Teaching Alexander to read.

[Marie J Harris]

Hello Everyone, I'm new and l'm hoping someone can advise me. My son Alexander is a happy 7yr old boy. He's going through the process of being assessed for Aspergers, here in Australia. We've been waiting for over 2 years to get this far. We started his schooling late as we were worried about his social skills. He finished prep this year and will be in grade 1 next year. The school has been good overall, but unfortunately Alex does not meet the criteria for an intergration aid, is teased because he is different and is not reading well. Because Alex started school late l tried to teach him at home phonetically and l didn't get anywhere. At school teachers have had the same problem. Alex seems to learn whole words by a lot of repition. He knows all of his sounds, but he can not apply them. My husband and l feel that once Alex can read he will excell.

 

Does anyone have any advice? It would be greatly appreciated.

Edited December 30, 2004 by Marie J Harris

[oracle]

Hi

 

Our son Matthew is also 7 and has a diagnosis of High Functioning Autism. We home educate as Matthew did not fit the criteria for help either!

 

We also have HUGE problems with Matthew and reading. In part down to the fact that his school handled it so badly. We have just about tried everything, including buying into an internet reading package, which was excellent, but Matthew had no interest. Here in the UK I am a member of a SEN - HE list and the advice I was given there was to leave it. Take it off the agenda and give Matthew some space. So against my better judgement I have.

 

When the Christmas advertising began Matthew suddenly started to ask 'what does that say?' and so it has gone. He is now picking words out from the TV screen. he is wanting to read so that he can join his brothers on their computer games. We tried phonics, which he learned no problem but could not then string them together to make words. Now I believe he is reading whole words, by word recognition. We bought a junior scrabble floor game for Christmas and he is doing really well. We also play scrabble, and other word games and he helps by holding the bag but also now tries to make words. I have decided that Matthew will read - eventually. It's just going to take a while.

 

Sorry if this has not been much help to you.

 

Carole

[Marie J Harris]

Thankyou Carole. It is so good to hear that there is another child out there that is having the same experience as my son.

 

Marie

[Viper]

Hi Marie and welcome.

My son is is high functioning pre diagnosed AS and although he can read a bit he finds learning boring.

I have found a wonderful website that Ben loves it is www.starfall.com. sorry I can't do the link thing but give it a look and see if it helps, I sometimes sit with Ben and we do the reading together but he can play on his own too.

Hope that helps a bit.

Another idea is to label things around the home, ie door, window etc, this will help him to learn word paterns and words in general.

Viper

[katkin]

hi Marie, many children learn to read in many ways. Schools will not in the main just use one system such as phonics or "look see" method or they shouldn't do anyway! Learning purely by phonics can be really boring especially as children can't see the point of it, they just want to read a good story, or in the caseof a lot of boys, finding out facts. my sonn's fovourite book at age 8 was an encyclopaedia of world history! he still has a passion for history so it worked well for him! I would not worry too much about your son, he will learn to read. make it fun for him, if he can recognise shop logos such as macdonalds, supermarket etc he is reading. This will gradually increase and he wil make sense of the phonics he has learnt. I'm sure you do but read to him lots whatever he enjoys - i have had boys reading football results, books about snakes anything. i am also a firm believer in the beano and the dandy, asterix, tintin, any comic book because the words go along with the pictures. i know that sounds obvious but the amount of teachers i have heard say won't have a comic in their classroom, wel they just missed out on a great opportunity! read all the time, let him see your enjoyment in words and what you can find out. story tapes are great too especially ones that you can follow along with. in this way the child learns almost by osmosis instead of being plonked down with a set of flash cards which mean nothing and have no relevance to the child. In the uk if your child is registered disabled you can get tapes and videos form the library without paying for the rental, worth asking. labelling common items is a great idea as is putting text under pecs if you use them. Sorry if i've gone on but literacy is a subject close to my heart and i've seen too many children slip through to remain calm. let us know how you get on. Kat

[nellie]

Hi Marie, welcome to the forum

 

the advice I was given there was to leave it. Take it off the agenda and give Matthew some space. So against my better judgement I have.

 

I think this advice from Carole is spot on. The more pressure that is put on the child the more negative they can get. It is possible that long term damage can be done, making the person believe they can't read or putting the person off reading for life. I would go along with the idea of making reading fun and interesting by helping your son to read for pleasure and information. Using your child's special interest as a subject for learning usually helps.

 

Nellie xx

[Helen]

Hello Marie,

 

Just wondering, has your son received an assessment with a SALT, is your son receiving input from a speech and language therapist?

 

My son had a phonic problem at the age of 7, a few months later he was diagnosed as having a language disorder, he too couldn't read at that age. With the right help he flourished (by this, I mean input from a SALT and input from a specialist teacher). He received 2 1/2 hours 1-2-1 support per week with a peripatetic teacher for the duration of 3 years- his remaining time at primary school, 2 1/2 hours support doesn't sound a lot but it truly made a huge difference.

 

My son is now 12 years old and he doesn't have a problem reading anything anymore, but there is still a weakness in his ability to process information in a book.

 

Sadly, my son now hates reading - too much homework to contend with.

 

If your son doesn't meet the criteria for an intergration aid and the school is unable to meet his needs using a phonics programme then you need to ask the school how it intends to address your son's needs.

[Helen]

Marie,

 

If you are interested in delving into the SALT side of things for some help or advice, you could try the link below.

 

Good luck, Helen

 

http://www.speechteach.co.uk/forums/index.php?act=idx

[Helen]

Marie,

 

... another thought - subtitles ... you can activate subtitles on some children's television programmes. You can read the subtitles to your son whilst he is watching the programme.

Edited December 30, 2004 by Helen

[baddad]

Hi Marie -

You've probably already thought of it, but 'just in case'... could dyslexia/dyspraxia be playing a part in this? these are often co-mobid disorders (or aspects of) for children with diagnoses on the spectrum...

Some excellent advice already posted, but one other thing that might be useful is computer software. My son learnt most of the 'basics' with Reader Rabbit and Sesame Street software at pre-school, moving on to 1st and 2nd grader stuff as appropriate. I was careful to make sure this was seen as 'fun' activities rather than 'learning' activities, by mixing in easy/hard software on all sorts of other subjects (maths/time telling/problem solving) and straightforward software versions of favourite boardgames as well.

[helenl53]

Hi Marie,

 

if you are in Western Australia I can put you in touch with my friend who works for the Inclusive Schooling Services for WA Education Dept. She is brilliant and supports me here in the UK.

 

My son appeared to have difficulty reading - when he was tested by the Ed Psych, his literacy levels were some 2.5 years ahead of his chronological age. He could read words till the cows came home - but not in context. The problem was that the words were meaningless, to him, as he was reading fiction. School said they were unable to provide non-fiction readers for the kids under 10! - we bought him some non fiction books, in the "I Wonder Why" series from Kingfisher. They are excellent and contain byte size bits of information with lots of pictorial stuff as well.

 

The website is :-

 

www.kingfisherpubs.com

 

Jordan loves being read to because we can "tell" the stories - unfortunately he can not do this for himself. Because I love reading, and grew up with all the classics, I have wanted to nurture a love of fiction in him. For Christmas, we bought a portable CD Player and headphones and a selection of audiobooks. He has lovely stories like Tom Sawyer and Treasure Island that he can enjoy without having to go through the turmoil of having to "interpret" what he is reading.

 

Co-incidentaly, he can not understand why kids have to read to their parents every night. In his opinion, it is obvious that he can read!.

 

I think our kids will only do what they consider is relevant and necessary!

 

Best wishes

 

Helen

[helenl53]

Sorry peeps - I forgot to put the beginning on the link!

 

http://www.kingfisherpubs.com

[katkin]

hi helenl53, you know it makes me so cross when schools say they have no access to non fiction readers for under 10s. This is just pure laziness to the point of criminality on their part. All publishing houses of childrens reading schemes have a non fiction "arm" to them. If the school does not have them then they should get them for you. there is no excuse for them not doing this. in the uk literacy hour form the dfes states that non fiction texts should be studied so there must be some in school somewhere! When my daughter was in nursery and desperate to read the teacher told me that i could go to smiths and buy her the oxford reading tree as she wouldn't give her a book. i kept calm (just) and sent her to another school! sorry rant over- but schools get away with so much just by blustering at you. yes i know i work in one but i'm nice!!

[Marie J Harris]

Thankyou everyone for your imput, Alex enjoyed the starfall websitejava script:emoticon('')

smilie I had trouble getting him to exit the site and he's been asking to use it today. I've also labelled many items in our home, some at Alex's request. Alex has had an assessment through the school with a speech therapist to see if he qualified for an aid. She said he was just in the low normal range. Recently l took Alex to see a speech therapist at the hospital as part of his overall assessment for aspergers. As part of the assessment he's also seen a psychologist and he still needs to see an occupational therapist. We will get his diagnosis in February. The speech therapist was great! I was able to show her that Alex could read some words as a whole and he could read sounds individually. But he could not apply the sounds he knew to sound out phonetic words. She said she would request further testing and more speech therapy in her report. She was also able to see that although Alex's language on the surface seemed fine, that when she tried to talk to him in greater depth he was further behind than thought. She said the assessments the school therapists use only show surface, not underlying language. This surprised me. Most importantly she feels that Alex does has aspergers!! I will be talking to the school this year. Alex does enjoy educational games. Thankyou for your imput, it's been very helpful. Marie

Edited January 1, 2005 by Marie J Harris

[BEVERLEY]

Happy new year to all

 

I thought this was the best place to post this

 

Until recently Toni was unable to read, then one day it was like someone had turned a light on and she was practically word perfect. she has now caught up and is starting to overtake her classmates but the problem is toni cannot tell you about what she has just read. School are also worried about this and it is now down in her IEP

 

Has anyone eles come across this

 

Bevxxx

[helenl53]

Hi Beverely

 

Yes, we had the same experience with Jordan - absolutely fluently reading but didn't have a clue about what he had just read. Part of the problems is a lack of interest in what he has read which is why non fiction is much better for him.

