dyslexia

You can go to imslec.com, and look under “members”. IMSLEC accredits quality training programs that teach multisensory structured language education. Hope this helps!

There is a book by Sally Shaywitz that talks about what Dyslexia is, how it affects reading and spelling and some of the programs that work for teaching people with Dyslexia to read and spell.
It seems that each program has it’s own requirements for becomming a certified tutor in their method. To find out what is required check their website. Most of the programs listed in her book have one.

Of my 3 reading and spelling age children, 2 of them have Dyslexia and 1 of them also has dysgraphia. I looked for a looonnnnggg time to find a tutor who specializes in teaching dyslexic people and finally found one. She uses the Barton Reading and Spelling program. It is based on the Orton Gillingham methods. From my reading I’ve discovered that any successful reading and spelling program should be based on the Orton Gillingham method. Apparently, there are several of them that exist (see Overcoming Dyslexia.)

I’ve seen the Barton Spelling and Reading program work miracles for my 2 children. They both started in June of 2007. One had just finished 7th grade and the other kindergarten. I’ve been told that I shouldn’t have started tutoring the youngest so early but all the signs of Dyslexia were there so I decided not to wait. I also found out that younger one has dysgraphia.

The results for both have been amazing. My oldest can now read nearly anything on his own and read it almost fluently. He still reads slow but he can read without help. His spelling has gone from extremely bad to average. He can even spell words he doesn’t think he knows how to spell. We just need to build his confidence. His writing has gone from almost non-existent to pretty good. If I hadn’t seen it myself I wouldn’t have believed how much he has improved. The other son has gone from not knowing the alphabet to being on grade level at the beginning of second grade. His first grade teacher was continually amazed by his progress. She couldn’t believe it. He started first grade in the lowest reading group (the 5th one) and at the end of the year he was in the 2nd one. He was only student who moved up more than one group during the school year.

I attribute their success to the tutor and the method she used. She said she tried the Wilson reading program but found that it wasn’t rigorous enough for severely dyslexic children. She has found much better success with the Barton Reading and Spelling program.

This may sound like snake oil but is isn’t. I spent many sleepless nights trying to find out how to help my oldest extremely bright son be all that he can be and discovered our tutor and the Barton Reading and Spelling method. It has literally changed my boys life. Before we didn’t think there would be college, now the sky is the limit!

Good luck in your quest to teach dyslexic students. It can be done! You can become a certified Barton Reading and Spelling tutor. See the website at bartonreading.com .

[Modified by: majaw on October 21, 2008 12:11 AM]

The methods mentioned seem interesting. However, it seems better to start out with younger children. I teach 7th grade reading/spelling and grammar/writing. Does anyone know of a successful way to help someone of this age with dyslexia? I see my students get so discouraged because they “can’t read good,” or they “can’t spell anything.” Will these methods help this age, too?

Ah, maybe I can help a bit. Older students have a lot of difficulty with that self-esteem issue because of their reading/writing issues. At this age it can be important to accommodate some of the issues by using technology - Text to Speech (TTS) for reading and Word Prediction for writing. This does not mean that they should not continue to work on reading and writing, though.

A couple of things helped my Dyslexic/Dysgraphic daughter in middle school.

We used Sequential Spelling to help her learn spelling. This program was written by a dyslexic english teacher. http://www.spelling.org/ My daughter found it very helpful and it gave her a lot more confidence.

She also started using a TTS program for her class books so that she could receive instruction at grade level, where her cognitive abilities are. (Nothing is more frustrating that not being able to read what the other kids are reading.) It not only helped her function at grade level but it also helped with visual tracking issues, site words and gave her a multi-sensory reading experience.

Her High School learning support uses Read180 by Scholastic. They’ve had a lot of success with it for kids who have difficulty with reading and writing. They also use it in their ELL program.

Hope this helps.

cgtwizzy,

If you’ll notice my oldest didn’t even begin tutoring until after he had finished 7th grade! Yes, these methods work for older students too.
I know the Barton Reading and Spelling method works. It has worked for my son.

Since you are a teacher of older students I’m going to mention the program Read 180. It is a reading intervention program by Scholastic. If I remember correctly, it is mentioned as a program that works in the book Overcoming Dyslexia.

The Middle School my son went to in 7th and 8th grade offered it to their struggling 8th grade readers for the first time at the beginning of last year. It was so successful they opened it up to more grades and more students this year.

The teachers got a $30,000.00 grant for the computers and the program. It has teacher manuals, is scripted and is broken into four modules that students rotate through on a regular basis. If I remember correctly, one of the modules is direct instruction and the other three are computer based.

