Learning to read - seems to be no structure to it

[grumpypants]

I'm a bit frustrated at the moment - ds (5) is in Y1 and brings home two books a week, one to read to me, and one to have read to him. There is just no continuity to the books he is meant to read and he is just not reading as well as i thought he would be by now. Older ds also couldn't read (worse than this) buy the end of Y1 and we hired a tutor for Y2 - he is now a free reader (Y3) and has a brilliant reading age.
The school read in groups, and apparently use several reading schemes.

Any thoughts?

The term SpLD is used by my LEA to cover dyslexia, dysgraphia, dyspraxia ...
and personally I don't feel a label is necessarily needed if the nature of the difficulty is recognised and supported.

dolfrog, what do you think of Headsprout?

Hmm. . . I can see your point Mrz with regards to how useful (or not) the word dyslexia, dyspraxia etc is from the teacher's point of view when supporting the child in question, but I think the terms have their uses. Dyslexia is widely recognised and understood by the general public. I think a child/young adult with dyslexia may like to be able to refer to themselves as such - at times when the labels stupid or lazy may otherwise be applied - rather than trying to explain that they have a SpLD as others would not understand this.

I guess this can be easily got around if you are telling the parents and/or child that they are dyslexic but then explaining that due to the LEA policy it is SpLD which will be written on the form and this will not effect the standard of teaching that they recieve.

mrz
The issue from my prespective is about identifying the life long disabilities, which these children will have to live with after they leave school.
Thye will have to understand the full nature of their disabilities, the compensating skills and abilities thye have developed to work around their disabilities, and be able to self advocate these issues with their peers, employers, and work colleagues etc.
So they need to be able to describe their strengths and weaknesses in terms that thew whole population can understand and accommodate.
Dyslexia is only a symptom of a range of medical or clinically diagnosable disabilities, which your LEA would appear not to be providing adequate information to parents whose children may require a referral for further clinical assessments.

So in the wider picture although your LEA is providing some support it is not adequately preparing these children to self advocate in the adult world post school.

StarlightMcKenzie

Headsprout is not a program i am familiar with so I can not comment.

I thought perhaps not, when you mentioned there was no researched 'system'.

Headsprout is very carefully designed to increase effective outcomes for the learners and has a good research base.

StarlightMcKenzie

All programs are well planned but all have their limitations.
I have just Googled Headsprout, which would appear to be another phonics based program, there are many of them, but of little use for those who share my communication disability.

There needs to be programs which address all of cognitive skills that children use when they learn to read, and phonics based programs only address a single processes. And does not address the requirements of those who are cognitively not able to use phonics, which the medical research council estimate to be 10% of children who have APD, and there are other cognitive disabilities for which phonics is the least appropriate teaching method.

There is no program which has been scientifically tested using neuroimaging and other research technology, that can match and provide the necessary training for the development of the cognitive skill areas, which have been identified by the research of recent years as being required to performing the task of reading. Phonics is only a part of the process, which some are not cognitively able to use.

Slightly catching up here -
Gooseberry: You quoted:

The King beneath the mountains,
The King of carven stone,
The lord of silver fountains
Shall come into his own!

His crown shall be upholden,
His harp shall be restrung,
His halls shall echo golden
To songs of yore re-sung.

The woods shall wave on mountains
And grass beneath the sun:
His wealth shall flow in fountains
And the rivers golden run.

The streams shall run in gladness,
The lakes shall shine and burn,
All sorrow fail and sadness
At the Mountain-king's return!
"Truly songs and tales fall utterly short of the reality,
O Smaug the Chiefest and Greatest of Calamaties," replied Bilbo.
"You have nice manners for a thief and a liar," said the dragon.
"You seem familiar with my name, but I don't seem to remember smelling
you before. Who are you and where do you come from, may I ask?"
"You may indeed! I come from under the hill, and under the hills and over
the hills my paths led. And through the air. I am he that walks unseen."
"So I can well believe," said Smaug, "but that is hardly your usual name."
"I am the clue-finder, the web-cutter, the stinging fly.
I was chosen for the lucky number."
"Lovely titles!" sneered the dragon. "But lucky numbers don't always come off."

It seems a no-brainer that children should be introduced to poetic language, ideas, images at 6, and read children's literature at that age, provided they are proficient decoders.

Appropriate decoding readers/schemes are invaluable while children are learning to decode to automaticity but beyond that point they usually offer a narrow, stiffling, unimaginative diet of remorseless ordinariness - it's like having concrete poured into the brain.

EvilTwins: Around 20% of children fail to access a secondary curriculum because they aren't given appropriate reading schemes until they have learned the sound/letter correspondences. Virtually all children benefit from starting with very specifically structured readers, and for a high percentage of children these are an absolute lifeline.

If children are not using phonics to decode new words, dolfrog, they must perforce, memorise them as wholes or part-wholes. No, there is no program I am aware of that teaches sufferers like yourself to memorise vast numbers of words. It presupposes a prodigious memory, which most of us have not got, and that is why the original develpersof our writing systems devised an alphabetic sound/letter code.
How did you do it and continue to do it? You come across as a very literate person, with a wide vocabulary, invariably spelt correctly.

