Multisensory learning is often considered the gold standard for dyslexic students. Technology can help by converting text to speech, adding pictures, or adding some action to what otherwise might be a passive task. Â Â Â READING When it comes to reading, early readers need to reliably hear sounds and associate them with letters, letter groups, and words. The easiest to understand are professional readers of audiobooks who read with liveliness and drama. Older students and adults may be able to transition to electronic voices, especially if they can be sped up. Â PHONICS AND STRUCTURED LITERACY Blending Board, iOS FREE (below) creates free customizable deck of phonemes. Also includes multisyllabic words. PHONICS GENIUS (below) is 99 cents on iOS and has over 6000 words […]
Essential Tech: Favorites for Work/Life [Premium]
Every year technology gets better and better and it’s clear that finally it’s catching up with dyslexic minds.  Major technology companies have finally responded to calls to optimize their text-to-speech, speech-to-text, and spell and grammar checkers to the dyslexic community. If you tried and then gave up on technology in the past, now is the time to check again.   VIRTUAL ASSISTANTS Phones, tablets, laptops, and smart watches all have virtual assistants.  Siri will send and read texts, set alarms and timers, make calls / start facetime, set reminders and check calendar, do translations and conversion, solve math equations, navigate on apple maps, search and create notes, play voicemails, check the weather, find files on the Mac, check stocks, even fill out […]
Dyslexia-Friendly Technology: Customizing Your Web Reading And Listening [Premium]
With increased demands to read on phones and mobile devices, it’s more important than ever to optimize web reading for dyslexic students and adults.  There are 2 resources that you may want to check out. The first is an Unofficial Immersive Reader Chrome Extension that is free in the Google Extension store HERE. Here’s EdTech Teacher demonstrating some of it’s helpful features. The extension is unofficial because it doesn’t come directly from Microsoft. I was able to activate it quite quickly – I hope this extension is truly here to stay. The voice is quite good and there are also helpful functions like breaking down words into syllables to easier reading. It’s much better than Google’s tools. It can help with adjusting color, character […]
Free Structured Literacy Resources [Premium]
Even if these are unprecedented frustrating times for instruction due to the pandemic, there are occasional upsides – like the increased availability of free resources about structured literacy now available on the web. In many respects, it’s never been easier to sample different curricula, look at how others introduce lessons, and take advantage of free resources posted online. As an example, for those using the Wilson system, here is a teletherapy site where teachers have uploaded lessons.  Here is a board that can be used if you’d like to work with a student remotely or simply give your student digital manipulatives for lessons. https://sites.google.com/view/teletherapyforwilsonproviders/home      Work directly online with a board HERE. Get a copy of the board HERE.  […]
Challenges of Pandemic Learning For Dyslexic Students
As education slowly drifts to a new normal, and parents take stock of where they are and what their priorities are in education, it is best to be aware of what to be on the lookout for because dyslexic students learn so differently. AUDITORY PROCESSING HURDLES Because...
How to Avoid Delays in Identifying and Helping Students With Dyslexia Due to COVID-19
With news of the disruption in special education assessments across the country, I asked Brock to comment on the situation and share how the Neurolearning app could be helpful. The app is available for students ages 7 - 70. By Brock Eide MD: A recent article in...
How to Teach Dyslexic Students Geography [PREMIUM]
Many people may not know that a dyslexic scientist (Dr. Wally Broeker) led the first research team characterizing the Great Ocean Conveyor Belt – a massive cycling that takes place in the world’s oceans that circulates the sun’s heat around the globe and also has profound effects on marine animal migration and climate. Although the subject of Geography should be a natural fit for many dyslexic students with its high demands on MIND strengths (material, interconnected, narrative, and dynamic reasoning), it can also be taught in rote fashion (memorize map names and features) that can lead many students to struggle. In at least one study, dyslexic students being taught geography learned significantly better than their non-dyslexic counterparts if they were taught using multimedia (text, graphics, and sound). Multimedia was […]
WHAT YOU CAN LEARN FROM A CHILD’S WRITING [Premium]
There are many skills that are required to write by hand. Besides having an idea and being able to organize it into words, there’s remembering the motor, kinesthetic, and visual sequences of letters and words and being able to discern similar and dissimilar sounds (auditory processing, phonemic awareness). No wonder it’s hard to write! What do you see in the following writing? Mix of capitals and lower case letters,  irregular spacing, sight word error (plaid instead of played), phonemic error (chr instead of tr), elision / dropped sound or attention / working memory mistake (chis instead of chips).   This student would benefit from working with an alphabet strip of lower and upper case letters in view as well as a spelling or writing […]
Top Back to School Apps for Dyslexia [Premium]
EARLY READERS Endless Reader by Originator – Free to try; $5.99-11.99 bundles. iPhone and iPad Great for visual learners. Animations and characters help with sight word learning. Orton Gillingham Card Deck by Mayerson Academy  FREE. iPhone and iPad Multisensory card deck with consonants, single vowels, consonant digraphs, vowel teams, vowel + r, short vowel signals, VCe, and common suffixes. Auditory drill. Record and playback to hear pronunciations. Video see and hear sounds. Great phonics practice. Sight Words by Little Speller – FREE Iphone and Ipad All 220 sight words, no-frills program that allows you to create your own sight word lists – lower case or upper case letters. Can allow hints. Sight Words Reading and Spelling by Edoki $3.49 Android. Includes 320 sight words (Fryes + Dolce). […]
