Reading

[Guest guest]

Suzi,

I was real interested in reading your post about teaching your twins to read.

In the past a few people whose children with apraxia have had trouble learning

to read have posted but then there is the boy on the debtsmart talking page who

apparently is one of the best readers in his class. So, I am still trying to

figure out if reading difficulties are related to apraxia and if so what kind of

apraxia/treated apraxia or untreated/oral/verbal/global, etc. etc. or if it is a

pretty separate issue in the brain.

I also decided to purchase that book and start teaching my son, 6 1/2 to read

since I hadn't seen any of the " prereading " catch-on stuff that I had seen with

my first son at an even younger age. We started in November/Oct., (can't

remember exactly) and he is also enrolled in a public afternoon kindergarten

class (we decided to hold him back a year), plus the holidays so we don't do a

lesson every single day. I am very impressed with the book, it is clear and

easy to follow and it does only take 15mins. with the child if you don't also

try to do the writing exercises at the end of each lesson but it does take a

little more time of prep on the adult's part beforehand. We are on lesson 34!

Hooray!!! He IS actually figuring out and reading words on his own in the book

BUT the thing I find interesting is that it is NOT generalizing easily and

quickly like you would expect it to. Also he will learn a sound or word and

seem to know it real well one day and then not on another day. And he has great

difficulty keeping the sounds of the vowels correctly formed with his mouth as

the short i and long e sound so similar when he says them and the a and u sound

so similar when he says them.....he sees they are different but when he says

them he doesn't always say them the same, know what I mean? I have found that

it is really hard work for him to HOLD each sound but that when he does it he

" hears " the word so much faster than when tries to put the sounds together more

quickly. It has been really good for me to see so clearly where he is at in

reading and helps me be a lot more patient with him since it is so obvious

that it is such hard work for him and not developing and progressing naturally

like it did with my other son. Are you doing your kids separately? I can't

imagine it would work to do them together? Unfortunately when I asked the

school to include reading instruction in his kindergarten class, last year at

his IEP meeting,the Special ED. Director said " well we can't change the whole

curriculum just for him!! " Can you imagine??? Then when they got a whole

class of kids this year who were doing well on alphabet stuff they decided to

have the Reading Director come in and work with the " most advanced in the class "

and he is in the " top three " ! Little do they know how much real work he does at

home! The other thing that is irritating is that the reading director isn't

even doing phonics with them, but the whole language, even though I copied a

couple of articles from the LD site about the importance of phonics for children

at risk! HELLO!!!?????!!! Sometimes I do get so FRUSTRATED in dealing with

public school and constantly feeling like I am caught between a rock and a hard

place! But I better stop right there as when I get going on this topic I tend

to keep going and going and going! Gone for now, Carol p.s. oh yeah, please let

me know how you and the girls are progressing!

[Guest guest]

I was wondering what book you were referring to. My daughter is soon to be

5 and severely apraxic, but I am interested in getting the book. She does

very well on individual sounds and perhaps this book would benefit her. She

will be starting school soon also.

Thank you

>

[Guest guest]

Here's a link to the book on amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0671631985/qid=1011331875/sr=8

-1/ref=sr_8_3_1/104-2455285-0643964

Amazon even has some of the pages to look at. It has the

introduction and the first couple of lessons to look at.

I've just started all of this, so I can't say this is a great book

or not. If you want to wait, I'll keep everyone posted on how they

are doing with it.

One of my daughters, , is severely apraxic also. I'm not sure

how she is going to do. It's more of an experiment with her. I

want to see for myself how she handles all of this. I also figure

it can't hurt to give her a boost before kindegarten.

My other daughter, , is only mildly apraxic. Most of her

troubles are now articulation problems. I already know that she is

going to pick up on this fast. is extremely bright, and she

has already started to sound out some words. She has been dying to

learn how to read for awhile, and I just didn't know how to go about

teaching her.

Suzi

--- In @y..., " S. Surfus " <sillybear65@h...>

wrote:

> I was wondering what book you were referring to. My daughter is

soon to be

> 5 and severely apraxic, but I am interested in getting the book.

She does

> very well on individual sounds and perhaps this book would benefit

her. She

> will be starting school soon also.

> Thank you

>

>

> >

[Guest guest]

Hi

I'd like to make a few comments about this since my 8

yr. old with apraxia has gotten past the struggles of

emerging literacy.

