Thoughts on Reading, Writing, and 'Rithmetic

Right up there with learning to read and rhyme is learning to count and use numbers. In kindergarten, math can still be fun.

identify numbers 1-20 – after all, we only get to 3 when our parents are counting.

count by ones, fives and tens – thus assisting in requesting cookies.

do short 'story problems' (if you have 3 kittens and give 1 to me, how many do you have?) – also reinforcing that “sharing” concept that we all struggle with occasionally.

The harder number stuff comes later in school, but it all builds on the successful understanding of these basic concepts. Some students may be introduced to more than this, but these are the foundational pieces. If your child is out of kindergarten and still struggling, don’t wait till he is in Algebra 2 before you look into getting help.

ALP has worked with students ages 5 to 50, and the earlier the intervention, the better the student can compensate further on in life.

The ABCs are the building blocks for kindergarten – not to mention the rest of school. Usually children start manipulating sounds in spoken words before they reach kindergarten.  They can make up silly rhyming words by manipulating beginning sounds--for example, Susie makes up a new name for her sister and calls her "Silly Jilly". 

But in kindergarten, learning about the funny shapes called “letters” that we use to put our spoken language into writing begins in earnest.  Most kids in kindergarten have the phonemic awareness they need to really take off with using the alphabetic system.  Somewhere between 10 and 20 per cent of children will need help with developing that phonemic awareness, however.

Word games are a delight in kindergarten, a joy that should never cease throughout life. Here are a few things that a kindergartener should be able to do by the end of the kindergarten year:

- orally identify beginning and ending sounds (not necessarily letters) in words AND

- orally identify the middle sound (not letter) in a short word like 'cat' or 'play' – recognizing different sounds in spoken words is an important step in language processing – the alphabet may be the building blocks, but we all know how English cheats. Sounds come first.

- be able to create rhyming words – because half the fun of childhood is rhyming

- be able to orally omit a sound in order to create a new word (what is 'fat" without the /f/ sound?) - being able to manipulate sounds deson't come quite as easily as manipulating the parents, but it should be there by the end of the year.

recognize, name, and write the letters of the alphabet in both upper case and lower case - but it's not a cause for worry if 'b' and 'd' really take some thought still. 

associate sounds with all the consonant letters and the five "main" vowel letters (a, e, i, o, u) – if only Old McDonald came with a few more vowel sounds, this would be a cinch.

recognize a few sight words (such as 'the') and read sentences containing simple one-syllable words – See Jane run with scissors – oops, that last word’s a little too big, probably a good thing.

One of the best things about working at Applied Learning Processes is hearing about former students who are continuing the successes they began with us.

Last week we got an email from a very happy mom. Her son was with us in 2005 and 2006 as a 1st grader.  His needs were among some of the more severe we've ever seen. We worked with him on phonemic awareness and beginning reading and spelling, language comprehension and math.  Four years later, his parents and his school are still seeing improvement.

He got a 100% on the following spelling list:

remain

pressure

dance

appear

plantation

bear

convey

encyclopedia (yikes)

continue

become

flicker

nose

dungeon

The week before he got an 80% on a math test with almost complete independence. His mom told us that he has been moved into the regular spelling group, and she is looking forward to seeing him continue to improve. So are we!

People can think of kindergarten as a time of learning to play nice with others before starting school, when the real work will begin. While there is a definite element of truth in the essay All I Needed to Know, I Learned in Kindergarten and that way of approaching the kindergarten experience, kindergarten is actually a very important year academically. Aside from learning the Golden Rule and remembering to put away what they get out, children will spend the year learning how to manipulate the alphabet and numbers and establishing a foundation for some basic academic skills.

Here is a partial list of the academic skills your child should have grasped by the end of kindergarten, with an ALP-style twist of humor.

Basic skill set:

coherently retell a story that has been read aloud – keeping the facts straight is important throughout life.

establish right or left-handed dominance – Useful when writing, shaking hands, and eating.

understand time concepts like yesterday, today, tomorrow – Yesterday, I asked for a puppy. Today I am asking for a puppy. Tomorrow I will ask for a puppy again.

understand spatial concepts like over, under, behind, before – because we have to be able to tell our parents where the monsters are hiding.

hold a pencil correctly – even if it seems more fun to scribble, it’s a part of being a big kid.

recognize and name the 8 basic colors - Let’s face it, life without colors would be a terrible thing.

recognize and name basic shapes (square, triangle, circle, rectangle) – Things in life rarely fall in these exact shapes, but it’s a great starting place.

state his/her address and phone number – it’s almost as important as remembering not to talk to strangers and staying put if you realize you’re lost.

There are many other skills a kindergartener will need to have mastered by the end of kindergarten. Check back for more information about kindergarten alphabet and number skills.

