Thank you both so much! I'm not completely opposed to buying different levels, just don't want to spend a fortune! :-) I'll take a look at what you've both recommended. Again, THANK YOU!

I am looking for a curriculum for my dyslexic son who is going into 5th grade. Currently he is doing third grade math. I have held him back because he didn’t know his math facts, as did the school I put him in last year. I am (finally) realizing that I need to let it go! Conceptually he does really well and understands math just fine. In fact his teacher said he picked up on concepts faster than anyone she has ever seen. So now I am trying to make up for my mistake and see how much he can get caught up this year. I am not interested in rushing him and I want to make sure he is at mastery but I feel like I have failed him at math rather than that he really struggles with math. (I’m going to give him a chart for his multiplication tables) I don’t want to spend a lot of money buying three different levels of math books (3-5th) so I was wondering what you all would suggest I could use to let him go as far as he can in math and catch up to whatever level he can this year. Thank you in advance for your help!

You all are wonderful! Thank you so much for taking time to help me find it! It was the one 2girls&amom linked to. Thank you all again!!!

Two years ago I attended the National IDA conference and they had an exhibitor who had a pen they were promoting. It's not livescribe. It was one that had dots and you would record a sentence (or paragraph, or page), and then place a removable dot on the page. Then, when the child touched the dot with the pen, it would read him the sentence or paragraph, or page. I have been trying to find the info on it but must have misplaced it. Does anyone know what I'm talking about? Thanks!!

Lecka, It's frustrating when people have that mindset isn't it! I do think most teachers are well meaning and want to help, they just don't have the knowledge to do so. I think another barrier is that teachers think that if they have seen one child with dyslexia they understand the situation. They think if Johnny has dyslexia and he can do this, then Billy should be able to do it as well. The reality is that if you've seen one child with dyslexia, you've seen one child! Dyslexia can present itself in so many different ways and most teachers are only looking for that one specific thing that they know about - normally reversing letters or being unable to read. How about the many kids with dyslexia who read fine but struggle with spelling and written composition? What about the memory issues, the processing speed, directionality, tackling abstract concepts, etc? And even after you've educated someone on dyslexia, they sometimes still don't get it. I had spoken with my son's teacher at length last year about dyslexia and toward the end of the year we had a conference. She told me that she felt my son wasn't trying his hardest because when he read aloud to the class (something we had previously agreed would not happen) he messed up on the small words and she knew he knew them! :banghead: I just watched another video on you tube about dyslexia that was really good. It talked about the school system and how it can harm children with dyslexia by breaking their spirit. The video was made in the UK but its message was universal. One of my favorite parts is when the speaker says he started getting notes home from school saying that his son (with dyslexia) was lazy and disruptive. He said, "Imagine being told your child is drowning....but he's just too lazy to swim. " I thought that was a great analogy! He also said he was shocked to learn how little schools have learned about dyslexia since he was there over 40 years ago. That nothing had really changed. "And they have the cheek to call us slow learners" (Great line!) Here's the video if anyof you want to watch it:

I understand your frustration and anger. I first noticed symptoms in my son at a very young age and everyone wrote it off. The most irritating thing was that many of them alluded (very strongly!) to the fact that I was a single mom and that a child's environment has a lot to do with how soon they start to read. They would tell me that I needed to work with him more at home, read him books, expose him more to literature, etc. They had no idea how hard I worked with him or how much exposure he got (I'm an avid lover of books - I have an English degree! :)) I just chalk it up to ignorance. My goal now is to get more educators in my area to be aware of what dyslexia really is and how to spot the symptoms. Nealry every educator I talk to has no idea what it really means. They say, "Oh, they see things backwards right?" I'm glad more movies are coming out on this. The new movie The Big Picture: Rethnking Dyslexia premieres soon. You can see many of their videos at YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/TheBigPictureMovie

In case anyone was looking to get something from Linguisystems - you must be a member but all you have to do to register is give them your email address. http://www.linguisystems.com

Not sure if these have been posted but I found these resources and thought they were very helpful. http://dyslexia.yale.edu/math.html http://www.landmarkschool.org/students/ems/courses/math

Yes it's definitely been a huge learning experience for me! My son is actually 7 now - need to update my sig - but we started when he was in kindergarten. The tutor did Fundations with him. It's very close to the regualar Wilson curriculum but it has puppets and is laid out as a classroom curriculum rather than 1-1. I don't think they have any pre-K material but you're doing exactly what I did with my ds. I would have him air write letters while saying the signs (we would of course have a contest to see who could get their finger out of their holster and air write the letter first while saying the sound.) We would also write the letters in shaving creme, sand, on the table, etc - all the kinesthetic things they suggest with OG.

