[senco-forum] Acceleread/write

It is difficult to judge without knowing the precise difficulties that the child has, but I would work on consolidating the phonic knowledge he has learned from the intervention, using only decodable text for reading.  I wouldn't use any text that is of a purported 'low reading age'  as this bears no relation at all to ease of decoding.  I would be aiming for a high rate of success in reading, to boost confidence, and frequent practice of what he has been learning, to promote automaticity in decoding and blending. Common or garden 'low RA' books don't offer any systematic phonic progression and are full of words which children can't decode without help.  As he's Y7, if he is fairly secure with decoding and blending, I would be working on straightforward (i.e easily decodable) compound & multisyllable words as he will meet them out 'in the curriculum' and is probably desperately afraid of them.

For spelling, much the same. Working with phoneme/grapheme correspondences he has learned in ARAW, lots of segmenting of the spoken word and writing to dictation; with the text to speech software and without.

Martin, 

  You may be interested to know that I have been using ARAW for the first time with a child who has had an undiagnosed vision problem (now issued with a pair of glasses!)  He never remembered to leave a space between words and had problems with locating exactly where to place the cursor to correct errors.  At the end of last term, for the first time ever, he did a piece of handwritten work with spaces between the words, paragraphs and plausible attempts at spelling!  Working with him today on the computer I noted that he had hardly any problems with locating errors and placing the cursor in the correct place..this is a real breakthrough and I am very pleased with him!  This after completing only the first 2 'sets of colour cards' .  (And he'd forgotten to bring his glasses to school, so it can't just be put down to improved vision!)

Maggie

Mmilesep at aol.com wrote:  
In a message dated 08/01/2008 12:49:34 GMT Standard Time,  
Helen.Norris at swaveseyvc.cambs.sch.uk writes:

We are  just coming to the end of a four week intervention using
Acceleread/write  with some very weak year 7 pupils. 

When can we repeat the intervention  with the same pupil? How long a gap
would members leave before repeating  the intervention and what would
they use with the pupils in the  meantime?

When we first put this intervention together I had hoped that the  children 
would, once basic literacy skills had been improved, move on to the  more 
interesting and relevant curriculum-based and project-based work still  using a 
talking word processor. Most schools, pleased with the results of the  "remedial" 
aspect worked in this way again with different children. I know of  little 
qualitative evaluation using the talking WP to support  writing.

For the same reasons as above I know of few children who have had a second  
go of 4 weeks and how they have got on. The only data I do have is of a boy (Yr 
 3) who had more sessions about 9 months later and improved by another 37 
months  in reading.

The 20 sessions over 20 days (4 weeks) was somewhat arbitrary but satisfied  
the criteria of short and frequent. I asked for this arrangement to be adhered 
 to during the evaluation in an attempt to control some of the variables. 3  
sessions a week for 6 weeks might be just as effective. Try it and see.

If anyone has any data or info on further sessions I would be interested to  
hear of it. The most recent data I have received was from Lancs and showed an  
average increase in reading of 14.7 months after the initial twenty 20  
minute sessions.

More information from _Talksystem at aol.com_ (mailto:Talksystem at aol.com) 

Financial interest declared.

Martin

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