What worked for dyslexia?

[Anonymous]

There’s a group on FB called “Dyslexia Support - for parents of dyslexic children”. Highly recommend, there’s good information on there.

Rising third is still young. In your shoes I’d probably do public and OG tutoring and see how it goes. You can switch to private later if you need to.

[Anonymous]

My DC has a very severe form of dyslexia and dysgraphia. He also has a very strong math ability after a very slow acquisition of math facts. In fact, he majored in math in college. He is currently 25.

It is a marathon not a sprint. Expecting a summer of reading intervention to solve the problem will not work.

I recommend reading Sally Shaywitz’s “Overcoming Dyslexia”, she is one of the leading researchers in dyslexia.

Some people divide dyslexia into two types: orthographic and phoneme awareness. Others pull out a third type from orthographic that has to do with RAN issues. RAN stands for rapid automatized naming- it has to do with the accuracy and speed that you can pull a word from your memory. My DC was in the single digit percentiles for all three. In fact, he couldn’t even get a percentile score on the RAN because it was so low. This was in the middle of second grade. We were able to get him to low average for orthographic and phoneme awareness but his RAN was at the 1st percentile. This was with tutoring 2-3 days a week from mid second grade to mid 7 th grade, including summers. He also received a daily 20 minute pull out at school through 6th grade and took one reading class in 7 and one in 8th. We also worked with him at home daily on the non tutoring days - our tutor provided us the materials we used at home. Small steps add up over time.

His strengths were in comprehension, vocabulary and background knowledge. Based on the mix of his challenges and strengths, we used the Wilson Reading Program. We were able to find a very experienced tutor who was certified through level II in Wilson, as well as in other programs. Wilson is based on the Orton-Gillingham method of multisensory reading techniques. I know other families who ordered the Barton Method and did it at home because that is what worked for them. Both are OG. Sue Barton’s program is somewhat easier for parents to do than Wilson.

In addition to the daily reading, he listened to us reading or audio books every day at his cognitive level. This is important so they can continue to progress in language, vocabulary, background knowledge and increasingly complex plot and character developments.

His spelling is still horrible. His speed and rate is still very slow. With his dysgraphia, having him work on keyboarding daily in the summer worked well enough. He picked the program he liked best. I would often take the tests for him to get to the next level because he could never pass on speed. That way he was able to progress to the entire keyboard, even if it was slow. He dictated homework to us for a long time, until his keyboarding was good enough. It progressed from him typing the short answers first and then to him being able to type in a whole paper. He was fully on the technology by sophomore year of high school. The other aspect of dysgraphia was the organization of thoughts - and graphic organizers worked best for that. They are free and easily googled and come in many different levels of complexity. He is still a slow typist. But he says he types as fast as his brain works. So that works for him.

He had a ton of accommodations. We were encouraged to work on remediation though elementary school, do less in MS while increasing his learning of technology in MS, so that he would be fully on technology and accommodations by HS and then in college. That worked.

His accommodations:
Reader and scribe for all assessments - this went from a human to computer with text to speech in college. He had a reader/scribe for all College Board tests including PSAT, SAT, Achievement Tests, and AP tests as well and the SOLs (Virginia required tests).

Use of a Simple calculator- he is very slow on math facts and this helped. He still received in icollege, and his major was math.

Use of clip art for anything that needed drawing
Kurzweil - this is an old technology and I am sure there are newer ones out there
Extra time on tests, but not on long term projects
Separate place for assessments - in MS and HS it meant going to the LD department for all quizzes and tests (except for simple quizzes in math)
He was allowed a laptop in class at a time when they were not present in the classroom
Priority seating
Teacher and then in college, Professor notes. He can’t type or write fast enough to take notes and be able to listen to the entire lecture.
Spelling did not count, unless it was a spelling test.


Good luck. Again, it is a long slow slog. Think marathon not sprint. Small improvements really add up.

[Anonymous]

In 4th grade, during covid, DS did 4 hours a day of online tutoring with Lindamood Bell. The school did nothing (prior to or after covid) so we realized we had a window to help. He went to half a day of online school and then did his tutoring. It cost a lot but so worth it in the end.

[Anonymous]

OP here. This is the most useful information I've gotten since the diagnosis! Thank you all for your insights and help. It makes me feel less alone. We just started with a new tutor that I feel really good about (the other was super disorganized), so I'm going to see how that goes and increase the frequency. We'll keep all options open for fall - luckily, the dyslexia school has openings, so we can decide last-minute if that's the route (or honestly, even after the school year starts if public is a disaster, although I'd rather save him from the multiple adjustments). Good point on it being a marathon, not a sprint. Deep breaths! Thank you all. Grateful for your experience and help.

[Anonymous]

OP, I’m chiming in as I also have a rising third grader with dyslexia, diagnosed this past June. No dysgraphia.

He’s made significant gains in the past month using the Phono-Graphix approach; there are others (EBLI, Reading Simplifed) based on it that also have very strong evidence. He went three times/week for three weeks, after lower intensity earlier this year. We also did P-G based exercises at home on the days he didn’t go for tutoring.

Despite the widespread praise for Orton-Gillingham, the method actually has middling empirical support. I’m a psychologist who has also conducted educational research; I read through the literature carefully when looking into interventions for my DS.