Yes, LIPS provided a visual for my son to understand sounds. Wilson provides a systematic, multi-sensory curriculum for his reading instruction. The fluency was actually facilitated by the tutor and taught to me. We started by having my son read a sentence to himself and then read it out loud, pointing to each word as he said it so he wasn’t just memorizing the sentence and saying it back. After doing that for a while, we switched to having him read a sentence without pre-reading but not letting him sound out any words aloud – he had to do it in his head. Wilson teaches scooping sentences so the next step was to get him to read with inflection and scoop (say the sentence) properly. We would scoop the sentence for him as he read so he knew the right places to pause and then eventually he started doing that on his own. We would also play a game with him where we would push a car as he read the sentence. If he paused, the car would stop and we would get a point. If he got through the sentence without pausing to sound out words then he got a point. My ds is very competitive so anything that can be made into a competition works great with him :001_smile:)

Cindy, Here is some info I pulled from some of my research from my classes. Not sure if this is what you're looking for but hope it helps! I hope in the future more research is done into right brain learning.... ******************************** The research provides strong evidence for the fact that early intervention can not only modify struggles children have with reading but actually prevent them (Foorman, Breir, & Fletcher, 2001). Children can be identified as at risk during their preschool and kindergarten years (Anthony et al., 2007; Felton, 1992; Simmons et al., 2008). Standard referenced tests such as the Woodcock Letter Identification subtest of the Woodcock Reading Mastery Tests–Revised can be used to identify at risk pre readers (Woodcock,1987). The most essential prerequisite to successful literary skills has been found to be phonemic awareness (Felton, 1992; French & Feng, 1992; Cabella et al., 2010). Specific techniques which have been found to show the best results include rapid letter naming, beginning sound discrimination, and auditory conceptualization (Felton, 1992; Anthony et al., 2007). Early intervention can prevent later reading problems for children (Simmons et al., 2008, O’Connor et al., 2005; Scanlon et al., 2005; Helland et al., 2011). In Simmons research study, the researchers found that of all the at risk children who had received early intervention in kindergarten, 92.7% of the students had placed out of risk by the end of third grade (Simmons et al., 2008). Risks Associated with Delayed Remediation Children who struggle with emergent reading skills who do not receive early intervention continue to show persistent problems in later years (Stanovich, 1986; O’Connor et al., 2005). Children who receive delayed intervention show a marked increase in anxiety around reading tasks (Niles, 1997). Stanovich synthesized much of the research on reading ability and found that there was a “rich get richer†and the “poor get poorer†aspect to emergent literacy (Stanovich, 1986). In other words, those who started out as poor readers became even poorer over time, and those who were “rich†in reading skills maintained those skills, and got even better in later years.

That's what happened with my son. He couldn't rhyme until after he started reading. We still work on phonological skills and phonemic awareness but he's made tremendous gains in those areas.

My son didn't have verbal apraxia but he had no ability to hear individual sounds in words, isolate sounds, no rhyming skills, just no phonemic awareness skills at all. I did Earobics with him and that seemed to help a lot. Then we did some LIPS (which worked wonders!) and then I moved him to Wilson. I know in my son's case, the next hurdle after sounds was in his fluency. It took him a long time to get to the point where he could blend CVC words accurately. We had to remain at that level for so long that he got in the habit of sounding out every letter for every word. So fluency was our next hurdle.

:hurray: So glad to hear your news! As parents we always second guess our choices. Sounds like you gave your son just what he needed. :001_smile:

Oh I don't think she wants kids to struggle either! I meant no disrespect to the author. And I like what she is saying about catering to their interests and about right brain learners. I do incorporate all of those elements into my son's schooling. I just think you can do all that and still introduce (gentle and slow) remediation efforts for reading and writing at an early age. :001_smile: