Learning Reading Help

Part 1 Auditory Memory

When you need learning reading help you want to be sure you are considering all of the areas that may be problematic to learning reading. Whether you have dyslexia, an identified learning disability, are falling through the cracks,  or are gifted, these areas of perception are the reason why you need reading help.

Remember, there are 9 areas of  auditory processing, 9 areas of visual processing, and 9 areas of tactile/kinesthetic processing that affect learning. When you have a difficulty in any of those areas learning reading can become difficult.

Learning Reading Help: Auditory Areas

For example, auditory memory is just one of the 9 areas or auditory processing that is critical for learning reading skills. If you can’t remember the sounds of the letters you will have trouble with learning reading. However, there is more to auditory memory than just straight recall of sounds.

Auditory Memory and Learning Reading Help

I have worked with students that could restate whatever I said such as a list of words…blue, purple, red. But they were not able to use that information, process it, and then give me an answer. I have worked with other students that could remember songs but had great difficulty remembering their spelling words. And spelling is part of learning reading skills. There really is a difference between sheer regurgitation of auditory information and the utilization of the material you hear.

Watch the video Learning Reading Help Part 1 to find out more.

Hi,

My question is what is the best sequence of teaching spelling patterns to dyslexic students?

Which spelling patterns in particular will be the most tough for the dyslexics to grasp & what knock-on effect can they have
on the learning of other patterns?

Which doors would be opened in reading & writing by knowing a certain pattern & which would be closed if the pattern was not known??

Kindly explain.

Thanks

Aisha.

Aisha,

There are only 8 spelling patterns in the English language. I teach spelling with the spelling books – Making Spelling Sense and Making Spelling Sense II. The spelling books are designed to work with dyslexics of all ages. In addition to teaching spelling patterns it addresses both auditory and visual processing at the same time.

I always start with the vowel/consonant spelling  pattern as it is the easiest one to learn and the most predominant spelling pattern in the English language. Then I go on to the vowel consonant silent e spelling pattern. The other spelling patterns follow.

As you gradually introduce the patterns with multiple lessons per spelling pattern, I don’t think there is really one pattern that would be considered the hardest one.

When you understand the structure of the language you can not only spell thousands of words, you can also decode thousands of words. Teaching spelling with this spelling program addresses both encoding (spelling – writing the word down) and decoding (sounding out words – reading) simultaneously.

Bonnie Terry, M. Ed., BCET
http://bonnieterrylearning.com

Need help with spelling? Teaching spelling or learning how to spell doesn’t have to be daunting even if you have a learning disability, dyslexia, or are even gifted. And, yes, even gifted kids sometimes struggle with spelling. Spelling problems are typically due to areas of auditory processing that aren’t working as effeciently as they should and could be working. But, when you teach spelling with the spelling patterns in an auditory, visual, and tactile way, everyone can spell.

When I tell parents that there are only 8 spelling patterns they are usually quite surprised. But, we only put letters together 8 ways to make words. Then, they become curious as to how I teach the patterns to my students. They ask me all the time to show them how to use Making Spelling Sense.

Here is a home schooling family using Making Spelling Sense with their younger kids. They use Making Spelling Sense II with their older kids. You can even see one of their older kids helping the youngest (who is in preschool) join in the lesson. Spelling is really a family affair! Watch the Woods family using Making Spelling Sense (with one of the first lessons) and see how easy spelling can be. They are doing the spelling lesson with multiple age kids.

Scroll down and watch a family learning the 1st Spelling Pattern:

Hope this was helpful. Be sure to get your FREE teaching and Homework Tips – go to the upper right side to get them!

Bonnie Terry, M. Ed., BCET

What can you do during the winter weather to help your kids improve their skills? This question is a frequent one for me. Parents are always interested in helping their kids, but it is sometimes hard to stay motivated, especially during the winter months.

The following activities work well with all kids, whether they have dyslexia, LD, ADHD, are falling through the cracks, or are gifted. I have done the activities successfully with all of them!

I have two favorite things to do to not only help my kids, but to stay motivated doing it too. The first thing is to have more frequent game nights, playing educational games – learning games like The Sentence Zone, The Comprehension Zone, or The Math Zone. When you play games with your kids, they build skills while having fun and get a lot of modeling from you too. At the same time you get to have quality family time, so it is a double win situation.

