Tag Archives: Barton Reading
Homeschooling with the Barton System
Susan Barton loves getting emails like this:
My son, Tom, is about to turn eight and has been struggling with reading since kindergarten. Even at that age, asking him to sit down and read for ten minutes resulted in tears. But we forced him to try.
In first grade, kids in his class were correcting his reading mistakes. He felt very bad about himself. He would often come home sullen and exhausted. He was unable to read anything on his own. He needed help with even the simplest of books.
But he was a great guesser and could figure out a lot from picture clues and context. In fact, the school actually encouraged children to guess at words. But Rick had no strategy to figure out a simple word or sentence, so if there were no pictures, he would simply give up.
By the time he reached second grade, it was obvious that all the hours spent reading at home (and at school) were not helping. He still had no clue how to sound out words.
So last January we took him out of public school and enrolled him in an online charter school in a desperate attempt to help him here at home. That’s where you come in.
That charter school asked us to watch your dyslexia video, which explained things so clearly. We then realized Tom has dyslexia – as does his father. Thankfully, that online charter school had a site license for the Barton Reading & Spelling System, so we were able to get it through them.
Your program has been a miracle for us. We are finishing level 3, and Tom is starting to read on his own. He chooses books for himself and delights in reading them to us. He is so happy and proud of himself.
Thank you for the time and effort it must have taken to develop your program and create those training videos.
Susan Barton is thrilled that so many virtual charter schools – which support home educators – are now providing parents with the Barton Reading & Spelling System.
If you are homeschooling, or thinking about it, watch Susan Barton’s free 30-minute video with advice for homeschoolers by clicking on this link:
http://www.bartonreading.com/index.html#homeschool
Above grade level in just 18 months
Emails like this make all of my hard work worthwhile.
Thank you from the bottom of my heart for developing the Barton System.
My children are homeschooled. My youngest of 5 just could not learn to read no matter how hard we tried. I kept thinking we just weren’t putting in enough effort. So I told him last spring that if we tried harder, he would be reading soon. He was in 4th grade and 9 years old. Well, despite our best efforts, he still could not read.
He did not have the pressures of being in public school, and he seemed not to care that everyone else in the house could read. But when I talked with him privately, he broke down crying and said he felt stupid. Of course, this broke my heart. A friend suggested he be tested for dyslexia.
He’s doing so much better now. He was just retested using the Peabody (PIAT). He scored at the 95th percentile for reading recognition and comprehension. His spelling was at the 53rd percentile — right where he should be for his age.
Considering he was at a preschool level just a year and a half ago, that’s a great result !!!
Your system has made my son realize how intelligent he is — despite having to learn to read in a different way. He no longer feels “less than.”
We are very open about our son’s dyslexia and encourage him to be open as well. It is amazing how many people right around me had similar struggles that I knew nothing about.
Sincerely grateful,
Janet Yates, Homeschool Parent
Winter Haven, FL
Remote tutoring works
Certified Barton Tutors who have gotten additional technology training, and special files, can provide Barton tutoring over the internet.
That is a great option when a student (or a tutor) is away for part of the summer, or for students who have no local Certified Barton tutors, as this person shared in a recent email.
Susan, please issue graduation certificates to two of my Barton students who just completed Level 10. One is in New Jersey. The other is in Oregon. But as you know, I am in Utah.
Thanks to your Remote Barton tutoring option, I have been able to serve many students who otherwise would not have been able to have a tutor. I have helped an adult student in Italy. I currently have students in Alaska, Alabama, Missouri, Oregon, New Jersey, Texas, and Georgia.
Most of them are in small towns with no resources.
I truly love tutoring. Thank you for creating the Barton System and for your continued support these many years.
Rosemarie Hoffman, M.A.
Certified at the Masters level in the Barton System
info@onlinereadingtutoring.com
Parents who want a list of Remote Barton Tutors can send an email to Susan@BartonReading.com with the word Remote as the subject.
