Homeschooling

Archive for August, 2006

Question: Dyslexia and Homeschooling?

Hey I am 16 and in the process of tutoring a 5th grade girl who I believe has dyslexia. She is 13 years old and is currently had a 1st grade reading level and a kindergarten writing level. I was homeschooled, so I was hoping to find a curriculum targeted toward homeschool moms that I could use. If you know of anything please let me know. I am desperate to help this sweet girl! Thank you!!
After the first answer to my question, let me make it clear that I am looking for material that I can use, not her parents.

Answer: I'm not at all clear that the dyslexic girl you're referring to is even homeschooled, or if it's just you.

However, I have a dyslexic fourth-grader who has about a first grade writing level. And I've had this kid privately and professionally tested by pediatric neuropsychologists, all out-of-pocket. It's not neglect, it's why we LD people jump up and down and scream about Learning Disabilities being a REAL ISSUE. They are! Traditional school focuses mainly on "Here's a book, read it, write down what you read, and bring it to class. If you don't, you fail." What if reading takes you four times the amount of time and four times the effort of your classmates? A typical day of assignments becomes: "Read 12 chapters for Science and write a six-page paper on it. Make sure you do the 80 problems for Math, eight worksheets for Phonics, and read four chapters for History and do a quick four-page paper covering the navigation skills of the Vikings. And don't forget to pick four short books for your reading this week. There are prizes for those of you that finish first!" And how totally demoralizing if the rest of the class seems to breeze through this workload and you're the ONLY ONE WHO CAN'T.

Now having said all of that...has this girl been evaluated? Are you sure it's dyslexia she has, or dysgraphia or....? And all those have high co-morbidity with ADD and executive function disorder that makes it hard to deal with academics, too. If she gets evaluated, the evaluator can suggest accommodations for her that would be appropriate. Kids who are severely dyslexic can get such interesting things as more time for taking the SAT / ACT, and a scribe to put your thoughts down on paper for you, or a keyboard so that you can type instead of using pen and paper. BUT (and this is a big one) she has to have it documented by a professional as early as possible! Otherwise the schools think that she's trying to game the system and get an advantage she shouldn't have, and they'll refuse her. (My college advisor's kid was severely dyslexic, and she had some interesting tidbits like that to share!)

Introduce her to books on tape. Listening to different books by different authors allows her to not only be exposed to a variety of stories and literature, but also to hear how different writers put language together to create imagery, which will help with writing her own thoughts down. Lots of people have had luck with Orton-Gillingham based methods of reading instruction...and it helps if mom doesn't give official reading assignments. Have her play some kind of video game that requires reading to get ahead. PopTropica, for instance, is good for that, as is Club Penguin. Sparktop.org has a lot of dyslexic-friendly games on it, though I question its educational value. We use the program Nessy Fingers to teach touch-typing, which has knocked down a lot of barriers when it comes to writing. The company also has reading materials which might be worth looking into.

Ben Shifrin - Why Verticy Uses the Orton Gillingham Approach