[Grovenet] GroveNet Digest, Vol 54, Issue 1

Sat May 2 17:27:45 PDT 2009

We also played "Connect Four."  But I  believe he had more fun  with 
playing "store."  To teach math and more reading skills, I would have  him bring 
me various toys, then I would give him some play money and let  him buy the 
toys from me.   I played the store game with him when he  was ages 2 and 3.   
 By the time he was 4 he was  into playing monopoly.  He would play the 
full version of the game;  counting the money, giving change, etc.

I believe most people overlook or are unwilling to take the time  to teach 
their child to read at the early ages.  I was teaching  my son the alphabet 
when he was a baby.  Since I did not know nursery  rhymes, etc. I would do 
the alphabet and phonic sounds for hours to  entertain him. He started to 
walk at 7 months, and by the time he was a year old  he would toddle into a 
restaurant with us, point at, and read the various signs  (the simple ones like 
"Please Wait to be Seated.")  People would always be  amazed and not 
believing what they saw and heard would ask,  "Did  he just read that? "

Teach the kid young - they can learn!

He was about 15 months when he  went through the classic autism symptom of, 
regressed actions and loss of  speech.  I went into a intensive mode of 
working with him on things I  knew he knew; counting, colors, alphabet, and 
reading!  It took about  4 or 5 months to get him back into talking and 
reading, and  he was even better at it than before!  During the time when all he  
would do was was grunt "uh", he was still learning.

I had utilized various books, TV shows, video tapes, and computer  
programs.  In each method used, I was there with him expounding on what was  being 
taught and encouraging him to interact with me and what he was  seeing.  Yes, 
I spent many many hours interacting with him with many  types of teaching 
aides.  
At some point, I started a game of reading the simple books with  him.  I 
would read a word then he would read the next word.  If he did  not know how 
to sound out the word I would help him work through sounding it  out.  As he 
got better, I switched from each of us reading every  other word to each 
reading every other sentence, then  paragraphs/pages.  After about a year of 
that, I switched to him  reading to me with me just assisting if he did not 
know a word.  I would  insist that he ask if he did not know what a word 
meant as he could sound out  words that he did not understand.  After he was 
diagnosed, we started  to include many social stories in the book lineup. this 
resulted with him  expecting people to react the way they should per the 
books, his literalness was  being exposed. 

Teach your kid to read early but also take it in stride when the  school 
personnel does not believe you when you tell them he/she knows how to  read.  
We were always told, "Oh, he can read by rote memory."   They would then 
come pack to tell us a few weeks later that he can  read!  Each teacher would 
whisper in my ear, "Did you know he can  read. I mean, he really knows how to 
read!"  I have always  wondered why each of the teachers would whisper it 
to me as though it was  supposed to be some huge secret.  I  had three 
different teachers  (Pre, K, and 1st) react the same way with almost the exact 
same words.  Be  sure to request that they give the child a reading 
comprehension evaluation  early on!  I did not know that they had such a thing and it 
took them till  the 2nd grade to think to bring up the idea of evaluating his 
reading   comprehension.  My son should have been tested in  Kindergarten!  
Oh, but they were more concerned about his 'autism' and  could have cared 
less about what he actually learned educationally!  Even  after they gave him 
the reading evaluation, they never gave him anything  challenging his level 
of knowledge.  Excuse me, the areas of challenge they  did give him were in 
areas that were directly in conflict with his condition to  the point of 
causing him distress.  It was always back to their attempt to  take a square 
kid and try to mold/pound him into their round hole instead  of addressing 
his educational needs and methods of learning that he could relate  to.

James

In a message dated 5/2/2009 3:27:04 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,  
feralcattamer at yahoo.com writes:

