Reading issues and Dynamic Reader program

[sweet2ndchance]

So ds is finally making some progress in reading. He is gaining some automatic recognition of words since we a) started vision therapy and b) started using ABeCeDarian as our reading curriculum. 

But he still does strange things that make me want to pull my hair out, lol!

I just had him read the following words in isolation. Here is what happened:

up (automatic recognition)

rat (thought he would auto recognize since he has before but he ended up blending it correctly)

sit   ("is...it...sssiiii...si...si..t....sit" I didn't say anything while he struggled to finally sound this out. Definitely not the first time he has seen this word)

hog (blended correctly)

ten   (blended correctly)

rate, mope, cute, site (correctly identified the silent e every time but had to be reminded after incorrectly blending the word that the other vowel said its name on each word. Also had to be reminded that the name of the vowel is /you/ not /uh/ in the word cute)

teen (blended correctly but was unsure of himself and tried to correct himself and say "ten". I had to reassure him that he had it right the first time)

So am I just blocking this stage of learning to read from my memory with my older kids?  I had one very late reader (9.5yo) that I think might have done these things but that was over a decade ago and my memory is kinda fuzzy. The rest of my kids were early readers with little instruction or learned to read with instruction at 6yo with no problems at all.

The DO said he needed orton-gillingham style instruction which is what we had been doing in one form or another but he really seems to be doing better with a straight forward program without bells and whistles like ABeCeDarian. He seems to have amazing auditory memory (he can remember things that were said extremely accurately, stories we read forever ago, etc) but not very good visual memory. Which the visual memory problem could be related to the intermittent amblyopia.

The vision therapist, who works for the DO in her office, has him doing Dynamic Reader as part of his therapy to increase his reading speed. She tells me to supply him with the words he doesn't know. Does anyone have experience with Dynamic Reader? He HATES it and I can understand why. He reads the beginning readers with ABeCeDarian slowly but I won't let him read it inaccurately. It may take him 15 minutes to read it but he reads each word accurately. With Dynamic Reader, he seems to start guessing and just memorizing the stories out of frustration. Her goal for him is to get him reading at 80 words per minute, which she says is what an average first grader reads at (ds is a second grader by age so she is trying to bring him up to speed). The program is currently set for 20 - 30 words per minute (it gets faster each time he reads the story) and he is guessing and memorizing the story to avoid reading it. To be fair though, he has always freaked out when he knows he is being timed on something or that a game has a time limit and things like that.

This same kid did 150 subtraction facts yesterday of his own volition (as part of a game) and got over 95% of them correct. He is also experimenting with the idea of multiplication on his own and does great with math puzzles. Numbers are no problem for him, just words lol!

Just kinda rambling and thinking out loud at this point. Any input or things to think about would be appreciated.

[Lecka]

I think you can tell the vision therapist that Dynamic Reader is not a good fit for him at this time.  
 

If that is what you are feeling like.  It sounds that way to me.

Edited November 12, 2020 by Lecka

[PeterPan]

2 hours ago, sweet2ndchance said:

Dynamic Reader

Pushing reading speed or fluency before reading accuracy doesn't seem like an evidence based practice for dyslexia. He's not getting fluent with the program you're using, so it doesn't matter if it's enough for *some* kids with dyslexia because it's not enough for *him*. 

You may simply be going through your reading program too quickly. You would need to back up, cover one lesson, drill it to fluency, then do the next lesson and drill to fluency and so on. Very slowly, meticulously. Yes, an OG based program would tell you to do this and make it more obvious.

And yes, you could toss the DR (which is clearly wasting your money and not timely) and instead work on RAN/RAS, which you can do for free. https://www.dropbox.com/sh/4rcl6f0uo70esmv/AAAaGAHw3_YTMEQZSw_WI-t_a?dl=0

Edited November 12, 2020 by PeterPan

[domestic_engineer]

No experience here with Dynamic Reader, but I'm using Abecedarian with a dyslexic.  As a compromise, you might ask the VT if you can work on reading fluency on your own using Abecedarian's fluency drills that are free on the website.  The 80 wpm seems like an extremely lofty goal; Abecedarian's goal is 60 WPM, iirc.  (We're so far below that goal, I can't remember what the ultimate goal is.). 

4 hours ago, sweet2ndchance said:

rate, mope, cute, site (correctly identified the silent e every time but had to be reminded after incorrectly blending the word that the other vowel said its name on each word. Also had to be reminded that the name of the vowel is /you/ not /uh/ in the word cute)

I think this struggle is pretty normal based on both my dyslexic kiddo and my younger NT kiddo struggling with this.  (Of course the dyslexic, who sounds very similar to your DS, is struggling for much longer ....)

 

p.s.  Don't be like me and forget to use all the free stuff on the Abecedarian website.  There's lots of stuff there to help build fluency.

[sweet2ndchance]

4 hours ago, PeterPan said:

And yes, you could toss the DR (which is clearly wasting your money and not timely) and instead work on RAN/RAS, which you can do for free. https://www.dropbox.com/sh/4rcl6f0uo70esmv/AAAaGAHw3_YTMEQZSw_WI-t_a?dl=0

I've seen you post this before but I just don't get it. How is it suppose to be used? What is the point of reading the digits? Forgive me if I'm just being dense.

[PeterPan]

5 hours ago, sweet2ndchance said:

I've seen you post this before but I just don't get it. How is it suppose to be used? What is the point of reading the digits? Forgive me if I'm just being dense.

The CTOPP (tes of phonological processing), which I assume your dc has had if he has had evals by a psych, includes RAN/RAS testing because poor ran/ras is considered a lagging indicator of dyslexia. Strong RAN/RAS is correlated with strong readers and poor ran/ras correlates with struggling readers. It's rapid naming. So the idea is that to read and rapidly work through material for fluency, you need to rebuild that RAN/RAS that is poor. 

