- OK Bob, I have a humdinger for you. This is the first, and so far only, child I have seen in decades (not admitting how many decades) for whom DI seems not to be working. M. is now 7, in Grade 2, and has had two years of K and a year of Grade 1 (with an outstanding teacher in first grade-- one in the top 5% anywhere). He is a native English speaker, clearly not developmentally delayed, well-organized, good gross and fine motor skills. Went to a half-day K program for kids with oral language delays and seemed to benefit. His PPVT is in the normal range, about the 70th %ile, which rules out intellectual disability. He does have some speech issues -- still uses inappropriate syntax, like "he goed" and "I gots" but receptive language is at least average. So what is the problem? This boy has not been able to learn sound-symbol correspondences. We started working with him in the middle of Grade 1. I always use Fast Cycle, providing repetition as necessary, but he could not keep up the pace, so we switched to RM I (Rainbow edition) and began at the beginning. He could do the " say it fast" tasks, caught on to blending sounds after a little while, but could not learn new sounds. He already knew s, m and a -- we managed to add r and ee -- but when we got to f and t he stalled. We did every lesson (the sounds parts) over multiple times. We had practice sheets where we did just those sounds, in an I do -it -- We do it -- You do it fashion. We practiced timing him on those sheets (did only 15-second timings) and he never passed a rate of 25/min. We could get through a RM lesson with him meeting criteria (after "repeat until firm" several times) but he never remembered the next day, and it was back to square one. We also tried having him write the sounds as in Spelling Mastery. He could never do this "cold." We tried having him write the sounds, while saying them, 10-15 times at the beginning of each lesson. Harking back to graduate school (really, grasping at straws) I decided to try the kinesthetic/tactile approach as well. I got some Montessori tiles where the child can trace the letter with his finger while saying the sound. He would do this (with t, for instance) 10-15 times, then trace the grapheme on paper. Now, between the time his finger left the tile to when he went to trace the letter t on paper (about 2 secs), he *forgot* the sound (this was after several days of practice). At this point he would get upset, because he KNEW he had just done it!! If you dictate a word like "it" to him, he can't spell it even when you tell him the letter names, because he can't remember how to make an i or a t. Both letters are in his name. We've tried cards, computerized practice, games, making the letters with finger paint and wikki stix -- and his teacher and an aide in the class have done everything they can think of. He still knows only about 6 sounds, whether for reading or writing. He does not have the ability to learn "sight words" (maybe that's just as well). His printing is good and he can copy accurately -- but not read anything he copies. I confess I am stumped, I think for the first time. On the other hand, he had no difficulty with Language for Learning, and once when he came at the wrong time, and a group doing Language for Thinking (lesson 75) were halfway through their lesson, he joined in and responded perfectly. Ideas? Please! M. is a great kid. But he is starting to get discouraged.
- November 22, 2009 4:20 PM
Monday, November 23, 2009
palisadesk
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I'm probably not doing this right. Someone who knows blogs might help me. I was hoping to see each questions as a new post, and then my answers as responses to just that.
ReplyDeleteThe Palisadesk question is good and points out something very important, the extreme variability in learners. I contend that M. can learn the sounds. One problem seems to be that no matter how slowly a given program introduces sounds, that might be too fast for M., implying that we have to step away from the program for a bit. There is really no point in doing anything in the RM programs until M. learns sounds.
It's not a criticism of M. that he's slow at learning sounds. It's just an observation. If we humans were computers, we would have infinite patience with M. We need to emulate a computer in this respect.
Specifically, I'd copy the first few sounds from RM and make flash cards with individual sounds. Do the ones you're pretty sure he knows first: sm, m, a, r, ee. Let's just say he isn't as firm on those as he needs to be. Just start with one sound and ask him what it is. The moment he makes two errors, adjust the cards so that you're working only on those two sounds.
Forget about rate for now. Get accuracy established. Give M. a little extra time to identify a sound. (You can gradually lesson that over time.) Unless there is something you haven't identified about M., sooner or later he's going to start getting the only two sounds he working on. That's the extreme case: he misses the first two sounds. In the set, as soon as he makes errors on two different sounds, work only on the sounds in that set at that point. That is, the two missed sounds and two or three sounds he consistently gets right. Don't introduce any new sound until M. masters one of the missed sounds.
And don't use the flash cards in the traditional fashion, putting the missed sound at the end. Say he gets the first one right, then misses the second one. Go to the third one, but THEN go right back to the second one--the one he missed. Keep doing that until he gets it right. He will. What if it takes a long time? Who cares? He's taking the time he is demonstrating to us that he NEEDS. It's not just that he needs lots of trials. He needs a limited set in which he mostly experiences success: maybe three sounds right and two wrong, but never more than two he has gotten wrong. He needs immediate reviews more than delayed reviews. He doesn't need to be rushed. (To every thing there is a season.)
But isn't M. behind and we want to catch him up? Sure. Aside from mastery, efficiency is our big goal. But we can't make the instruction more efficient than M. can handle. What I'm describing IS efficient ... for M.
In short, I can't say there is anything particularly "wrong" with M. The problem in this situation is that we humans have to get it through our heads that extremely slow progress is progress, and success with a kid like M. has more personal payoff than with most kids.
In short, don't let him fail on more than two sounds, don't rush him (rate can come later), and--I'm sorry to say this--don't change strategies mid-stream to kinesthetic letters or anything else because ultimately, it just slows down M.'s progress. It's not the least bit phoney to reinforce M. like crazy when he gets a sound--especially one he missed previously--because you should be thrilled. Just show him that. And don't worry if he "learns" a sound today (gets it right) and misses it tomorrow. Tomorrow, go right back to a smaller set of sounds. As Zig Engelmann would say, M. is an incredible learning machine. That's a metaphor. He's human; we have to act like machines with infinite patience. Let me know how it goes.
November 22, 2009 5:15 PM