I have written before about my son who is (most likely) Dyslexic, I say most likely because he has all the symptoms on the list, he has developed the strategies that dyslexics usually develop to try to cope with or hide their disability, and I've had a reading specialist tell me that they are about 99% sure he has dyslexia, but he hasn't been formally tested yet, so there is still a very small chance that it is something else. The only people who can actually give a formal diagnosis are developmental psychologists, and as of yet we haven't seen one. We will be seeing one soon, I plan to call for an appointment this month, but in the mean time I have been doing a lot of my own research.
What I have found is that "experts" don't even agree exactly what dyslexia is, let alone how to treat it, however most of the experts agree that there is more than one type of dyslexia, for some children it is primarily a distortion of letters on the page, something in the visual processing area of their brain mixes things up, and they don't really "see" the print correctly, for others it primarily an auditory processing problem, the brain must use its auditory center along with its visual center in order to sound out words, and for some children this is more difficult than for others, so it takes them much longer to recall the sounds of the phonemes they see on the page, even if they do see them correctly. For other children it is a basic language difficulty, these children typically had trouble learning to speak, and seem to have difficulty with language in general, including written language. Then from those three basic types of dyslexia, children can suffer from widely varying degrees of difficulty, a few have such severe problems they never become functionally literate, but most can obtain literacy eventually. Not only are there widely varying degrees of the disability, and at least three separate processing problems that can cause it, but it seems that many children have a combination of two or more of these types of dyslexia. Some of the children also have a lot of problems with memorization in any subject, which effects their ability to learn sight words and phonemes.
All of that makes me understand why the approaches used to teach dyslexics often differ from child to child. Depending on the exact mix of processing problems, some dyslexic children will do best with intensive phonics, some need to get a large number of sight words under their belt, some need to improve their eye tracking ability, some need to work on general language skills by being read to and answering questions, engaging in conversation, writing and dictation, and other activities like that. Some children need to learn to use their hands on the page to help their eyes and brain determine directionality of the print.
While I am not an expert special education teacher, I do know my son. I know that his problems seem to touch all of those areas to a degree. He struggles some with distortions on the page and with eye tracking, but is usually able to overcome those problems just by keeping a finger on the page. He did have a language delay, and needed two years of speech and occupational therapy before he was speaking on an age appropriate level. The auditory processing seems a little slow, but not too severe, and he has really improved his phonemic awareness since we started intensive phonics instruction. Rote memorization takes him more time than it does most kids, which is why the phonics program we use is so good, it reviews everything daily, so he gets the practice he needs in order to memorize what sound each phoneme makes, and which sight word is which.
In both my research, and in speaking with other mothers with dyslexic children, I have found that there is a lot of disagreement. Some people insist that phonics is the ONLY approach that works, while others insist that dyslexic children can NOT learn phonics an must memorize sight words to the exclusion of phonics. Others insist that you must use a combination of approaches. My intuition and my experience with my son tells me that the last group of people are the ones who correct, at least in regards to my own son's reading difficulties. My son needs the phonics instruction in order to be able to figure out new words, but he also needs to see those words repeatedly, over and over again, until he begins to recognize them by sight. Even with words that are phonetically regular, he needs to have enough repetition so that he does not have to continue sounding them out every time he encounters them. The intensive phonics we have been using has greatly increased his accuracy and decoding skills, but has done little to improve his fluency. He still sounds out almost every single word letter by letter. So I know that we need to also start using repetitive books to help him start to recognize common words without sounding them out letter by letter.
I have some repetitive books, and I am also going to start working with him on learning Dr. Fry's 3000 instant words. This is a word list compiled of the most common English words used in print, the 220 dolch sight words are part of the list, and those words alone make up about 50% of written text that children encounter, these words, along with the rest of the 3000 instant words make up about 90% of written text that any English speaking person will encounter.
So my son is going to continue learning his phonics, he is also going to start practicing his reading with some repetitive books, he is going to do some reader's theater to practice reading with expression, and we are going to start adding the words from Dr. Fry's list to my son's weekly spelling list, and also start practice reading those words off a list or from flash cards each day.
For the 3000 instant words, we will be using THIS BOOK. As you can see, we don't try to get the 3000 words memorized in one year, instead we have weekly lists, which the child can learn to spell, and can also practice reading. Any that give my son difficulty after a week's time will be carried over into the next week until he masters them. However, I won't teach the phonetically regular ones as pure sight words, I will introduce them first while pointing out the phonetic elements and helping my son to sound them out, but thereafter will have him practice them until he recognizes them quickly, by sight.
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