THE ExWyZee REMEDIAL READING COMPUTER PROGRAM
[Click
here to download the ExWyZee program]
The
ExWyZee remedial reading program was designed for use by parents in the home.
The computer software,
exercise sets, and
training to use the program are provided free of charge as a public
service of The Salvation Army.
In addition to home use a tutorial option
is now available, where a student is brought to a Salvation Army site, or a
public or university library for instruction by a tutor trained to administer
the program.
If you are well versed on the Neurological Dyslexia Syndrome, and want to go
directly to
diagnosis and treatment, read the note to parents below then scroll down to
Part-2: DIAGNOSIS
AND DEVELOPMENT OF YOUR STUDENT'S READING DEFICIT PROFILE.
Part 1: Introduction to tutoring the dyslexic reader.
Part 2: Diagnosis & development of Reading Deficit Profile (RDP).
Part 3: Example
of developing a Reading Deficit Profile.
Part 4: Links master
list.
NOTE TO PARENTS OF READING IMPAIRED
STUDENTS
Parental home-tutoring in reading can be frustrating. While we can reap immediate
satisfaction
when
helping a child with routine homework, most reading problems are anything but routine. To add to the
discomfort, payoff is almost
never immediate. Too
often, the only indication of reading improvement might be the next year's reading test
scores. Worse yet, what we are likely to find next year is somewhat higher
grade-level
scores, but that the student has fallen even farther behind relative to classmates.
Much of the frustration is due
to a lack of focus in reading tutoring. In mathematics, a
couple of
weeks of after-supper work on multiplication facts
or percent problems can result in fairly quick and
obvious achievement of specific objectives. But with reading, the work is rather faith-based
-- faith that sitting down at the table after the
dishes are cleared to do reading homework,
will make much of a difference.
THE
ExWyZee READING HOMEWORK IS SOMEWHAT MATH-LIKE
ExWyZee is an objective-based, and
mastery-based, program. Objective-based means
the program is
designed to treat specific deficits in a student's reading tool
kit. Each
skill deficit is an objective to be
mastered -- in the same sense that a student's
multiplication-fact deficit is an
object to be mastered. Take a quick look now at a list of
reading skill deficits. Don't dwell
on them at this point,
just read enough for a general idea of reading
deficits, and to have a sense of what we're up against with the
dyslexic. Click Reading Deficits Summary
PART 1: INTRODUCTION TO TUTORING
THE DYSLEXIC
READER
There's the old joke about a
child who asks a teacher some question about
railroad steam engines, and the Teacher responds, "Your father was a locomotive engineer,
why not ask him."The child answers, "Don't
wanna know that much about steam engines."
But, as with
most of us, when setting out to do remedial reading work with a dyslexic
student, if you have not already put some
effort into becoming informed about dyslexia,
you need some basic training.
If you have not done so already, we have to
get a
common misconception out of the way. Dyslexia is not a
visual perception problem, where letters and words are seen backward or
some other distorted way. When a student reads date as bate, or reads the
word saw as was, it is no more a matter of seeing things backward than
it is if you get a wrong number by dialing 555-6496 instead of
555-6469. (For treatment of b-d confusion see link,
Is it b or d?)
BASIC TRAINING LINKS
[ ] (2) Read the first 3 pages of About
Dyslexia Monograph.
About Dyslexia Monograph
(3pp)
[ ] (3) Read the advisory
on the Phoneme Blending Deficit.
Phoneme Blennding Advisory (1.5pp)
[ ] (4) Read the advisory
on The Transition Deficit.
Transition
Advisory (1.5pp)
[ ] (5)
Read the first 2 pages of the SepCom Monograph.
SepCom
Monograph (2pp)
[ ] (10)
Read incident-driven vs. focused instruction.
Focused vs Incidental Instruction (1p)
[ ] (6)
Read the Snapshot Proficiency Monograph.
Snapshot Proficiency
(=2pp)
[ ] (7)
Take a quick look at Basic Skills Deficits.
Reading Skills Deficit
(skim)
I say quick-look at Link-7
because there's too much there to
digest in one meal. It's a
smorgasbord of reading sub skills.
