Dyslexia is not a visual problem – it is an auditory one.
People with dyslexia struggle to read partly because they are using the wrong part of their brain. So even if they are making some progress with a traditional phonics program it will be much harder than it should be – imagine trying to learn to type with your toes instead of your hands! You could buy the best typing curriculum in the world, or hire the best typing tutor, but until you switch to using your hands, it isn’t going to go very well and will be REALLY frustrating! Especially when you see how much faster and easier everyone else is typing – because they are using their hands! Remediation should be targeted at rewiring those synapses. Getting them to use the proper part of their brain.
How?
Phonemic skills. Learning to break words apart into their basic sounds. The brain stores the word’s spelling in auditory chunks called phonemes. If they can’t break the word into those individual chunks it doesn’t get stores in the brain, at least not in the right place or the right way.
Think of reading like cooking – following a recipe. If you are a beginning baker earning to bake a cake for the first time, you need a recipe that breaks things down into the individual ingredients. To read a word a beginner reader needs to be able to hear the individual sounds – the phonemes. To be a SKILLED baker you need to be able to manipulate those ingredients easily – to quickly identify them at a glance, to to be able to substitute say, brown sugar for regular sugar, etc. A skilled reader also needs to be able to easily manipulate and substitute sounds.
An example is – say the word “MOP” without the /m/. “OP”. Now say the word mop but switch the /m/ with a /t/. “TOP” A person with dyslexia will find that harder than someone without dyslexia. Often, they struggle to even hear all the separate sounds in the word. So a remediation program will address that – having them separate out words orally into their sounds and then put them together again. It will have them substituting sounds…so going from mat to map to mop to top.
These are the things that have to happen BEFORE you work on phonics rules. This developmental step happens intuitively with a large number of people, so you don’t even notice it happening. But with struggling readers, if you skip this and go straight to phonics they will struggle. You don’t teach someone to hop before they can walk. You don’t teach phonics before phonemic awareness.
This is why some programs that are truly excellent phonics programs, like All About Reading, are not enough for dyslexic students. Without the necessary phonemic awareness to make sense of the phonics and store things properly in their memory they can’t really do much with that phonics knowledge. They are still using the wrong part of the brain, making things harder and slower than they should be – which frustrates everyone.
So, what can you do? What homeschool resources are there?
First, I highly focusing on educating YOURSELF about dyslexia and how the brain learns to read, BEFORE working with your student. David Kilpatrick’s book Equipped for Reading Success will make you a reading expert, explaining the developmental steps, how to identify what might be missing, and how to fix it. The book also includes a huge section of one minute oral exercises to do with your student, to work on phonemic skills.
Then, for curriculum I have two great programs depending on your needs and budget. The best known and most in depth, comprehensive, step by step program is Barton Reading and Spelling. This program will help rewire the brains so that they can identify and break apart the sounds in words, and then put them together again. Later levels also teach phonics and spelling rules. This program is very intense and because it is very methodical it can take a long time. It is also very expensive – although you can usually resell used levels fairly easily.
We used the first level, and it was very helpful in that it came with videos that taught ME how to teach my student, and I saw big changes taking place in her thinking – it was like I could SEE her brain being rewired in real time, making those connections. But, the slow nature of it was frustrating to her, and she just really needed to see some progress and success – she needed to READ.
At that point we decided to try something different – and that leads to the second program I am going to talk about – Abecedarian. Abecedarian reading was developed by a reading tutor and integrates the best parts of various methods including Orton Gillingham and Phonograhix. It does not teach rules, instead it is more of an immersion approach. And it, like Barton, uses deceptively simple exercises to help the brain rewire, to help the student use the proper part of their brain for reading and storing the words they are learning. It’s also both affordable AND easy to use. Start by taking some time to read the teacher’s manual, and watch the videos on the website, but after that it is open and go, with little to no prep.
One of my favorite things about it is that there are two versions of the levels – the regular version for kids just starting out, and “short” versions for older kids who need remediation but can work at a faster pace. We started with the “short” version of A, and then did the regular levels of B1 and B2 . That’s three grade levels of reading instruction that we were able to cover in less than one school year. At that point we contacted the owner for some advice, and he suggested we stop there and work on fluency using other materials, which we did. At this point she’s reading right at grade level. .
After covering the basic spelling rules using All About Spelling Levels 1 and 2, we chose to shift our focus and energy to the most commonly used words. For that we purchased a set of incredible – and VISUAL – flashcards from I See, I Spell, I learn! They utilize pictures to highlight the difficult parts of the word, and then a phrase or sentence that goes with the picture, to help the student remember the spelling. These were really helpful, but kids with dyslexia will always struggle more than other students.
For that reason, after focusing on remediation, it is important to consider accommodations. Things that make it easier for the student to express themselves without their dyslexia holding them back. For instance, we are prioritizing typing skills so that she can use spell check in her writing. No, spell check isn’t perfect, but it is a huge help for dyslexic students. The typing instruction program we are using doubles as reading and spelling instruction, called Touch, Type, Read and Spell. It is an Orton-Gillingham based website that reviews phonics and spelling while teaching them to type well. It costs more than other typing programs, but is well worth it in my opinion.
Our other main accommodation in her writing is letting her use an app called Easy Spelling Aid. She can speak a word or phrase and then see the spelling. Because she can use a whole phrase, putting the word in context, it makes it easier to get the correct spelling for homophones.
Other ways to accommodate a dyslexic student are to let them do more oral presentations instead of written ones, as well as using audio books and documentaries and other video based instruction. Reading material in a textbook is NOT the only way to learn!
Finally, I’d like to take a moment to remind you that dyslexia doesn’t mean your child won’t be successful in their education – it just may mean that success looks a bit different. Find their strengths, and focus on those just as much as you do on their weaknesses. And let them know every day that their dyslexia doesn’t define who they are, or who they are going to be.
Hopefully, that’s given you some hope, and some resources you can use, but if you have questions, or want to share what has helped you or your student, I’d love to hear from you – just leave a comment below.
Homeschool In the Heat 