Here are some things that I noticed along the way:

1. Standard reading instruction through the teaching

of decoding skills (phonics) was helpful to start.

Then it became a matter of lots and lots of reading

practice until the process became automatic. I think

that this is true for all children, but it seems that

my son needed more practice than most of his peers.( I

have another son who is a year younger and without

apraxia. He seems to be moving to the " automatic "

stage more quickly than his brother did last year.)

At age 8, my son now choses to read independently all

of the time, and he is actually at the high end of his

class with reading skills. Yet, if you present him

with a simple " nonsense " word to sound out, he cannot

use phonics as well as most of his classmates. He is

much more successful at using context clues to

identify a word.

Of course, this means that if the word isn't in his

vocabulary he may not be able to read it aloud. I am

not too worried about this though since he has a good

vocabulary for his age,because of all of the reading

that he does.

2. My son's oral reading now mirrors his speech.

When Ethan converses he has a tendency to speak very

rapidly and to blend words together. He also has

articulation difficulty with certain sounds like " th " ,

" F " , etc. Sometimes he drops word endings or uses an

incorrect verb tense.

Ethan now shows these difficulties when reading aloud,

but he didn't start out that wasy. In the early

stages of reading, Ethan's intelligibilty was better

with oral reading than it was with speech. I think

that the need to concentrate when decoding slowed him

down, and made him concentrate more on his sounds.

Now that reading is more automatic, his oral reading

is like his conversational speech. We often need to

remind him to slow down and use his clear sounds. He

also often needs reminders to pause at the end of a

sentences and to acknowledge short words in the middle

of text like " of " , " the " etc. ( By the way, his

reading comprehension doesn't seem to suffer from

these things; we just don't understand him well.)

I know that every child is unique, but I hope this

information was helpful to those of you with emerging

readers.

Audrey

Mom to Ethan age 8, global apraxia, ADHD, kind,

imaginative, and an avid reader.

>

>

>

__________________________________________________

[Guest guest]

Thanks for the post. It was very helpful.

--- In @y..., Audrey Goldman <audreygold@y...>

wrote:

> Hi

>

> I'd like to make a few comments about this since my 8

> yr. old with apraxia has gotten past the struggles of

> emerging literacy.

>

> Here are some things that I noticed along the way:

>

> 1. Standard reading instruction through the teaching

> of decoding skills (phonics) was helpful to start.

> Then it became a matter of lots and lots of reading

> practice until the process became automatic. I think

> that this is true for all children, but it seems that

> my son needed more practice than most of his peers.( I

> have another son who is a year younger and without

> apraxia. He seems to be moving to the " automatic "

> stage more quickly than his brother did last year.)

>

> At age 8, my son now choses to read independently all

> of the time, and he is actually at the high end of his

> class with reading skills. Yet, if you present him

> with a simple " nonsense " word to sound out, he cannot

> use phonics as well as most of his classmates. He is

> much more successful at using context clues to

> identify a word.

>

> Of course, this means that if the word isn't in his

> vocabulary he may not be able to read it aloud. I am

> not too worried about this though since he has a good

> vocabulary for his age,because of all of the reading

> that he does.

>

> 2. My son's oral reading now mirrors his speech.

> When Ethan converses he has a tendency to speak very

> rapidly and to blend words together. He also has

> articulation difficulty with certain sounds like " th " ,

> " F " , etc. Sometimes he drops word endings or uses an

> incorrect verb tense.

>

> Ethan now shows these difficulties when reading aloud,

> but he didn't start out that wasy. In the early

> stages of reading, Ethan's intelligibilty was better

> with oral reading than it was with speech. I think

> that the need to concentrate when decoding slowed him

> down, and made him concentrate more on his sounds.

> Now that reading is more automatic, his oral reading

> is like his conversational speech. We often need to

> remind him to slow down and use his clear sounds. He

> also often needs reminders to pause at the end of a

> sentences and to acknowledge short words in the middle

> of text like " of " , " the " etc. ( By the way, his

> reading comprehension doesn't seem to suffer from

> these things; we just don't understand him well.)

>

> I know that every child is unique, but I hope this

> information was helpful to those of you with emerging

> readers.

>

> Audrey

> Mom to Ethan age 8, global apraxia, ADHD, kind,

> imaginative, and an avid reader.