Sat Zach through an informal assessment today... his first encounter with OG in person.
He actually did quite well, especially with the real words. There were a few that he couldn't read, but weirdly enough, some were actually quite simple words. He even managed some of the nonsense words well enough, though there were quite a few he was inclined to change them back into more familiar sounding words as well.
Like the EP said, his word attack skills were weak, and this showed up particularly when trying to spell words he had not seen many times before.
He also took a while to understand what to do, when I was testing him on his ability to manipulate sounds... we started by having him change the first sounds of words, like from cat to bat, telling him to change /k/ to /b/.... but later when I switched and changed the last sound, like from cat to cab, he knew he had to use the /b/ sound, but he ended up still switching the first instead of the last sound. After two mistakes, I knew I had to stop and really explain until he got it before I went on, because I knew he could manipulate the sounds... he was just having trouble wrapping his mind around the task... so after that, he scored full marks.
He already knows many of the sounds like vowels pairs and consonant pairs... but I still need to get him up to par with the rules and keywords that come with them... but I think I can skip quite a bit and plunge into the thick of things. Now to familiarise him with the OG lesson structure and what is required of him.
It's going to be an interesting time, because I've not been this high up on the OG scope and sequence on a practicial level as yet.
Saturday, January 31, 2009
Friday, January 30, 2009
Being Accomodated...
Stacey's teacher just called. It's the end of Week 4 now, and she and the EL HOD have finally decided to accomodate Stacey's needs by giving her only 5 spelling words instead of 10, in addition to the dictation passage that she has to learn.
I also requested that Stacey's teacher move the Spelling Day to Tuesday or Wednesday in order for Stacey to have more time to learn her spelling because having it on a Monday meant that she had to learn it way before and hope that she still remembered it by Monday since we don't have any time on Sunday to really learn it... and now Stacey's teacher has told me that next week onwards, the Spelling will be moved to Tuesday!!! Woohoo!!! That would help make all the difference in the world! Yay!
Her teacher this year is a little less systematic though... in that last year's teacher chose the 5 words based on words that Stacey would more likely need... but this year's teacher is just picking the top row (her words are organised on her list in two rows) for her to learn. Guess that will do too...
All in all, good news!!!!
I also requested that Stacey's teacher move the Spelling Day to Tuesday or Wednesday in order for Stacey to have more time to learn her spelling because having it on a Monday meant that she had to learn it way before and hope that she still remembered it by Monday since we don't have any time on Sunday to really learn it... and now Stacey's teacher has told me that next week onwards, the Spelling will be moved to Tuesday!!! Woohoo!!! That would help make all the difference in the world! Yay!
Her teacher this year is a little less systematic though... in that last year's teacher chose the 5 words based on words that Stacey would more likely need... but this year's teacher is just picking the top row (her words are organised on her list in two rows) for her to learn. Guess that will do too...
All in all, good news!!!!
Finally completed the "baby" sounds
Yay, today Kasser has finally completed the first 26 "baby" sounds... next lesson I hope to move him onto bigger things... so so far, he has 26 sounds and 3 rules under his belt, together with new coping techniques like skywriting, tracing and fingerspelling.
Vowels still present quite a bit of a struggle for him. Today during Auditory Drill, he wrote "e" instead of "i" everytime he heard the short /i/ sound... and I had to check him and ask him to check his sound bank to see if he even had the "e" letter there.
He was quite tired today... tired dyslexics learn far less than well rested ones. He also woke up late and was not ready when I turned up for class today.
Still... I haven't been doing a full OG lesson with him so far... not enough learned words and so on to do dictation... plus I was crashing the sounds... next week I'm going to try him on a full OG lesson plan... complete with learned words and words for spelling for the new phonemes as well. And I also hope to start some reading... we'll see.
Still, not bad for the 4th lesson....
Vowels still present quite a bit of a struggle for him. Today during Auditory Drill, he wrote "e" instead of "i" everytime he heard the short /i/ sound... and I had to check him and ask him to check his sound bank to see if he even had the "e" letter there.
