Dyslexia treatment and progress

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Anyone else have a child who is being treated for dyslexia using an Orton-Gillingham based system? Is it being done through your school, or by an outside tutoring place? How often? How do they keep you updated on progress? Do they send home books to read or homework?

DS8 has dyslexia, although not an "official" diagnosis. He attends a non-public (ie special ed) school for kids with AS, and his best friend there also has dyslexia. After consulting with a dyslexia specialist, his school decided to start using Sonday System last November. (It appears to be pretty similar to the Barton system, in that it is designed for a non-specialist to be able to learn it using DVD's.) All the teachers and aides were trained by the specialist.

For the first few months it seemed to be going great. The comm log showed them doing SS 4-5 days a week, and DS was pretty much completing a level each week. (There is a post-test after every level that you have to pass before moving on.) DS and his friend H were paired, and got to level 12 by spring break.

Since then, however, progress seems to have slowed way down. I'm only seeing SS noted in the log 2-3 times per week, and "reading comprehension" on some days. From April to June, DS and H have only progressed from level 13 to 15. Based on the scope and sequence of the program, I expected DS to mainly be catching up on spelling until he got to level 22.

The teacher doesn't give me any guidance as to what DS should be reading at home. The weekly homework packet usually contains one reading comprehension assignment -- 1 to 2 pages that has a lot of words types he hasn't covered yet in SS followed by about 8 questions. (They've covered all the consonants, short vowels, ee, ay, and are starting on blends. They have not yet covered silent e, long vowel pairs, nor multi-syllable words. DS's ability on these is patchy.) DS gets through the reading with my assistance, and then aces the comprehension questions.

How does this compare with your experience?

My daughter used to bring things home to read. She hated it and stopped. I think the teacher probably decided it wasn't worth it. Undoubtedly my fault.

After years I found a home tutor, which is very common where we live but hard to find even for students identified as reading disabled. Though the school program which is Orton Guillingham based, is good, and daily, she is not catching up. Meaning she is progressing but more slowly than non learning disabled students. With her home tutor, she reads things of interest to her, and I can see more how it's done, which really helps me.

It's frustrating, though, as despite everyone's best intentions and hard work and my wish the problem go away, the learning disability is how her brain is wired and does not disappear.

How long has she been seeing the tutor? What system? Does the tutor give any sort of progress updates?

Just a couple months. And she has respected my wishes she does do some testing but mostly she's quiet about it and just works on improving things. I felt there was too much in school testing and want it this way. But I trust her and can see the improvement when I listen to her read. So it's more valid for what my child needs then numbers that don't go up on a graph. And she teaches specific gaps rather than a program that doesn't target the important gaps for the specific child.

I feel like too much testing not enough individualizations in school even though they do help and it is partially effective.

I don't want too much testing, either. Maybe something like a quick 60 second fluency measurement once a month so we can see if DS is making progress.

I'm really annoyed that when DS took the GORT-4 (gray oral reading test 4) back in December, the tester didn't put the numerical scores in her report, only categories like "scores below average", and "below grade level". Grrrr. I pulled a 60 second fluency test off the web, and on a 2nd grade passage DS had 51 words correct per minute. Subjectively it seems like he's reading faster and better, but I wish I had the actual baseline to compare to, now that he's had 6 months of O-G instruction.

In DS's quarterly IEP progress report, his teacher measured his reading speed at 30 wpm. I wonder what she's using.

I don't know why they're so vague, either.

A lot of children do respond well to intervention. It sounds annoying your child isn't testing as well at school, but it's encouraging he can do well at home.

If your child tests close to low average, generally they need to discontinue services. If they or you feel he needs the extra reading help it might be not be a bad thing if the test scores look low. Though perhaps they can give help since he'll still be classified. I try to think about what I want and block out details that, while upsetting, distract from my goal. Which for DD is that she continue to be supported for reading rather than that her scores look good.

Still, it's extremely distressing to look at DDs uniformly poor reading scores.

I wish we could all progress exponentially all the time.

Alas, I have found, initial progress in many things is great; however, as time goes on, progress almost invariably slows, sometimes plateaus, and sometimes even regresses.

This is why we must "follow up" after initial successes. I've only recently learned this, by the way.

If the teacher was still doing the lessons 5 days a week, and progress slowed, I could accept the explanation that DS had just finished covering the stuff he already knew and to expect slower progress going forward.

HOWEVER, when the progress slowdown happened at the same time the lessons were dropped down from 5 days a week to 2-3 days a week, and they are currently covering things I believe DS has mastered (blends like sw, st, etc.) it makes me suspicious that the higher intensity was better for him.

The teacher is going to give me the materials to work with him on my own over the summer. It will be interesting to see what kind of progress he makes...

I really am encouraged for you because maybe yes, maybe he will make continued steady progress!!

I am seeing a lot of progress with the tutor. She is very creative and the individualized approach is working well at helping my child own the conceptw☺️

Everything I've seen suggests 4-5 days a week is best, so I guess the issue would be to sort out if the decrease in frequency is a response to your child needing more of something else, resisting the program, or whether they saw progress so reduced the help as can sometimes happen. And then you have to find a way to get everyone back on the same page.

Do you think the change was them, or a response to your child seeming to need something different?