reading query

[Guest guest]

Dear Everyone,

A friend of mine who doesn't yet do the computer thing has a situation I thought

you might be able to help with. Her 18 year old daughter w/ds only sight reads.

She has had a lot of tutoring over the years, but doesn't read for

comprehension. Any thoughts? Recommendations?

Thanks in advance,

Eleanor Green

[Guest guest]

Hi,

This is good timing.

Maverick is doing very well on the Edmark reading program, but it is a sight

reading program. Last week at his inclusion meeting we were talking about

how ready he might be (or not be) to begin phonics.

The sp ed teacher says he needs to learn patterning before he is able to

start on phonics. He really has a hard time with that. This summer we are

going to do PATTERNS....as a lifestyle in our home to try to get him ready

for phonics next summer.

So, now I am curious.....does this 18 yr old have the patterning down pat?

I'm assuming that it must make a difference.........but any of you who have

children who read phonetically, did patterning have a big part of it? Were

your children successful at patterning before they began phonics? How did

you teach them patterning? And do any of the rest of you have patterning as

a goal and have any suggestions for us?

[Guest guest]

Would patterning also be patterns/groups of letters? I'm sure there is a

more correct way of saying that, but letter patterns, like words that all

use " ea " in them or " ie " or.... I know the reading specialist at our school

who also teaches the elementary kids who are in special education swears by

the " son " Reading Program. She uses it with kids who others thought

would never learn to read and they're now reading. Not sure how it would

work with some of our kids, but it might be worth looking into. It deals a

lot with these type of pattern things--I think. I " m hoping she'll be Mac's

teacher someday and I'm sure she'll probably use this method. Anyone else

ever heard of it?

Jill

..

> The patterning is like in K and 1st grade when you see a pattern.....car,

> house, car, house, car....what comes next?

> That is where we are having problems.

> Also, on sequencing he is working on that. IF it is familiar and concrete

he

> can do it.....with 5 or 6 steps.

> Oh, on THAT note..... I used my digital camera and made some sequencing

> worksheets for him of him Feeding the Cats.....and Brushing his Teeth.

> Pretty cool and fun!

>

>

>

>

>

>

[Guest guest]

In a message dated 5/7/2002 11:25:22 PM Eastern Daylight Time,

Michdock@... writes:

> but any of you who have

> children who read phonetically, did patterning have a big part of it? Were

> your children successful at patterning before they began phonics?

Stefanie learned to sight read words first and then learned phonics. We

never worked on patterning. But we did play lots of games to reinforce

phonetics. One of her favorites was " go fish " where we said the sound of the

letters, not the names of the letters.

Cheryl in VA

[Guest guest]

Ahhh....go fish....he LOVES. I can do that!! I will also make a letter

bingo game for him....we have number and word bingo... and I'll add one with

just letters......good idea....THANKS!

[Guest guest]

So, approximately what age did Stefanie learn to read phonetically?

[Guest guest]

Hi,

Mav is on the level 2 Edmark Sight reading program so he has a pretty

extensive Sight vocab, plus he's got other sight words he learned out of

necessity.... survival signs....like Pizza, Taco Bell....LOL. Family

names..stuff like that. That is no problem.

But the phonics...he's not getting.

The patterning is like in K and 1st grade when you see a pattern.....car,

house, car, house, car....what comes next?

That is where we are having problems.

Also, on sequencing he is working on that. IF it is familiar and concrete he

can do it.....with 5 or 6 steps.

Oh, on THAT note..... I used my digital camera and made some sequencing

worksheets for him of him Feeding the Cats.....and Brushing his Teeth.

Pretty cool and fun!

[Guest guest]

Well, Stefanie was an early reader, she was reading sight words at 2 1/2 and

was reading phonetically by 5. Remember, many experts say kids with DS can't

read phonetically. She was doing well and we participated in a summer

reading course for a program called Sing, Spell, Read and Write. She did

very, very well with that. What I liked about the course was the constant

reinforcement for the phonetics. They had a song for vowel songs and a song

for all the consonants that my kids LOVED to sing ... OVER and OVER and OVER

( I still know the songs by heart!) We played the tape in the car everytime

we went somewhere, which was OFTEN!! Anyway, they had workbooks, songs,

games, all the components of a good program. The reading books introduced

one vowel sound at a time and the child did not change books to next sound

until they mastered the first. The next book then had two vowel sounds in

the words. Kept building sounds until the last book, which was all the

irregular sounds (ph, kn, etc) Very easy progression.

She can sound any word out she sees, although sometimes foreign words throw

her. I had stopped to get boxes one time to pack away some stuff and left

them in my car. She pops in the house and says " Mom, what is teck-il-la? "

I am trying to figure what she is asking, what she has seen. Then it dawns

on me she has peeked in the car and seen the boxes .... can you guess where I

got the empty boxes from?

;-)

Cheryl in VA

[Guest guest]

Dear :

I'm not sure what you mean by " patterning " , for now I'm going to assume that

you mean sequencing. On the WISC for children they have a section that they

use to test short term memory.They test how many digits a child can remember

before making mistakes. I believe they do this auditorily and visually.

What they are really doing is measuring how many pieces of information a

child can hold together in short term memory. A person needs to be able to

remember auditory and visual sequences in short term memory to be able to

speak and to be able to decode words phonetically.

Many of our children are more visual than auditory. Perhaps that is why

they excell at sight reading. While they are learning to sight read, they

can also strengthen auditory memory and discrimination by practicing

sequencing everyday for a few minutes. I believe that Earobics is probably

a good program to use on the computer that is more fun than sitting in a

chair repeating digit spans, but here in our house, I did digit spans (said

digits in a row slowly, first 3, then 4 , 5 etc.)daily everyday for a few

minutes, a couple of times per day. We made books and taught sight reading

until our kids had an auditory digit span of 5 or 6 and then introduced

phonics. When their digit span got to six, they had no problems with

phonics and began reading fluently.

I taught three of our children to read this way, including Cristen, with

Down syndrome.

My six year old is learning phonics now but his digit span has only recently

become 6 (he can remember 6 sounds in his short term memory). Last year,

when he was 5, he could say the beginning sound of each letter and all of

the short vowels, but he had a lot of trouble stringing all the sound

combinations together to decode words. Now he has no problem and does this

easily. He is actually reading now.

Many people think that phonics is the only good approach to reading. I

have found that three out of four of my children (the fourth is still only

three)learned best by getting a good sight word vocabulary down first, say

300 words or so (all the commonly used words that you see over and over

again, as well as some interesting words to your individual child that may

or may not follow phonics rules). At the same time, work on sequencing

activities. When this skill is solid, then introduce phonics

and your child will be probably be reading in no time.

Many of our children have auditory difficulties. This hinders anything

involving sound, including both speech and reading. The key for us was to

try to strengthen auditory skills. Reading books to your child is also a

good way to do this. Ask questions and even get your child to read a little

with you to keep his or her attention. Most kids will benefit from auditory

exercises, even if they don't have Down syndrome. We live in a very visual

society these days.

Maybe this is all as clear as mud!

Re: reading query

> Hi,

> This is good timing.

> Maverick is doing very well on the Edmark reading program, but it is a

sight

> reading program. Last week at his inclusion meeting we were talking about

> how ready he might be (or not be) to begin phonics.

> The sp ed teacher says he needs to learn patterning before he is able to

> start on phonics. He really has a hard time with that. This summer we

are

> going to do PATTERNS....as a lifestyle in our home to try to get him ready

> for phonics next summer.

> So, now I am curious.....does this 18 yr old have the patterning down

pat?

> I'm assuming that it must make a difference.........but any of you who

have

> children who read phonetically, did patterning have a big part of it?

Were

> your children successful at patterning before they began phonics? How did

> you teach them patterning? And do any of the rest of you have patterning

as

> a goal and have any suggestions for us?

>

>

>

>

>

>

[Guest guest]

What is patterning?

[Guest guest]

That's a cute idea!!!

Christie

*Momi* of Sara 9, Sabaa 6, Alia 5 and Hana 7 weeks (ds)

On Wed, 8 May 2002 09:08:19 EDT Michdock@... writes:

Oh, on THAT note..... I used my digital camera and made some sequencing

worksheets for him of him Feeding the Cats.....and Brushing his Teeth.

Pretty cool and fun!

[Guest guest]

In a message dated 5/8/02 4:53:12 AM Central Daylight Time, wildwards@...

writes:

> But we did play lots of games to reinforce

> phonetics. One of her favorites was " go fish " where we said the sound of

> the

> letters, not the names of the letters.

> Cheryl in VA

>

> In Montessori, as had, they teach the sounds of the letters, not

the names. When they recite the alphabet, it's by sounds. Before he changed

schools I thought I'd better make sure he knew it by names and he did. Don't

know where he learned except maybe Sesame Street.

Jessie, Mom to , 37 and the light of my life.

[Guest guest]

In a message dated 5/8/2002 8:17:05 AM US Mountain Standard Time, Wildwards

writes:

> .... can you guess where I got the empty boxes from?

>

LOL...the BEST place to get empty boxes of course!!!

So, this program that included Music.....is it a local activity/class program

or is it something we can get?