The other activity I like to do is to have an evening where I might turn the heat up a degree or two, and everyone gets dressed in ‘summer’ clothes, and we have a ‘picnic’ on the floor of the living room. Afterwards, we might tell stories to each other – what I call ‘add-on stories.’ In these stories one person starts off and then the next person adds on to the story. We keep going round and round and the story gets longer and longer. The only thing is, the kids have to pay attention and so do you, so what you add on makes sense to the story. This builds listening comprehension and memory as well as a really good time.

Hope this is helpful!

Bonnie Terry, M. Ed., BCET

Bonnie Terry Learning – Review of The Comprehension Zone: Rocket Rap

This review is difficult for me to write because this product had such a dramatic and positive effect for one of our children.  It has been an answer to prayer, a break-through for our child who has struggled with auditory comprehension for years.  I am grateful for the opportunity to use this product that we would not have otherwise had access to,  thankful for God’s sovereignty that our family was chosen for this review and that the vendor determined to send us this particular product (as part of the TOS Bloggers Program).

So as you read this review realize that I’m not unbiased, know that I’m indebted to this product for helping my child in a way that I had failed to help him on my own and take from it what you will.

Bonnie Terry Learning focuses on products for the struggling learner.  The goal is to enable you to be better equipped to develop strong reading, writing and math skills in your child with dyslexia, ADD, Autism or other general learning difficulties.  Even gifted children can struggle in some of these areas and Bonnie Terry aims at smoothing out those bumps in the road of education.  They try to help you “think outside the box” to address your child’s difficulties from an angle, direction or perspective that you may not have considered, a direction that may be the difference between success or struggle for your child.  Bonnie Terry offers a variety of games and products to improve reading, writing, math and study skills for children 7 years and older.

Bonnie Terry Learning sent our family The Comprehension Zone: Rocket Rap ($67).  Rocket Rap is geared for 1st  grade through adult to help develop and strengthen reading or listening comprehension.  The game comes with 3 sets of cards written at different reading/listening levels (2nd-3rd grade, 4th-6th grade and 7th-12th grade).  Each set of cards can be used in several different ways.  Children can find the factual information, the main point or work on sequencing.  Children are able to read the cards themselves or may listen as you read to them in order to work on either reading or listening comprehension.  This versatility makes it easy to play the game with children at multiple reading/listening levels at the same time.  The cards are self-correcting and include hints to help your child succeed and even allow for using a helper in the scoring.

The Rocket Rap game consists of a high-quality, over-sized vinyl game mat, 3 sets of cards, four playing pieces and a die.  Play progresses by the child reading or listening to the paragraph on the card.  Then they complete their task depending on their level.  Beginners name two facts from the card, intermediates relay the main point of the paragraph AND two facts and advanced students use several cards at a time and put them in the proper chronological order.  Each time the child completes their task they get to roll the die and move.  If they need to use one of the helpers you take one point off of their roll.

All of our children from 1st grade up were able to play together, which as you know is an important feature for our family.  Our older children (10, 11 and 13) were able to easily complete the comprehension activities on all levels of cards, but enjoyed working on the sequencing.  Our 9 year old was happy to play with the 7th-12th grade cards.   The game was interesting enough to the kids that they wanted to play multiple times, even when some of the novelty had worn off.

Pros:

* multi-level play

* nice, high quality game

* lots of fun facts about people and planets included on the cards

* improves focus on the task at hand

* gives older children an opportunity to read out loud

* ability to focus on several different aspects of comprehension

Cons:

* price

* there should be more cards (in my opinion)

* not a fast-paced, edge of your seat type of game, but our children all enjoyed playing it, so what can I say?

What Rocket Rap did for our child:

The Comprehension Zone: Rocket Rap had amazing results for one of our children.   We have been working with him on comprehension for years.  I often have him draw pictures of what I’m reading, we act things out and we read just a few phrases at a time and ask him questions whenever we are dealing with auditory learning.  He simply struggles in this area.  I was interested to see how he would do with Rocket Rap.

