I read the report on my dyslexic pupil today. The specialist tried the coloured overlays but they didn't work. She suggested toe-by-toe, PAT, listening to the pupil read every day, and also something done on computer where pupil is responsible for own learning........can't remember the name.

Specialist was LC, DQ, know who I mean?

yes i do, and she knows her stuff too.

Do you think it's worth me asking the parents if they could take book on Fridays and continue toe-by-toe over weekend? then assuming they say yes, share the book so he gets full every day entitlement to the scheme? i have used very successfully 5 days a week before, but as the pupil is year 5, maybe needs 7 days?

worth a try, the more the parents are involved the better progress he will make, plus they could also try some other strategies like the spelling techniques

oh yes, that was another suggestion. Fernauld tracing technique......something like that. Do you have any info?

yes! i wondered why you didnt add that, it is usually recommended

will look for it later for you, will try during the day today,

definition....

Fernald method (The)
The Fernald method involves the learner tracing over words selected from language experience written on card in crayon, to get a 'feel' of the letters. The learner then 'Looks, says, traces, covers, says, writes, checks'. The learner uses the forefinger of the writing hand to develop a kinaesthetic/motor memory for the word. This can be extended through a structured individualised spelling programme which develops word recognition through spelling.


we gave the pupil a small note book, and they wrote the word, then 'traced' over it in different colours, to get the pattern if the letters, then write in the air, then spell again. They also are supposed to imagine the letters on the page, trying to make it visual


also read this and thought it may be helpful, i think the course you are doing recommends Alpha to Omega

Specific strategies for educating children with dyslexia

In relation to dyslexia there are a number of educational interventions. These include structured written language programmes and multi-sensory teaching. Structured language programmes include the ‘Alpha to Omega Programme’ and the ‘Bangor Teaching Programme’. A structured programme sees learning to read and spell as the acquisition of skills. The skills are cumulative in that basic skills need to be laid down before more complex skills can be taught. In terms of a written language programme the sequence of skill acquisition would be as follows: letters, sound/symbol correspondence, blends (combinations of sounds), regular words, polysyllabic words and syllabic division. The teacher would need to assess what skills the child has and start from there.
Multi-sensory techniques involve the teaching of phonics, but with an approach that uses the inter-relation between sensory modalities, i.e. the connections between auditory, visual, kinaesthetic and tactile modalities. Let us take the word cat. The individual hears the word cat (auditory), sees the word cat (visual), says the word cat (auditory), prints the word cat (kinaesthetic) and feels the word cat (tactile as it is written in wooden two-dimensional letters). The rationale is that if there is a weakness with one modality then there is a need to find an alternative way of learning which capitalises on existing strengths in other modalities (Thomson 1990).
‘Teaching Today’ (Dyslexia in the Primary Classroom 1997) gives the following examples of multi-sensory teaching:

• Have children look in a mirror when reading words so that they can see how sounds are formed by lip and tongue movements. This task is useful for auditory discrimination, such as distinguishing the sound f from th.
• Tracing the letter shape on the table, in sand, in the air or on someone’s back helps to establish what arm and hand movements correspond to what letter. This process is enhanced if the child does the movement with a blindfold on.
• With eyes shut the child holds a wooden letter to feel and identify the letter.
• Running around big shapes and letters in the playground establishes a whole-body feel for the shapes involved.

I hope I'm not going to star t a row here, but I think that most of the so called 'dyslexia experts' have very little real understanding of the processes/skills needed for a child to learn to read and write. 'Whole language', with its strange and completely discredited belief that children somehow learn to read by a process akin to osmosis, has held sway fro many, many years now, and most of the 'experts' have been trained in whole language methods. That's why they promote the range of strategies exemplified in the stuff dq has quoted. They are floundering because they don't know what to do and how to do it!