[Guest guest]

On this defintition of patterning I am not entirely sure of how it would be a

useful, let alone neccessary skill for learning phonics. Tim reads at a 6.5

year level, with a vocab of between 300-400 words (he is 8.5). He started age 5

with phonics learning but it wasn't applied to his reading, it was more to make

him aware of the different sounds in speech. It involved actions for specific

phonemes and diagraphs. He learnt to read by sight, initially with the use of

flash cards but these days he only has to be shown the word a couple of times in

context and he can read it. he can use picture clues and context to work out

most unfamiliar words ( he needs to have the word in his speech/sign vocab to do

this method tho) but also over the last few months he has started to

spontaneously decode simple cvc words phonetically and is beginning to decode

words with diagraphs too. His latest new skill is to split words into sylables

or into the words that make it up, so upset into up and set etc. But put a

pattern in front of him and you'll wait a long time for him to follow anything

other than a simple 123 123 type pattern. He finds sequencing sentences very

difficult tho he is slightly better with pictures. He has a digit span of about

4 on a good day.

sue wong

Re: reading query

Hi,

Mav is on the level 2 Edmark Sight reading program so he has a pretty

extensive Sight vocab, plus he's got other sight words he learned out of

necessity.... survival signs....like Pizza, Taco Bell....LOL. Family

names..stuff like that. That is no problem.

But the phonics...he's not getting.

The patterning is like in K and 1st grade when you see a pattern.....car,

house, car, house, car....what comes next?

That is where we are having problems.

Also, on sequencing he is working on that. IF it is familiar and concrete he

can do it.....with 5 or 6 steps.

Oh, on THAT note..... I used my digital camera and made some sequencing

worksheets for him of him Feeding the Cats.....and Brushing his Teeth.

Pretty cool and fun!

[

[Guest guest]

Cheryl,

Ahhhh, my favorite place, the liquor store????? Had to read that like 4

times before i got it. LOL

[Guest guest]

I have used something different and never really heard of that patterning

approach. I use word families - say the at family. Other words in that

family are:

cat

bat

rat

etc... I have made them into a house and put the at in the top the roof.

You can use any word family with repetition. That is the key. Another

family is ad, or in or en.

Adding a picture clue with each word helps too.

And most kids (including ) learned to read from real books. I talked

with Kathy about getting the right books for sara on her reading level. Easy

books with one or two words on a page, a picture clue and then increasing the

number of words on a page. To something like:

I see the dog.

I see the cat.

I see the boy.

I see the ball.

Again using alot of repetition.

Using a phonics approach to teach reading in isolation, will only be useful

in isolation. It should be combined with many other reading strategies -

including sight vocabulary and REAL books and repetition. Many of our kids

have trouble with phonics especially if they speech or hearing problems.

Well I hope some of this helps. This was the teacher in me who taught

reading to 1st graders for at least 6 years and has taught many special needs

students to read along the way.

If anyone has specific questions or wants to know about the books to use for

their kids, just email me back.

~ Mom to 11 DS and Diabetes Type 1 and 7 NY

[Guest guest]

In a message dated 5/8/2002 8:16:39 PM US Mountain Standard Time, Linman42

writes:

> Many of our kids have trouble with phonics especially if they speech

AHHHHH....here is another issue. Why does the speech affect the reading? Or

is the speech and hearing combined only? Where does apraxia fit into reading

issues?

Maverick does so well with his sight reading...and he LOVES to read...and if

I tell him what a word is once he will usually remember it.

I have some small phonics books that a teacher got for me... and he reads

those...one and two words on each page.....I like Ike. Ike and a bike. But

he doesn't really seem to get that they all sound alike. Which is why the sp

ed teacher says he's not ready. (I'm trying to decide if he's not ready or

she doesn't want to teach him.) Also, we have several Reader Rabbit and

Jump Start programs that deal with phonics and word patterning..and he just

isn't ready for those unless we are sitting with him.

Right now his favorite books are Treehouse Kids....and he can really read

quite a bit of the book, but mainly the sight words. He has a real desire to

read right now and I want to strike while the iron is hot.

So, now while the teacher in you is showing, how do I teach my 13 yr old his

factoring!!!!!

[Guest guest]

,

Factoring???? What for? Tell me what you need him to learn specifically in

math and ill try to help. Again, REPETITION, repetition, repetition! That

is the only way amanda can do math and she still always starts from the

begining. Like if you ask her what's 5+5? she has to start at one and get to

5 and add 5 more.

How did this discussion turn to math???

[Guest guest]

In a message dated 5/8/2002 8:51:32 PM US Mountain Standard Time, Linman42

writes:

> How did this discussion turn to math???

The discussion didn't turn to math regarding ds. I was just trying to tap

your teacher brain regarding my 13 yr old who I homeschool. .....sorry.

[Guest guest]

This sounds like . He was reading words on cards at two and

then learned phonics in Montessori school. He learned spelling very easily

too. It's nonsense if they say kids with DS can't learn phonics, I wonder

where that came from. Must have been a nincompoop. He can read anything.

Jessie, Mom to , 37 and the light of my life.

