How It Started Part 1

So, you can take a look at the About Me page and find out the basics of why I'm starting this little blog. But to go into a little more depth about the WHY, here is the beginning of my story.

In first grade, the school indicated that our oldest son struggled with reading but assured us that he would "catch up," that sometimes boys just "developed later," and that things would eventually just "click." But having worked with reading researchers for so many years, I did not think that was the case. At the time, our Reading Clinic was unavailable to me as it was housed in the Bethel School District and it was very difficult to find someone to do any kind of tutoring. His father and I worked with him constantly but no amount of reading to him, writing stories with him, or sounding out words, seemed to help.

His first-grade teacher did indicate that she thought something was "wrong" but wouldn't specify what and it definitely didn't have anything to do with reading (she thought he had Autism, but that's another story).

By second grade I was annoyed. I expressed my concern to the teacher and she expressed HER concern that our son had a speech issue. I said I really wasn't concerned about his speech, but I was very concerned about his reading. They assessed him for speech difficulty and he qualified for an IEP. I signed off on this because I knew that it was easier to transition an IEP than it was to get a new one and the SLP (Speech and Language Pathologist) assured me that she would have him read when he came for services. Throughout second grade I scoured the internet for books that didn't seem like decodables but that were decodable, all while learning from my son that he was in a "reading group" with another student who also couldn't read...they were left to their own devices to "read" together silently - I think you can imagine how well that went.

These Branches Books were too hard for him to read, and Scholastic really does NOT seem to be on board with the Science of Reading, but he really loved them and they were easier than the books that were provided in the classroom. We mostly read these together.

By the middle of second grade, I had had enough. I asked our doctor for a referral to CDRC for ADHD and suspected learning disability in reading. This is roughly a 6-month process, so it was the end of the school year by the time I had paperwork in hand to give to the teacher (evaluations require teachers and parents to fill out questionnaires about the child being evaluated). On his last day of school, his teacher pulled me aside to tell me how glad she was that I was having an evaluation done. She had just looked at his data and he didn't make any growth all year. I had a lot of feelings about this. I was angry - why the heck was she telling me NOW? Why hadn't she thought to say something to me sooner? The last day of school? I was incredulous - how is it that she hadn't realized he hadn't made any growth? I had been reading with him at home all year and I knew he hadn't made any growth! Really? I was disappointed - I knew that the school should have been better at supporting my son, but I didn't know how to make them do that.

We also received a flyer from his SLP telling us that we should sign him up for a "Fluency Camp" at the HEDCO Clinic - Unknown to the SLP, I had worked in the HEDCO Clinic when the CTL Clinic was still on campus, so I was very familiar with it. It's worth noting that SLP Fluency is not the same as Reading Fluency, but I took him in to have him evaluated for the program. A week later, I was told that my son didn't have a speech problem. The supervisor of the program didn't observe any abnormal disfluency in him while she talked to him. But she liked him and thought he was funny and wanted to work with him. So, I brought him in for Speech sessions at the HEDCO Clinic during the summer term and they worked quite extensively on phonemic awareness (Check your Big 5 Ideas of Reading. This is number 1).

As we were winding up the summer camp at HEDCO, we had our evaluation scheduled with CDRC. Long story short, he did NOT have ADHD but was diagnosed with significant anxiety and a specific learning disability (SLD) in reading with suspected dyslexia.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is where our story begins...Go to Part 2

Resources for real decodable books:

1. This list from The Reading League is relatively comprehensive if you are looking for books that are decodable. Decodable books are books that have words that can be easily sounded out for students who are just starting to learn to read.

2. Flyleaf Publishing has some decodable that I've heard great things about and some free e-books