He was quite tired today... tired dyslexics learn far less than well rested ones. He also woke up late and was not ready when I turned up for class today.
Still... I haven't been doing a full OG lesson with him so far... not enough learned words and so on to do dictation... plus I was crashing the sounds... next week I'm going to try him on a full OG lesson plan... complete with learned words and words for spelling for the new phonemes as well. And I also hope to start some reading... we'll see.
Still, not bad for the 4th lesson....
Friday, January 23, 2009
The Uninitiated - Zachary
Zachary is my eldest. At 8+, he is in Primary 3 this year. I never dreamed he'd be diagnosed as Dyslexic.
Zach zoomed through his Phonics program, which he completed in just 10 months. He was in K2 when he began with the teacher who taught Montesorri Phonics from her home, and he blazed through the word lists that she gave for practice.
Even as he went through Kindergarten, he had very little (noticeable) problems with his worksheets when it came to English. Maths was significantly more of a struggle, while Chinese was non-existent (his command of it, that is... not the homework. Homework he had plenty of...)
So as he entered into Primary School, his struggles with all things arbitrary and his weakness in Mathematical concepts became more obvious. He struggled with simple concepts that came naturally to me growing up. His younger sister would often blurt out answers way ahead of him, and this despite the fact that she was one whole academic year behind.
Chinese was a mystery to him... he couldn't, even at P2, string a sentence together... he had so little vocab that his youngest sister way surpassed him in terms of vocabulary and understanding Chinese.
So even as I was sharing with the Educational Psychologist about his difficulties (when I was seeing her for Stacey's problems), she noted that it was a very unusual thing for a child to not pick up at least a little Chinese... despite having been in school since he was 3 and learning the language from 20mths old, when he attended childcare.
End of last year, he went to see the Educational Psychologist, because I was getting increasingly frustrated at his inability to communicate information clearly, and his apparent inability to remember what teachers had said in school. Compounded by the fact that they had a nightmare of a teacher in P2, his struggles became glaringly obvious. I thought he was only Dyscalculic. Or that maybe he had Chinese Dyslexia.
But it turns out that he is dyslexic. He also has a great visual memory. Which is how he had been coping all this while. He had not been decoding words or blending them. He had memorised how they were spelt. And he used his memory for the words that he could read. So he struggled this year when he was faced with Science and its unique set of vocabulary, never before encountered.
He also has other issues, like a poor verbal memory - he literally is unable to remember what has been said to him, and retains only about half what other people are able to retain. Given the passing of time, he only retains about a third.
All this explained why he had always been the hands-on kid I knew him to be. He also has some social issues it seems... being too literal in his interpretation of things, he is unable to fit in perfectly. He used to get teased or "bullied" by "friends" - they would tell him tall stories and laugh at him because he believed them... he always fell for their stories hook, line and sinker.
So it has been recommended that we begin OG lessons. My 4th student. One I never imagined would need OG.
And honestly, I don't really know where to begin. Getting him to blend and sound out words instead of just relying on his memory will be, in itself, a challenge. Maybe we just have to use more non-words instead to force him to sound out instead of drawing from his memory bank. I really need to sit down and figure out this one.
Zach zoomed through his Phonics program, which he completed in just 10 months. He was in K2 when he began with the teacher who taught Montesorri Phonics from her home, and he blazed through the word lists that she gave for practice.
Even as he went through Kindergarten, he had very little (noticeable) problems with his worksheets when it came to English. Maths was significantly more of a struggle, while Chinese was non-existent (his command of it, that is... not the homework. Homework he had plenty of...)
So as he entered into Primary School, his struggles with all things arbitrary and his weakness in Mathematical concepts became more obvious. He struggled with simple concepts that came naturally to me growing up. His younger sister would often blurt out answers way ahead of him, and this despite the fact that she was one whole academic year behind.
Chinese was a mystery to him... he couldn't, even at P2, string a sentence together... he had so little vocab that his youngest sister way surpassed him in terms of vocabulary and understanding Chinese.
So even as I was sharing with the Educational Psychologist about his difficulties (when I was seeing her for Stacey's problems), she noted that it was a very unusual thing for a child to not pick up at least a little Chinese... despite having been in school since he was 3 and learning the language from 20mths old, when he attended childcare.