The CTOPP tests it multiple ways actually, with colored dots, numbers, etc. You could use pictures of zoo animals, anything you want. It's not supposed to be a *word retrieval* exercise, which is why they use *simple* things. For my ds, I had to make sure he knew and could accurately say the names of the colors, so we were working on the rapidity of the naming, not what the name is. 

I think I may have some pages of numbers in there. I know I made a few at the end. I printed the pages, put back to back in page protectors, and then I would take out and have him read three ways (rotating the page 90 degrees and even reading like a diamond on point) to get lots of use from one page. We read them for speed and later read them with a metronome.

There is some discussion about it, sure, with some people saying don't bother. I'm just saying it's free to work on and *might* help and that poor rapid naming would be a logical thing to hold back fluency. By *separating* the rapid naming and the decoding, you're able to work on just the rapid naming difficulty, making it stronger for when they are working on decoding/fluency. In other words, you're making one of the parts of a multi part task easier.

https://www.schoolmoves.com/a-few-thoughts-blog/tag/rapid+naming  S'cool moves (an OT site) is where I read about RAN/RAS. They'll have multiple articles, but link has info (it says) on the connection between RAN/RAS and fluency. They sell pages like the ones I made and am sharing for free, so they're explaining the logic on why you want to do them. It's not a long term commitment either. We worked on it 3X a day for 6-8 weeks at the most. It's a skill that sticks once you build it, unlike say working memory. So you could start now and be done with it by Christmas. I'm always looking for that, 6 weeks of things I can do that will put me in a better place to resume in January. So you could work on it 1-3 X a day for 5 minutes, whatever time you've got, see what happens.

[sweet2ndchance]

55 minutes ago, PeterPan said:

There is some discussion about it, sure, with some people saying don't bother

Isn't there always about almost anything? lol I wasn't questioning your suggestion so much as trying to understand the task and what it is trying to achieve.

He hasn't had the psych evals yet. That is still a possibility we can explore though.

So I just need him to name the colors quickly? Is there a goal we should shoot for? So many per minute? The whole page in so many minutes?

[PeterPan]

1 hour ago, sweet2ndchance said:

So I just need him to name the colors quickly? Is there a goal we should shoot for? So many per minute? The whole page in so many minutes?

Yes, you literally just "read" across the rows, saying the names of each thing, whether it's numbers or colors or whatever. It's a rapid naming exercise.

No, I did not have targets or goals. You'll see him improve. Iirc, when it got easy enough that it was like oh why bother, then I switched to having him read it with the metronome at 54bpm. We also did some with hand signals using S'cool Moves stuff. So he was doing the same thing, but he was moving in response, moving his arms up/down/etc. 

The reason I wasn't pushing speed was my ds' apraxia. He was only going to be able to say them as quickly as his mouth could motor plan, kwim? So I had him start slowly, so that he was saying them clearly, and he just naturally got faster as it got easier.

Fwiw, ds' reading is very fluent. It's definitely worth it to try and I don't think you have to do it too amazingly or perfectly for it to have benefit.

[Terabith]

OG has a lot of rules, which is hard on memory.  We actually started Wilson at age 8, worked on it steadily for two years, and then dropped it.  My kid did a lot better learning to read with a combination of decoding work from Webster's speller and reading aloud from easy readers from the library where I just supplied the word if she didn't know it/ couldn't sound it out on the first try.  We spent a lot of time at the Mr. Putter and Tabby level.  My kid learned to read decently and took off with that combo.  I think ABeCeDarian would have been a good fit, too.  But spelling was horrible, and even though she worked hard on Wilson for a couple years, we lost the teacher at age ten for a year or so.  Found a new teacher at 11, started again, and had to start over part way through book 1, but then she flew through it and got through all 12 books doing once a week sessions for 3 years.  It was helpful for her spelling, and at that point she had the maturity and working memory to make progress that stuck.  

[Not_a_Number]

22 hours ago, sweet2ndchance said:

But he still does strange things that make me want to pull my hair out, lol!

So, this is definitely not my area of expertise, but what is feeling strange or off? 

[Jentrovert]

I'm catching up after a few days off the boards, so this is late, but wanted to give our experience using the Dynamic Reader.

It wasn't used in dd's VT, because she was too young. Ds was older when he started, and they did use it with him. At the time, he was not reading at all (I'm thinking he was 6ish). We had recently started Barton. 

When they called me into the room after his session, to show me the Dynamic Reader and how to use it at home, I was less than thrilled but wanted to look it over before responding. At home I realized it was awful for him. He could "read" some of it, sure, after doing the same story multiple days, because he was memorizing it. The stories were heavy on sight words, and even had they not been, he wasn't reading anyway! 

The next visit, I told the therapist that he was not able to read the stories, so I felt it was too early to use that particular tool for him. She hit play on a story (that he had done over and over for days), and then when he recited the words, was like, "tada! he's reading!" I pointed out that he was simply memorizing the words, not reading, and I did not want him memorizing words at that point. She looked at me like I had three heads. 

We soon quit VT for him, for this and other reasons. I feel they were churning out "results" by pushing memorization and the office and staff had changed a lot in the years since we did dd's VT.

We use the Dynamic Reader at home now, but I enter stories from Barton manually, so they are reading words they can actually decode (plus the few sight words in Barton). We also use the VT software at home. I keep going to this same office because I want to keep using these programs for now. I think the DR is a good tool, but NOT the way they were using it.

[sweet2ndchance]

Sorry I didn't update this sooner. I did talk to his therapist and we both agreed that until he is a bit further along with phonics, working on fluency is a moot point. So we have stopped Dynamic Reader for now. Thanks for all your help and encouragement. :-)