This may not sound like much to some. I tried to teach my son to visualize words and he was getting it when I told him to do it but he never really used it on his own. I also have always tried to get him to see when a word was spelled wrong. He would look and look at a misspelled word and had no idea what was wrong with it.
This morning he wrote speek and said, “That just doesn’t look right.” Then he wrote speak.
He had the picture in his head and somehow retrieved.
He also had a major breakthrough at the vision exercises last night. He was able to sustain tracking for 5 minutes which was our goal and is considered where he should be by his therapist. Before this he could only do it for 2 minutes.
I don’t know if the two events are related. I will have to watch to see if that was just a fluke.
Fabulous...
I ‘ve seen an improvement (somewhat erratic but its there) in my son’s spelling since completing Seeing Stars, which I attribute to his ability to “see” the words.
Re: My son saw the word today.
How neat!!!!! :-)
It wouldn’t surprise me if VT helps with visualization. Just the heavy focus on vison and visual perception probably makes a difference. I hope his progress continues!
Re: My son saw the word today.
Laura,
I actually believe that it takes both the vision therapy for the input and the direct teaching of visualization strategies for some but not all kids. My son really does have trouble with the input (vision issues) so teaching the strategies alone wasn’t getting us there.
I think for some kids just teaching visualization could be enough.
Re: My son saw the word today.
You talked about tracking in your post, asss this is one of the things they say my daughter needs to learn, could someone please explaain to me what it means. I have tried to ask the s. ed. teacher and coornator at her school but they side step most of my questions and just point out that it has worked with other students.
Re: My son saw the word today.
Hi Maxine,
I just found your post. In order to understand tracking you have to look into vision therapy.
There are some exercises that can be done by you if you can not afford vision therapy that would help. There is one called circle e that does really help. For some kids like my son the issues are more complex and intensive vision therapy is needed.
This is how you do the circle ‘e’s. Type up a page of nonsense text (just letters) you may have to adjust the font size of the letters based on what your child is capable of, my son had to start with big letters. Have your child draw a line under the text and stop to circle every e.
Increase the size of the font as she gets better.
Hope this helps. Also, look into vision therapy.
You didn’t mention his age but at any age being able to develop those “it doesn’t look right” skills is SUPER! Also, I had vision therapy (isn’t well accepted in the Ed field - I’m an educator) and it was wonderful for me. I can not cross my eyes due to disfunction in the eye and couldn’t understand why I hated to read. After some med. issues I got my eyes checked by two different Drs. and got the same diagnosis. One wanted to do surgery, yuck! and the other suggested therapy. Good luck and I hope it is as helpful for your son as it was for me.