(no subject)

[the_rck]

My sister suspects that her third grader is dyslexic. He has very poor fluency in reading and ends up completely stymied by words he hasn't previously memorized. His teacher is inclined to think that he might be, too, but hadn't noticed the problem until my sister pointed it out and made her look at the test scores again. He tests well as long as doesn't run into words he doesn't already know.

At any rate, I'm trying to come up with ideas for books he might be interested in. He likes Goosebumps and The Diary of a Wimpy Kid series and used to like the Captain Underpants series (he might still, but I don't know for sure. My sister has commented that they're not great because of deliberate misspellings). I tried introducing him to the Dragonbreath series, but he doesn't seem to have been interested. Maybe he would be now. I don't know.

The problem is that I'm not entirely clear on what his actual reading level is. I also can't judge very well how difficult things I've read, particularly things I read a long time ago, are. Also, a lot of stuff I think might be good in difficulty level has a girl for the main character, and my sister says he finds that embarrassing.

I'm thinking of Shel Silverstein's Where the Sidewalk Ends as a good option. Danny Dunn might be too old fashioned. Maybe Bruce Coville? I think Jacob Two-Two Meets the Hooded Fang would be appropriate and appeal to him. There are some graphic novels that might appeal to him.

Any suggestions?

Comments

[kyrielle]

Is she going to get him tested? There are interventions for dyslexic children if that's what's going on.

For books, I'd google for pages of things liked by kids who like the things he does.

[the_rck]

I suspect that testing will have to wait until January. She's got surgery at the beginning of November and will be six to eight weeks recovering from that. It's not clear when she'll be able to drive again.

If the school would do it, that would be different, but my sister really isn't in a position to take him anywhere right now.

[kalloway]

Encyclopedia Brown? I still use/reference little facts I learned from those books.

Wayside School.

Spiderwick Chronicles.

[maramcreates]

My brother really had a hard time reading in that age range as well, and some of the few books that he actually liked to read were:
- My Side of the Mountain (Jean Craighead George)
- The Hatchet (Gary Paulsen)
- Dogsong (also Gary Paulsen)
- Just about anything by Roald Dahl

The Redwall series eventually clicked for him too, but I can't remember when he started reading that (probably not in the 3rd grade).

It can be tough finding books for struggling readers, but it can be done! Good luck!

[maramcreates]

I should add these as well:
- Maniac Magee
- There's a Boy in the Girls' Bathroom
- I second kalloway's suggestion of the Wayside School series
- The Chocolate Touch
- How to Eat Fried Worms

Book suggestions and testing

[dialecticdreamer]

Testing is imperative Look for someone in your area qualified to test vision processing disorders instead of dyslexia. My sons and I ALL have them, but the youngest was the only one who seemed to be "dyslexic" as a result of the processing issues. Even if you have to pay out of pocket, it can make a TREMENDOUS difference.

Reading suggestions: Bruce Coville, ABSOLUTELY. I forget the author, but "Half Magic" was great.

Ask your sister if she can make time to read aloud, something geared for the family if that child has siblings. It helped, emotionally and academically, especially when it wasn't an assigned reading. A fabulous read aloud, "Carry On, Mr. Bowditch," by Jean Lee Latham (had one scene I warned the kids I was skipping) but all four of us LOVED it.

Re: Book suggestions and testing

[the_rck]

My sister doesn't live anywhere near me, so it's not in my area. I'm in Michigan. They're in Georgia.

My sister is still in the middle of treatment for her breast cancer with another surgery coming up at the end of this month/beginning of next month. That will have a 6-8 week recovery time during which she won't be able to drive.

Right now, she and her son (he's an only) are reading aloud a book assigned from school that she says is dreadful. They're alternating chapters. He really dislikes reading aloud with either of his parents, but he wants to please his teacher, so he does it with this particular book.

My sister says that it's usual where they are to test and diagnose kids with dyslexia and similar problems in 4th grade. She's of the opinion that that's when the kids' coping strategies stop working and the teachers finally have to notice.

He will work at reading books that he finds sufficiently interesting, so I'm trying to come up with a variety of options in hopes that something will appeal to him.

I'm pretty sure that Half Magic (Edward Eager) would be too hard. Bruce Coville, based on the few that I've read, is probably fine. If he can handle Goosebumps (with a little help), he can handle Coville.

Re: Book suggestions and testing

[dialecticdreamer]

No, no,no. Not alternating reading, which works to boost the kid's interest and keeps them focused on the story rather than. Yet. Another. Word. Now.

PURE read-aloud for fun.

We first read "Carry On, Mr. Bowditch," by Jean Lee Latham, when the youngest was six. He could NEVER have dealt with it on his own. My favorite story about it: Hubby wanted to go shower, to finish getting ready to go to work, but I didn't REALIZE why he'd stepped out of the room. He was UPSET that he'd missed a couple of pages of the story.

OH. Forgot something!