Barton Tutors who want to learn how to do remote tutoring should click here.
Proud Dyslexic Student
Many people who attended my Screening for Dyslexia course last week have asked for a copy of this letter.
Dear Mrs. Barton,
My name is Nathaniel, and I have dyslexia.
This past week, my mom has been attending your Screening for Dyslexia seminar to learn more about dyslexia and how to help others. Each night when she returns to our hotel room, she shares a few highlights of her day. She told me about the emails and letters you are sharing to remind the group why they are there at your seminar.
I wanted to share one more.
My story is similar to many other people with dyslexia. My early school years were filled with much pain and emotional trauma. My first tears, and adding the word “stupid” to my vocabulary, started in Kindergarten. I was only 5 years old.
The phrases, “Try harder,” “Practice,” “Read more,” and “Why can’t you?” were engrained in my head during those early years by teachers.
I had bruises on my fingers from trying so hard to write sentences, and I was pulled out to attend a class for slow readers.
Recess was my favorite part of the school day until 3rd grade. I was punished and humiliated during 3rd grade. I was forced to sit on the wall during recess while all the other children were allowed to play . . . simply because I could not finish my work in class on time. I had to sit there watching my friends play with my incomplete piece of paper. Yet I still was not able to complete it because I could not read it.
After weeks of sitting on that brick wall, I snuck my papers home and tearfully asked my mom to help me complete them so that I could have a couple of days to play during recess. Needless to say, I never returned to that school – thank goodness!
After that, I was finally told that I had dyslexia, and I began homeschool. In fourth grade, I was reading and spelling at a very low first grade level.
But today, I am proud – MORE than proud – to share that I am just weeks away from completing Level 10 of the Barton System. Not only can I now read and spell, but I know LATIN !!!!
I just finished 8th grade at a public school where I received awards in Academic Excellence with a 3.9 GPA. I won first place in our social studies history project, and I have been accepted for high honor classes in high school next year. My test scores show that I am proficient (and even advanced) in math, comprehension, and yes, even reading !!!!
While writing is still not my strong area, mostly due to dysgraphia, my computer sure makes it look like I am a whiz. I still hate to tie my shoes, my “other right” is a common joke, and I occasionally reverse my numbers and letters when I am tired. At times, the Franklin Spelling Ace is still my best friend, and my favorite inventor is the man who created the digital clock.
Now I can spell words like “purely exhilarated” and “euphoric joy” to express my gratitude, but my word is “happy.” Those first spelling rules, like the Happy Rule, changed my tears and fears into a HAPPY, confident and successful dyslexic student.
Thank you, Mrs. Barton.
Your forever grateful and proud dyslexic student,
Nathaniel Porter
Colorado Springs, CO
Reading fluency is not the whole story
Many schools use DIBELS for progress monitoring. But by the end of first grade, DIBELS only checks reading fluency – which means reading speed. But children with dyslexia, even after their reading skills have greatly improved, may never read as fast as the other kids.
And focusing solely on fluency can cause teachers to miss the big picture – as this mother shared in a recent email.
Our daughter is starting 4th grade. She is in Level 5 of the Barton Reading & Spelling System.
The school she attended last year was terrific. But we moved, and the 504 team at this new school has NO CLUE about dyslexia. It is so painful and frustrating to have to continually fight their ignorance.
We explained that she has been professionally diagnosed with dyslexia, and that due to our paying for the right type of private tutoring, her phonemic awareness and decoding skills are now above grade level. So is her reading comprehension.
But they are focused solely on her reading speed (fluency), which as you know, may never completely “normalize.” Who cares?
My daughter says that when she tries to read as fast as the teacher wants, she then has no idea what she read. So what’s the point?
On the state standards test at the end of last year, she scored ABOVE grade level in reading comprehension, science, and writing. And she scored AT grade level in math and in 4 of the 5 strands for reading. The only thing she scored low on is reading fluency.
