The students in grades 2-5 will be using the Wilson Reading System for instruction. The Wilson Reading System (WRS) is the flagship program of Wilson Language Training and the foundation of all other Wilson programs. Based on Orton-Gillingham principles, WRS is a highly-structured remedial program that directly teaches the structure of the language to students who may require multi-sensory language instruction.
Program Highlights
Program Highlights
- Offers a research-based program with more than twenty years of data collected and analyzed from school districts implementing the program.
- Provides a systematic and cumulative approach to teach total word structure for decoding and encoding.
- Follows a ten-part lesson plan that addresses decoding, encoding, oral reading fluency, and comprehension in a sensible and logical fashion.
- Aids teachers by making all instruction multisensory and interactive.
- Uses a unique “sound tapping” system.
- Uses criterion-based assessments built into the program to measure student progress and success.
- Is a comprehensive program that can follow students from grade to grade.
Characteristics of Dyslexia
The primary difficulties of a student identified as having dyslexia occur in phonemic awareness and manipulation, single-word decoding, reading fluency, and spelling. Secondary consequences of dyslexia may include difficulties in reading comprehension and/or written expression. These difficulties are unexpected for the student’s age, educational level, or cognitive abilities. Additionally, there is often a family history of similar difficulties.
The following are the primary reading/spelling characteristics of dyslexia:
Kindergarten through Third Grade
The following are the primary reading/spelling characteristics of dyslexia:
- Difficulty reading real words in isolation
- Difficulty accurately decoding nonsense words
- Slow, inaccurate, or labored oral reading (lack of reading fluency)
- Difficulty with learning to spell
- The development of phonological awareness, including segmenting, blending, and manipulating sounds in words
- Learning the names of letters and their associated sounds
- Phonological memory (holding information about sounds and words in memory)
- Rapid naming of familiar objects, colors, or letters of the alphabet
Secondary consequences of dyslexia may include the following:
- Variable difficulty with aspects of reading comprehension
- Variable difficulty with aspects of written composition
- A limited amount of time spent in reading activities
Common Evidence of Dyslexia
The following may be associated with dyslexia if they are unexpected for the individual’s age, educational level, or cognitive abilities.
Pre-school
- May talk later than most children
- May have difficulty with rhyming
- May have difficulty pronouncing words (i.e., busgetti for spaghetti, mawn lower for lawn mower)
- May have poor auditory memory for nursery rhymes and chants
- May be slow to add new vocabulary words
- May be unable to recall the right word
- May have trouble learning numbers, days of the week, colors, shapes, and how to spell and write his or her name
Kindergarten through Third Grade
- Fails to understand that words come apart; for example, that snowman can be pulled apart into snow and man and, later on, that the word man can be broken down still further and sounded out as /m/ /ă/ /n/
- Has difficulty learning the letter names and their corresponding sounds
- Has difficulty decoding single words (reading single words in isolation)—lacks a strategy
- Has difficulty spelling phonetically
- Reads dysfluently (choppy and labored)
- Relies on context to recognize a word
- Has a history of reading and spelling difficulties
- Avoids reading aloud
- Reads most materials slowly; oral reading is labored, not fluent
- Avoids reading for pleasure
- May have an inadequate vocabulary
- Has difficulty spelling; may resort to using less complicated words in writing that are easier to spell