PAT Programme

sarahv

Hi, my son is in first class and his reading still hasn't taken off. A retired teacher I know says she has the PAT Programme books but she's not sure if they are still used in schools. She can give them to me and I can do a little each day with him. Do any teachers still use this programme or is there something better that I can use? Is this one any good? Thanks

Lady_North1

We have dyslexia classes in our school and it's used in there. We use PAT in our mainstream classes all the time. Very useful resource, simple but effective.

Sesame

My first classer does Pat too and it'd been brilliant. Sometimes the old reliablea are better than the modern day approaches.

byhookorbycrook

Mmm, it depends, the programme isn't evidenced based for helping with difficulties and we no longer use in in special ed in our school. Does he know the 42 letter sounds?What about the Dolch words?Have you spoken with his own teacher- does the school do shared reading or peer tutoring?

Romantic Rose

We had a sales rep in our school and apparently the PAT programme is back en vogue (I know he wants to sell it too) but there is only so much reinventing of the wheel in teaching reading you can do.

byhookorbycrook

Yes, but there's a reason PAT was left behind. It is alright in the mainstream classroom , for the children who are doing reasonably ok with reading, but it's very limited in what it does and we have dropped it from supporting children who are finding reading a little difficult. And there's no point in doing PAT if the child doesn't have the 42 sounds or needs work on the Dolch words. It's very much "look and say" which doesn't suit a lot of learners.

Romantic Rose

It's crazy how opinions can differ so much about resources. It's always great to learn about resources that are working.

I would love to shadow you Byhookorbycrook

byhookorbycrook

Romantic Rose wrote: »

It's crazy how opinions can differ so much about resources. It's always great to learn about resources that are working.

I would love to shadow you Byhookorbycrook

Gawd help us, sure I'm a cranky auld wagon, I'd say you would run a mile . I was a major flag carrier for PAT when I started in SEN many (many) moons ago as it was in vogue , but learned the hard way that it didn't really help most children with difficulties .

Bells21

I think as byhookorcrook has said, having the 42 sounds and dolch list words would be a good place to start. I think that working on rhyming words informally would be an idea. My infants have really gotten into the swing of it this year and love finding the odd ones out or continuing on rhyming strings.

sarahv

Great thanks for advice. I might borrow it and have take a look. He has most of his words and sounds (gets tripped up on a few of them) but it's when it comes to the actual reading that he has difficulties. Doesn't always recognise the sounds in words or the tricky words in books. Doesn't recognise the same word from page to page. He gets there but very slowly, no fluency.

byhookorbycrook

Shared reading is excellent for fluency and enjoyment. You begin for finding somewhere cosy for you both to sit together. Look at the cover and title, discuss what you see-who do you think that is, where are they, do you think etc. and look at the pictures. Use that time to slot in words that might be difficult that will crop up after, say "hippopotamus" or whatever. You both then read together at the one time. When he feels confident, he taps you on the knee and he continues alone.If he meets a word he doesn't know, he taps you on the knee again, give him the word and move on, reading with him again until he signals for you to stop. This is about enjoying a little time together and doing some reading without the pressure of "sounding it out" or "you know this one" etc. and will boost his confidence. Try to do that 3 or 4 times a week if you can, just for ten minutes and it will stand to him very much.

Romantic Rose

Something like this might help him-

https://a1toys.com/match-spell-orchard-toys.html.

I also got fridge magnets on Amazon for Sight Vocabulary for my own girl. Maybe revise 2 per day. What I used to do in LS, was start with 2 on a Monday, revise that 2 and learn 2 more on Tuesday, revise 4 on Wed n learn 2 more etc. So that by the end of the week, they would know 10 new sight vocabulary (in theory).

If he's in first class now, he should be moving up a level with Phonics and it's more consonant blends he'll be doing.

I used to do up my own flash cards with a particular blend on senteacher.org. I'd just get the children to practice decoding words with that particular blend.

It sounds like it's just practice he needs more than anything.

Work on his memory too. Play memory games with him like memory matching pairs.

sarahv

Sorry I missed that last reply. Thanks, yes we had been doing shared reading since senior infants and he does enjoy it as it takes the pressure off