HOD and Dyslexia

[mrskturner]

My ten and seven year old have dyslexia. They were both tested in August and one is severe and the other is mild. This is a HUGE challenge to me as a teacher. The past two weeks with my daughter has been very discouraging. She is ten years old and is still struggling with reading, spelling, and her penmanship. She consistently mixes up her b's and d's, p's and q's. I have to read pretty much everything to her for her to comprehend it and even then it doesn't always click with her.

Does anyone have any advice on Dyslexia???

Something we have been doing this year that has helped tremendously is using dry erase boards. Instead of my kids looking at a sheet of math problems and having a melt down, I give them one problem at a time from the workbook and they do it on their dry erase board. If it is wrong they erase it and work it again right away, if it is correct I give them the next problem. I can not stress how much this has helped out! I had no idea that my son's huge resistance to math was all because the whole page of problems overwhelmed him. Now he loves math.

[amarie]

My son does not have dyslexia that I know of, but he has a similar problem with math pages. If the math problems are unorganized, he literally cannot do it, or it takes a lot of help from mom over several days to complete it. However, when I wrote the questions down the side of a white piece of paper, he was able to complete all of the work in 5 minutes or less. I was so relieved to find that he was understanding the math and was capable of doing it! I will be interested in finding out if this is causing other "challenges" to our days.

I hope some of the other ladies will have really good advice for you.
Amy

[crlacey]

If your children are dyslexic, I've read (and found true) that the more senses you can involve the better they will be able to process and remember information.

I found Susan Barton's website very helpful. She explains about dyslexia, how dyslexics see the world, and then strategies to help them learn. I took 3 pages worth of notes on my first listen through her seminar that is free on the website.
You can find a thread discussing it a little here:
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=7157&p=52257&hilit=dyslexia#p52257

We have found that HOD is a great program to use for our dyslexic DD since Carrie does use lots of senses throughout the learning process. Which is why HOD also works for many different types of learners.

[crlacey]

I forgot to mention that we leave an Alphabet and number chart up where DD can reference it anytime she need to remember which direction a letter or number should be formed. It has helped giver her confidence in her writing since she can now just concentrate on copying the letter correctly instead of needing to guess which direction the letter should be formed.

[Tracee]

Look in your inbox.


Tracy

[my3sons]

There are many dc using HOD that have dyslexia, and it seems to be a good fit for them. I do think it is important to place them according to where they fit in the placement chart, but that's very important for all dc anyway. Using the alphabet chart and number chart is something we do too, and it's a good idea. For my ds that mixed up his b, d, p, q, we had him trace the letter on the chart each time he missed it. I could eventually just "write" it with my finger next with him watching next to wherever he missed it, and he could fix it from that. The bodily/kinesthetic movement seems to really help. If the markerboard is working well for math, you could use it for copywork, spelling, written narrations, etc.. We do, and love it! We have several white marker boards. Writing one sentence on a marker board, and then the next sentence on the next markerboard worked well to start. Using black markers and writing quite big in neat manuscript helped. Also, sticky notes help a lot! I put sticky notes above and below the dictionary word they are looking up, for instance. This helps set apart the definition, so it's not lost in a sea of words on the entire page. Highlighting helps too. So, maybe if they are doing poetry copywork, you highlight all of the p's, q's, b's, d's, just to draw their attention to those letters that need their extra attention. I use a high-lighter to mark the indentations for poems and the double lines to skip, and that really helps my dc. Alternating the subjects that have reading/writing with subjects that don't also works well. So maybe they do a reading something, but then sing their music. Next maybe they do a writing something, but then do their poetry lesson. What HOD guide(s) are you doing? We could try to help with the things that are more challenging. HTH!

In Christ,
Julie

[mrskturner]

JULIE!!! Thank you! That is exactly what I was looking for. We LOVE LOVE LOVE using HOD. I just wanted some tips on how to tweak it for dyslexia. We do use the dry erase boards for math, spelling, and our english sentences. And even though DD does not spell well if you give her a piece of paper and ask her to write a story, she is getting every spelling word right from our HOD spelling list. I can not stress how well a dry erase board works!!! I don't know if it is the fact that they are seeing the words in such big bold letters with the marer or if it's because if they mispell it they can quickly erase it and rewrite it correctly, so they mispelled word is wiped off the board and wiped out of their minds. It could just be the enjoy using the dry erase boards so much! LOL I love your idea of highlightening the indentions for poetry. That is something both of my kids have struggled with. And highlighting the backward letters and numbers. My daughter is reading The Courage of Sarah Noble right now and just a month ago I would have never guessed that she would be ready for that book. We realized she retains what she reads better if she reads to herself. So that is what we have been doing lately and she uses a highlighter to mark anyword that she struggles with while reading on her own. Then I put that word on a flash card and we study the words she is struggling with. She is all into her book right now and so excited that she is understanding what she is reading.

We are using Bigger this year for my 7 year old son and my 10 year old daughter. It seems to be a perfect fit for both of them. And I love when strangers or grandparents quiz my kids and they know so much about what we have learned. I have to admit that I love learning along with them just as much. I am excited to do school every day. That is a far cry from how school was going last year with a different curriculum. And even my two year old gets in on the learning. We recently learned about Benjamin West and his love for painting. We all did berry juice painting and I have precious pictures of my two year old licking the strawberry juice off of his picture. Those very activites are what makes it possible for my kids to retain what we have read about Benjamin West.

Thank you all for your ideas! I do have a friend who uses Susan Barton and has offered for me to give it a try for DD's dyslexia.