Reading Intervention time

[Nm.]

Now much time do/did you spend on reading/spelling intervention for a child with dyslexia each day?  Did you have a limit?  Any studies/research to indicate an appropriate length (assuming it’s an effective method)?

[Lecka]

How old?  
 

After school, or home-schooling?

 

I would say in general — frequent short sessions, stopping before fatigue.  
 

It depends a lot on how much kids can do.  Try to be always positive and encouraging, and “end on success” — this means end on something they did well.  Don’t stop on something too hard.

 

Mix in lots and lots of review and don’t spend too much time on things that are currently new/hard.  
 

Give lots of examples, don’t put kids on the spot.  

[Lecka]

For building into a routine, I have kept practice sheets (etc) in the kitchen and run through them at times we are in the kitchen.  
 

I have also set a timer to do a short lesson between episodes of a tv show.  
 

 

[Lecka]

To answer the question… I generally tried for 2 hours when not in school, and 20-30 minutes after (public) school.  

Often some 20-30 minutes sessions and some 2-5 minute sessions.  
 

It’s very possible to build a lot of short sessions in, and count lots of practice/review in the time and not just “teaching a new lesson.”  
 

Edit:  with a younger child, with a lower frustration tolerance….  

Edited January 9 by Lecka

[Lecka]

I think the “zone of proximal development” is really solid, it does not give advice about a time, but talks about how students will learn well, and things to look for.  It’s not specific to reading, but I think it’s honestly very helpful.  

[Nm.]

Thank you!! I definitely stop when needed, but this kid is a hard worker.  I do about an hour a day, 4 days a week.. homeschooling.  I know it’s enough because he’s making lots of progress, but hopefully it’s not overkill.  He’s 10!

[Lecka]

I think that sounds great!

[PeterPan]

Well then you'll feel better to know I spent 2 hours a day. One hour a day seems perfectly fine and would be in line with what Barton etc would say. My ds was an unusually hard situation (motor planning of speech plus phonological processing plus...) so the extra work was necessary.

Happily, my ds has zero memory of his early intervention (for reading or speech or anything basically) and just thinks he has ALWAYS been this marvel of teenage omniscience. 

So fear not, your child will love you and survive. 🤣

Edited January 11 by PeterPan

[Nm.]

@Lecka @PeterPanwhat did you use for those 2 hours? All about reading 4 didn’t take us far enough to just be done.  I’m using such a mish mash of different things to cover various areas- it feels a bit crazy.

Edited January 11 by Nm.

[Lecka]

I used some Barton.  I did use some Abecedarian — it does not go farther than AAR 4.

I had a book about how to increase reading fluency, and did exercises out of that book.  My son read in a monotone with no attention to periods or commas.  The things he liked for that were putting a horizontal line where he should pause when he was reading.  (I would have short passages for him.). I also marked passages for/with him with “scoops” (like a parentheses symbol going under parts of a sentence) to show phrasing.  There are also some rules to teach about phrasing, that were in this fluency book — that kids usually just pick up, but my son was having trouble with it.  So basically he would practice reading out loud his fluency passages with good fluency, which can be pretty short.  
 

I also included just — reading time, in that 2 hours.  If it was productive reading time, he was reading something he could read easily for independent reading — I counted things like that.  It’s not that I was “doing reading instruction” the entire time, all the time.  Sometimes he could do more, sometimes he would be more “stuck” at a level and do a lot more of just practice/review at that level, or I would look for ways to review by basically covering the same material with a different program or something.  
 

Something else I did was to pre-read books I was going to read out loud to him, and underline sentences for him to read, that he would be able to read nicely.  He liked that and it was pretty low pressure for him, but also “real reading.”  
 

Another thing he liked was to read captions to pictures in those “visual dictionary” books (Lego and Star Wars had them at the time) and similar books, he could read the captions and didn’t feel bad about it taking time for him to figure out the words.  I would read him the blocks of text, but then he would still like to look at the books and read the captions.  

[Lecka]

I’m going to add, my son also did pretty intense speech therapy, he had speech therapy 5 days a week for about one school year (3x/week in school, 2x/week after school at a university speech clinic.)

He also had school and private OT, and that included “crossing the midline,” he was losing his place in reading when his eyes “crossed the midline,” causing him to lose his place, as he read.  He also had an issue where he would skip the line of text with a paragraph indentation, he would just skip that line and read the next line, and it would be very confusing to him.  I took him for a vision therapy consult, and he was already in OT, and that person said “let OT do it.”  The OT had said he should have the consult.  The vision therapist could have treated my son but his practice was not geared towards his age and wasn’t going to have fun stuff like OT had.  

[SFisher]

I taught my kids to read at home. Some of that was homeschool and some of that was before/after public school. They don’t have dyslexia, but have other issues. At the beginning (learning sounds, cvc words, phonemic awareness) we probably did 5 minutes a day 5 days a week. As they got into phonics and site words, 10-15 minutes a day 5 days a week. Once they wanted to read longer chapter books, 20 minutes 5 days a week. They have always been big into being read to, so lots of time doing read alouds which builds vocabulary and background knowledge. One son loved audiobooks and spent a lot of time listening.

Instead of basing your time on what other people have done, here’s my suggestion:

when is the best time for your child to work on reading? One of mine could not deal with frustration in the evening/bedtime, so he always read right after breakfast. The other one enjoys cuddling up at bedtime and getting my full attention. If this is the hardest thing your kid is working on, use the absolute best time of day for attention and patience, and when you are not distracted/time crunched.

watch your child to figure out what they do when their effort is waning…. Do they get squirmy, do they start trying to chat, do they start getting angry… then stop your lessons before you get to that point. If the attention for the hard thing is really short, you can split it up throughout the day.

 

 

 

[PeterPan]

22 hours ago, Nm. said:

what did you use for those 2 hours? All about reading 4 didn’t take us far enough to just be done.  I’m using such a mish mash of different things to cover various areas- it feels a bit crazy.

I wouldn't assume you're doing it wrong. We were using Barton but a mix of AAR or moving on to AAS or whatever plus some other resources could work. The cohesion is YOU and your vision for what needs to happen. When I've been in paid tutoring places, they'll have up a schedule with some sort of plan for the hour (5 minutes this, 10 minutes that, etc.) They're using a mix of materials and methods with one cohesive vision. You might begin integrating some typing (or you're already working onthis? I forget). I end up including syntax work and language work with my ds. In the early days, that two hours was all phonological processing, encoding, decoding, fluency. But he was a really hard case in his own way with the apraxia.

[Nm.]

@PeterPan thanks that helps about what you saw at paid tutoring places.  I do have a vision, I think it will help to set limits to each activity and decide on the flow.  I don’t have to worry about him being cooperative.  He’s at the extreme end of being overly cooperative and I don’t want to take advantage of that.  I want to make sure he has plenty of time to work on his strengths/interests.  Understanding what others have done helps with having a ball park reference.  If you all said 20-30 minutes tops I’d have to really reconsider my approach 🙂. More is not always better.  In this case I think 4 hours a week (what I am aiming for) is reasonable based on what I’ve read in research articles and what has been said here.  I am sure I go over that time, so my next step is to work on time limits and flow.

[Lecka]

I think that sounds like a good amount of time!

[Lecka]

I think there is some balance between:

kids can only make as much progress as they are going to make, it is just going to take time, they have to have time for things to percolate and gel….

 

and…

 

a relationship between time spent and progress made, where more time means more progress.  
 

I think there is a balance there, and “enough” time is important, but “too much” time does not lead to greater progress.  
 

I also think I am liberal in what I would count.  I counted *anything,* not just stuff that would be more formal reading intervention.