Some of the listed deficits are suffered by virtually all dyslexics.
Some become
evident in the early years of reading instruction and some not until later.
[ ]
If you don't have
time to do it now, make a note to Google Joseph
Torgesen and read his paper,
Catch Them Before They Fall.(Warning: Then you might feel the urge to attend school
board meetings
and make
a nuisance of yourself.)
Now, having read those pages and
having some idea of the nature of The Neurological Dyslexia Syndrome, how can I tell if dyslexia
is my student's problem?
As far as using the ExWyZee
program is concerned, you don't have to know for
sure, because the program was
developed for, and through research with, dyslexics.
>>HOWEVER, don't infer from that remark that there is no-need-to-know if
your child is in a regular school's remedial reading program. Most
special education remedial reading programs are not structured to treat
serious dyslexic reading deficits. If I am challenged to support that bold
assertion about a particular school I will simply refer to the A-list of deficits in Link-7 (above)
and ask to see that school's focused materials and tutoring procedures used to treat
them. That is, I'd want to see such evidence of procedures
in addition to
Focused vs Inscidental Instruction on them during
oral reading sessions (See Link-10).
But what if I don't feel comfortable assuming
dyslexia and want a definitive basis for remedial reading tutoring?
First, look at the link, Testing For Dyslexia, on this site: Testing
For Dyslexia.
Then log on to the International Dyslexia Association site, click on IDA
Provider, and
select a state for a list of specialists. But be aware
that, as in any profession, there's a range of experience and
competence. So before committing to an evaluation by a provider you might want to ask for references.
And beware
of guarantees. One education organization guarantees a year of growth in reading or math scores after 36 hours of instruction. It's not a money
back guarantee. If a year's growth doesn't occur you get 12 more hours of what didn't work in the
first place.
*****************End of introduction*****************
PART 2:
DIAGNOSIS AND DEVELOPMENT OF
YOUR
STUDENT'S READING DEFICIT PROFILE
When you take a child to a physician the
first thing she will do is evaluate vital signs: temperature,
pulse, respiration, blood pressure. Those numbers provide a general
health profile, and a basis
for
attacking whatever ailment brought the child to the clinic. And
we begin evaluation of a reading
impaired student in the ExWyZee program by
evaluating three vitals for fluent reading. Deficits in
these
reading sub-skills are indicators of reading ill-health, and treatment of
the them is imperative.
Other deficits on the A-list (Reading Skills Deficits)
are diagnosed after evaluating and beginning any work that's indicated on these three deficits. Nothing else we do will do much good as long
as a student is deficient in these three fundamental reading sub skills.
Before beginning diagnostic exercises see the links pertaining to these 3 reading
sub-skills.
(a) Snapshot skill. See
Link-6:
Snapshot Proficiency
(b)
Phoneme Blending skill. See Link-3:
Phoneme Blending Advisory
(c)
Skill at Decoding By Parts.
See Link-4:
Transition Advisory
DIAGNOSING AND TREATING THE SNAPSHOT PROFICIENCY DEFICIT
First, scroll
up to PART-1 and read paragraph 3. I advise that reading, or
(re-reading) because
of the pervasive myth that the Neurological Dyslexic
Syndrome is due to faulty visual perception.
When the letter-pair
ap is flashed, and the student
chooses ad or aq from the multiple choice list, it's
not that the second
letter in that pair is seen backward or upside down. What we have is
a child who
has not yet had adequate experience and-or training in making
those fine distinctions.
PART 3:
EXAMPLE OF BEGINNING DEVELOPMENT OF
A READING DEFICIT PROFILE
FINDING #1: Sue, a third-grader,
does not have a serious deficit in
phoneme awareness
(A2).
That is, she knows at least
one sound
(phoneme)
for each letter, and more than one
phoneme for
most of the vowel letters.
That will be true for most third-graders.
FINDING #2: We find that Sue does have a sound-blending deficit (A3).
She reads the
letter-
pair fa as two
separate sounds (phonemes), fff-aaa, instead
of blending the
phonemes as in
father, fate, fall, or fast.
