DD's Test Results - Now What?

[mom2a&z]

We are in our first year of homeschooling and we had our dd 10 evaluated because of her poor reading comprehension. Her WISC-IV scores were low average for perceptual reasoning, high average for for working memory, and average for everything else, including IQ. She also took the Woodcock-Johnson Test of Achievement and her Reading Comprehension subtest score was Below Average and 17 points below her IQ. She was also evaluated by a Speech Therapist and was found to have mild delays in expressive and receptive language.

The child psychologist thinks her problems with reading are due to her language delays and she highly recommended speech/language therapy. It is highly unlikely we could get that through the ps and we can't pay for it out of pocket. What would be a good program for me to use at home?

I'm also having problems finding something to use to help her reading comprehension. She doesn't have problems decoding words. She just can't understand what she has read. We've already done the first book of Reading Detectives, but I haven't seen any progress. Should I continue with that and be more patient or is there something better out there?

Thanks!

[AngieW in Texas]

I have seen Visualing&Verbalizing from Lindamood-Bell recommended for comprehension. Unlike most other programs that merely test comprehension, it is supposed to actually teach methods for it.

http://www.lindamoodbell.com/programs/visualizing-verbalizing.html

[chiguirre]

Practicing narration has helped my 8yo immensely with both spoken and reading comprehension. Up till now it's just been informal practice and the suggested discussions from Five in a Row, but we just started Writing With Ease 1 and it's very thorough and easy to follow. The SOTW Activity Guides also have narration questions laid out for you. Both of these would be okay for a 10 yo, IMHO.

My autistic 8yo just had his 3 year re-evaluation done by the school district so that he could remain eligible for speech services and amazingly he scored in the average range for receptive language. That's a huge turnaround from 3 years ago and I think a large part of ds's success in overcoming part of his language delay is doing read-alouds and narrating. Of course, now we have to focus on syntax and pragmatics to improve his expressive language, but I never would have thought ds could score in the average range for receptive language.

Patience and practice paid off for ds and I'm sure it will help your dd, too!

[Terabith]

You might be able to get help from the public schools. It's not impossible.

Would your insurance cover any speech therapy?

Lindamood Bell's Visualizing and Verbalizing is pretty expensive and user unfriendly. I've heard IdeaChain is a much more user friendly version.

[ElizabethB]

A recent 5th grader I taught was thought to have comprehension problems by her Mom and the school.

Actually, she was suffering from a phonics deficit and too many sight words.

The 5th grader was reading at grade level on one test and 1 grade level above on another test and didn't miss any words when reading aloud, but had a comprehension problem. When I gave her the MWIA, she read the phonetic list 62% slower than the holistic list. I'm going to retest her after her break is finished, but she's comprehending more and reading faster now, and based on her work with Webster and M.K. Henry's words, I think she'll be reading at the 8th or 10th grade level now, but I won't know for sure until I test her.

You can give the MWIA (use the MWIA II for her--the MWIA I is for younger children or older children reading below a 2nd grade level) to see if there is a problem. If she misses more phonetic than holistic words or reads the phonetic portion more than 15% slower than the holistic portion, she needs some remedial phonics work. The MWIA and some reading grade level tests are here:

http://www.thephonicspage.org/On%20R...gradeleve.html

It only takes 5 or 10 minutes to give, and there are a lot of good free and inexpensive interventions if there is a problem with phonics. It's worth 5 or 10 minutes to make sure there isn't a subtle phonics problem.

Also, you might want to try Webster's Speller anyway if there are speech issues, it's free, the use of syllables and the arrangement of words by accent pattern should help with speech and language processing.

Here's the Webster thread, I have an online movie about how to use it now:

http://www.welltrainedmind.com/forums/showthread.php?t=70153&highlight=syllabary

[Stacy in NJ]

Patience and practice paid off for ds and I'm sure it will help your dd, too!

Good job, Chiguirre!!!
Good job, Chiguirre's ds!!! :D

[dtsmamtj]

WOW your daughter sounds a lot like our son. We just stopped our speech therapy on a regular basis because the expressive and receptive language issues along with vocabulary, etc. can be worked on here at home. We can't afford Linda-Bell Mood, but am going to look at the other suggestions. Over the past several years, I too can attest that "patience and practice" paid off. For reading comprehension we too have used the Reading Detective and other things. For our son it is that he doesn't understand the "words" to be able to understand what the sentence/paragraph is meaning. We are using a couple of different things for vocabulary. Writing is another area that is difficult for our son. The comprehension issue is slow going, but improving for us.

T