Yet without our knowledge, this new school pulled her out of Chorus and sent her to the “reading intervention room.” My daughter said there were about 15 other kids in the room. Many could not read at all. They handed her crayons and told her to color a book cover.
After about 10 minutes, my daughter went to the teacher and asked her what they would be doing. The teacher said, “Testing kids.” My daughter replied, “I already was tested, and I should be in Chorus now.” The teacher insisted she had to stay in that room so that the teacher could account for all of the students.
She then handed my daughter a piece of paper, which she brought home. She was supposed to fill in the following blanks. “My name is _____. I like ______. I love ______. I feel ______. I need _____.” After showing it to me, she crumbled it up and cried. I cried, too.
She’s 11, her IQ is probably higher than the teacher, and she does not belong in that class – so we pulled her from it. The school totally disagrees with our decision and warned us, “If she tanks, we’ll be back at this table again.”
Is this dyslexia?
A parent recently sent me this email:
My daughter, Karen, is 8 years old and in third grade. She is full of life and so much fun. She makes friends easily and enjoys having a good time. But she is struggling in school.
She started struggling in Kindergarten. She had a tough time staying in her seat and was always in trouble for pestering others during nap time. She struggled with sight words and reading, and she missed the DIBELS benchmarks. But her teacher said Karen just needed to mature a little more and that she would be fine.
But in first grade, Karen was way behind in reading. She has always been a “social butterfly,” and she still had a hard time staying in her seat. So her teacher allowed her to get up move around a bit and then go back to work. That seemed to help.
Spelling tests were very tough for Karen. Reading comprehension tests were also tough because she couldn’t always read the questions. However, she could orally tell you all about the book. Her handwriting was poor, but legible.
In January, her first grade teacher suggested retention. But by the end of first grade, the teacher claimed Karen had caught up in reading. Karen was just a little immature, but she would grow out of it.
In second grade, Karen was about a semester behind in reading, and she sometimes swapped b’s for d’s. Her handwriting was (and still is) really hard to read at times. She did okay in math. But she often failed the spelling tests – even though we practiced every night and tried all sorts of things when practicing those spelling words.
This year, her third grade teacher knows all the “tricks.” Spelling tests are multiple choice. Karen has to circle the one that looks right, and she gets 95% or higher on that type of spelling test. But she cannot spell any of those words the following week.
Vocabulary tests are given with a word bank, so most weeks, Karen scores 85% or higher.
In math, she is allowed to use scratch paper and her fingers because she still has not memorized her adding and subtracting facts. Now they are starting multiplication. Yikes. Her class recently started to learn to tell time. Karen is struggling in that as well.
The school says Karen is at the 2.5 grade level in reading – but she should be at 3.4. Karen is doing better with being attentive in class, except during reading time. She loves to be read to, but she gets frustrated when she tries to read.
Her teacher doesn’t seem alarmed, but I have this feeling that something isn’t quite right.
Karen started cheering this year. She struggles to memorize the words and motions of the cheers. She often goes left when the group goes right, lifts her left hand when the group raises their right, etc.
She has a hard time memorizing Bible scriptures in her Bible classes. Scriptures that she memorized a week ago, she can no longer recite.
Do you think she might have dyslexia?
Tech Tools are not enough
Technology tools help adults with dyslexia survive. But as the following emails prove, they never stop wanting to improve their reading and spelling skills.
One woman wrote:
I watched your video on dyslexia, and I am exactly like your brother’s child.
I am 48. I am using Naturally Speaking software to write this. Otherwise, I would spend my entire day trying to fix my spelling mistakes.
I’m at the point where my heart is on the floor. I have tried every program in school, out of school, and on the internet.
At the moment, I’m doing a program that is supposed to increase your brain power to try please my mother for the last time.
My tears were flowing as I watched the demo of your program. Your program is the best I have seen in all my life. It makes so much sense to me.