When directed to say the sound of letter-pair
ab-fi, she
responds with
four distinct sounds aa-buh-ff-ii,
instead of the saying the nonsense-word abfi. So Phoneme
Blending Deficit (A3) goes
into Sue's RDP.
For more detail on this deficit see Remedial
Reading Advisory-1
Phoneme Blending Advisory.
FINDING #3:
Next, we'll look at Sue's achievement of the E-rule. That is, the
letter-e
affixed to the
word sit
(with short-i) changes the vowel sound to the long-i, site. In
drills for
this deficit we work
with a list of letter-combinations such as: bas, jun, fit, tub, pop, rul,
shad, writ.
We direct the
student to recite what those combinations will become with
the letter-e affixed to them. We find
that Sue does not do well on E-rule
drills. So the
E-Rule
deficit goes into Sue's RDP.
FINDING #4: It would be unusual for a reading impaired student of Sue's
age not to have
a deficit
in making
the transition from Letter-By-Letter Sounding-Out of multi-syllable words.
Look now at
the
Transition
Advisory. Viewing the remedial reading scene through on-site
observations in
schools,
vicarious
observations
through students in the ExWyZee program, and through the
reading
literature leads
to three conclusions:
(1) Virtually all reading-impaired people suffer a deficit in the Transition From
Letter-By-Letter Sounding-Out of multi-syllable words to Decoding By Parts.
(2) In the reading impaired of all ages, from the third grade up, that deficit is the
most debilitating deficit in readers' tool kits.
(3) And, as essential as that transition is to fluent reading, the Transition Deficit is
grievously under-diagnosed and under-treated in classrooms and at the kitchen table.
For a brief discussion of the transition deficit see Remedial Reading Advisory-2, Transition Advisory.
For detailed guidelines in remedial treatment of the transition deficit see. SepCom Monograph
PART 4: LINKS MASTER LIST
1. Dyslexia Watch List: Advisory for the proactive parent
2. About Dyslexia Monograph: A monograph on the nature of dyslexia
3. Phoneme Blending Advisory: Phoneme blending deficit advisory.
4. Transition Advisory: The Transition to Decoding-By-Parts.
5. SepCom Monograph: Treating the deficit in transition from Letter-By-Letter
Sounding-Out of multi-syllable words to Decoding-By-Parts.
6. Snapshot Proficiency: To focus students' attention on text being read.
7. Reading Skills Deficits: Basic skills deficits treated in ExWyZee program.
8. Is it b or d? Treatment of the b-or-d confusion.
9. P=Pa Phoneme Fault: Eat aparicots aboard a subamarine.
10. Focused vs Incidental Instruction: Incident Driven vs Focused Instruction.
11. Induced Dyslexia: A disturbing question raised by research at Yale.
12. Testing For Dyslexia.pdf: International Dyslexia Association article.
14. Parent's Guide To Schools Of Choice: Questions to ask before committing your child.
15. Other Authors: Inadequate screening, inadequate IEPs, Late emerging disabilities.
16. Installing ExWyZee: Hard copy available
17. Brain Scan MRI: From the book, Overcoming Dyslexia
18. Reform of Special Education: Case Study on Dyslexia
19. Social Promotion: Today's rant, having nothing to do with dyslexia
23. Behind the Dyslexia Closet Door
26. Conceptual vs. Rote Development of Computational Skills
27. Remedial Instruction in Division in Grade Seven
THE NOT-DYSLEXIC DYSLEXIC
Sounds like a contradiction in terms?
Yes, but be aware that you might have a child, or you might
be an adult, who
shows symptoms of dyslexia, but who does not, in fact suffer
from the
Neurological Dyslexia Syndrome (NDS).
The logs of some
reading impaired students treated in the ExWyZee program, from grade 2 to
grade
9, clearly were cases where reading problems were not due to dyslexia.
Their Response
To Intervention (RTI), and the diminishing of their reading
impairment was too easily attained for
their reading problem to be dyslexia. eg:
See logs of Student MS (gr4), Student CV (gr2), SE
student (Jr High), Western
student (gr5).