P-G isn’t a panacea, but it’s outstanding for building phonemic awareness and foundational skills, and usually fairly quickly. Kids benefit from structured interventions, the younger the better, and with sufficient intensity to make a difference. Twice a week isn’t going to cut it. Good luck.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP, I’m chiming in as I also have a rising third grader with dyslexia, diagnosed this past June. No dysgraphia.

He’s made significant gains in the past month using the Phono-Graphix approach; there are others (EBLI, Reading Simplifed) based on it that also have very strong evidence. He went three times/week for three weeks, after lower intensity earlier this year. We also did P-G based exercises at home on the days he didn’t go for tutoring.

Despite the widespread praise for Orton-Gillingham, the method actually has middling empirical support. I’m a psychologist who has also conducted educational research; I read through the literature carefully when looking into interventions for my DS.

P-G isn’t a panacea, but it’s outstanding for building phonemic awareness and foundational skills, and usually fairly quickly. Kids benefit from structured interventions, the younger the better, and with sufficient intensity to make a difference. Twice a week isn’t going to cut it. Good luck.

what about other forms of dyslexia? My DC has more than just phonemic issues.

[Anonymous]

Here is an interesting thread from a few years ago.

https://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/827173.page

[Anonymous]

We're entering 9th grade at a SN school. We were at a combo of private and montessori up until the end of 4th. DC was drifting further and further behind as the years went on. DC just couldn't keep up.

We took a BIG financial leap and placed DC in a SN school at the beginning of 5th grade. We thought we'd hold off on starting a SN school for a year to see how it would go in 4th grade and it was pretty sucky. I hate to say this, but the further you put potential SN school placement the harder it seems to get into SN school. This is just my opinion. I'm sure others on this list may have different feelings. Many SN schools that end at 5th or 8th grade don't seem to want to take kids who are "aging out of their system" b/c it'll be harder for them to go thru the entire remediation process. Many SN schools really want kids to go thru the entire system to get a good handle on the OG program. Our DC school ended in 8th and we rarely saw kids being admitted in the 7th and def not for 8th grade.

We really needed 5x a week constant support to get DC really reading. I think the constant support/tutoring/being with her 'people' really made all the difference in the trajectory of DC reading and confidence.

It couldn't hurt to apply. See what happens.

[Anonymous]

I strongly urge you to consider the dyslexia private school. They will know how to give your son the right instruction on a consistent basis, within his school day. You'd be amazed how much of a difference that can make. My DD spent 2 years at a dyslexia private school and it made a huge difference for her.

Public schools are not equipped to give appropriate dyslexia instruction, even with the best IEP. It will be an exercise in frustration for everyone involved.

[Anonymous]

Dyslexia takes a long time to get to "normalcy" in that it depends how far back your kid is and how much it takes to catch up. That being said, once you start the path to formal tutoring on a program that is proven effective, you will see changes. It does get better. DS was diagnosed summer before 5th grade and now approaching 9th, he is grade level reading. He was not so much behind however and never struggled until about end of 4th grade. It will never be "normal" for him but with the assistance of audio and continued efforts of tutoring to help in school to keep up, I have every confidence he'll be alright. He has ADHD as well which also adds to issues but I never realized HOW MANY successful people had either or combo of ADHD + dyslexia. Let me tell you, there are so many ways to success even with dyslexia. 2 of my best friends told me after I shared my son's diagnosis that they have and 1 was a Cathlab nurse and the other a VP of HR. Neither had help growing up. So there you go

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, I’m chiming in as I also have a rising third grader with dyslexia, diagnosed this past June. No dysgraphia.

He’s made significant gains in the past month using the Phono-Graphix approach; there are others (EBLI, Reading Simplifed) based on it that also have very strong evidence. He went three times/week for three weeks, after lower intensity earlier this year. We also did P-G based exercises at home on the days he didn’t go for tutoring.

Despite the widespread praise for Orton-Gillingham, the method actually has middling empirical support. I’m a psychologist who has also conducted educational research; I read through the literature carefully when looking into interventions for my DS.

P-G isn’t a panacea, but it’s outstanding for building phonemic awareness and foundational skills, and usually fairly quickly. Kids benefit from structured interventions, the younger the better, and with sufficient intensity to make a difference. Twice a week isn’t going to cut it. Good luck.

what about other forms of dyslexia? My DC has more than just phonemic issues.

It would depend on the other specific deficits. The benefits of using P-G, from what I can tell, is that it builds phonics and phonemic awareness fairly quickly for many struggling readers, so they can then move more quickly into other needs, such as fluency, spelling, etc. People aren't held back by needing to pair reading with spelling, for example. There's one study in which intensive instruction in P-G was paired with the Read Naturally program (for fluency) and which showed significant neurologic changes among the children receiving the intervention. Again - not a panacea, but IMO an option worth mentioning.

[Anonymous]

Speech therapy and OT

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Speech therapy and OT

OT for addressing what? Fine motor?

[Anonymous]

NP - do in-school pull-outs / IEP services ever work? Is dyslexia school (almost) always the answer if one doesn't have the time or ability to do near-daily tutoring?

[Anonymous]

Please recommend dyslexia schools.we are in NOVA