade), and an "about the author".  And they've got 2 weeks of writer's workshop block to work on it.  That's a pretty typical 4th grade assignment.

First, you'd modify the assignment.  Maybe you replace 2 of the paragraphs with one sentence answers, and one with a list.  You also agree that you (the teacher) will create the bibliography, and the about the author will be done in speech therapy with the SLP acting as a scribe.

Yes, definitely! Teachers are very open to modifying assignments, thank goodness. 

[Kanin]

On 8/19/2019 at 10:11 PM, CuriousMomof3 said:

I used to have the kids dictate words they’d need but couldn’t spell  into a graphic organizer, and then let them use their Wilson skills to fill in the little words in the sentence.  

Or for kids with less stamina, I’d have them dictate a sentence to me, repeat the words back while counting them, and then draw a line for each word,  Then I’d fill in the blanks for the words they weren’t ready to spell, and let them do the rest.  It was a great incentive to use varied words, because if you said “It is big.”’ You had to write it all.  But if you looked at the same picture and said “That hippopotamus is absolutely enormous.”  You got me doing the work for you.

I love this!