End of last year, he went to see the Educational Psychologist, because I was getting increasingly frustrated at his inability to communicate information clearly, and his apparent inability to remember what teachers had said in school. Compounded by the fact that they had a nightmare of a teacher in P2, his struggles became glaringly obvious. I thought he was only Dyscalculic. Or that maybe he had Chinese Dyslexia.
But it turns out that he is dyslexic. He also has a great visual memory. Which is how he had been coping all this while. He had not been decoding words or blending them. He had memorised how they were spelt. And he used his memory for the words that he could read. So he struggled this year when he was faced with Science and its unique set of vocabulary, never before encountered.
He also has other issues, like a poor verbal memory - he literally is unable to remember what has been said to him, and retains only about half what other people are able to retain. Given the passing of time, he only retains about a third.
All this explained why he had always been the hands-on kid I knew him to be. He also has some social issues it seems... being too literal in his interpretation of things, he is unable to fit in perfectly. He used to get teased or "bullied" by "friends" - they would tell him tall stories and laugh at him because he believed them... he always fell for their stories hook, line and sinker.
So it has been recommended that we begin OG lessons. My 4th student. One I never imagined would need OG.
And honestly, I don't really know where to begin. Getting him to blend and sound out words instead of just relying on his memory will be, in itself, a challenge. Maybe we just have to use more non-words instead to force him to sound out instead of drawing from his memory bank. I really need to sit down and figure out this one.
First Paying Student - Kasser
Kasser is an almost 8yo, currently in Primary Two. A church counsellor, who had been visiting the family to provide support and advice and follow-up approached me and asked if I would take a look to see if I could help this young man.
Although his mother is a very conscientious lady, reading to him and trying her best to raise a reader, helping him in schoolwork and basically guiding him closely, he has failed to learn to read fluently and at his level.
From the little that I understood, the family had tried to get him help, asking the school for a referral to an Educational Psychologist, yet, the school was unwilling, saying that Kasser was only slow, not learning disabled. They felt that all he needed was time to catch up with his peers.
On my first visit, I found a young man, very much alert and alive, yet shy and introverted at first. His father was quick to call him lazy, lamenting that he would not try and learn independently, saying that he wouldn't learn rather than couldn't learn.
I spent about an hour with him that morning, doing an informal assessment. I found a young man who, despite phonics instructions from young, still did not know his sounds. He knew only one of the 5 short vowel sounds, and many consonants were also unfamiliar to him. Like Donny, he found some sounds difficult to produce, possibly having learnt them wrong all his life. Writing was also a slight problem... formation of letters were odd, made worse by his left-handedness. When asked to write the alphabet in only uppercase, he got confused... he showed problems with sequencing.
Blending was easy for him if the single consonant was placed in front... but too many single consonants and he got confused. This was especially so if he was unfamiliar with the word. He had no reversals though, so that was a good thing, but he had little idea how to use the "head-line", "belt-line" and "foot-line" to help him in forming his letters. Like Zach and Stacey, his "j" stood up on the footline and extended all the way to the headline, instead of starting from the beltline and extending below the footline.
We've had 3 lessons so far and he is moving nicely along. With skywriting, fingerspelling and tracing under his belt, he is quickly picking up the sounds and keywords. He still struggles with the short vowel sounds a, u and i... and often confuses them when he is in a rush to finish forming the word... but he is better able now to self-correct... a wonderful thing. He's also had the rush of being able to spell 5-letter words entirely by sounding them out... an achievement that impressed his mother. Previously, all spelling words had to be drilled, letter by letter tediously, and caused parent and child much grief.
I hope to complete the Baby Deck real soon... by the next lesson if possible, although he still has two short vowels to contend with - "o" and the dreaded "e". Singaporean children seem to have a major problem with the short vowel sounds "a" and "e", simply because in Singlish, the two sounds are rather similar, if at all different. In relaxed conversation, even when I say "pat" and "pet", they sound the same... so it's difficult for them to hear and produce the two different sounds easily.
