possible dyslexic 4th grader

Hi there. Welcome, and you are not alone, unfortunately.

Yes, testing may give you some info and guidelines. And then again it may not.

Kids not knowing anything about phonics — story of my life. You are not alone, and you definitely have to do something about this.

She definitely needs the phonics, a good developmental program. You need something more intense than the average commercial book.

I parallel the phonics with reading developmental books that *gradually* develop high-frequency vocabulary. I never have the kids memorize and guess beyond their level; you don’t stop reading, but work on a level where she can be nearly independent and work up slowly.

Similarly in spelling, you work on a level where she understands what is going on, parallel with the phonics, and build up a bit at a time.

In math it sounds like you are on the right track. I’m against finger-counting because it is simply not accurate. Count real objects — I use a baggie full of pennies, and then introduce dimes for tens. Before she can do carrying and borrowing, she needs to learn tens and ones (base ten system, place value). This can take a few months teaching with the pennies and dimes and a basic workbook page a day, but it does work slowly but surely.

If you would like them, I send out copies of my old posts and other notes on teaching reading. Just send a request to [email protected]
I also have some old posts on math teaching that I can organize and send out — send me a separate request if you would like those too.

You might want to try one of the Sound Reading CDs from http://www.soundreading.com to help develop phonemic awareness. Most children like working with this CD, and I have seen it help even children with severe deficits.

Also, if you haven’t already, try the approach in “Reading Reflex” by McGuiness. This often works when traditional phonics approaches have not. The book is widely available in libraries and bookstores (under $20).

Nancy

I just started home schooling my son who is severely dyslexic; he too is in the 4th grade. So far it’s going great but it hasn’t been my job to teach him how to read and write because I hired an awesome reading and writing specialist who sees him twice a week. But until we started with her 2 years ago he could never remember what a letter looked like nor what sound it made. He still spells upside down and backwards. Her program works on the logical side of things so she put logical associations to letters. i.e. “a” was very sick and always said “ahhhh” that kind of stuff.

Phonics, all that other stuff never worked for him.

Math, I do a lot orally with him, because if he has to read and write his own numbers he will almost always get things mixed up i.e. 5 becomes 2, 21 could be 12 or 15 etc.

But he has an awesome brain, and I tell him that all the time, and when he does math in his head, he always gets the right answers. Multiplication tables I haven’t bothered having him memorize, because as far as I’m concerned without rote memory it’s very hard to memorize. But because he is so quick at mental math we are learning all sorts of tricks. All the 9’s he multiplies by 10 first and then minuses one digit. Like 3 x 9 he does 3 x 10 = 30 -3 is= 27

Or 3 x 4 he does 3 x 2 =6 x 2 = 12

Keep on talking to people, don’t get frustrated and believe in both yourself and your daughter you are her best advocate.

Good luck!

For more ideas like that with Math see http://www.resourceroom.net/math/index.asp

Also http://www.resourceroom.net/Products/toolstimes.asp has some sample chapters that might have a few things you haven’t already dug up :-)

Hi,
We had great success teaching our son reading with a product called Fonty. After a few weeks, he made tremendous progress in decoding words. It’s not too expensive compared to other products.
[url]www.fontyonline.com[/url]
SLSTG

I looked at the Fonty program and the website certainly *says* all the right things. I am a little concerned over their “Learn to read in fifteen hours” statement, but PG does the same and is otherwise good. Unfortunately the demo isn’t working so it’s not possible to see if they live up to their promise. I’d say this program could be worth a try.

Only thing though, Victoria, I don’t think Reading Reflex claims fluent and automatic reading in 15 hours, only that the child will learn the code. There’s a difference in claims I think.

—des