NONFICTION books! Too many teachers overlook kids who just don't like FICTION, so look at the DK Easy Readers, especially from the library, and step DOWN -they're marked in "stages"-- to what he feels comfortable with.

The youngest was reading nonfiction books on dinosaurs, wild fires, astronauts, et alia, for the first year or so he was willing to read. (That's a whole different story, though.)

Vision processing is NOT dyslexia. I had no CLUE that the oldest had any problem. Age four, he was reading "The Hobbit" along with me as a bedtime story. I'd read the words, and he'd correct me if I skipped or fumbled an Elven name. He has a processing disorder. By fourth grade, he was reading Shakespeare independently. He has a processing disorder.

Most modern kids books are DROSS.

The older books, published before say, 1970 --the stuff my generation would have read, were the last major STORYTELLING books, instead of SERIES-- Magic Tree House, Goosebumps, Babysitters' Club... they're selling a formula, not stories.

So, considering my snob-statement, LOL, first I freely admit that there have been GEMS published in the last forty years, or the last year, and I will be happy when I spot one. But I have to wade through a LOT more dross to do so.

That being said, there's a Christian company aimed at homeschoolers that has a book catalog of REALLY GREAT literature, called Sonlight. Their catalog is no longer free, but you can read their recommendations online, by age and reading level. (I sure did; when you've got an eight-year-old reading Hamlet, you pick VERY carefully to avoid major emotional minefields. We TALKED about that play for longer than it took him to read it!)

Okay. Another motivational tool: Book Adventure. (Everything I just typed is inaccurate. Ten years will do that!) The new site is run by Sylvan, and has some useful reading suggestions. She'll have to check it out to see if it suits him at all. http://bookadventure.com/Home.aspx

Off to breakfast! PM me if you want some ideas, and if your sister wants to email directly, (she may not have the spoons for it) also pm me.

Re: Book suggestions and testing

[the_rck]

My sister is dubious about testing-- For one thing, the school won't do it, and their insurance won't cover it, so it would cost $4000 out of pocket. For another, the state of Georgia doesn't consider dyslexia to be something they have to do something about unless the child is getting poor grades and has been getting them for at least a year. Even then, dyslexia (or anything similar) isn't considered a true learning disability by the state, so they don't do much of anything. (I started googling Georgia and dyslexia and IEP, and what I found was pretty depressing.)

She says that 4th grade is when this sort of thing comes out in the Georgia schools because that's the year they change from purely verbal instructions to purely written instructions.

She says that her boy loves to buy books and to carry them around and to pretend to read them, but he can't actually read them. Basically, he's incapable of figuring out a word from context or of sounding it out, and he's really hugely embarrassed by and ashamed of that. He does everything he can to pretend that he just doesn't *want* to read.

She's not convinced it's dyslexia, but it's certainly some sort of very real problem. She just doesn't have $4000 to spend on anything right now.

Re: Book suggestions and testing

[dialecticdreamer]

Okay, then, it's bootstrap city. I know she's got her hands full, with enough stuff to keep an octopus juggling, BUT...
There are three things you could try.

One was a book called Eyes on Track-- I bought it when we couldn't scrape up the 4K each for the boys' processing therapy. That's consistent,non alphanumeric training exercises so he learns patterning FOR reading.

Two is --teach him to knit. Not from a book. Kinesthetic training for left-to-right patterning slips in UNDER the visual processing part of the brain entirely. It helps prop up a skill he is very weak at with one which is stronger. Plain, garter stitch hot pads made of kitchen cotton (peaches and cream, etc, at walmart, very cheaply).

Three is also a book. This one you might be able to get through interlibrary loan, and it's called "Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons" by Siegfried Engelmann." I loved it because while I taught myself to read, I was worried about mis-teaching phoneme sounds or other fiddly bits I thought were too obvious.

It starts WITHOUT any letter recognition, and does pattterning exercises, too, verbally, and each lesson is designed to take less than fifteen minutes. MOTIVATED kids can do two lessons a day, but DO NOT go past that, because it's about having fun, even when they know "all the answers." (The oldest skipped ahead to read the last, several page story, then did his regular lesson, and yes, there were things he hadn't realized.)

It finishes at SOLID second-grade reading and an appendix includes a list of books the child can read easily and independently at that point. EVEN if the kid knows it all, work gently, one lesson a day or two if your sister has the energy, and work on penmanship, which is included. Dyslexics aren't always dysgraphics, and muscle memory helps.

He's probably very, very afraid he WON'T learn to read by now. One of the advantages of 100 Easy Lessons is that it begins with a connected, orthographic script that SHOWS "this means a long sound, like AAAAAAAAAAAAAA" or "this is a short, fast sound like "t." Go gently, encourage him. My kids would roll their eyes and go "OB-VI-OUS!" and I'd agree and then say, BUT, some kids have missed that piece of information, and you can't build a wall if some of the bricks are missing, can you?

if this sounds too much like "been there, done that," -- I did. We weren't dealing with medical issues, but no$$ and insurance that fought us for a YEAR before they would pay 3/4 of the costs -and then we had to scrounge the 2k for our share, so I was working a LOT of the Oh-crap-dyslexic-or-what ladder for a couple of years.