It's only been 2 weeks since I first met him, but already, the child is blossoming with a newfound confidence in himself. So wonderful to see.
Although his mother is a very conscientious lady, reading to him and trying her best to raise a reader, helping him in schoolwork and basically guiding him closely, he has failed to learn to read fluently and at his level.
From the little that I understood, the family had tried to get him help, asking the school for a referral to an Educational Psychologist, yet, the school was unwilling, saying that Kasser was only slow, not learning disabled. They felt that all he needed was time to catch up with his peers.
On my first visit, I found a young man, very much alert and alive, yet shy and introverted at first. His father was quick to call him lazy, lamenting that he would not try and learn independently, saying that he wouldn't learn rather than couldn't learn.
I spent about an hour with him that morning, doing an informal assessment. I found a young man who, despite phonics instructions from young, still did not know his sounds. He knew only one of the 5 short vowel sounds, and many consonants were also unfamiliar to him. Like Donny, he found some sounds difficult to produce, possibly having learnt them wrong all his life. Writing was also a slight problem... formation of letters were odd, made worse by his left-handedness. When asked to write the alphabet in only uppercase, he got confused... he showed problems with sequencing.
Blending was easy for him if the single consonant was placed in front... but too many single consonants and he got confused. This was especially so if he was unfamiliar with the word. He had no reversals though, so that was a good thing, but he had little idea how to use the "head-line", "belt-line" and "foot-line" to help him in forming his letters. Like Zach and Stacey, his "j" stood up on the footline and extended all the way to the headline, instead of starting from the beltline and extending below the footline.
We've had 3 lessons so far and he is moving nicely along. With skywriting, fingerspelling and tracing under his belt, he is quickly picking up the sounds and keywords. He still struggles with the short vowel sounds a, u and i... and often confuses them when he is in a rush to finish forming the word... but he is better able now to self-correct... a wonderful thing. He's also had the rush of being able to spell 5-letter words entirely by sounding them out... an achievement that impressed his mother. Previously, all spelling words had to be drilled, letter by letter tediously, and caused parent and child much grief.
I hope to complete the Baby Deck real soon... by the next lesson if possible, although he still has two short vowels to contend with - "o" and the dreaded "e". Singaporean children seem to have a major problem with the short vowel sounds "a" and "e", simply because in Singlish, the two sounds are rather similar, if at all different. In relaxed conversation, even when I say "pat" and "pet", they sound the same... so it's difficult for them to hear and produce the two different sounds easily.
It's only been 2 weeks since I first met him, but already, the child is blossoming with a newfound confidence in himself. So wonderful to see.
Starting with the Godson
The Godson, Donny (not his real name), is now 5+, going on 6 at the end of the year. He is currently in his 2nd year of Kindergarten.
He comes from a not so well-to-do background... parents are not superbly educated, and find managing their finances a great challenge. As a result, his education has been of a sub-standard level. From the time he was little, he was looked after by a nanny - an elderly lady who is not very educated and speaks only Chinese. He only started attending Childcare a while back, and even then his learning can be described as slow at best.
His teachers complain that the child writes badly - that is, his handwriting is atrocious and very untidy. His letter formation is also weak. He is falling behind in terms of reading and spelling... a situation made worse by the lack of intelligent conversation (as opposed to very functional interaction between caregiver and child, mostly consisting of instructions and scolding) outside of school.
So when I learnt about his situation, I volunteered to go to his house once a week, seeing as to how his home is near my in-law's place... and I've since had 2 lessons with him... the pace is slow. The child is unused to speaking good English, and so, the sounds are so unfamiliar. It takes a great deal of effort to curl his tongue around the sounds and produce a halfway decent sound.
An initial informal assessment shows a child who is unable to blend, and does not seem to have any notion of blending, despite having been in Kindergarten 1 last year. He doesn't know many of the basic sounds of the vowels and consonants. The words that he read successfully, he recognised by sight, not the results of phonemic awareness. He cannot consistently differentiate between a capital letter and a small letter (or uppercase and lowercase letter). His letter formation is awkward, and has to be re-taught.