I’m upset to realize that the form of dyslexia I have is complicated. I am also sad because I know this problem will never go away.
I don’t have to tell you the agony that a person living with dyslexia goes through. Because of that, when I was 16, I decided not to have kids. And that was a wise decision.
Things that happen in the classroom also happen at work, as this man shared:
I am 30 years old. I have always struggled with reading. I received extra help in school through Title 1 Reading, Special Ed, and summer school. As you might suspect, I hated school and would avoid going whenever possible.
Recently, I was at a seminar for my work and was asked to read out loud to the group. I was mortified.
Is there anything that would help me – an adult who has struggled for so many years – read better?
Yes. Adults with dyslexia can improve their reading and spelling at any age – so they will not have to avoid careers, as this woman did:
I am a deep thinker. I love learning about different religions and talking about God with my friends. So I would like to get a Masters degree in Theology.
But with that degree, I would end up being a teacher – which I am afraid to do because I would have to write things on the board.
I would also have to grade papers, so I would need to know more about punctuation than just a period and a comma.
And I might even have to read passages aloud to the class.
As the following man shared, companies that employ dyslexic adults are often willing to pay to improve their skills.
I am 56 years old, and I have tried a lot of things during my life to overcome dyslexia.
It started when I was in second grade. I can remember my mom crying when she tried to teach me my spelling words.
I attended summer tutoring for 4 years in a row to try to learn to read. Finally, the tutor said he would not work with me any more because it was a waste of money.
I took phonics in college, but it did not help. In fact, I failed a speech therapy class because I could not hear the sounds.
Many years later, I went to a dyslexia center. But they said they could not help me because I was too old.
Your video nailed me to a tee. When you talked about left and right confusion, that’s me. I always use spell check, and yes, sometimes it does say “no suggestions” or I pick the wrong word from the list because I can’t read them all.
I am in charge of a region with 145 centers that generate hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue. My company is trying to find something to help me. Is it too late? If not, what would you recommend?
No, it is never, ever too late to greatly improve the reading, spelling, and writing skills of adults with dyslexia. The oldest student I personally worked with was 69 years old when we started. The oldest Barton student I have met was 83.
If adults get at least 2 hours of one-on-one tutoring by someone using an Orton-Gillingham based system designed for adults, such as the Barton Reading & Spelling System or the Wilson Reading System, their skills – and their self-esteem – will get so much better.
Confidence comes from success
Parents often ask me how to build their child’s confidence. Confidence will grow when your child is successful at something that used to be hard . . . as this parent shared:
Both of my kids are dyslexic. But my daughter, who is going into 7th grade, suffered tremendously in school since she is older and was in a traditional school longer. My poor daughter was an undiagnosed dyslexic all the way through 5th grade.
Every year, I spent hours and hours after school and on weekends trying to reteach material she was not understanding at school – and to prepare for all the spelling tests. I did not know anything about dyslexia, so we did what the school recommended and drilled the spelling list every single night, 7 days a week, hoping she would pass the spelling test through constant repetition.
Some Fridays she passed the test, and some Fridays, she did not. But the following Monday, she could no longer remember the sequence of letters. What a colossal waste of our time and effort (hers and mine), and it was so demoralizing to my daughter who began to show signs of clinical depression.
So we began homeschooling this past year, and I found the Barton System. We started it in late fall, and I had to go very slowly in the beginning (mainly because she was so down on herself), but she is now half-way through Level 3.
She took a spelling test from an assessor the other day on the recommendation of a friend. We did not study for the test. It was given to her cold.
There was a time when she would not have gotten a single word right on that list, and what’s more, she would have been utterly terrified at the prospect. But this time, when a word was read to her that she was uncertain of, she would finger spell the sounds, write the word down and study it, sound it out again, then change what she felt might need changing.
She got every single word correct, which was great.
