Website Problem–Fixed Now
I apologize to anyone who has tried to access the information on my site the past couple of weeks. Somehow all of the pages to the Guide on the sidebar became inaccessible and it took a while to fix the problem.
While the site was down, Google (and probably the other search engines as well) categorized a bunch of pages that were randomly located on the site, so if you got here via a search engine and couldn’t make sense of the site, it’s because you became trapped in an archive of the site when it wasn’t working right. Try coming directly to ontrackreading.com and using the table of contents to the guide on the sidebar if you’ll be returning for additional information (instead of trying to find the page via the search engine…for a while, anyway.) With the site back up, the search engines should straighten out over time.
And thanks to the anonymous poster who left the comment that alerted me to the problem, and thanks also to my son, Matt, at Astuteo.com, for doing the fix. Thought I’d lost everything there for a while.
Merry Christmas, and Happy Holidays!
Rod Everson
OnTrack Reading
January 29th, 2008 at 2:26 am
Hi Rod. I gave you the idea for Lulu way back. I’m finally ready to try your method. We’ve been using the Wilson Reading System with my son who is 11. He’s just starting Step 4 which is finally getting into “silent e” words. It’s just taking SO LOOOOOONG that I was hoping that your method would go faster for him because honestly I need him (and his younger brother who is having problems as well) to READ because I have another child I’m teaching to read and next year I’ll have another one.
I have a question…my sons know the first vowel sounds, the basic consonants & wh, sh, ch, & ck. How do I teach the others? Do I drill them with all the sounds, then move into how it’s done in Reading Reflex or start with the methods in Reading Reflex and just go from there?
I have downloaded all your articles on this site (I put them in a Word document so I can find them easily) and read through them last night. Your method of chunking words seems so much easier that Wilson’s.
Also, is it possible to get an “advanced copy” of the workbook? Pretty please??
Thanks for your site!
January 29th, 2008 at 12:05 pm
Hi Dawn,
First, I’m sorry for the delay in getting the workbook published. I’ve gotten distracted lately.
Regarding your eleven-year-old son, have you investigated the vision side of things yet? In my experience, if he’s really having trouble with basic reading at that age he probably has a vision problem of the nature I discuss elsewhere on this site. That’s especially true if another sibling is also having trouble learning to read, as I believe that the vision problems are genetic in nature.
I much prefer to have the vision issues addressed first with vision therapy and then attack the phonics problem. Many times the phonics instruction isn’t even needed then because the child starts to learn on his own, including using phonics information he was previously taught.
I’ll email you directly regarding the workbook.
Rod
January 29th, 2008 at 12:37 pm
He finished vision therapy this past summer and has made great progress so far. I know he’s ready for the other phonograms (ai, etc.) but Wilson takes too long to get to them. Thanks!