Dealing with Dyslexia--at different reading levels

[Reya]

My DS has a speech processing disorder and dyslexia. As a result, though he's very smart, he doesn't advance in reading level like most people--simply by reading.

 

I've realized, as I've faced each hang up, that there is are DIFFERENT hurdles at different reading levels, and different kids will get hooked at different points for different reasons.

 

Grades K-3--"Gimme" years. This is that "basics." From here, we go from zero to a kid who can read many of the words he uses in everyday speech.

 

A kid who is reading word-shapes (whole language, see-and-say, whatever) and not processing individual letters (phonics) can progress normally, to all appearances, through the end of grade 2 but by the end of grade 3 will show significant delays. In K-2, there is a very limited vocabulary, which can easily be memorized, though sight-readers will show high error rates. A difficulty with starting on the left page is also indicative of the directional confusion that's common with some types of dyslexia.

 

Phonics is critical for making the jump from memorized word-shapes to being able to read all known vocabulary. Once the phonics rules are understood and the child is correctly processing letters from L to R, he will be reading at a 3rd grade level. Devices like a "window" in a card to see just a few words can give temporary help that can get kids to make a jump they otherwise may struggle with.

 

Third grade is the level at which most deaf and Downs kids read because neither the deaf nor kids of low IQ are able to make the jump from sight words to phonics that most kids will make, no matter how they are taught. However--and this is crucial--both groups can, with better instruction, go far beyond this. Kids with Downs who are taught using phonics can top out at a 6th grade reading level--which is the highest that phonics can take you without more sophisticated reading skills. (More on that soon.)

 

Plenty of other kids without a recognizable condition struggle with making the sound/mark connection, either because of speech processing problems, with visual processing problems, or (in my son's case) both. For these students, explicit instruction in phonics beyond that which gets most kids up and running is needed. Remedial Reading on donpotter.net is particularly good for that. Pollard's Synthetic Speller can be a great resource, too, along with Word Mastery.

 

The phonics foundation here is critical for future development.

 

 

Grade 4-6 - Phonics pays off. At these grade levels, a student's knowledge of phonics is critical for him to build a strong decoding ability, enabling him to read all the words that he already knows.

 

One problem at this level may be speed and accuracy. For some kids, practice in regular texts just isn't enough when it comes to dealing with difficulties in processing things correctly in the right order. Remedial Reading on donpotter.net helped with this, as well as Word Mastery. Reading lists of that sort have no content beyond decoding, so they can build speed and accuracy.

 

Another bugaboo will appear here for some kids, and that is their ability to understand nonliteral language and to learn new vocabulary.

 

Most children understand nonliteral language--whether it's figurative or a character obliquely lying--automatically, but others will struggle. The problem is made worse when the reading level is challenging for them. For that reason, I separate books into levels depending based upon both the level of sophistication of the vocabulary and the sophistication that's needed to understand the way the ideas are presented. Complicated interpersonal interactions or highly allusive language would be an example of high conceptual levels. Hard words are high vocab level. I make sure that if the conceptual level is high, then the vocab level is low, and we do lots of discussion. (Have I mentioned that Asperger's also runs in the family and that my son is hyperliteral, too???)

 

Not being able to figure out vocabulary from context is another big barrier to advancement in grade level. One method of addressing this is teaching vocabulary directly, using Word Mastery or another program. This will have quite a bit of success through grade 6, but not past--there are just too many words that are too rarely encountered to learn through such a directed way. This is why low-IQ kids who have mastered phonics usually top out at 6th grade level--that's as high as you can typically go without developing sophisticated comprehension skills.

 

So while vocab programs can help--particularly those that concentrate on roots--the solution for getting a kid to really raise his reading level is teaching him how to use sophisticated reading skills to decipher words from context and to then remember the meaning of the word. This is hard. Really hard. My DS all but stalled at a 6th grade reading level for this very reason.

 

One method is to get books that are conceptually VERY simple but with challenging reading levels--librarians call books with low reading levels and high age targets lo/hi; these might, instead, be thought of as hi/lo. Just So Stories, old collections of fairy tales, and The Jungle Book are examples that worked great for us. What you need is something with a VERY simple storyline, very simple character, motivations, and interactions, and a challenging reading level. The child will never be confused as to what's happening, which makes figuring out individual words much, much easier. Sherlock Holmes and Poe would be good for other kids--simple ideas, big words.

 

Talking with a child about using context clues also helps, but what's really needed are texts that are simple to practice on, like those I mentioned above.

 

Grade 7-12 - Increasing vocabulary by using context clues.

 

If a child stalls here, it's because of insufficient vocabulary (see above to solve) or insufficient maturity to understand sophisticated interactions. On the second, there's no solution that I know of but time! You'll know this is an issue because the child can perfectly understand some very difficult material but struggles with understanding what's going on in nuanced interactions at a much simpler reading level.

 

This is what I've learned (the hard way) with my dyslexic kid so far. Hope it's a help to someone else! This is NOT easy, and many of the steps are tedious and difficult to actually put into practice, so I don't mean any of these to sound like a silver bullet, but they've worked for me as I've run into difficulties with my brilliant but oh-so-dyslexic kiddo.

[AngieW in Texas]

Fabulous post!

[siloam]

bump

 

Heather

[Reya]

Thanks, both of you! I have a PM that I'll respond to publicly in a S/O post.