I got a new perspective on dyslexia/dysgraphia yesterday...

[merry gardens]

Yesterday I was tutoring my 13 y.o. son with Barton, an Orton-Gillingham based program that largely uses tiles to teach reading and spelling.  We're on level 10--and there's a LOT of tiles!!! Letter tiles, unit tiles, digraph tiles, vowel team tiles, prefix tiles, suffix tiles, etc. Now, we've added Greek and Latin cards. 

 

After years of doing this, it finally hit me: what I'm going through in trying to locate and keep track of all the tiles, etc.--that's similar to what my son's brain goes through in order to write.  These are the thoughts that go through my mind as I search through tiles when tutoring: "Where'd I put that? I know it's here somewhere--we just used it. Ah, here it is! No, that's the wrong one. It's this one. Now that's it. I've got it. Okay, now where's the next tile...." 

 

I go through that process several times just to spell one word.  

 

 

  

[OneStepAtATime]

Great post merry g.  :)

[Hedgehog]

Yup.  That is how my 13yo describes spelling more difficult words.  She has improved massively over the last 6 months though - I read somewhere that dyslexics often have a learning spurt around this age and it's sure true for L.

[Pen]

Do you have to use tiles?

[OneStepAtATime]

Do you have to use tiles?

There is an ap for the tiles that can be used on the IPad, basically replacing all those tiles with virutal tiles.  They are nice and tidy, easy to use, etc., which makes organization and cleanup EXTREMELY easy.  Don't know if OP has ever used the ap but we did.  We still use it when traveling but honestly the kids do a lot better with the tactile/kinesthetic feedback of moving the actual tiles.  The virtual tiles just aren't the same for them.

[merry gardens]

I don't have the Barton app. It came out after we had already been using Barton. I decided to stick with using the tiles we already had been using.

 

I like using the tiles. It was only recently that it hit me that seeing my son write out longer words with a pen and paper looks a bit like what I go through mentally when trying to sort through all the various tiles. He's making great progress, but there's lots that he has to sort through mentally when he writes and spells that most people don't.   

[Julie of KY]

The Barton app has been a tremendous help at my home. My daughter had slowed way down having to use the tiles and we weren't progressing very fast. When we moved over to using the app, she was much less resistant to doing Barton and we progressed much faster. My 8 year old is enjoying the app now, but he doesn't have as many tiles to keep up with.