But what was even better was seeing her confidently studying the words when she felt the spelling might be wrong – instead of just giving up in tears. She did not panic going into the test, either. She sat down confidently, and left the test the same way.
When she found out she had not made a single misspelling, she and I looked at each other with huge grins on our faces.
The next morning, she got up early and asked if we could go ahead and start our next Barton lesson before breakfast.
Thank you, Susan. There really aren’t adequate words to express how grateful we are.
I can finally be who I want to be
It is best to catch dyslexia early.
But even in high school, it is NOT TOO LATE to greatly improve their skills — which will change their entire future.
A high school student gave me permission to share this talk that he gave at a fund raiser for his private Christian school in Idaho.
My name is Michael Warner and I am the first student at this school to fully complete the Barton Reading & Spelling System.
Before I knew that such a program existed, I endured many different types of special education plans and teachings. All, however, failed. After enduring nine years of mental, emotional, and social abuse due to my dyslexia, I came to this private school.
For the first time, I wasn’t only trying to match my mental capability, but to exceed it. I say this with my own choice of words… with no help whatsoever.
Although I never thought it was possible, I remember dreaming of the day that it would just click and I would just get it…although it was never coming.
Just to give you an idea about how much I have learned from the Barton System, I have in my hand my FCAT scores. For those of you who don’t know, it is the Florida version of the WASL. In reading, I got a one.
According to that score, I had the equivalent reading level of a third grader. I was in the ninth grade when I took this test. A freshman in high school! Tell me that wasn’t emotionally damaging…a third grader! That test told me that in reading and spelling, I was close to mentally retarded.
My public school in Florida would not let me be in college prep classes. They tried to control what I learned so I would become a construction worker because they thought I was too stupid to do anything else. Everything around me told me I would never measure up to anything.
Then I came here. You found out I had dyslexia, and put me in the reading program. Halfway through that program, students were clapping for me in the middle of class because they could see how much I improved. That shows you the spirit of the students at this school.
After two years here, I wanted to become a programmer. So I had to leave and go to Newport High School to take the classes I needed. Do you have any idea what it feels like to finally pursue your own dreams?
So I went to Newport last fall and I took the WASL. One try and I passed everything — reading, writing, everything.
Some students take three or four tries to pass it, and they take special classes in order to pass it. I passed it on the first try.
I’m here to say how much this private school has changed my life. All I can say is thank you. I can finally be who I want to be.
Michael Warner
former student at House of the Lord private school
in Oldtown, Idaho
From a sibling
I do not often hear from a sibling of someone with dyslexia. But a parent just sent me this essay, which her daughter wrote for a school assignment.
Haley’s Dyslexia
I was in 5th grade when my brother Haley was diagnosed with dyslexia.
The first time I heard Haley had dyslexia was on a school night when my mom was reading to Haley in bed. All of a sudden, I heard my mom scream, and I ran upstairs thinking something was wrong. But my mom was just giving Haley high fives and kissing him because had read a sentence all by himself.
At first, I was mad because I felt, “Hey, when I get straight A’s, I don’t get that much praise. Yet Haley read one simple sentence and he got a ton of it.”
About an hour later, I went into my mom’s room to ask why she praised Haley so much. That’s when she told me Haley had dyslexia and dysgraphia. It took her about half an hour to explain what it was, and how it would affect our family. When she shared that, I felt ashamed of my jealousy.
So that night, while Haley was sleeping, I went into his room and gave him a kiss and a hug. I told him I loved him and would support him through everything.
Since then, our life has been a great adventure. My mom and dad have worked so hard for both of us.
My mom starting using the Barton Reading & Spelling System with Haley, and he made so much progress that she started tutoring other kids. Now she runs a clinic called Haley’s Hope where several tutors help children and adults with dyslexia.
My dad has taken over helping Haley and I with our homework.
I am so proud of everyone in my family.
Bright Solutions for Dyslexia 