This child has problems with reading and spelling? I would suggest that first of all you read the Appendix to the Rose Report on the 'Simple view' of reading, which details the skills that are needed for reading. Which are basically; that a child needs to know how the sounds that make up English words (44 of them) and how they are represented by letters. They need to be able to respond to a letter (or letters) automatically with the sound, or sounds (because some letters & letter combinations spell more than one sound) that they represent. Once they are able to do this they can 'read' words by producing the sound of each letter/letters, from left to right in the word, and blending them together to say the word. For spelling, they need to be able to break a spoken word into its component sounds and spell each sound. The difficulty with spelling comes when the sound has more than one way of spelling it, they have to learn which is the appropriate spelling for the sound. The problem for most 'dyslexic' children is that they have never been taught these skills in a systematic, incremental fashion as, in all but a few schools, this is not part of the initial teaching of reading. Most children can learn these skills; there are a few who can't, but they are very rare and usually have an underlying difficulty. Most 'dyslexics' do not have any underlying difficulty, and research (and experience) shows that once they are taught the fundamental skills, they learn to read.

Problems traditionally associated with dyslexia are things like poor short term memory, disorganisation & visual problems. None of these should hinder learning to read - they may just need more intensive practice of the basic skills to get them secure, and some benefit from overlays or corrective glasses.

Now let's look at the information DG posted and see what is useful and what isn't, bearing in mind that you are (or should be) teaching phonic skills:

Quote:

Fernald method (The) The Fernald method involves the learner tracing over words selected from language experience written on card in crayon, to get a 'feel' of the letters. The learner then 'Looks, says, traces, covers, says, writes, checks'. The learner uses the forefinger of the writing hand to develop a kinaesthetic/motor memory for the word. This can be extended through a structured individualised spelling programme which develops word recognition through spelling.

This is a typical 'whole language' method. It completely ignores the vital connection between the sounds which comprise the spoken word and how they are 'encoded' on paper. It, in fact, demands that children 'learn' the letters and the order in which they come, for every word. This is a huge memory overload, especially for children who already have a poor memory. There are thousands of words in an ordinary vocabulary, it is impossible to learn the individual spelling for each one. And what happens when they have to attempt to spell an 'unknown' spoken word? Without knowing how to break it into sounds and how the sounds are spelled (because the method gives then absolutely no instruction on this) they will be completely at a loss as to how to go about it. Thus proving how 'dyslexic' they are......it's a vicious circle.

Quote:

we gave the pupil a small note book, and they wrote the word, then 'traced' over it in different colours, to get the pattern if the letters, then write in the air, then spell again. They also are supposed to imagine the letters on the page, trying to make it visual

This should have some benefit. Tracing over the letters, especially if they are similar to normal handwriting, helps to develop a kinaesthetic 'feel' for individual words (we rely a lot on this for automatic spelling - each word has a unique 'feel' to it and we spell familiar words without even thinking about it, in the same way that an experienced driver puts the correct feet on the correct pedals of the car without any concsious thought). The technique would be further enhanced by having the child say the sound of each grapheme (the letter or letters which represent the sound) as he traces over it. Then have him write the word, again, saying each sound as he writes it; this helps the sound/grapheme association to become automatic. I would quarrel with the 'visual' bit, though. Spelling is predominately an auditory/kinaesthetic process - the visual bit only really applies to 'proof reading' what has been written, and the ability to instantly recognise that a word is 'wrong' is primarily the product of having read (by decoding) the word many hundreds of times

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also read this and thought it may be helpful, i think the course you are doing recommends Alpha to Omega

Alpha to Omega is not a bad programme, but modern synthetic phonics programmes are better as they are based on more up to date research and understanding of the reading/spelling process- try Sounds Discovery (Ridgehill Publishing), or Jolly Phonics or Ruth Miskin

Quote:

Specific strategies for educating children with dyslexia In relation to dyslexia there are a number of educational interventions. These include structured written language programmes and multi-sensory teaching. Structured language programmes include the ‘Alpha to Omega Programme’ and the ‘Bangor Teaching Programme’. A structured programme sees learning to read and spell as the acquisition of skills. The skills are cumulative in that basic skills need to be laid down before more complex skills can be taught. In terms of a written language programme the sequence of skill acquisition would be as follows: letters, sound/symbol correspondence, blends (combinations of sounds), regular words, polysyllabic words and syllabic division. The teacher would need to assess what skills the child has and start from there.