So in the first lesson, we started on just the first 4 sounds in the OG scope and sequence, developed by Ron Y... and did another 4 in the second lesson. I also incorporated handwriting, as well as some blending and reading using the cards. To motivate and encourage practice, I got him to make his own set of sound cards... he possesses 8 so far. He picked up the keywords readily enough, although he struggled with "wagon", not having seen one in Singapore. But it's a start.
He also picked up the notion of the "headline", "belt-line" and "foot-line" readily enough, although it looked like he might have learnt some of it in school. So we plod along. Progress is slow, in part due to the only-once-a-week lessons, in part due to the fact that there is little home support.
He comes from a not so well-to-do background... parents are not superbly educated, and find managing their finances a great challenge. As a result, his education has been of a sub-standard level. From the time he was little, he was looked after by a nanny - an elderly lady who is not very educated and speaks only Chinese. He only started attending Childcare a while back, and even then his learning can be described as slow at best.
His teachers complain that the child writes badly - that is, his handwriting is atrocious and very untidy. His letter formation is also weak. He is falling behind in terms of reading and spelling... a situation made worse by the lack of intelligent conversation (as opposed to very functional interaction between caregiver and child, mostly consisting of instructions and scolding) outside of school.
So when I learnt about his situation, I volunteered to go to his house once a week, seeing as to how his home is near my in-law's place... and I've since had 2 lessons with him... the pace is slow. The child is unused to speaking good English, and so, the sounds are so unfamiliar. It takes a great deal of effort to curl his tongue around the sounds and produce a halfway decent sound.
An initial informal assessment shows a child who is unable to blend, and does not seem to have any notion of blending, despite having been in Kindergarten 1 last year. He doesn't know many of the basic sounds of the vowels and consonants. The words that he read successfully, he recognised by sight, not the results of phonemic awareness. He cannot consistently differentiate between a capital letter and a small letter (or uppercase and lowercase letter). His letter formation is awkward, and has to be re-taught.
So in the first lesson, we started on just the first 4 sounds in the OG scope and sequence, developed by Ron Y... and did another 4 in the second lesson. I also incorporated handwriting, as well as some blending and reading using the cards. To motivate and encourage practice, I got him to make his own set of sound cards... he possesses 8 so far. He picked up the keywords readily enough, although he struggled with "wagon", not having seen one in Singapore. But it's a start.
He also picked up the notion of the "headline", "belt-line" and "foot-line" readily enough, although it looked like he might have learnt some of it in school. So we plod along. Progress is slow, in part due to the only-once-a-week lessons, in part due to the fact that there is little home support.
How it all began...
This blog will chronicle my newly hatched journey in the Orton-Gillingham method of teaching Dyslexic children...
When Stacey, my middle child, was in Kindergarten, I wondered why she was struggling so. She seemed bright enough... able to out-talk and sometimes out-wit those older than her, yet, she couldn't seem to get her hands (or tongue, or mind) around sounds. I sent her for Phonics lesson with her ex-kindergarten teacher who specialised in teaching Montesorri style phonics from home. My son, Zach, had gone to her and was doing well, so I started her too when she was in her first year of Kindergarten. At that time, she was only 4, for she is a Nov baby, and while her peers in her class were already 5 or reaching their 5th birthday soon, she was, in reality, only 4y1m when she started life in K1.
Zach seemed to zoom through his Phonics... he read the lists easily enough... and seemed to learn the sounds easily enough, and he didn't seem to have problems reading. He could even read long complicated words that he encountered in his books and worksheets and school life. No big deal. Sure, occasionally he got words wrong and read them weird, but after a quick correction, he was usually spot on after that.
Stacey, on the other hand, struggled. She struggled to rhyme. She struggled to sound letters. She struggled with vowels. Whatever she didn't know, she guessed. Sometimes she was right on target. Many times she was outrageously wrong. She relied on the pictures in her books to give her clues as to what the words might say. And because half the time she got it right, the other half of the time, those who taught her felt that she was playing the fool... that she was not concentrating, that she was not trying hard enough. Her writing was wonky... often she reversed letters... b d p q... even the s in her name got turned around. She would reverse her numbers too... often confusing 2 with 5, and writing 3 so that it faced the other way. My teacher-trained mind shouted out that something had to be wrong... yet when I brought up the suggestion that perhaps she needed special support, her educators felt that I was making a mountain out of a molehill... that she couldn't be a special needs child... she was too bright to be one... she was not slow. No, she was just lazy or not taking her work seriously.
