I’ve just been told that my niece, 8, has been diagnosed with mild dyslexia. What can I do to help her?
I’ve already told her parents about a special font for dyslexics.
My son was diagnosed at about the same age. Two words… Orton Gillingham. Find a program and help get them enrolled. Locally the Shriners’ offer it for free (but we were on the waiting list for over a year). Three days a week for three years and 30 minutes drive each way but it was well worth it. He went from being in the remedial reading group to being currently a 4.0 student as a Junior in High School.
I was diagnosed in 1st grade. I graduated with Honors. (stealth brag) Making the school aware of this is very important. (It was actually my school that set up the testing, so this may be a “moo” point.)
yes, I know it’s MOOT.
Rearrange the furniture every few days. j/k
Help her find learning subjects she enjoys for after school projects. Dyslexia doesn’t mean being dumb, but it sure can feel like that sometimes, esp for a kid. So, some positive reinforcement from friendly people can be of great aid.
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The two biggest things I’ve found to help, both coming from the mists of time before “dyslexia” was a word:
Figure out which specific letters cause trouble and learn to analyze them. For my brother, pdbq are a problem with most fonts but not handwritten - which makes sense once you realize that the printed version is variations on “a circle and a stick”. One of my classmates also had problems with mnñ (ok, the one with the hat is easiest; for the other two, count sticks), and with AN but not with an (the caps look alike, the small ones don’t).
That may mean taking longer than other people. Learning is not a race, and the reason people with dyslexia can get more time for written exams as an accomodation is that their school systems recognize that yes, the extra effort they need to put in requires more time.
The second thing is, if what you are reading doesn’t make sense (not because whomever wrote it was using something illegal, but because the words themselves don’t seem right), ask.
I read some very recent research that suggested that dyslexics don’t intuitively parse phonemes. For example, most people, even first graders, having learned to spell “upward” and “hill” can easily figure out how to spell “uphill.” Dyslexics can’t. If she has mild dyslexia, she might be able to pick up on this if someone explains it to her-- and if this is actually a problem she has. Dyslexia might not be one thing-- it may be a cluster of problems, and how serious it is depends on how many of the cluster a person has. That last bit is just my guess, having been in a resource room for three years. (I was assigned to heard-of-hearing kids, but I worked with everyone a little.)
My son is eight. I think that’s old enough to ask her if she wants some extra help, and some “aunt” time, and then tell her you want to see if she has this particular problem. See what compound words, or words+suffix she can’t already spell, then try to throw some novel words at her, and after she learns those, see if she can combine them with parts of other words she already knows
Example: if she already knows “bookcase,” teach her “brief,” and then see if she can spell “briefcase.” If she can’t, she has trouble parsing phonemes. Maybe she is old enough, though, and if it happens that she’s reasonably bright, you can try to explain to her about syllables, suffixes, and compound words. She has probably heard this before, and it went over her head, so be prepared with lots of examples.
If it does turn out she has this problem, you might try putting words on cards, and putting them together, and asking her which make sense (the ones that don’t will be funny), so you will have words like up+hill, up+chuck, wood+chuck, wood+en, etc. en+chuck, chuck+hill, etc. will probably be funny, or at least as funny as reading therapy can be. (Up+chuck will score you some “cool aunt” points.)
You’ll need to make sure she is thoroughly familiar with all the single words (and they should be one syllable) first, so you may need to use them like flash cards. If she is mild-moderate, this may be easy, and verbal praise will be all she needs. If it’s really hard, you might need to give her something like Hershey’s kisses to keep her motivated.
I’ll stop now before I get TL;DR.
Keep 'em coming!
Since many dyslexics have difficulty with phonemic decoding, it can be helpful to use flash cards when teaching them to learn words. This way they remember the visual gestalt of the word and its associated name. Many longer, visually distinguishable words are better remembered this way.
The use of flash cards would be a drill done each day for a few minutes as an adjunct to remedial reading programs or high-interest, “fun” reading activities.
Figuratively or literally?
Check out educational kinesiology in general and Brain Gym specifically.
I looked at Orton Gillingham a while back with a view to possibly becoming a tutor and it struck me as somewhat cultic. There are several Orton-Gillingham associations and most, if not all of them want to stovepipe the entire experience - you have to get training from them, certification from them, and buy your materials from them. If you get certified in one tradition, you can’t “switch” and get certified in another without going back and doing Day 1 of basic Orton-Gillingham training again.
Read to her. Get her family to do the same. Get audio books for her. Just because she doesn’t read well, doesn’t mean she shouldn’t have access to great stories. It may encourage her in school.
Hook her up with Learning Ally.
Here is some information about a special font (maybe the same one mentioned in the OP).
Wow. I had trouble reading that font.