Good Luck,

[quote=cgtwizzy]I teach 7th grade reading/spelling and grammar/writing. Does anyone know of a successful way to help someone of this age with dyslexia? I see my students get so discouraged because they “can’t read good,” or they “can’t spell anything.”
[/quote]

Hi,

This is a two-part answer. First, read [url=http://ontrackreading.com/the-dyslexia-puzzle/my-take-on-dyslexia/]My Take on Dyslexia[/url] on my website at [b]OnTrack Reading[/b] to get a feel for the vision issues that affect many kids who struggle to learn to read. By the time a lot of the students who are affected by visual efficiency deficits reach the upper grades, those vision issues have often resolved, though not necessarily in the most favorable manner. For instance, many of your students might be using only one eye for reading, as this is one likely adaptation that often occurs.

Now, if vision remains a problem, the best move you can make is to ensure that the parent knows of the possibility, because a lot of parents will go to the time, effort and expense to address the issue once they’ve become aware of it.

My point is that you’re probably looking at a batch of students who have been considered dyslexic, some of whom are now perfectly capable of learning to read because their vision issues have resolved on their own (one way or another.) Another cohort is still visually confused, but they’re older now and phonics instruction has a better chance of being learned, even if they do continue to read with visual discomfort. And, of course, you probably also have a cohort of students without vision issues, who’ve never had vision issues, where something else is getting in the way of their learning to read, including the possibility of poor instruction in the early years of school, i.e., no phonics at all.

All that said, I would encourage you to next take a look at the [url=http://ontrackreading.com/junior-high-phonics-course]Junior High Phonics Course[/url] on my website. It’s untested in the classroom, but I’ve used the basic elements of it successfully with a large number of students in my reading instruction practice at OnTrack Reading, and it really does provide them with an easy-to-understand method of breaking down long, unfamiliar multisyllable words. As they learn to do so, a decoding strategy quickly replaces the guessing strategy that they’ve generally been using until now.

Incidentally, should you, or anyone else teaching in your situation, decide to try this, I would be happy to correspond by email to sort out any issues that arise. The feedback would be very useful to me as well.

Rod Everson
[url=http://ontrackreading.com]OnTrack Reading[/url]

[quote=cgtwizzy]The methods mentioned seem interesting. However, it seems better to start out with younger children. I teach 7th grade reading/spelling and grammar/writing. Does anyone know of a successful way to help someone of this age with dyslexia? I see my students get so discouraged because they “can’t read good,” or they “can’t spell anything.” Will these methods help this age, too?[/quote]

Rod Everson mentions his website in his post below. It is really good, and I think you’ll find it really help. I believe the book “The Writing Road to Reading” is mentioned there. That’s a good book and is pretty user friendly. When I worked with middle school kids, I really liked using Wilson Reading. It is an OG-based program, and it’s pretty user friendly. Although my employer provided training in O-G, I think you could use Wilson w/out it. I believe the website is Wilsonlanguage.com. I found that my middle school kids really liked it, too.

I’m chiming in to add my two cents that most of the Orton-Gillingham based programs have the flexibility to be tailored to the age of the child being tutored. I know of children who did not recieve intervention until the middle grades and still made signficant gains in their reading, writing and spelling skills after a year of consistent, intensive remediation using an Orton-Gillngham based system.

After one year of using the Barton Reading and Spelling System with my daughter all of her Stanford Achievement Test Scores went up, but her spelling score in particular jumped 32 points.

I’ll add that she also has auditory processing disorder and was receiving auditory therapy with a Speech Pathologist at the same time I was tutoring her three times a week.

I still tutor her using the Barton Reading and Spelling System coupled with other resources and methods I learned about from taking a formal Orton-Gillingham Training class last summer.

Before reading your article I don’t have any idea about this . Thank’s for giving me knowledge about a new thing.

Lisa11

hello im Luis Antonio S. Tutaan
a 2nd year college student in the University of Santo Tomas here in the Philippines

in my perspective as a student, dyslexia is one of the leading kinds of learning disabilities, it affects the reading skills of a child or adult. but having this disability the are not considered liabilities to society but assets

Besides Wilson and Barton, other Orton-Gillingham based programs are Project Read (Language Circle) and Recipe for Reading. I have used Project Read materials; and for older kids I have used their “Linguistics Guide” with supplimental word lists from Megawords (multisyllable words). For these older students, beginning phonics concepts (short vowels) still can be taught by using words that have roots and affixes such as…abstract, district, expect. Both Project Read and Megawords, teach where to divide words. The one nice thing about Barton is that it has
dvd’s demonstrate how to teach each lesson. The most important thing with all of these programs is to FOLLOW THE SEQUENCE OF PRESENTATION do not skip around. Systematic, sequential instruction it what makes these programs successful.