In 2007, when Zach started Primary School, I quit my job as a full-time teacher to stay home with my kids. This led to much more time with the children, and I saw how hard Stacey struggled with her reading... sometime in June, a friend who was also my children's godmother, suggested that perhaps Stacey might be dyslexic... her own son had been described as one by a friend... and had put him through an informal OG assessment which had surfaced his problems. FF, the children's godma, went through a course to be trained as an OG teacher... and offered to take a look at Stacey after her training.
So started our encounter with OG. Stacey began weekly sessions with FF, who felt that she needed the support. I stopped Stacey's lessons with the Montesorri Phonics teacher - those lessons were putting her under tremendous pressure and stress... it was not doing her any good. Under FF's kind encouragement and a method of learning that suited Stacey's learning style and needs, Stacey flourished. In no time, Stace went from a child who studiously avoided books and who declared that "I cannot read, only korkor can!" to a happier and more confident child who said "Mummy, I will read to meimei (younger sister)...". For half a year, Stace attended weekly sessions with FF, and she began to deal better with worksheets and work... learning to use her sounds and blend more systematically. Her writing and awareness of letter formation improved, and her reversals lessened.
Encouraged by her progress, and realising that her lessons with FF couldn't extend beyond that year (for she would soon go on to Primary School and only come home at around 2pm - a time when FF started her private piano classes at her home), I quickly made the decision to join the OG Associate Program offered by the Orton-Gillingham Centre, taught by Ron Yoshimoto. It didn't come cheap... but it was well worth the investment.
In Dec 2007, I attended the 2 week full-time course, and came away enlightened and raring to go. I picked up where FF left off with Stacey (who by this time had had about 16 or so lessons with FF) and tried to continue. However, I decided also to have Stacey seen by an Educational Psychologist, to see if she could be assessed and possibly obtain an exemption from Chinese Mandarin Testing in school, seeing as to how she was truly struggling with Mandarin at that time.
Thus, in order for her dyslexia not to be masked by her OG training, I stopped her lessons for 2+ months, until she had her assessment in March. Unfortunately, it was no soon enough. It was revealed that Stacey had a high average non-verbal IQ, but anything that had to do with language was brought down to just within the Average range... but the Average scores were not good enough to have her formally diagnosed as having Dyslexia... despite the Psychologist feeling that she does present as being dyslexic... so we wait. Meanwhile, we continue with her lessons... the first year has been somewhat rocky and inconsistent - in part due to our having moved out of the house for almost 4 months then the move back in, in part due to my just settling into the role of a Stay-Home mom.
So right now, Stacey is still not very far from where she left off in terms of Scope and Sequence with FF, having progressed only by a few sounds and into Rabbit words (under Syllabication), but she has made great leaps and bounds in terms of coping with spelling thanks to techniques like finger-spelling and sky-writing.
This year, I intend to make her OG lessons with me a priority, and try to have lessons with her twice a week. Something else may have to give... I have not decided what... but we definitely need more time for her to work on OG.
When Stacey, my middle child, was in Kindergarten, I wondered why she was struggling so. She seemed bright enough... able to out-talk and sometimes out-wit those older than her, yet, she couldn't seem to get her hands (or tongue, or mind) around sounds. I sent her for Phonics lesson with her ex-kindergarten teacher who specialised in teaching Montesorri style phonics from home. My son, Zach, had gone to her and was doing well, so I started her too when she was in her first year of Kindergarten. At that time, she was only 4, for she is a Nov baby, and while her peers in her class were already 5 or reaching their 5th birthday soon, she was, in reality, only 4y1m when she started life in K1.