Btw, the younger son, for other reasons, didn't become a steady reader until he was nearly sixteen. Now, he's like me, four books in progress for different moods. THERE IS ALWAYS HOPE.

If worst came to worst, cold a teenage neighbor or trustworthy adult act as a tutor for him? Fifteen minutes a day, 100 days, for the reading book, but Eyes On Track requires a little more careful observation from the adult, and they did work well for us in tandem. Try contacting the scout leadership locally for someone looking to do an Eagle scout project, or a high schooler who needs mandatory volunteer time (California silliness, but it's stuck for years now)>

We couldn't afford the paperwork fees to go through the teaching program at a local private university to have him screened (they're under the supervision of the professor, who, here, had a doctorate in spec. ed.), which would have been enough ammunition to cut the year off the insurance BS. Is there someone else who can take on all THIS extra stuff to juggle for her?

I know it's complicated, and messy, and hard to fix from the outside without proper information. But you CAN help, and I'll be looking for more ideas until I find one that works, blast it! Too much of his education HINGES on literacy now.

i used to work in a kids' bookstore

[untonuggan]

but most of my rec's were based on "what is X's interest" or "what is popular right now?" rather than "X issue in particular". I would say that finding something your nephew is interested in would help -- possibly also consider graphic novels? the visuals might help fill in context clues? also fwiw i've gone back and read some of my favorites from when I was young and gone, "oh look the period-appropriate racism/sexism/whatevs!" so, just...you know...the classics don't always age well.

some perennial favorites
- Bone (graphic novel - the smaller versions were colored post-production, but would be more expensive to buy outright than the giant compendium)
- American Born Chinese (graphic novel)
- My Side of the Mountain (novel)
- Hatchet (novel)
- The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (novel with artwork) - technically YA so check if age-appropriate?
- the Warriors series (about feral cats in the woods) is pretty popular with kids I've talked to in the 8-9 range; the animal rights person in me wants to yell at the books about how that is not actually what happens in feral colonies OR with housecats. But. They are pretty addictive and fast-paced, so. Worth it for getting someone to read?
- Series of Unfortunate Events (series, novels) - in case the mystery/cliff-hanger aspect gets him reading "just one more page"

Also, if there are indie/local bookshops in your or your sister's area, I cannot recommend them enough (in general). Speaking as a former employer of one such venue, seriously, personal recommendations are how they stay in business. So, that's also worth a shot.

Re: i used to work in a kids' bookstore

[the_rck]

He likes gross out humor. He likes emotional stories. He collects coasters and shot glasses.

Bone and a Series of Unfortunate Events *might* be easy enough for him, but I'm pretty sure that everything else you suggested is beyond his ability. My sister says he can't even read the Diary of a Wimpy Kid books on his own.

Well, part of what I meant when I said that the Danny Dunn books might be 'too old fashioned' was sexism (I think they may side step overt racism by having no characters at all who aren't white, a type of racism that is harder to spot).

But my sister is of the opinion that giving him more books won't help. She says he loves buying books and that they've got two or three hundred books that he's interested in. He just can't read them.

[evalerie.livejournal.com]

Hm. Maybe the _Ordinary Boy_ series, about a boy who is the only person who doesn't have superpowers in a world where everybody else does -- but their superpowers are often kind of strange and wimpy, like the kid who can make hair grow on whatever he touches, or the boy who can make a puddle appear anywhere. I really enjoyed those and found them hard to put down.

Or maybe "The True Meaning of Smekday" by Adam Rex. That was another page turner. Aliens have taken over the earth, and this is the story of a girl and an alien as they adventure around in it. The book is zany and lively, and even has some meaningful things to say.

[the_rck]

I considered The True Meaning of Smekday, but it has two strikes against it. First and most importantly, it's too hard. Second, the main character is a girl. My nephew is very, very hesitant to touch books about girls unless he's forced to for school.

I'll suggest Ordinary Boy to my sister.

I *think* his reading level is about Magic Treehouse level. It's just that his story level is higher if that makes sense.

My sister says that it's not a problem of not having books he wants to read. He likes buying books and carrying them around and pretending to read them. He just can't actually read them and is embarrassed/ashamed of that.

[evalerie.livejournal.com]

Yes, that makes a lot of sense (about his interest level being higher than his reading level). I've read that that is a big issue in remedial education where they are teaching adults to read, and adults don't want to read books for little kids.

I think Smekday spans the genders very nicely, since the author is a man, so it isn't in any way a "girly" kind of book. But if the book is too hard then it's too hard.

Actually, this might be a good question to run by Arborparents. They are very good at this type of thing. :)