Hi,
I am in my second year of college and right now I have just started doing my observing. There is an individual who is severely dyslexic in the classroom. This is a special education class so that person is getting help with this problem. The teacher told me they have tried and tried to help this student and as soon as they think they have gotten some where, the stduent goes right back to where they were before. Can anyone give me some tips on how to help with this?? I know I am not actually teaching yet, but it would be nice to see some things that may have worked for others.
Thanks :)
Re: Help with teaching a student
This is just my experience (but it’s many years in a private school for kids with LDs, many of whom who were severely dyslexic — you don’t go to private LD school if you’ve got anything but pretty serious problems). What worked for some pretty tough cases was going back to square one and not trying a little of this and a little of that, but learning square one to masteery and then building the squares from that, with a great deal of review and practice, frequently and intensively. (No, you didn’t have to completely master something to move on, because we’d be going back and doing a lot of review, but there was a *whole* lot more review and practice than I had ever done in the 7 years’ I’d taught previous to that setting… where I saw an awful lot of students that had made an art form of “going back to where they were before.”)
The other aspect of our program was that students were not expected to learn things they had not been taught, which is common in most reading programs (including Reading Reflex). This isn’t somethgn every student needs (and is one reason why I wouldn’t inflict Orton-Gillingham on everybody :-)) , but was a real godsend to many of our severely dyslexic students (the severity of their dyslexia meant that they didn’t generalize that if silent e meant “a” sounded like its name, you could just apply that to the other vowels too, and that in words like breakfast and healthy, sometimes ea sounded like /e/ in bed, and that s could sound like /s/ or /z/…that sort of thing).
So, it could be that sticking to one thing and taking the time necessary is what’s been missing.
Help for Severely Dyslexic Student
Hi,
If you will email me, I will be glad to share a concrete, pencil and paper, multisensory, decoding strategy that works with any text immediately. I have been using the strategy for 20+ years, and it is helpful for all levels of dyslexia. This board will “time me out” before I will be able to fully explain what I am doing. [email protected] Anita
Re: Help with teaching a student
I know what you mean about being timed out :-)
I’ve learned to cut and paste (though even that has its limitations!) — if I’ve been typing too long (or got interrupted) and get that “invalid_session” thing, I go “back” and copy the text, then hit “refresh” and paste it back in and post. I try to copy and paste if there’s a chance I’ll get the message, since sometimes I can’t get back to it. (On the other hand, sounds like what you’retalking about would be a *lot* of typing!)
Borrow the book “Reading Reflex” by McGuiness from the library. This approach has an excellent track record with dyslexics.
Most dyslexics have an underlying problem that needs to be addressed. The most common diagnosed area of deficit is phonemic awareness. The approach in “Reading Reflex” is usually very effective for this. Occasionally, however, the problem is so severe a program such as Lindamood Bell LiPS is necessary.
The most common undiagnosed deficits are developmental vision delays and/or auditory processing disorders. These are usually beyond the purview of schools, but most parents don’t know how to get accurate diagnoses and treatment.
Nancy