I think  you're right about the need for individual attention. When my son 
was four  years old, I taught him to read. I could see early on from his 
pre-school  experiences that he would have trouble in school. I believed that 
if he had a  leg up on other kids with respect to reading, that might help to 
compensate  for some of his other difficulties. So, I found Bob Books. I 
cannot say enough  for this amazing systematic system for reading that was 
developed by a  kindergarten teacher at Catlin Gabel School in Portland. I have 
seen no better  system for teaching kids to read. There are three boxes of 
twelve books and  each box contains a graduated group of books that becomes 
increasingly more  challenging as you move forward. In the first box of 
books, each book teaches  three or four new letter sounds and each book builds 
on the previous ones. By  they time you make your way through the first box 
of books, the child has  learned the sounds of all 26 letters of the
alphabet except for the letter  Q. The second and third boxes of books move 
on to consonate blends and vowel  combinations. The last book in the third 
box contains a fairly complicated  fairy tale. By the time the kid reads 
that final book, they're ready to pick  up easy readers at the libary and run 
with them. The books contain all these  funny stick figure illustrations that 
were drawn by the author's husband. And  unlike the Dick and Jane books, 
Bob Books are often very funny and  interesting. 

My son loved to play the game Connect Four. It's a very  fast game that 
involves connecting discs together in groups of four--either  vertically, 
horizontally, or diagonally--before your opponent does. Like  tic-tac-toe, it 
doesn't take long for one person to win. So, to keep my son  motivated toward 
getting through the Bob Books, I used to tell him, "Let's  play Connect Four. 
If you win, we keep playing the game. If I win, we read  another five pages 
of this Bob Book". He got so good at Connect Four that I  could hardly beat 
him by the time we got through all 36 Bob Books.

I  can't say enough about how effective and systematic Bob Books can be in  
teaching kids how to read. And, they contain instructions inside that are 
easy  for parents and teachers to follow.

Honestly, I cannot figure out why  Bob Books are not used more by school 
districts to help kids learn to read.  They work for anyone--particularly kids 
who are struggling. I even have a  friend who tutors adults from Samalia in 
learning English and she uses Bob  Books in teaching them how to  read.

Holly

________________________________
From:  Theresa Carter <theresacus at yahoo.com>
To: grovenet at rdrop.com
Sent:  Saturday, May 2, 2009 4:45:05 AM
Subject: Re: [Grovenet] GroveNet Digest,  Vol 54, Issue 1

Has anyone done any research as to what the best  teaching methods are for 
children of Autism and ADD?  I have friends,  with children, who have been 
tagged with those labels. They are both off the  scale as far as intelligence 
too. That in itself does not make it any  easier.  One mom ended up quiting 
her job, to home school her son and he  is now studying to become a 
dentist.  The other battled the schools and  her son is in Alaska fishing. Both are 
doing well for themselves and the  families seem to be happy.  

I am not sure that with the labeling  that the child actually gets a better 
education.  The parents too are  questioning whether, that was the best 
thing to do but at the time it all  seemed to be guided or driven, by the 
school.  Unless the school is able  to truly teach these kids using different 
methods then it seems pointless to  me, to put both parents and students 
through the testing.  

I have  to mention that my younger sister, who has now been diagnosed with 
dyslexia.  My mom saw her falling behind in school and spent countless hours 
teaching her  to read.  Later, a tutor that my parents hired.  (She is 46 
years  old and at that time there was no additional help in the schools.)  My 
 sister went on to a community college, in electronics.  She struggled but  
was determined in chasing her dream.  Now she is pushing polygons around  
as a mask designer, at Intel and doing very well for herself.  

My  mom then became a reading tutor at the grade school, as a volunteer.   
Some students simply needed a stronger foundation in reading and others had  
some severe family issues, that were distracting them from learning.  The  
one thing that she did see is that the individual attention helped with not  
just their reading but their self esteem and behavior as well.  She  
couldn't imagine putting any child through 13 years, of failure.  The one  thing 
that she used to say to me as my sons were growing up.  "A child  who can not 
find possitive attention will find negative attention.  No  attention is 
the worst kind of lonliness."  

In defense of the  teachers, the class sizes in Forest Grove are huge. My 
youngest son, a senior,  at the high school dropped two classes this year 
because there were not enough  seats to accommodate the class size. One was an 
AP class too.  It is next  to impossible to give the attention that is 
necessary to just one or two in a  class of twenty-five or thirty.  I do know 
that some of the students have  a special person that shadows the students, who 
tend to be disruptive.   Maybe it would be better to have those people 
actually giving individual  education, rather than having them in a classroom as 
a child's behavioral  monitor, all day.  I personally feel that those 
dollars could be better  spent on educating because the socializing will come 
with the students  success.  

Theresa Carter

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