[Guest guest]

hi

Alec started sight reading at first too. He was taught the consonant sounds

in Kindie. He had much more difficulty with the vowels, but has learned the

short vowels, long vowels and is now learning consonant blends and vowel

blends.

Alec loved the word family wheels to learn the word families.... One of his

teachers made 2 big dice out of small boxes. One die had consonants on it,

the other had vowels. He would throw the die and then read the word.... I

had the up words game which is like scrabble, but the tiles can be put on top

of each other. This was great for learning the word families too, as alec

could just put the consonant tile on top of each other to make new words.

I also made some word family bingo games up, that built on his sight word

ability. He didn't learn just in isolation. Some of the books that he liked

and was successful with were the easy phonics readers by teacher created

materials.

jill-- i would love some hints on math and how to teach regrouping.

Lori mom to Alec (9DS) and le (13-teenager)

[Guest guest]

I am amazed at all the myths I see exploded by kids with disabilities

regarding reading and reading readiness. It's a good think we didn't know

(or believe) any of them when we started working with Stef to teach her to

read! ;-)

Many children with LD have problems reading because they have actually

language problems that no one has ever diagnosed or checked for. Many times,

for them, phonetics is not the best method to choose when it comes to

reading. I have heard from parents of children with LD disabilities who

believed digit span theories indicating their children would never read until

they reached a certain number. The parents chose another method and voila

..... their child encountered success. I think the lesson they learned is a

valuable one. Don't sit and wait for your child to reach a magical level or

number before you explore alternatives. Kids constantly prove to us their

uniqueness and constantly show us how wrong some of the theories people try

to apply to them actually are!!

Cheryl in VA

[Guest guest]

In a message dated 05/09/2002 12:50:12 AM Eastern Daylight Time,

JB66111@... writes:

<< He learned spelling very easily too. >>

One of the things we moms in our DS support group here love to talk about is

how great at spelling so many of our kids are!!! I mean EXCELLENT spellers!!

We theorize because it is so concrete, because they learn the RULES about

spelling, and because they can practice.

One of my friends son is an wonderful speller, gets 100 on every test. He

started a habit of spelling his words out loud as he wrote them on test day.

His teacher discovered that the entire class would listen to this young man

spell his words, and write their answers in harmony with him!! ;-) They had

to work on breaking his spell out loud habit .... but for a while the entire

class was getting excellent spelling test grades too!! ;-)

Cheryl in VA

[Guest guest]

Oh please, please, please send me ideas on some hands-on approaches to doing

math. I love the ideas so far for reading. If any of you have anything you

are doing that has been working well academically for your older children

with DS (say 5th to 8th graders) please let me know somehow. 's IEP is

coming up on 5/23 and I'm so tired of the methods and programs being used.

I'm searching frantically for good stuff, because Lord knows the special ed

teacher never does.

One issue we are debating (my hubby and I) is whether or not to include him

for DARE. Anybody's kids doing DARE? I asked the teacher to send the DARE

book home for me to look at and consider adaptations for (again, something

she should do). His special ed teacher really ticked me off the other day

and she immediately got defensive when I sent her a " friendly " email saying

that I am looking for different approaches and hoped we could put our heads

together to come up with some more hands-on approaches for next year. I just

know my son is capable of more.

I asked her about computer lab. She said 8th graders do Hyper-Studio and

create web pages and that she didn't think could do this.....too over

his head. This is what gets me! I want to scream " Of course it's over his

head! I expect it to be! It's your job to pull out something he CAN do

which will apply to a goal in his IEP! " Why do they NOT get this! I think

creating a web-page would be fun for to do, which I " kindly " told her in

another email along with pointing out that we would need the aide that will

be assigned to him that period to have proper training in creating a web-page

herself! So there!

I have a feeling this meeting will not be pretty. I'm done being pushed

around and having them tell me something won't work without even trying it.

I don't think they are going to like this Jackie. Geeze!

Jackie, Mom to 14ds, 11, and Bradley 8

[Guest guest]

In a message dated 05/08/2002 6:45:17 PM Eastern Daylight Time, Michdock

writes:

<< So, this program that included Music.....is it a local activity/class

program or is it something we can get?

>>

I think you can still mail order the program. The reason they asked kids

from our support group to participate ( I think this is the reason) is they

wanted to be able to use their success as an endorsement. I know they used

the program sucessfully with the prison population that could not read. They

had tapes for all the sounds they were teaching. I gave my stuff away years

ago and the people who designed the program ( a former teacher) donated a set

to our DS support group's lending library. At one time this was done by CBN

and sold at their bookstore but I don't know if that is still true or not.

Do a search on Sing, Spell, Read and Write and see what comes up. YOu

used to be able to buy just components of the program. Not sure what is

available now.

Cheryl in VA