 

He does enjoy being read to as we can put the inflection where it needs to go.

 

Love

 

helen

[Joe's gran]

Happy new Year everyone.

Thanks very much Viper for the wonderful website

www.starfall.com (hope I put that in ok). The website is wonderful and Joe and I had a good hour on it last night whilst his mum and dad had an hour out. Within minutes he mastered the clicking on the letters and soon could find 'T' for Thomas (of course) and 'J' for joe. He repeated everything with the children on the site.....we were having a bit of a giggle as he also copied their American accents!! Not bad for a 3and a half year old who has only recently started to use verbs to any extent.

Thanks again Viper.

[katkin]

Hi beverley. Not able to recall or explain what's just been read is very common in all children. I think with asd it may be harder for the child to be "lost" or "caught up" into the story so harder to empathize with the characters and then harder to recall. I have worked with some children on this and i made some very basic comprehension cards that asked factual questions about the text to start with. "what is the boys name?" "where did they go?" etc It helped that the fiction text was then treated more like a nonfiction text because the child was then able to find ut the facts. it helped writing down the answers too as it helps recall brain using motor memory (from writing using- arm muscles) as well as spoken answers to me and visual ones. Gradually we extended this into "how do you think they felt in the story" and things like "what would you do" Failing that just read non fiction. My father has only ever read non fiction hes 71 and one of the most knowledgable people i know. So make a virtue from a fault!! And your child will be the one on the phone in "millionare" I hope this helps- being new on here you all seem to know so much about everthing i'm not sure how worthy my comments are but i'm good at literacy! If you already know this lot ignore it! love Kat

[Valiant_Skylark]

I have a friend whose son had the similar problems. He really struggled to learn the sounds that went with letters, and couldn't even get to the point of stringing the letters into words in infant school. This boy was eventually dxd as ADHD. We lost contact as our boys went on to different schools, but I do see his mother around occasionally. She said his reading eventually just took off in junior school and is now not so much of a problem. His brain just came on-line as it were?

 

Another woman I know was onto her "second family". When she realised that her 5 yr old was struggling with phonics, and being made to repeat phonics-based programmes at school, she "sprang him from school" and went home ed. Apparently her children from the first marriage were dyslexic and never conquered phonics at school, had rotten school careers, but eventually learned using the whole word method. She was very confident that she had done the right thing and within weeks the youngest boy was reading well at home.He was a lot calmer, and happier!

 

I taught both my boys using Mona McNee's "Step by Step". This cost �5 a few years ago! It was a Godsend. It is phonics based, but worked for us. My sons read above their ages now and have a good knowledge of spelling rules, although their spelling is worse in a piece of free writing. My sons both have poor phonological awareness, as measured by SALTs, which implies that they are at risk of being poorer readers, but they have actually done very well. Also, I have heard that a child with v poor short-term memory will find learning phonics v v hard, if not impossible. Well, my older son has a second centlie forward digit span, backwards digit span was 16th centile. He should have been a no hoper. But he does read about 2 years above his age now. SALTs were a bit bemused!

 

My boys then both had trouble reading when the text got smaller. Words kept jumping on a page, words would blur, they would lose their place in the text. We looked into their vision, but a standard eye test showed little. We then went to the Dyslexia Research Trust and looked into the boys' problems in more detail. They had severe problems in a number of areas. You could look up Ian Jordan's posts on this website and then simply ask your son if he experiences any of these phenomena, along with his auditory problems? Perhaps you could talk to Ian to see if he can check this area for you?

 

Has your son had his memory assessed? Part of an Ed Psych report? My son finds that, if he reads a longer sentence, he can remember either the beginning, the end, or the bit in the middle, but not all of it! He has to read things through several times to fully get the gist of things. He should really have info presented to him in short sentences. Perhaps this is why some children appear to "read" fluently, but then can't remember what they have read long enough to process it meaningfully?

 

If all else fails, you could consider having your child assessed at a centre that specialises in dyslexia. If private assessments are out of your budget, as they were at that time for us, be aware that the Dyslexia Research Trust is a charity and only asks for "donations". Better to see somebody than nobody??? Ian's assessments look more detailed, but we can't all, unfortunately, always afford to "go private".

 

Good luck.

 

Let us know if/when your lad's reading takes off!

 

Valiant_Skylark xxx