If what you’ve read so far has given you some concern for your child, be proactive about potential problems. Early intervention is the key to long-term success.

One of the things the students and I share is a love of the end of an hour. That doesn't mean I dislike my job or any of my students - in fact, the reason break time is so great is that I have those few seconds to chat with the students without our work being the priority. Oh, and there's the stickers. Choosing the appropriate sticker for the hour can be the highlight for both of us.

I have a set of pirate stickers that was the favorite of one of our students in particular. Braden Konzem is a second-grader from Great Bend, KS, who came to us in September, 2009 for intensive phonemic awareness treatment. Braden and I quickly became "pirate buddies" - we put the treasure chest sticker inside his flashcard box and decorated the outside with pirate ships, cannons and "Beware of Pirates" stickers as booby traps in case anyone came searching for the treasure. Braden made excellent progress, but I admit, I was pretty sad to see him go.

Last week, ALP got a call from Braden's mom. She has been thrilled with Braden's progress since he left. Whereas before he came to ALP, he consistently failed spelling tests, he has earned a 100% on every one since his return to school. She also said he is interacting with his peers with much more confidence.

At his nine-week report, Braden was put on the honor roll, something his mom never thought she would see. She is very happy with how her son is progressing, and so are we.

Way to go, Pirate Buddy!

- Rachel Phelps, Clinician

Heather is a second-grader who loves to make up stories in her head or have her parents read to her. But learning to read has been a real struggle. She often substitutes similar words (home for house), makes the wrong sound for a letter (b for d), omits, adds or incorrectly sequences sounds (left for felt, sell for spell), or makes other random errors that just seem odd to her parents. In kindergarten, learning the alphabet was a much harder task for her than the other children in her class. The teacher said it was normal for some students to struggle more than others and to not worry about it because the differences often level out once they go to grade school. Heather is a bright little girl, so it surely isn’t a learning disability, right?

First of all, it is always, ALWAYS important to remember that intelligence has nothing to do with a learning disability. That would be like assuming that someone bound to a wheelchair because of a physical disability is lazy. Many children with learning disabilities are incredibly smart but have trouble expressing that because of the challenges of the disability.

The next step is to realize that parents know their children and can often tell something is not right before a school system can. The earlier a child can receive remedial instruction, the better chance that child has of being able to overcome the learning disability.

Fast-forward Heather a few years. She is now in middle school and avoids her English homework like it’s the plague. Her grades are suffering because she refuses to read or do writing assignments. If she does sit down and try to work on them, the stress is far out of proportion with the task and often results in tears. Her handwriting is hard to read, and her spelling is riddled with misplaced letters (siol for soil, or expect for except). When her math homework includes story problems, it is very hard for her to get past the reading portion to formulate a problem, although when the problem is read aloud in class, the work is much easier for her. As her school work continues to progress in degree of difficulty, Heather’s frustration levels also increase. Could this be why Heather frequently "mouths off" to her teachers and acts like she really doesn't care?

This is an example of one type of learning disability, centered mainly in a phonemic awareness deficit. Heather’s brain is often not able to determine if the sounds she hears in a spoken word match the letters she sees on the page. This creates problems in reading - when she cannot figure out what sounds to make in a word – and in spelling, when she cannot effectively separate the sounds she hears in order to assign letters to those sounds. One-on-one stimulation of phonemic awareness will develop the sensory weakness Heather is experiencing and give her the tools she needs to confidently continue into high school, college and the rest of her life.

The earlier a problem like Heather's is pinpointed and treated, the better equipped the child is for success.

David Zickwolf is a 6th grader who has been at ALP for about three and a half months. We worked with him for 120 hours on phonemic awareness and visual motor processing.

Almost everyday, David has come in carrying a backpack that looks as if it could possibly swallow him whole. We’ve all made it our daily joke, laying bets on when it was going to fall apart, or simply bury him. He’s laughed along with us and faithfully toted the backpack in so we could use his school materials in our program.

Friday was David’s last day with us, and he surprised the staff by bringing each of us our own personal grinch. We’ll miss him and his monster backpack, but we know he’s ready to take on whatever that backpack holds.

PS – David, we LOVE the grinches!

I was working with one of our students on reading when I discovered anew just how confusing words can be.

Avi (age 7) and I were working on a pyramid story, which gives the students practice in looking at one new word at a time with the end goal of building reading fluency and speed.  It looks something like this:

This

This is

This is a

This is a pyramid

This is a pyramid story.

By the last line, a student can confidently read the entire sentence and often understands it better than simply reading the sentence: This is a pyramid story.

Our pyramid story was about a bird who can fly very high. Avi started out strong:

“The; The b-ir-d… bird! The bird can…”

He stopped and looked up at me with a confused wrinkle in his forehead. He read all the words correctly, so I wasn’t sure what the problem was.

