Beginning Readers

Because my boy is eleven, (ten when I started) 
this blog often focuses on that age group. I do
try to look back, but I also appreciate and post
tips for younger kids.
Fortunately, there's a wonderful group of moms
of kids with special needs that I know on and off
line. What follows is a chat about teaching your
young child to read sight words.
K: I'm wondering if I need to sell a kidney to pay for tutoring.
First grade homework is going to kill me!! 
Well, maybe not the homework but a certain first grader I know. 
One day he knows his sight words, the next it's like he has never seen them. 
Don't know if it's because he is tired or if it's normal.                              
Any books or resources to read about helping a little one?                                        Any classes or workshops to attend?    
L: Write each word on a separate 3x5 index card and tape it to a door. 
He must say the word before he enters the door                                             
(bedroom, parent's bedroom, front door, garage door, etc.)  

make it a game and he will get a lot of exposure seeing them on a regular basis. 
Change out weekly or when mastered. Hope this helps!

J: We drill with index cards. Five new words a week, starting with Primary Dolch list. Try and show the little guy each word five times, just sitting down and flashing them.... we do a zero second delay for the first few days -- meaning, we just show Charlie the card and say the word. After a couple days of that we start giving him five seconds.... meaning, we show him the word and wait silently for five seconds, if he doesn't say it then we say it for him and ask him to repeat it. Sometimes he needs a verbal prompt "read" just to get him unstuck. But this works really well for us. After a week he's usually mastered them. We start news words the next week, and a couple of times a week we show him the words he learned previously to make sure he remembers them. As we moved along we started to use the learned words for fill in the blank sentences. That also helped with handwriting practice.... sorry that was so convoluted, happy to show you sometime if that doesn't make sense.

K: We use index cards too. It just gets so frustrating sometimes.
http:www.leisahammett.com: Try the Vanderbilt reading clinic 

(http://kc.vanderbilt.edu/site/services/disabilityservices/readingclinic.aspx)

  J: Our strategy was a little like L's, except we labeled practically 

everything in the house using a label maker (chair, floor, clock, window, etc..). 

Once he had an opportunity to examine these with no pressure for a bit, 

I would write same words on post-it notes (starting with just one word to 

keep it simple), and he would match by sticking post-it on labeled item. 

After all these were mastered, we removed labels and just gave post-

it's for him to stick in appropriate and varying places 

(still window, but different window) to check for comprehension and 

generalization. 

JS: We did that, loved that my kid recognized "refrigerator" 

before he had a clue how to say it. But what to do after you've 

labelled and mastered all the nouns in the house? If anybody is 

interested, here's a link to the 220 Sight Words (Dolch List) 

that is used, it's separated into pre-primer, etc. and there are 

some great lists and printables here, too.
 http://www.mrsperkins.com/dolch.htm

*the above chat was lightly edited-any mistakes are mine.

Many thanks to all who contributed

their wisdom-I withheld names except

for Leisa's (she said I could link

to her wonderful blog) but friends, 

please feel free to comment

and take credit if you wish. 

-Spectrum Mom 

P.S. The book at the top is a rhyming 

sing-songy fun version of "over in the

meadow" with knights and dragons-just

right for this age group and for kids who

like patterns.

Back to the Books

I'm finding it very hard to get back in the blog.
My apologies if anyone's missed this weekly
word of  .  .   . wisdom? Perhaps
screed of struggle is more accurate.
My boy continues to pick up picture books in
preference to others, so I keep looking for a
compromise. Big Nate, like the Wimpy Kid
books, embellishes (or interrupts) its narrative 
with a lot of pictures. Author Peirce alternates
text and short comic strips. The cartoons are sometimes
Nate's thoughts, but not always. This is fine for 
the usual reader, but not useful for a rule oriented
one mainly looking for patterns and word play.
Which makes me think it would be cool to find a book
which always used drawings for the protagonist's thoughts
and regular text for what is actually happening. 
For kids who do not understand that you are not thinking
the same things they are (theory of mind), this could
help make a needed demarcation between interior
and exterior life.
On its own merits (instead of my wish list), 
Big Nate is engaging and accessible.
The fact that it took us half an hour to read
eleven pages of not dense at all text gives you an idea 
of how unfocused my kid currently is about text.
I have known for a long time my son pays
more attention to the page numbers than the
characters and prefers word play and poetry to
the most exciting adventure story. 
But after months of struggling through
summer reading I think that narrative holds no
appeal for him at all. Neither fiction or non-fiction
intrigue him into asking "but why?" or "what happens
next?"
Still, after reading Big Nate with his dad, he at least sat
looking at it on his own for a while. He asked about
words while reading it, so the level is fine for him-
an eleven year old sixth grader (!how did that happen?) 
with autism. In general, the book targets the same
audience as Diary of a Wimpy Kid 
with a similar setting (school),
themes (teachers, bullies, sports),  and characters
(underachievers, brains, jocks). 
Completely different wish list idea: 
I'd like to see one of these books with a slacker 
girl, they're either smart and annoying or sweet 
and distant.
Both my boys are remarkably good-looking 
(completely unbiased opinion) so I'd like them to 
have a better understanding of girls than is offered 
by boy kidlit.
I have read them a bit of Laura Ingalls Wilder, Judy
Blume and Cynthia Rylant. 
Anyone have other suggestions?
-Spectrum Mom

Acting Out

 
"Gon out. Backson"
Sorry for the long hiatus.
Hope you caught up on classic posts while the boys
occupied my every waking moment, or, better yet,
read classics like A. A. Milne's Winnie the Pooh,
The House at Pooh Corner, and My Father's Dragon.
My boy remembers this book from last vacation.
Mainly for the mouse who misspeaks.

