Need Help for Teaching Language Delayed Child Reading

[Crimson Wife]

AKA there was a reason that I had my SN child in PS SPED and not home with her siblings.

It's become abundantly clear this week that none of the reading resources I have on my shelf are going to work for my SN child. She's at about a late 1st grade level. Good phonological processing skills but poor working memory and major language delay.

IIRC Barton isn't appropriate for students with language delay. So what is?

The silver lining is that she's actually doing very well with Math Mammoth so long as I read it to her and skip the word problems.

[Rosie_0801]

I used ElizabethB's lessons with my language delayed kid. 

[Terabith]

Is her issue decoding or comprehension or both?

[Crimson Wife]

Just now, Terabith said:

Is her issue decoding or comprehension or both?

She can decode okay as long as it's simple. Trying to remember the more advanced phonics rules like silent e, soft c/g, diphthongs, digraphs, whether y at the end of a word says "ee" or "igh", etc. is HARD. Also she has trouble recognizing that she just decoded the same word in the previous sentence so she sounds it out E-V-E-R-Y S-I-N-G-L-E T-I-M-E.

[Terabith]

1 hour ago, Crimson Wife said:

She can decode okay as long as it's simple. Trying to remember the more advanced phonics rules like silent e, soft c/g, diphthongs, digraphs, whether y at the end of a word says "ee" or "igh", etc. is HARD. Also she has trouble recognizing that she just decoded the same word in the previous sentence so she sounds it out E-V-E-R-Y S-I-N-G-L-E T-I-M-E.

Ugh.  That's brutal.  

[PeterPan]

Ok, so I have a really bad attitude on reading instruction these days, and I'm taking chamomile because the stress is so high in our state I can't keep my body calm. Nevertheless, here's how it went with my ds.

-phonological processing--This requires discriminating (check) and processing (thinking morphologically) at the BITS LEVEL about words. 

So when OG is criticized, what they're rightly pointing out is that it is dramatically incomplete and not going to remediate the REST of what is going on. Does your dd also have a hearing impairment?

-language delay--The videos at this link (just the previews, I never bought the courses or the main book) pulled it together for me and finally helped me realize what had happened with ds. You're studying SLP, yes? So it will make sense to you. https://www.northernspeech.com/speech-language-acquisition/natural-language-acquisition-in-autism-echolalia-to-self-generated-language-level-1/

So the jist is, if a person is learning language whole to parts, their brain IS NOT THINKING in terms of the parts to whole. 

Just park there. We have all this bunk and crap and junk (told you I'm really pissy right now) about how "some kids learn whole to parts" and all this junk. Hogwash. That's why we end up with these messes. Everything disconnected, things not connected, things not working.

Sure you can do OG with her. You can end up with a dc who is then hyperlexic. It will be a secondary form of hyperlexia but legit hyperlexia. That's what happened to my ds. So word meaning, spelling, the whole, the bits, everything was filed all over his brain, none of it connected. He wasn't even READY to process the world in terms of BITS.

So for my ds, the absolute number one thing to bump his reading has always always always been language work. I agree, do OG. I agree, knock yourself out on auditory discrimination exercises. But language is where it's at.

So when I say language, it's all rusty in my brain, and you probably know the terms. Language all together is composed of the strands (concepts, syntax, narrative, blah blah). Your dd has had a ton of work. I really like the SPARC workbooks SPARC® for Concepts  and you could look at the series and see if they are redundant. They start off exceptionally simply and build to where the dc is using the targets in longer narratives. For my ds, that basic language had to be worked on really thoroughly, so he was thinking in terms of words, bits of words. Plurals, past tense endings, etc. were not redundant for him.

Verbalizing and Visualizing. Again, your people may have done this, but it's an aspect of connecting meaning and language you can check. Honestly, I would focus less on "reading" and more on something that you can focus on that maybe has gotten missed. 

I'm trying remember why my ds finally started thinking in terms of bits. Maybe review my old threads? Something happened. Was it the SPARC books?

