Dealing with Dyslexia part 2

Let's just say I had quite a few plans. If you scroll down on this particular blog you will see each year has a plan for curriculum for each child. And each year it has changed at least twice and sometimes mid-year. I did a lot of research and asked a lot of veteran home school moms. One name kept coming up, Dianne Craft. She had taught at the Home school convention in Arizona, the year before and some other moms were recommending her.  Her website, www.diannecraft.org  became my life line! Take the time to study and explore her methods. She deals with children who have extreme dyslexia, dysgraphia, and ADD and ADHD. I first purchased her book, Brain Integration Therapy Manual by Dianne Craft, MA, CNHP . This manual has become the basis for all I do for Graham. It is a bit overwhelming at first and can be discouraging when you are trying to start and want immediate results. But it is worth the effort! Each child that struggles with any type of reading or writing glitch is going to be unique and have their own learning style. I am going to share with you our daily routine that I do with my son. Hopefully this might help you when your muddling through all the information your going to have to read. Most of the basic techniques I use are from Dianne Craft.org, but there a many that I do with Graham that we have come up with over this last year and half, that work well for us and our day of schooling. Mind you, I am teaching a fourth grader, a second grader, a first grader, a pre-schooler and juggling an 18month old. So, my days are a bit hectic and scattered and I do use some outside help on occasion to keep us on track. We have been using the following schedule since Graham started the first grade in 2011.

To summarize our learning dilemma: After a year of teaching traditional methods of reading and writing in Kindergarten and beginning of first grade, Graham was not recognizing the differences between letters or numbers. He could not recognize all the letters of the alphabet or count past 10. He would read from the last letter to the first. He could just begin writing his first name. He occasionally wrote his name completely backwards. GRAHAM would look like MAHARG. He began writing most letters from the bottom to the top. He had difficulty recalling information he learned that very day, even a few minutes before.

I began this method:

1. Exercises: large motor, crossing the mid line and stretching the backs of the legs. Eye eights and ear eights.

2. Reading simple words with the short vowels, the same words every day for a week sometimes longer. I use the Right Brain Phonics Program by Dianne Craft

3. Dictation: he would write the words I read to him on paper. I used the same words we were reading that week.

4. Sight words/letters: I used the Dianne Craft alphabet cards to teach him his letters. There are pictures behind each letter, allowing his amazing long term memory to take over and compensate for his poor short term memory. By giving each letter a picture, it gave it meaning and he was able to store each letter and sound. This happened within a week! We then started sight word cards. 5 per week to introduce those tricky words that don't make sense.

This is a picture of our current sight word wall. We are adding to it each week.

 

5. Reading: We are using Dig In by the Merril Reading Program. I got them on Amazon. 

 

6. Writing eight exercises. This video explains how we do this each day.

http://www.facebook.com/brooke.morriszimmermann?ref=tn_tnmn

 

 

7. Spelling: I use www.spellingcity.com  I use whatever words he is struggling to read or write that week.

 

 

 Ok..so dinner is cooking and kids are needing me. So this will have to be continued. There are a few more steps to our daily schedule. Paragraph writing and vocab. I cover math options and extras to build visual processing and concentration. I will go into more detail in the next few days. In the meantime....check out www.diannecraft.org and the Davis Method.