Malaleuca

There are whole word programs, and I can only process whole words when speaking and learning to say new words. You might be confusing working memory with long term memory, they are two seperate but related systems.
those who have my sort of disability are able to use their long term, and we tend to think in pictures rather then words, which it is easier to remember pictures than it is to remember the code used to describe a picture.

Not every society uses an alphabet to represent the sounds of speech, alphabets which have both cosonnants and vowels tend to be of European origin. And letter codes are not part of every writing system.
And many societies do not use writing systems at all.

You need to begin with the development of speech. Those who have auditory processing disorder, have problems identifying the so called sounds that can combine to make up a word. So we only say a word when we can reproduce the whole sound of a word. We are not able to process the gaps between the sounds which can make up a word and thus we are not able to identify the seperate sounds which can make up a word. WE can also have problems with those who have rapid speech as we are not able to process the gaps between each word.

One of the Battery of diagnostic tests used as part of an Auditory Processing Disorder assessment attempts to measure the size of gap between sounds that an individual can process. When was assessed for APD, there was not a gap big enough in the test for me to process the gap between the sounds in the test.

So for the 10% of children who have APD and who are not able to use phonics or phonetically sound out words, we have use pictures of words to rmember their shape, not ideal when using an alphabet, but less of a problems when using a logographic form of graphic symbols to represent speech.

Jezabelle I think lots of people know the term dyslexia but few understand what it really means and if you say dysgraphia or dyspraxia or dyscalcula many look very blank.

Perhaps you recall this news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/4205932.stm

dolfrog I think you are confusing the use of a pretty meaningless label with identification of the needs of individuals. My LA doesn't do the first but certainly does the second.

mrz

"Jezabelle I think lots of people know the term dyslexia but few understand what it really means and if you say dysgraphia or dyspraxia or dyscalcula many look very blank."

This more about a failure to train teachers to understand the various disabilities which can cause learning problems, and a failure to explain and inform both parents and the general public about these same issues.

I am not confusing the use of meanigless labels more trying to prevent the use or the use of a new meaningless label which is being used to prevent parents from understanding the reveal nature of the problems facing their children. This a move by the Civil Service penpushers to create a more ignorance of the real problems facing our children.

Does your multi discipline team includethe very important audiologist and optometry professions who can provide the basic cognitive diagnosis which the other professionals you list depend on for any realistic assessment. Or is this more smoke and mirrors.

dolfrog I was talking about the general public not teachers.

My multidisciplinary team can include any profession that is needed to meet a child's often complex needs dolfrog. It isn't a move by Civil Servants as it has always been that we deal with the "problem" not with the label. Out of a hundred children labelled dyslexia it is more than possible for no two to have the same problems, just as no two children labelled ASD or ADHD will require the same approach. We treat children as individuals with individual needs which we strive to address.

mrz

That is good to hear.

All of the labels can only provide a clue or a guide to the real issues, which as you say vary from individual to individual. But they do serve a useful purpose to help parents, family and potential employers to have some initial starting point for further research into the needs of each individual.

Much like Auditory Processing Disorder (APD) which to most when they first see that label only think of it as a listening disability, (if that), but when i first started to research APD back in the late 1990s the leading researchers were talking about 4 subtypes or models of APD, since then those same leading researchers are now talking about 12 - 13 subtypes or models of APD as their research has increased their understanding of the issues which can cause APD.

this does not mean that the APD label is of any less use rather that you need to have a more indepth understanding of the issues, and be able to explain them in everyday terms so that all can understand, which issues relate to them or do not relate to them if they are diagnosed as having APD.

The same applies to dyslexia, There are two types of dyslexia Developmental Dyslexia which has a genetic origin, and leading researchers as saying it is possible to identify potential dyslexics from the age of 6 months in families at risk of dyslexia. Alexia or acquired dyslexia is concerned with those who are loosing their ability to read as a result of brain injury, substance abuse, stroke, dementia or a progressive illness. The same symptoms but for different reasons.

International researcher uses the terms reading disability, and dyslexia, to be almost the same thing, but that excludes Hyperlexia, which is another reading disability. So we need to use the terms which everyone is familiar with, while at the same time providing more indepth information from leading international research to explain all of progress made in our understanding of these very complex issues.

I currently work with a child who has ASD and hyperlexia and although it was never officially diagnosed my son also exhibits hyperlexia.

Just came across this research paper
A theory of reading/writing: from literacy to literature

Hi There
Has anyone had any experience with My Baby Can Read books, flash cards and dvd sets?
I have seen them advertised on tv and the set is £125, a big investment. Does it work? Does anyone have any advise or a second hand one to buy?
Any advise would be gratefully received.
Many Thanks
Mamagmama

My advice - don't teach your baby to read. Why on earth would you want to do that?

£125 is an enormous amount of money - to do something which shouldn't be done anyway......