So then even when he was processing in terms of bits, we had this disconnect, like spelling is over HERE and usage is over THERE. Like if they don't want it or it's not connecting, then it's memorized, not functional. And my ds seems to file things in the "weird pony tricks I memorized but have no plans to use" folder. So reading or spelling connected to pictures, connected to meaning, is better than isolation. 

I have a picture dictionary I adore and I just don't have the link handy. I've shared it before. Each two page spread has color pictures with all the words that go with that topic. So it organizes their brain (lexicon) AND can be reading, spelling, anything.

https://www.spelfabet.com.au  I used this some with my ds and like it a LOT. Highly visual. Not expensive. And she has a free game https://www.spelfabet.com.au/2019/06/new-word-building-card-games/ You can find her on FB too.

Don't fight and don't feel guilty to do/attempt what the school will do when she returns. Look for something that you CAN implement with her, even if it seems low. If it's low, then maybe it's more working on pairing, reciprocity, conversation, or other goals, kwim? Is she BORED if you play review material? Like if you got Spelfabet for the same level where she is, would she be bored?

I can't get you a link because my browser is ornery, but Lakeshore Learning has some BRILLIANT phonics flip books and crosswords with tiles. I'm using both with my ds. Spelling is only just now sort of relevant to him, clicking, connecting. Like I said, it was totally obvious that I could teach spelling and it was getting filed away totally disconnected from his world, meaning, usage. NOW at 11 1/2, hitting puberty, he's had some growth spurts and seems pleased with the idea that he could spell something. Like he's really PROUD of himself when he spells HILL. Kwim? That's developmental. There is no pushing and instructing beyond development.

I LOVE this program, highly recommend. https://www.proedinc.com/Products/20855/cooking-to-learn-combo-all-3-books.aspx Also there's a program, and the name will come to me. Is it News2U? Something like that. It's articles with picture coding above each word. It's what an intervention specialist wanted to use with my ds.

Also call your state senator and see if they can get teletherapy services put through. Our autism schools, private providers who use state funding, everyone are going to tele services until this blows over. And they're going to have OT (yes, even when it's not licensed for that), music therapy, SLP, intervention specialists, everything. So contact your state department of ed and your representatives if necessary and see what they can make happen. Although legally, technically they don't have to provide services to anyone in the emergency, IF they are providing services to ps kids via whatever, then they HAVE to provide services to your dc as well.

[PeterPan]

Phonics Flip Books at Lakeshore Learningwww.lakeshorelearning.com › language › phonics-word-building › p... See if this looks right.

Phonics Crossword Puzzles Activity Centers - Lakeshore ...www.lakeshorelearning.com › language › phonics-word-building › p...  

Like I said, this browser won't load the pages, but I think those are what I've got. Visual plus spelling plus kinesthetic, highly structured, ABA friendly, small chunk each day, good for anxiety.

Be kind to yourself. Everyone with ASD plus this mess is having a hard, hard time right now. I wouldn't set high goals honestly. See *small* goals. Like what could she already do? Do that while using a self-advocacy strategy. That could be an amazing goal. Going to bed having used a calm down tool to lower stress. That could be a good goal.

 As far as keeping her busy, yeah, it sucks. Can you and your spouse tag team? If they could get you tele services so she could have time with her familiar people, that could help and give you a break. I'd be pushing hard for that. People locally are saying it makes a HUGE difference in lowering kids' stress.

[PeterPan]

Spelfabet just posted this link https://portal.flyleafpublishing.com/

[Kanin]

How old is your DD?

I'm not an expert in language delays, so feel free to take my ideas with a grain of salt. 

