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Michael's Reading Success Story



Hi,

I have a 7yr old son, who, if not by the grace of the internet would be a reading failure today. Instead, thanks to the internet this CAPD child is reading fabululously, however, CAPD is still a major issue for us. Children with CAPD often have great difficulty hearing the individual sounds within words (decoding), or holding the individual sounds in their brain and blending them together to form a word (coding). Without these abilities, a child will struggle to learn to read. Michael could do neither, but let me start near the beginning.
Michael attended a good preschool, 5 days a week while he was 3 and 4 years old. The teachers expressed concern that he was hyperactive and never followed directions. They claimed he couldn't remember his letters and didn't learn to write or recognize his name because he wasn't paying attention. I was concerned that he couldn't remember what had happened during his day but could talk in great detail about the universe or stars or animal habitats. I was also concerned about why Michael would repeat a word over and over before finally being able to move on with his thought (Word Retrieval Problem) and why could this very intelligent child not do all these academic things other kids were doing..... These were all Early Warning Signs of LD.
In '97 Michael started kindergarten as any other child, excited, scared, but interested in learning. A few weeks into the school year the speech therapist requested permission to do a speech and language evaluation on Michael. She uncovered Word Retrieval Problems and poor pragmaticskills.
The TEAM (comprised of the K teacher, speech therapist, school psych) met and discussed Michael with us. His K teacher expressed her concern;"He is a very smart boy" she said, "but what he knows is so inconsistent and he isn't learning the letter names like the other kids. We need to do more testing."
By mid-year, Feb '98, we were meeting with the TEAM again to discuss test results and action steps. We learned that Michael had mild articulation errors, visual processing skills at or slightly above norm, his expressive vocabulary placed him at the 99% (and later we found his VIQ (verbal intelligence) to be 128--or border line gifted), but his auditory processing scores ranged from 99% to less than 5%. The school discounted this spread. They said he was not focusing, that he wasn't paying attention, that he was easily distracted....We needed to do an ADHD evaluation on this child. The school also responded by placing Michael into an afternoon kindergarten resource room where he received multi-sensory education so that he could learn letter names. {This approach did not help Michael and by the time kindergarten ended, his teacher said that Michael really only knew the names of 5 letters.}
The auditory processing scores that were so low were word recall, number forward or reverse recall, while the ones that were high were sentence recall, critical thinking and auditory discrimination.
It was also at this point, in Feb of '98 that I turned to the Internet and seriously started searching for help. I read about central auditory processing disorder (CAPD) and found my son being described within their descriptions. I read all I could about phonemic awareness, phonological processing, and learning to read at a website entitled Read by Grade 3. I read "30 Years of Reading Research: What We Know About How Children Learn to Read". I returned to the school and requested a CAPD evaluation at the school's expense. The school did not think that Michael had CAPD since his auditory discrimination scores were so high (99%) but I was prepared!
I told the school I believed Michael had CAPD because: These are all signs for CAPD.
The school paid for the CAPD evaluation. I requested an independent Neuropsyc evaluation -- the school paid. When we went for the CAPD evaluation, we found that Michael had raging ear infections. His reaction was a "aren't ears supposed to hurt?" Antibiotics started we were able to have the evalu done in mid-May '98, and tubes inserted in June.
In April 98, we had the end of year IEP meeting. His teacher and parents filled out an ADHD survey form--conclusion, he had 4 ADHD traits BUT the severity was similar to other boys his age. At this meeting the TEAM informed us that they were going to teach Michael coping skills and ways to handle frustration because he was NEVER going to learn to read. At best they felt that if he ever did learn to read it would always be a struggle, and he would never read near grade level. We were advised to accept that Michael would get through school by listening to books on tape.
We knew we had to find alternatives. The Neuropsych evaluation uncovered both auditory and visual processing disorder. The CAPD evaluation confirmed a composite auditory processing system that was 4 yr. 1 mo. while the chronological age was 6 yr. 2 mo. Michael's phonemic awareness was zero, his auditory memory was less than 5%, and there was no indication of ADHD or ADD during testing.
Not wanting to rely on only one test result I also had a speech and language pathologist (with CCC's) do a phonemic awareness test (TOPA) and a LAC test on Michael. These confirmed the CAPD results -- Michael's LAC score was lower than the recommended minimum for entering kindergarten. His TOPA results were in the 5% range. If something was not done quickly, the school's predication would be correct. However, the 30 Year Reading Research Report (this is a must read article) said that these skills can be taught and must be taught to the child before entering first grade to prevent reading failure. These tests quickly ask the child questions such as:
These should be easy things for a child entering kindergartner. Michael could not identify if 2 words ended with the same sound and often mixed up whether you were looking for the beginning or ending sound. He could repeat sounds, but then would blend them into totally different words, and a word was always only one sound to him. Michael could rhyme BUT rhyming is not strongly correlated to reading ability.
I read all the articles I could about Fast ForWord(FFW). This program improves auditory memory, enabling kids to hear the individual sounds in words (an ESSENTIAL SKILL to learning to read) and helps kids with CAPD. However, we really didn't have the money to do FFW. So, in May, Michael started doing Earobics, 5 days a week for an hour. EAROBICS is also an auditory processing computer program, and is approximately $50. It was frustrating, he quickly learned that he could not succeed at this program, and after a month and no progress we stopped.
I also found a way for us to do FFW, at a do-able amount. Michael did FFW over the summer at home, starting July 1 '98, working 6 days a week, 2 hrs a day, until mid-October. A total of 13 weeks. It is a tough program on the child but I used big rewards that occurred every 2 to 3 days. We probably spent $200 on toys/rewards but it was worth it.
What changes did we see:
When we embarked on remediation I struggled with how to explain to Michael all this work he was to do over his summer vacation. How to explain it so that Michael did not think that there was something wrong with his brain. So, I told Michael that the ear infections he had as a toddler prevented a part of his brain, the auditory processing part, from developing. I explained that the FFW program was exercise for his brain and would develop his brain's auditory processing system. In September '98, in addition to school and FFW Michael worked with Earobics. Now, the program that he struggled with just 3 months earlier was a breeze and a confidence builder. Doing Earobics was a great tool to demonstrate to Michael that his brain had developed (and it was nice blending and segmenting practice).
In October '98 the school did the Woodcock Johnson Reading Mastery test. Michael's scores range from a grade 1.1 to 1.6 Amazing improvement! In November '98, Michael could not even read the word cat. So, even though I had never taught anyone to read, I started using Reading Reflex to teach Michael to read. He now knew all the sound-symbol relationships, even though we had not worked on them. Perhaps they were somewhere in his brain and now he was able to process the information and retrieve it. I don't know, it is just another unexplained happening. I learned that knowing letter names is TOTALLY IRRELEVANT to learning to read. Phonemic awareness and sound-symbol relationship are critical beginner reader skills.
We worked from the Reading Reflex book at first on Saturday, Sunday and Wednesday, but I soon backed off to doing reading reflex book work on the weekends and let Michael practice reading to me the other 5 days of the week. Michael started reading, slowly, but I'll always remember that glorious December evening when I stood in the hallway outside of Michael's room listening to him read "Green Eggs and Ham". Tears streamed down my face. The words still echo in my ears; "We know it is a heartbreak, but your child will never read." How wrong they were.
I did manage to get the school to provide LiPs training - about 25 hours total. We did over 150 hours Fast ForWord training, countless hours of practice reading time and about 25 hours of Reading Reflex time to bring Michael to January '99.
By January'99 Michael was reading chapter books like "Frog and Toad Are Friends". In May '98 when a LAC test (Lindamood Auditory Conceptualization) was administered, Michael tested below the minimum for beginning kindergarten even though he was finishing kindergarten! In January '99 the LAC was re-administered and his score placed him at the end of 3rd grade beginning of 4th grade! A 4 year growth in phonemic awareness in just 6 months. The informal reading tests placed him at the Mastery level for stories not yet covered in his classroom. He did not make mistakes with reading words not yet taught in his classroom studies.