Also, make comments. Like do any of your kids
want to act out what they read?

My son with ASD wants to knock on doors,
rush down halls-whatever is described in the book.

-Spectrum Mom

Response to Hugo

My boy and I are slogging through summer reading, so no new suggestions 

today. Here's a brief peek at our process. The school offers three options for

summer reading reports, the traditional report, the response journal, or the 

cereal box. When we did the cereal box in third grade, it seemed more parents

than child. But of course the others involve a lot of prep work from us too.

For instance the response journal offers pages of questions. This is a bit much 

for him to process. But deciding which options to offer does not always take us

very deep in the book. Here's his work on Chapter Four:

Chapter 4

• Describe a character that you would like to meet (which doesn’t mean that you

think you would like the character, but that you think the character would be

interesting). List 4 questions that you would ask.

pg. 99-105

The girl has hair and eyes that look black.

The girl says that the old man made Hugo go away before she came to the booth.

What is your name?

What color is your hair?

What color are your eyes?

What color is your face? 

Love That Creech

Sharon Creech's two novels in poetry
(upper elementary-middle school reading)
combine elements especially attractive to
my boy with autism
● Poetry
● Dates
● Pages with few words
● Short Chapters
No illustrations, but they're not needed.
Some of the poems are illustrations in 
themselves-the "apple" and "chair"
poems.
Hate That Cat picks up where Love
That Dog left off with the remarkable
teacher Ms. Stretchberry switching
grades along with Jack.
My boy barely noticed the plot
(Jack gets a kitten, Jack learns to be
open about his mother's deafness)
but fastened right on to the discussion
of poetic devices like alliteration (long
one of his favorite thoughts).
I find the best way to share these books

with my son is for me to read the poems

and have my boy read Jack's responses

to them.

The book not only offers a selection of

poetry, but a list of books "from the

class poetry shelf" for further reading.
I'd like another book in the series from
Creech, but I expect she's done.
Unless Jack decides to
"Tolerate That Pigeon" ?
-Spectrum Mom

What do you know?

My son's summer reading list includes a Paulsen
book, an author whose name frequently comes
up as a popular choice for older readers with 
autism. This summer my kid gets a little
extra help from a specialist to try to teach
pre-reading, so she's started him on Woods
Runner while I read Hugo Cabret with him
at home.
Both of us are trying to use K-W-L-S to 
help "activate" his reading. Here's a
description: 
Recently, an instructional technique known as K-W-L, 
created by Ogle (1986) was introduced into classrooms. 
Teachers activate students' prior knowledge by asking 
them what they already Know; then students 
(collaborating as a classroom unit or within small groups) 
set goals specifying what they Want to learn; and after reading
students discuss what they have Learned. 
Students apply higher-order thinking strategies 
which help them construct meaning from what they read and 
help them monitor their progress toward their goals. 
A worksheet is given to every student that includes columns 
for each of these activities.
http://www.ncrel.org/sdrs/areas/issues/students/learning/lr2kwl.htm
The S stands for "What do you still want 
to know?"
Since my boy is my boy, some of his
answers reference non-textual matters,
and he often makes wild guesses that show
he's either processed far less than I thought,
or that he's not interested in answering
my questions.
But we've started, and we'll see how we
do.
-Spectrum Mom

Summer Reading List

Last year I wrote about the mostly immensely depressing 
choices on the summer reading list for rising 5th graders 
(5/28) and my eventual choices for my son (6/5 & 6/14).
I don't know if I ever mentioned that our work together 
on laboriously getting through Dodger and Me (funny) 
and The Magician's Elephant (melancholy) was largely 
moot. My boy was in Reading Resource. 
Why isn't there a Reading Resource Summer Reading 
list? It might have more cheerful books.
He worked really hard all year, and made good progress.
So this Fall, the teachers are going to try to keep him in 
with his peers for reading. Which means we're back to the
Summer Reading List, this time for rising Sixth Graders.
At first glance, the list seems a bit less doom laden.
The Invention of Hugo Cabret has been suggested to me
for years as a possible read for him. I've avoided it because
the illustrations seem more distracting than helpful, but it's 
worth a try.

I had high hopes for Avi's Nothing But the Truth. It has 
journal entries and my son is currently obsessed with journals.
Unfortunately, the first journal entry date did not match up
with the copyright year and pleas that the author wrote the
book the previous year when March 13 was on a Tuesday
were to no avail.
The book has a miserably unhappy ending, but nobody dies.
Plus, it makes a case for literature, funding schools, 
supporting teachers, and paying attention to your kids. 
TO BE CONTINUED .   .   .
This week I want to plug a play-kids with autism read
the script and the lyrics, so it sort of fits the blog. 
If you're in Nashville Friday or Saturday, come see the 
kids of SENSE theatre perform Bridges.  Full details here:
http://www.sensetheatre.com/