Mostly sound stuff here, especially about assessing what skills the child has, but children don't need to learn 'blends'. If they have been taught to decode & blend through the word they will be able to blend any combination of letters they encounter, without having to bother to 'learn' 'spr', 'str' , 'scr' etc - that's just timewasting. I would amend 'regular' words to 'phonetically regular' words - once they are able to decode and blend these with ease, then they can move on to the more rare letter/sound correspondences (and, don't forget, English is about 95% 'regular' if you understand all the sound/grapheme correspondences)

Quote:

Multi-sensory techniques involve the teaching of phonics, but with an approach that uses the inter-relation between sensory modalities, i.e. the connections between auditory, visual, kinaesthetic and tactile modalities. Let us take the word cat. The individual hears the word cat (auditory), sees the word cat (visual), says the word cat (auditory), prints the word cat (kinaesthetic) and feels the word cat (tactile as it is written in wooden two-dimensional letters).

I'm sorry, but feeling letters is absolutely no help whatsoever in learning to read, unless you're blind! Dump the wooden letters! (which are usually upper case, anyway, and completely confusing for a child who will mostly encounter text written in lower case) You can't 'feel' the printed word, so how on earth is this helpful?

Quote:

The rationale is that if there is a weakness with one modality then there is a need to find an alternative way of learning which capitalises on existing strengths in other modalities (Thomson 1990). ‘Teaching Today’ (Dyslexia in the Primary Classroom 1997) gives the following examples of multi-sensory teaching:

In other words, the expert is floundering.

Quote:

• Have children look in a mirror when reading words so that they can see how sounds are formed by lip and tongue movements. This task is useful for auditory discrimination, such as distinguishing the sound f from th.

Fine. It also helps them to recognise what sounds to spell by how it 'feels' in their mouth when they say a word.

Quote:

• Tracing the letter shape on the table, in sand, in the air or on someone’s back helps to establish what arm and hand movements correspond to what letter. This process is enhanced if the child does the movement with a blindfold on.

Okay, but only if the child is having difficulty with learning to form its letters- it's not an activity which helps with reading or spelling! If the child can form letters correctly, it's a waste of time.

Quote:

• With eyes shut the child holds a wooden letter to feel and identify the letter.

AARRGGGHHH! DUMP THEM!

Quote:

• Running around big shapes and letters in the playground establishes a whole-body feel for the shapes involved.

It certainly gives them lots of nice healthy exercise, which may improve concentration, but who runs around a piece of paper when they are writing a letter?

Please assess the child, find out what gaps he has in his phonemic and graphemic knowledge and teach skills to fill those gaps.

Good luck!

Maizie

*struggling into her body armour and taking cover behind pile of phonics materials*

im not starting a row either merely posting some information that i found today while trawling the internet

i have been asked in the past to try various strategies with students, some of which have worked and others that havent, and my job isnt to question but to allow the student to try all ways to support their learning, and discuss other strategies if necessary

im not claiming to be an expert so will take advice from those who have studied and taken part in training, and will use that advice for the benefit my pupils and students

some work some dont but offering the chance to them and as a support t to them having an open mind to anything gives the most opportunities

Not criticising you, dq

Just 'questioning' whether the 'experts' are really 'expert!

i know that maizie

but thats what they get paid for!

Money for old rope, really, recycling all the dotty whole language stuff they've been 'trained' in

Toe by Toe might be boring, but it works.

In my school we record in pencil, so that it can be rubbed out and the books re-used if a child leaves. We also *ahem* photocopy onto the relevent coloured paper for the children who need overlays.

I tend to do it at the individual child's pace. There was one child last year who could only manage one column per session, whereas others might do two or three whole pages.

They love to think that by the time they are in Year 6 they will be able to read the difficult text at the end of the book!!