Choosing the Right Reading Level Books for Students with Dyslexia [Premium]

It’s often told to parents that a “Five Finger Rule” can help you choose whether a book is at the right reading level for a student. The rule states that if a student misses five or more words, it may be too hard, no words and it might be too easy, and three words and it’s  ‘just right’. The problem for dyslexic students is that the “Five Finger Rule” may prevent them accessing print information at their intellectual level and if reading aloud is the guide for the rule, then it’s possible they may never be granted access to higher level books even if they are university professors! In fact, pioneering work by Rosalie Fink (see research paper below for Premium members), showed that accomplished […]

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[Premium] Q & A: Can People with Dyslexia Learn Speed Reading ?

  This question comes up frequently. Can older dyslexic students and adults learn ‘speed reading’ and if so, how? The short answer is YES, but it’s only usually a subset of people who can do this. Young children who are still struggling with decoding are not good candidates for speed reading, but some upper elementary and older folks may be able to do it – although when they do they will likely be skimming and not reading all the words. Recently a  member of our community volunteered to share her son’s experiences with speed reading. Rather than doing software or an app, she took the low-tech approach with a workbook and exercises that had her timing her son as he read books of their own […]

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[Premium] What to Do If a Reading Curriculum Doesn’t Work

It happens to everybody. You research a curriculum thoroughly or it gets through several levels of a review and then you put it into action and… it just doesn’t connect. What do you do? There are several common reasons why a curriculum doesn’t connect with a particular student – and so some trial and error and modification need to take place. The most common reasons that certain curricula fail for a particular student include:       1. Going Too Fast   Because there can be difficulty registering information accurately (sounds, letters, words), a student may need to slow the pace down considerably if the lessons aren’t sinking in. It may seem counterintuitive if you feel a student is slipping farther behind, but reducing work and simplifying […]

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Q & A: Can Someone Be Both Dyslexic and Autistic ? [Premium]

QUESTION: Is it Possible to Have Both Dyslexia and Autism? The short answer is yes, but it’s likely not very common and in general many of the features of dyslexia and autism are opposite. By strict criteria, low IQ and autism are excluded from the diagnosis of dyslexia. However, it is not difficult to speculate that a child with family dyslexia could also have autism either through inheritance or through some environmental factor. The main thing to consider is that it may be much more common that a child with dyslexia has social factors unrelated to autism or a child with autism has reading and writing problems unrelated to dyslexia. In fact, typically dyslexic and autistic children have different cognitive, memory, and perceptual patterns although they […]

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Why It’s Hard to Proofread and Read Fluently [Premium]

It can be maddening. You look and look you just don’t see it. Later you pass your work along, you see all the thing you hadn’t seen the first time round. What’s going on ?  You’ve experienced a ‘trick’ of perception. In our clinic, when trying to explain the phenomenon to children, we often use the analogy of optical illusions…when you see something that’s not there or you miss something – that later you can’t believe you could see at the start. These tricks of perception are what adds to the time needed for many dyslexic students on classroom and standardized exams. It accounts for why some teachers may be flabbergasted by a student’s need for extended time, when they seem so quick with problem solving […]

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Understanding Processing Speed and Dyslexia [Premium]

When families come together to discuss test scores, no group of scores surprises them as much as “Processing Speed.” Processing Speed scores on psychometric exams might mean Coding and Symbol Search scores on the WISC intelligence exams or Visual Matching and Paired Cancellation on the Woodcock Johnson. Processing Speed scores on these subtests are typically lower for dyslexic students, but on other tasks like Decision Making and in real life, these students may be quite quick and even quicker than their peers at various tasks such as insight-based problem solving or situational awareness (helpful for athletics, for instance). Understanding the true significance of Processing Speed Difference in Dyslexia, then is important not only for recognizing when accommodations may be appropriate school, but also for identifying […]

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Reading Fluency: What is Timed Guided Repeated Reading and Why Should Students Do It? [Premium]

In a recent report in the Journal of Learning Disabilities, Lee and Yoon reported that repeated reading had significant beneficial effects on the reading fluency of students with a reading disability. Listening to the passage first increased the benefit. Excerpt: “Reading the passage at least four times increased reading fluency more than two to three times…repetition is a critical variable, and automaticity was based on retrieval (memory) rather than adjustment of reading procedures (e.g. word decoding strategies… The listening passage preview with the proper prosody that was modeled by the teachers may have enhanced understanding of text and reduced the moderator of negative emotion (e.g. confusion, anxiety, frustration) presumed or students with RD (e.g. “with listening passage preview there is less anxiety.” N.B. Fluency practice […]

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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). […]

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Dyslexia Journal Club – Spelling Strategies – What Does Research Say? [Premium]

In a recent paper from Montreal, research tested dyslexic students ages 9-11 to see which spelling strategies were more effective. The most common strategy children use to spell is phonological, whether they are  or aren’t dyslexic. The other common strategies children use for spelling are visuol-orthographic, analogy, and backup. The phonological strategy used phoneme-grapheme correspondence. Analogy was based on the use of known words to spell that share orthographic similarities . Visuo-orthographic strategy involved visual and specific properties of words. A backup strategy was defined as using a personal mnemonic device for one specific word. In this research study, students were tested in tests that included spelling to dictation, and written narrative (summary) after being read a story. Spelling words were classified on the basis […]

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Best Early Dyslexia Screeners for Schools – Elementary [Premium]

With new legislation moving schools toward early identification of students with dyslexia, teachers, classrooms, and districts are having to decide on which screener would be best for identifying students “at-risk.” For dyslexic students, presence of a reading gap has been detected as early as the first grade and early intervention is well-recognized to be beneficial. Universal screening in schools is a great idea – parents, teachers, and students should just be aware of the limits that a brief screening tool can have. Most early screeners will not include cognitive or intelligence tests (e.g. working memory, reasoning, ‘giftedness’) nor will they assess non-reading academic tasks such as math, writing, or spelling. They are a start, however, and will definitely be valuable for helping kids get the […]

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