I began with the easiest level.  I read the card to him and he was to tell me 2 facts from the card.  When it was time for him to answer all I got was a blank stare.  When prompted with the helpers, he was still unable to answer.  I was honestly shocked that he could not do this.  The cards we were using only have 3-5 sentences, are chock full of facts and he couldn’t pick out one.  I ended up modifying the game for him, rather than have him tell me two facts per card to earn one roll of the die, I gave him one roll of the die for each fact he could pick out and we used lots of helpers.  He was still unable to finish the game.

We began playing Rocket Rap more often.  The improvement was rapid and dramatic!  By the end of the next game he was able to play without my previous modifications and currently it is easy enough for him to pick out facts while listening that he likes to try reading the card himself.

For the first time in his life our child will raise his hand when Mark asks questions during family worship and he will know the answer.  He will come up to us after church and spontaneously tell us something that he learned from the sermon.  He is so amazingly proud of himself and I’m amazingly thankful.

Final thoughts:

As I mentioned this is a tough review.  For 8 of our children this game would be a fun, helpful activity that is not worth $67, but for one child, for these results, I would happily pay double.  We’ve tried things similar to this in the past, we’ve been focused on this problem for years, but Rocket Rap has been the first activity that has been successful.

If you have a child who struggles with reading or listening comprehension, I certainly think that Bonnie Terry’s The Comprehension Zone: Rocket Rap is worth a look.  If any of you decide to go this route, I’d love to hear what you think.  Have our results been typical?

You may read more reviews of Rocket Rap and other Bonnie Terry Learning products at The Old Schoolhouse Homeschool Crew blog.  You may read more of my homeschool curriculum reviews on my review page.

Bonnie Terry Learning sent The Comprehension Zone: Rocket Rap to our family free of charge (part of the TOS Bloggers Program) to enable me to write this review.  All opinions expressed are my own and I am not otherwise reimbursed for any reviews here on Raising Olives.

Hi Bonnie,

I would be interested to know more about how you make your
visual clocks and what they look like.

-Susan

Susan,

As a teacher of K- H.S. age, I have a lot of resources and supplies. I’m a learning disability specialist and educational therapist as well as parent. I have ADD & have worked with ADHD kids for over 30 years. So, I have a number of telling time work sheets that are blank as well as a large blank clock stamp for making clocks.

The stamp can be gotten from

https://educationalinsights.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv?

And, I just did an online search and found this site where you can program in your times on the clocks and then print the sheets.

http://www.time-for-time.com/worksheets.htm

After making them, I would copy them on card stock paper to make them more durable and cut them from the sheets so I can tape them across the top or side of their desk.

You can even color code the hands of the clock or copy them on different colors of card stock to make it even easier for your kids to follow.

Hope this helps.

Bonnie Terry, M. Ed., BCET

P.S.: Don’t forget to sign up for the 10 FREE homework & teaching tips – right above my photo.

A parent recently wrote in: Is a language disability considered a learning disability? My son has problems with both expressive and receptive language. He has a big difference between his visual and verbal scores on his test. That turned his language delay into a disability. There was a very large difference between the two. He is much better with visual than verbal, but I knew that when he was little. He has always been very visual. He also needs some help with speech, but the main problem is language. He also needs help with social skills and behavioral help.

I do have an IEP meeting scheduled in a few weeks so it will be ready to be implemented when he starts 1st grade. What kinds of things should I have in his IEP so that he is taught visually? Is there anything I should ask about? He is already getting speech and language help one day a week at school, but his diagnosis has changed from delay to disability since that was implemented.

In one word, yes, a language disability is considered a learning disability.

The National Center for Learning Disabilities states the following:

Specific Learning Disability: A disorder in one or more of the basic psychological processes involved in understanding or in using language, spoken or written, which disorder may manifest itself in the imperfect ability to listen, think, speak, read, write, spell, or do mathematical calculations. The term includes such conditions as perceptual disabilities, brain injury, minimal brain dysfunction, dyslexia, and developmental aphasia. The term does not include a learning problem that is primarily the result of visual, hearing, or motor disabilities, of mental retardation, of emotional disturbance, or of environmental, cultural, or economic disadvantage.