Zach seemed to zoom through his Phonics... he read the lists easily enough... and seemed to learn the sounds easily enough, and he didn't seem to have problems reading. He could even read long complicated words that he encountered in his books and worksheets and school life. No big deal. Sure, occasionally he got words wrong and read them weird, but after a quick correction, he was usually spot on after that.
Stacey, on the other hand, struggled. She struggled to rhyme. She struggled to sound letters. She struggled with vowels. Whatever she didn't know, she guessed. Sometimes she was right on target. Many times she was outrageously wrong. She relied on the pictures in her books to give her clues as to what the words might say. And because half the time she got it right, the other half of the time, those who taught her felt that she was playing the fool... that she was not concentrating, that she was not trying hard enough. Her writing was wonky... often she reversed letters... b d p q... even the s in her name got turned around. She would reverse her numbers too... often confusing 2 with 5, and writing 3 so that it faced the other way. My teacher-trained mind shouted out that something had to be wrong... yet when I brought up the suggestion that perhaps she needed special support, her educators felt that I was making a mountain out of a molehill... that she couldn't be a special needs child... she was too bright to be one... she was not slow. No, she was just lazy or not taking her work seriously.
In 2007, when Zach started Primary School, I quit my job as a full-time teacher to stay home with my kids. This led to much more time with the children, and I saw how hard Stacey struggled with her reading... sometime in June, a friend who was also my children's godmother, suggested that perhaps Stacey might be dyslexic... her own son had been described as one by a friend... and had put him through an informal OG assessment which had surfaced his problems. FF, the children's godma, went through a course to be trained as an OG teacher... and offered to take a look at Stacey after her training.
So started our encounter with OG. Stacey began weekly sessions with FF, who felt that she needed the support. I stopped Stacey's lessons with the Montesorri Phonics teacher - those lessons were putting her under tremendous pressure and stress... it was not doing her any good. Under FF's kind encouragement and a method of learning that suited Stacey's learning style and needs, Stacey flourished. In no time, Stace went from a child who studiously avoided books and who declared that "I cannot read, only korkor can!" to a happier and more confident child who said "Mummy, I will read to meimei (younger sister)...". For half a year, Stace attended weekly sessions with FF, and she began to deal better with worksheets and work... learning to use her sounds and blend more systematically. Her writing and awareness of letter formation improved, and her reversals lessened.
Encouraged by her progress, and realising that her lessons with FF couldn't extend beyond that year (for she would soon go on to Primary School and only come home at around 2pm - a time when FF started her private piano classes at her home), I quickly made the decision to join the OG Associate Program offered by the Orton-Gillingham Centre, taught by Ron Yoshimoto. It didn't come cheap... but it was well worth the investment.
In Dec 2007, I attended the 2 week full-time course, and came away enlightened and raring to go. I picked up where FF left off with Stacey (who by this time had had about 16 or so lessons with FF) and tried to continue. However, I decided also to have Stacey seen by an Educational Psychologist, to see if she could be assessed and possibly obtain an exemption from Chinese Mandarin Testing in school, seeing as to how she was truly struggling with Mandarin at that time.
Thus, in order for her dyslexia not to be masked by her OG training, I stopped her lessons for 2+ months, until she had her assessment in March. Unfortunately, it was no soon enough. It was revealed that Stacey had a high average non-verbal IQ, but anything that had to do with language was brought down to just within the Average range... but the Average scores were not good enough to have her formally diagnosed as having Dyslexia... despite the Psychologist feeling that she does present as being dyslexic... so we wait. Meanwhile, we continue with her lessons... the first year has been somewhat rocky and inconsistent - in part due to our having moved out of the house for almost 4 months then the move back in, in part due to my just settling into the role of a Stay-Home mom.
So right now, Stacey is still not very far from where she left off in terms of Scope and Sequence with FF, having progressed only by a few sounds and into Rabbit words (under Syllabication), but she has made great leaps and bounds in terms of coping with spelling thanks to techniques like finger-spelling and sky-writing.
This year, I intend to make her OG lessons with me a priority, and try to have lessons with her twice a week. Something else may have to give... I have not decided what... but we definitely need more time for her to work on OG.
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