First, phonemic awareness - are you sure it's good enough? I would do Kilpatrick's PAST test and find out. with language delayed kids, however, it's tricky to do this test because understanding what to do can be a little difficult. However, with my language delayed kids, I have found that we can get there with many demonstrations. The PAST test is all done aloud, BUT when you are actually teaching the phonemic awareness skills, you can go from concrete to abstract with each skill. For example, if you're trying to get a kid to "say 'pat' but don't say 'p' - which will be 'at'), you can start concretely by writing the word on a whiteboard and erasing the p. Then you can move to having three stones on the table, pointing to each one and saying p-a-t-, and then taking away the first stone. Re-tap the sounds, but whisper the 'p' sound where the stone is missing, and then say 'a-t' in a normal voice. I think many kids may potentially have okay phonological processing, but not quite good enough without training.

Does she know her letter-sound connections really, really quickly? I use a deck of sound cards from the Fundations program, and drill them every.single.day, sometimes twice a day, with my dyslexic kids. https://store.wilsonlanguage.com/fundations-standard-sound-cards-3-second-edition/ We probably have 20 automatic cards in the rotation, a couple that the kids mostly know but sometimes mess up, and then one or two new ones. Memory challenges can impact how fast letter-sound connections become automatic... all the more reason to practice them every day.

When she decodes, does she do one sound at a time and then blend them together, or does she read certain words automatically? Without really good phonemic awareness and letter-sound automaticity, she will blend slowly. 

As far as remember rules like y making the ee sound at the end of a word like happy, it's going to require lots and lots and lots of practice. Working memory comes into play here, because the student is having to remember many things at the same time. You really can't rush a kid faster than what they're ready to do. Advanced phonemic awareness, automaticity with all the letter sounds/combinations, and steady practice with a structured program are all necessary. It can be frustratingly slow, but the alternative is pushing too hard and making the kid anxious and upset.

I really like the High Noon books for reading practice. Every day my reading students do 5 minutes of phonemic awareness practice, 5 minutes of letter-sound cards, 10-15 minutes of spelling/reading single words (including new concepts and reviewing older concepts), and then some reading of connected text.

Sorry this got long. It's such a relief to think of something other than the news!!

[Kanin]

As a word of encouragement, I teach a student with multiple challenges who wasn't reading much until this year, and hadn't made too much progress for the past couple years. I am ashamed to say that I had almost given up that this student's reading would improve, but seemingly all of a sudden, all the practice we had been doing came together. When that moment happened, I was able to give a lot more difficult instruction in a shorter period of time, perhaps because the foundation of the 'reading house' had finally been completed. I don't know, but it was a huge wake up call to me that I should never underestimate a child. I like to pride myself on seeing the potential in every student, but I think I had unintentionally pegged this kid as someone who wouldn't really read well. Interestingly, the boost in reading has coincided with a boost in language skills and comprehension. It's been pretty great to witness.

[ElizabethB]

Old Open court, long vowels first, might work.

Start with the blue book.

http://wigowsky.com/school/opencourt/opencourt.htm

I also have a draft long vowel first program I can e-mail you if Open Court works and you need more repetition, PM me.

You could also teach her the UPP and mark up books with it, I designed it to be able to be written over existing letters, it eliminates the need for learning rules.

http://www.thephonicspage.org/On Reading/upp.html

 

 

[Crimson Wife]

Updating a month later to say that she's making progress with a combo of AAR 2 + ETC 3 and 3 1/2 + Hooked on Phonics. Plus lots of high frequency words drill and reading decodable books. I just have to take things S-L-O-W and practice one concept at a time until the lightbulb clicks.

[Crimson Wife]

On 4/21/2020 at 4:00 PM, CuriousMomof3 said:

That's wonderful!  I'm surprised you are finding the phonics working that well with profound hearing loss. Does she have an cochlear implant?  

Yes, she has 1 cochlear implant and 1 hearing aid. It also helps a lot that her loss is progressive and didn't start until some time after 2 years old. So her brain was already wired for sound and she adjusted very quickly after getting the implant in 2016

[happycc]

Have you heard of cued speech ? Thinking of using that for my son.

[PeterPan]

6 hours ago, happycc said:

Have you heard of cued speech ? Thinking of using that for my son.

