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Helping a Child with Dyslexia.

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Helping a Child with Dyslexia.

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    Hi,

    I have a Year 2 child in my class who has mild dyslexia, from what I can make out. After spending ages researching the interenet, I can't really find any strategies I can use to help. Can anyone recommend anything I can do to help this child? Techniques, strategies or things I can implement into my planning to help ease the frustration would be really useful.

     Also, would you suggest that the child gets a professional assessment to diagnose the condition?

    Many thanks,

    Kev.

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     Dyslexia is such a huge umbrella term so you need to know what is causing the specific difficulties before putting in place effective strategies for a particular child. 

    kevinjames12
    Also, would you suggest that the child gets a professional assessment to diagnose the condition?
    would it tell you anything you don't know already?

     

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    Msz
    kevinjames12
    Also, would you suggest that the child gets a professional assessment to diagnose the condition?
    would it tell you anything you don't know already?
    No, but I'm supporting a parent of a child in my class to do this because it means professionals are then involved and so can suggest expert help and strategies. Something parents and I would all value.

    To the OP, you cannot magically do something without knowing much more about precisely what the problems are and the reasons for them. An expert assessment would help with this.



    [edited by: minnieminx at 10:08 (GMT 0) on 12-5-2012]
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    I know a few adults with dyslexia who use coloured paper/screens to ease their reading. most commonly yellow, but one friend uses light purple. We had some plastic pockets at work which were different colours so she used them to read things in, or we printed them out on coloured paper for her. On the pc she changed her screen to lavender instead of white. Could print out a few bits of writing on different coloured paper and see if the child finds any of them easier to read. Best wishes
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    Msz
    Dyslexia is such a huge umbrella term so you need to know what is causing the specific difficulties

    Indeed.

    And the remedy which helps all poor readers is the same, whether dyslexic or not:

    lots of patient one to one help.

     

    U can get a fairly good idea of a child's grasp of basic phonics by testing to see how well they can read the following words which use the graphemes which have a clearly dominant pronunciation:

    an   end   in   on   up big   cat   dog   fox   got   hat   jug  king    lamp    mud  nut  pin  red   sun  top  van   wind   box   yes  zip  quit   ship    chip  itch       the  thing arm    neck       tree   funny   dry    drive same   rainy   day stone   coat   toe   so   elbow cube   cue    new boil    toy saw   or   her  burn  birch       knee   write   bright    

    edge   page   station   fence

     

    Gaps in their grasp of those, u can address by using words from

    http://englishspellingproblems.co.uk/html/learning_to_read.html

     

    What makes children stumble after that are mainly the vowel spellings with variable sounds:

    <ea>  -  (treat – great, threat, theatre, create)<o> - (on – only, once, won, woman, women, who)           and all graphemes with <o> <ou>  (shout –should,  touch,  soul, soup)<o-e> (home  -  come,  move) <oo>  (food –good, flood)<oa>  (road – broad)

     

    Those simply need lots of reading practice, mostly with texts, but going over some of them

    in small batches of words from

    www.englishspellingproblems.co.uk/html/sight_words

     

    can also be very helpful.

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    Sorry about the messed up formating, but I am sure u can sort it.

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     As others have said dyslexia is such a global term and strategies will vary from child to child. The old terminology of Specific Learning Difficulty reflected the indiviuality of the problem.

    I have 2 dyslexic children of my own, who have needed completely different strategies to help them through their difficulties.But generally hands on activities and 'over-learning are good overall strategies, but boosting their confidence and showing them what they can do is essential to build up confidence to try different strategies to find out what works for them.

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    Hi one of the quickest and easiest measures is to change your whiteboard background from white to cream/ pale blue etc. We also photocopy work onto coloured sheets for our children who need it...some prefer blue, cream, green...we do a sample and ask the children. Also be aware that he may find copying things from a distance trickier than copying something right in front of him.
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    I don't know if you can bear any more reading on the internet but you might want to check out the following:

    http://senteaching.info/dyslexia-how-can-i-overcome-barriers-and-make-adjustments-for-pupils-with-dyslexia/

    The IDP: dyslexia materials may also be of interest to you. The above link is a summary of some of the key points from that but if you're up for more in-depth study, I'll find the link on TES resources to the full IDP and post it in a moment.
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    Hmm, I've found the link here on TES but it's not quite what I was expecting. It appears to be a booklet that would accompany the DVD. You used to be able to do the IDP as an online course, which is how I did it, but since the national strategies stuff all got archived I don't know if you can still access it. Does anyone else know?

    Anyway, here's the link to the booklet if it's any use:

    http://www.tes.co.uk/teaching-resource/IDP-Supporting-pupils-with-Dyslexia-Teachers-6105121/
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     http://www.dyslexiaadvice.co.uk/index.html

    is written by a parent describing her experiences searching for a strategy after all the professionals failed to help.

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     Reading and spelling resources at:

     www.helpingdyslexia.co.uk

     

     

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     'dyslexia' is such a vague term that it is hard to give advice without knowing what the specific difficulty is.

    I suspect, though, that the use of phonics strategies for supporting reading and spelling would be appropriate whatever the child's specific difficulty.

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