Disability categories: IDEA disability categories include autism, deaf-blindness, deafness, emotional disturbance, hearing impairment, mental retardation, multiple disabilities, orthopedic impairment, other health impairment (e.g., asthma, attention deficit disorder or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, diabetes, epilepsy, heart condition, hemophilia, lead poisoning, leukemia, nephritis, rheumatic fever, sickle cell anemia and Tourette syndrome), specific learning disability, (e.g., Perceptual Disabilities, Brain Injury, Minimal Brain Dysfunction, Dyslexia, Developmental Aphasia), speech or language impairment, traumatic brain injury, visual impairment (including blindness), and developmental delay.

There are a few other things I’d like to share with you.

1. In CA there are services for those with severe speech &/or language disabilities. Kids are typically placed in a classroom where the teacher has a background speech & language [typically a speech & language pathologist].

Placement in a class that is specifically designed for speech & language students where I live are actually county classes – in other words, the county office of education has classes sprinkled throughout several public schools and they bus the kids to the specific school that has the program/class they need. These classes are for those with more severe language problems than one or two sessions per week with the speech person in a pull out program would be providing.

“Language is often described in two ways: expressive language and receptive language. Individuals with LD often have difficulty with both expressive and receptive language. There is a strong relationship between language and learning disabilities. Articles within this section provide information for parents and teachers about early warning signs of speech and language difficulties.” [LD Online]

2. Even if you send your child to a private school, if you want, you can access speech & language services from the public school. You will need to transport your child at the time of day the public school schedules him, but the public school should be providing it.

I was in a similar circumstance a number of years ago. One of my students was in a private school and I attended the IEP meeting at the public school. The parents kept the student at the private school but were able to transport him to the public school for resource services provided by the public school.

3. Regarding the IEP, you will want to come as prepared as possible. You might ask your son’s current teacher for any special things he/she is doing for your son. You will want to also make notes yourself on how he works best at home. To get a fuller picture of what is going on, you may want to avail yourself of an informal comprehensive assessment tool like the Learning Difficulty/Disability Pre-Screening Tool and Informal Comprehensive Identification Tool. It will give you a lot of information so you will be coming from a position of knowledge and strength to the meeting.

Hope this is helpful.

Bonnie Terry, M. Ed., BCET

Teaching reading has a variety of things involved with it. One critical area is in the phonemic awareness area and auditory processing. Kids need to learn the sounds, including the vowel sounds. The short vowel sounds for the short ‘e’ and the short ‘i’ are very close to each other. This makes them hard for kids to tell the difference. But, teaching the short vowels is easy when you realize the short vowels are actually ‘on your body.’ With this technique kids have a tactile cue in which to remember the sounds. Remember, when you teach with an association, retention improves dramatically! Watch the video to see where the sounds are and how to teach them to your kids.

Hope this is helpful!

Bonnie Terry, M. Ed., BCET

Whether your child is being evaluated for LD or dyslexia you need to know the type of questions to ask the specialists. I just read this article that was posted on LD Online. It gives a lot of great information and I thought you might be interested…

Written by: Great Schools Editorial Staff (2007)

Hiring a private specialist to conduct a psychoeducational evaluation of your child is a big commitment of time, effort, and money. To find someone competent, ask other parents or school staff for their recommendations. You’ll probably want to interview more than one specialist before choosing the person who will work with your child. If you get a recommendation from someone outside the school, make sure the private evaluator has the qualifications and/or credentials your state or district requires.

Before hiring a specialist to conduct psychoeducational testing, you will want to interview her about her professional qualifications, procedures, and fees. The responses will allow you to screen a prospective specialist to see whether you feel comfortable with her, and to discover any potential “mismatches” with your child’s needs. The conversation can also help you prepare your child for the evaluation process.

You’ll be better prepared to interview an evaluation specialist if you have some background information on evaluation for special education eligibility and/or learning disabilities.

In order to get the most benefit from your initial conversation with a psychoeducational evaluation specialist, you’ll want to have a good basic understanding about why and how evaluations for learning disabilities are conducted-and how to understand the results.  For the rest of the article, go to LD Online.

…………………………

Get the parent friendly LD Dyslexia Screening Tool to help you identify your child’s learning problems.

Hope this is helpful.

Bonnie Terry, M. Ed., BCET