We did PROMPT for my ds' apraxia. Here's an upcoming workshop https://register.gotowebinar.com/register/7770411811500941836  that is going to go over some of the major systems of apraxia intervention. There is a method DTTC for apraxia, so that may be what your SLP is referring to. Personally, I think PROMPT is better. It was AMAZING for us and busts through where many other methods fail. It's also the hardest to learn how to do, which is why you get generalists doing this easier, faster, cheaper to learn methods (cards, cuing, buy a box, blah blah). 

So I suggest before picking a method you find someone who is *certified* in PROMPT, get an intake eval, and see what it would be like. I drove 2 ½ hours each way for 9 ½ years, ZERO REGRETS. My ds has basically perfect speech now. And he's considered to have moderate to severe apraxia. There are some apraxia "experts" out there who don't really know what they're doing. One just got featured in the paper in the big city near us, left me spitting nails. She dismissed a dc from therapy at age (7, 8, early) who had puffy cheeks and clearly wasn't using her mouth correctly. But the "expert" said she was done and the parents were elated, hence the newspaper article.

Actual good intervention for apraxia is very hard work. It takes several years to get certified in PROMPT, which is why people don't do it. They take an intro course and then say they "know" it, which is baloney. And not only does the dc need the motor planning work, but they need expressive language work. It's sort of an astonishing hole to dig out of.

Just for trivia, I'm getting APD testing for my ds this week, just to see if he has a subset of something. There are some things that are still odd. I think, as you're finding, some kids have layers. I had an entire post/thread on things I've done with my ds for expressive language. It's sort of the bottomless pit seemingly, and it affects reading comprehension, writing, all of academics, self-advocacy, and life. We now fund 3 ½ hours a week of speech therapy for him to continue working on it in addition to the things I do. There's basically never too much seemingly. And we did 2 hours a week of PROMPT plus reinforcement at home. 

We had another poster here whose awesome SLP integrated expressive language work into the PROMPT sessions. I think the issue was the level of support and language disability. My ds just couldn't handle that. So the amount that works for someone else could be overkill or under service for the next person. It's not like oh apraxia. It's that whole picture of the amount of what's going on. Your ds has quite the list, so I would expect a lot of focused attention over a number of years to be necessary.

Edited October 19, 2020 by PeterPan

[happycc]

Did prompt. Not a lot of movement per se. $100 an hour for not a lot of improvement. Probably because of the CAPD/Hearing loss. Cued speech is next on the list. 

 

My son I have been told by multiply professionals that he is complicated. 

My neurologist is retiring and she told me not to get a neurologist that is wet behind the ears. 

My good friend is a school psychologist too and he is also my kids' god father and he said my son is the most complicated of all the kids he has ever come across with it. 

MANY MANY LAYERS like an Onion. 

Developmental pediatrician and I spoke today. She says to try lots of modalities, repetition and lots of breaks. Not a lot of help there per se say but she suggested associating symbols with each arbitrary info like Days of the week ..Sunday is associated with a Sun. Monday a moon maybe etc And match the symbol with the name. I am going to try that. 

[PeterPan]

4 hours ago, happycc said:

she suggested associating symbols with each arbitrary info like Days of the week ..Sunday is associated with a Sun. Monday a moon maybe etc And match the symbol with the name. I am going to try that. 

Why? I'm missing it. You could see what symbols AAC like LAMP use for the things you're trying to teach. At 1:23 in this video you can see the symbols LAMP uses for each day. 

4 hours ago, happycc said:

Did prompt. Not a lot of movement per se. $100 an hour for not a lot of improvement. Probably because of the CAPD/Hearing loss. Cued speech is next on the list. 

I agree, the hearing loss and untreated CAPD would glitch everything. Nuts, my ds got a speech bump when his reflexes integrated and further improvement when we did LIPS. So there are probably more things you need to do for ANY speech therapy method to work well. I would have the HAs in a while and kick some serious butt with LIPS before you bother.