I ran into Michael's music teacher from school. She stated, "Michael has had the biggest attitude change in her class this year." Evidently in kindergarten, he sat in her class unwilling to sing and would hold his hands over his ears. This year he sings and enjoys her class. Not an attitude change, just FFW working its miracles.
At his 7 yr. check-up with his pediatrician in early May the doctor asked, "How's school?" Michael spelled, "g-o-o-d". The doctor replied, "What grade are you in?" Michael spelled "f-i-r-s-t". This went back and forth, at least 20 times. The doctor joining in on spelling some of the questions and Michael continued spelling his answers. Michael stayed focused on the topic of the conversation!! A year ago Michael could not say the letter names and these questions would have gone unanswered. Michael would have countered with his own questions totally unrelated to the Dr's questions. The doctor's reaction was, "Wow! I have never seen such a dramatic change in one child. He should be the poster child for FFW. Simply amazing!" It has been one year since Michael was seen by his doctor. Yes, it is a dramatic change, quite a year!
We recently had Michael's IEP TEAM meeting at school. Michael's kindergarten special ed teacher, was also at the meeting since she is moving to be the 2nd grade special ed teacher. She looked amazed when the first grade teacher said that Michael is definitely the top reader in his class and that he only needs an academic monitor status. She then asked, "Last year Michael had a real problem with consistently of what he knew and retention of information. You're saying this is not a problem this year?" No problem this year. She thought that this was unbelievable. It was a sweet moment since she was one of the ones last year saying that Michael would never read.
Michael worked through FFW2. While his TAPS scores moved from 5% to 35-45%, I still see this as a huge gap between that and his other 95-99% scores. While improved in many areas, he still was slow on responding to questions and requests. We did FFW2 for 4 months and we saw improvements again in processing.
Michael's reached his goal for the summer. His goal was to read 100 books. He knows he is a GREAT reader and he wants to continue to be a great reader. Research shows that kids who consider themselves great readers, read, while kids who consider themselves good or poor readers must be pushed to read. It is a rich get richer story cause kids who read get better at reading.
A couple weeks ago I started reading the 3 Harry Potter books to Michael. Michael, in 2nd grade, really got hooked on this story and read several of the chapters in the first and second book on his own! His reading is so smooth and he is easily reading all the words in these books. His reading ability has sky-rocketed over the last couple months and I am in awe. I know I was still reading 'see dick run....' at this age. And to think the school said that he would never read, 1-1/2 yrs ago.
At a school conference Michael's 2nd grade teacher said, "You have done a Great job teaching Michael to read." YES, and it's been well worth it!!!
Michael is now in 3rd grade(2000-2001) and continues to be an avid reader surpassing our hopes and dreams. This past spring he and his classmates took the TeraNova Standardized test. Michael scored between the 9th to 12th grade level in all areas related to reading and language arts. Quite a nice confirmation of the changes we believed had occurred.
We also, began to home school Michael this year full-time in order to best meet Michael's educational needs. At Michael's request, one day a week is devoted to independent reading from sun-up to sun-down and science continues to be Michael's hobby and passion. While home schooling has been fun so far, I have uncovered that Michael does not automatically know his basic math facts and he cannot start counting by 1's from any number other than 1. I learned from http://www.ldinfo.com/dyscalculia.htm , "Students who have difficulty sequencing or organizing detailed information often have difficulty remembering specific facts and formulas for completing math calculations." In addition to drilling math facts every day we are now using another computer program called Brain Builder, http://www.nacd.org/bb3.html. The exercises in this program should improve Michael's visual and auditory sequential processing abilities. I do not know whether this is related to CAPD or whether it is a separate LD issue.
I shudder to think where Micheal would be if I had not had the internet. Or, if other internet parents had not shared their child's problems learning to read and urged me to take action. That is why I am posting Michael's story here. I would be happy to share my thoughts with anyone else that may be experiencing some of the nightmares parents go through when dealing with the public educational system and teaching a child to read. We are our children's biggest and sometimes only advocates. Together we can make changes.
Carole

If you would like to contact Carole regarding her amazing story about Michael, please contact me and I will forward your letters to her. You can email me at CapdFromTheHeart@aol.com or by clicking here:

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