“Yes, Avi?”

He cocked his head, obviously concentrating very hard. “What’s a ‘bird can’?”

While it took a little explaining to clear up his picture of the words, Avi’s dilemma was actually good news. It shows that he is picturing what he reads and can discern when the words make an absurd picture. You see, in addition to working on Avi's ability to decode words, we've been working on his comprehension which involves the integration of words with mental imagery.  We call it "visual/verbal integration".  This aspect of Avi's treatments is progressing well.

Rachel Phelps

Clinician

I skim down the word list, looking for something that fits the challenge level of the student I’m working with. It needs to be complex, which means two consonants before and/or after the vowel sound.

“Here we go,” I say, putting the paper down in front of Sarah and pointing to the word.

Sarah looks at the word, scanning it for vowels. She stabs her finger at the word. “The vowels are… e and a.”

I glance down to be sure we’re still looking at the same word. Greapt. Yep, so now we have to probe a little. “Could those two vowels be working together?”

She squints at the word for a moment before the lightbulb comes on. “Oh! Umm, so the vowel sound is ae.”

“Check your card,” I suggest, nudging the index card closer to her. Each student has one, filled with ways to remember things we can expect letters to do. “What’s our rule? When two vowels go walking…”

“The first one does the talking! The vowel is ee!” She looks up, beaming.

“Great! Now let’s look at the rest of the word.”

Sarah knits her brows as she examines the word. “Greaft.”

I immediately cover the word with my hand to prevent any back-tracking or wild guessing. “When you say ‘greaft,’ what do you feel right after that ee sound?”

Sarah says the word slowly, “G-r-ee-f-t… f.”

“Awesome noticing. Now, tell me what feeling that f is in your mouth.”

Sarah made the sound carefully, planting her upper teeth on her lips and blowing out hard without engaging her voicebox. “It’s a quiet lip cooler.”

“Perfect! Now, how do we spell that quiet lip cooler?”

“F.”

I remove my hand. “Let’s check our word and see if it’s a lip cooler we see there.”

“Oh, no, it’s a p, a lip-popper!” Sarah exclaims, mimicking the motion of making the p sound.

“So that makes our word…”

“Greapt!” Sarah says, bouncing excitedly in her chair.

“Yep! Excellent thinking! Now, let’s write it out.”

Sarah covers the letters with her left hand and writes in the line next to it, carefully enunciating each sound.

“G-r-ea-p-t.” She uncovers the word and checks her letters. “I got it!”

“Awesome work!”

A seemingly simple error may not be so easy for a student with dyslexia to recognize or correct. That's because the brain isn't processing the sound buried in the spoken word. Our staff is trained to lead students to find another way to perceive the sound--by feeling what the mouth does to make the sound. Then thinking about the letters to go with those sounds gets much easier, and eventually, with enough practice, the student's brain DOES begin to recognize or "process" what it's hearing.  Sarah was able to correct her mistake because she felt a lip-cooler in her word and was able to identify that that sound was linked to a letter not in the word in front of her.  After about 100 hours of this guidance from us, we expect Sarah to be self-correcting and no longer need us.  Now THAT will be fun!

Cutting edge science is confirming that intensive instruction can actually rewire the brain and achieve long-term results for dyslexic students and others.

A recent study at Carnegie Mellon University using brain imaging technology found the brain reacted to specifically targeted, intensive instruction, “rewiring” itself to correct the deficiency. The research tracked blood flow to various parts of the brain, gauging mental activity during reading activities. The slides showing the brains of a group of kids who were considered “poor readers” at the beginning of the study nearly matched the slides of the brains of the “good readers” after 100 hours of intensive instruction.

What is more exciting is the testing done one year after the instruction ended. The mental activity in the “good readers” and previously labeled “poor readers” was almost identical 12 months after the original testing was done. The researchers believe this is due to the increased engagement with reading activities and the brain’s ability to adapt and activate low-performing portions.

The researchers hope to be able to use this study to open the door to curriculum evaluation and education policy reform, but for us, it confirms what we’ve been doing at Applied Learning Processes for years. The brain sometimes needs targeted exercises to build up its weaker components. And the most robust results are achieved when treatment is delivered intensively.  That means five days a week. Two to four hours per day is ideal, but the most critical issue is the daily stimulation. 

Neuroscientist Marcel Just, director of Carnegie Mellon's Center for Cognitive Brain Imaging (CCBI) and senior author of the study, put it this way:

“"Any kind of education is a matter of training the brain. When poor readers are learning to read, a particular brain area is not performing as well as it might, and remedial instruction helps to shape that area up. This finding shows that poor readers can be helped to develop buff brains."