There was a point where I felt like the SLPs were motor planning words into my ds instead of sounds that functioned as components that ds could generalize. It was literally like they were building into him every single word. He was learning language whole to parts instead of parts to whole.

 

[happycc]

The LAMPS video with the AAC is too slow for my son. He would be tossing the machine out the window. I actually stopped AAC because I needed to protect the Ipad. In his early years he used Scribblenauts to communicate with me somehow. That was when he was 4-5 years old or so. He would scream into the phone to finally get the speech to text to get the right word and then show the object to me. He would rather drag my arms around the house to things to show me or find a Youtube video that explains what he is saying. 

His SLP doesn't seem too excited with me suggesting her to use AAC. 

I think the AAC picture are too abstract for him. I don't know. 

 

Edited October 20, 2020 by happycc

[PeterPan]

I agree, that video was very tedious. He sounds very bright and like he's working very hard to solve his problems! And you know it's funny, but do you also think he's decisive or knows what he wants? My ds is like that. You would think with his anxiety he'd hum and haw, and instead he knows exactly what he wants--what color, which shirt, everything. A little super power in a sea of challenges, lol.

I think you're right to listen to his super power when he's that decisive and knows what he needs and what's working. It doesn't mean he'll make happen for himself things that are hard. Like using his speech that he has, he might not do that on his own and might need some help. But as far as like AAS vs. ASL, dude fine. 

I think the best use for AAC would be instructive, like creating specialized pages of words for something you're working on. And he might not need it. We bought in on LAMP but ended up doing other things. So to me it's a tool I have access to if I want to create a specialized page to work on something. But for everyday, I agree it's a lot of menu flipping, a whole system. Also my ds finally, at 11/12, has spelling making sense. Like it really means something to him. So he's learning to type, meaning he won't need a symbol based system. So there could be a long term progression like that. But it took a lot of language work for the bits of language to mean something so spelling would. You could literally see where he was spelling blankly before, memorized, parroting, like a parlor trick, where it didn't MEAN anything to him or click. 

Edited October 20, 2020 by PeterPan

[happycc]

He definitely knows what he wants. He tells me all the time. Very vocal, expressive and loud. 

He shops online on Amazon all the time and he has the funniest sense of humor. Kind of slapstick sick sense of humor too. Little boy potty humor too. 

It's butt, poop all the time. 

The other day in his signing class, he got bored and decided to sign "Poop" to see what everyone's reaction would be. Luckily the teachers have been very good at redirecting his potty talk in ASL classes. He loves to stick his feet on the screen to get a reaction too. Sigh. His latest favorite sign is Fart and constipated. Sigh! Double SIGH! I don't know if I should teach him private parts yet. I am afraid he would use penis constantly in ASL class. Embarrassing. I keep telling him it is not appropriate. But it continues. Please let this stage pass soon. 

[happycc]

No cued speech is usually used for the DHH population but allows people to see the phonics in words using their hands on the face. I could see it being used for Apraxia and CAPD especially to help with reading. I would use ASL socially like language development but cued speech for literacy. 

[PeterPan]

3 hours ago, happycc said:

No cued speech is usually used for the DHH population but allows people to see the phonics in words using their hands on the face. I could see it being used for Apraxia and CAPD especially to help with reading. I would use ASL socially like language development but cued speech for literacy. 

Just your word of warning. The reason you want a method meant for apraxia is because they are weaving in some other things they aren't telling you about. It's things about how the words tie together, how the sounds flow, the *timing*. It's actually wicked complex. So the fact that you did PROMPT and got so much intelligibility tells you that he responds well to a hands on method like PROMPT. I think it's ok to take time off, build other factors, and come back at it. 

We had times when we let someone who thought they knew what they were doing work with ds (not doing straight PROMPT, not certified), and they screwed him up. You might end up finding that a less qualified person makes problems for you. Your other person may have been doing it so well that they made it look easy.