Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Twice Exceptional Sight Words and Dyslexia?

DD came home today with 3 pages of sight words she is supposed to work on every night. There is no way that she can actually read column after column of words and really hates flashcards. Has anyone come up with a good technique for this? Last year she was sent home 5 per week which was much more manageable.

She also has to do spelling tests this year. We started by practicing the words orally and then had her type them in a large brightly colored font. Today we did the spelling words in play dough. Any similar type of activities you can suggest for sight words?

On the sight words, I would still break it up into smaller lists since you know that was met with success. You're still working on the list each night, but just focusing on a small part at a time.

Spelling:
Finger spell the words with ASL
Write them out in sand, shaving cream, sidewalk chalk. On the sidewalk chalk, make them HUGE so that it uses her full body.
Color code the words according to the spelling rules being taught. Short i is one color, long i another.
Play tic-tac-toe with the words
Spell them orally. Spell them orally while jumping rope or playing hopscotch
Break it up into tiny practice sessions, doing as many as 3-4 3 minute sessions per day.

Celebrate victories in learning words, even when there are still errors.

Not sure how much help it is for the basic challenge, but ran across a reference in the current Fast Company to a typeface designed for dyslexics. It is designed such that letters don't mirror and rotate due to alternate line weights and other nuances.

Dyslexie font:
http://www.studiostudio.nl/project-dyslexie/en/

Huh. I'd be interested to know if it's legit. I'm turned off immediately by their front page grammar. Every time you use an apostrophe to pluralize, a kitten dies.

Hilarious! LOVE this!

I used to work at a clinic that served a lot of students with dyslexia. They used a method that develops symbol imagery so students can learn to visualize letters and words properly. It's a very intense one-on-one program, and it gets results.

I worked there in the summers- one summer I had a teen who had just started and couldn't reliably tell me the sounds all the letters made. He couldn't properly sound out (or recognize from sight) the word "cat". By the end of the summer he'd made quite a bit of progress but was still so low they kept him there for the school year instead of sending him on to high school. (I believe this was all paid by his school district.) By the start of the next summer he was reading Lord of the Flies. Having quite a bit of trouble comprehending it, but still, huge gains in just a year!

I just thought you might want to look into the program and try some of the method with her at home since it can really get to the heart of the struggles a lot of kids have with reading.


I'd say the key activity the program uses is air-writing. Once the students at the clinic got familiar with the basic method of visualizing letters, they could do some sight words. Here's how that works:

1. Show an index card with the word written on it, tell the student what the word says, give them 5-10 seconds to look at it & memorize it visually.

2. Take the card away and have them "air-write"- write the word in the air with their finger, making the letters each about 3-4 inches high and saying each letter as they write it. (If they have a lot of trouble with this at first, have them first trace the letters on the card with their finger, then when the card is taken away, "write" the word with a finger on the table rather than in the air.)

3. The student should be holding the word in their visual memory now, so you can ask them a variety of questions to develop this skill, such as:
"What do you picture for the second letter?"
"Point to the last letter. Now tell me the letters you see backward starting from the last letter."

In addition to sight words, similar exercises are used with syllable cards. (Just cards with one or more syllables on them- anything from one letter to one syllable of a real word to mutli-syllable nonsense words and real mutli-syllable words.) Working with a higher-level student using these, you can get really creative and have them make changes one letter or one syllable at a time by "erasing" some of what they wrote in the air, adding and changing letters and syllables, all while holding it in their visual memory.

In addition to all the great advice above, use fine sand paper to finger spell the words, and if the teacher will humor you, have the sand paper available to spell out finger style first on the day of the test.

You can also ask for accommodations if you're on an IEP (sorry - don't remember) - spell verbally instead of written, given less words each week, no word searches as homework - to name a few.

But for us, it didn't matter how much we practiced or how he tried to learn the words, he could have them all correct the night before the test and still get a 30% when he took the test. I finally stopped making him spend hours practicing for a test he would likely fail and used that homework time to do something more productive. In fourth grade, he studied every night and got F's. In 5th grade, we never reviewed the words at all, and he got F's. he felt better about those grades, because he didn't feel like a failure. And little by little as he gets older, a few words are starting to click.

So my advice is to try them all, and if something works, embrace it. If it all fails to produce amazing results, just make sure your kiddo knows life will go on without being a master speller.

When my dyslexic dd was younger I would quiz her on her spelling words and let her spell them with the fridge magnets.

This technique really turned around my DDs spelling, but also seemed to turn around her performance on working memory texts (which are mostly auditory, and dyslexia is usually an auditory problem, not a visual problem). I theorize that this technique taught her to map sounds to her visual memory and she has learned to do it all the time now. My DD's first WMI scores were 13th percentile, last few have been 80-90th percentile and we have seen that degree of shift in her day to day functioning - not only from this technique of course!! There were lots of factors at work in DDs overall improvement but this technique really did seem to bounce her ability to hold auditory information in WM.

My DDs spelling is still poor, but it would be comign along a lot faster if I were working harder at it. We are focused elsewhere at the moment.

What technique?

We tried lots of the things suggested above. We also tried having her form the letters with clay. The most successful trick for us was having her spell the word backward. For some reason, this helped her get a visual image in her head that she could use to then spell it correctly going forward. All of these tricks only got the words in her head for spelling tests. None of it transfered to her writing.

I have to wonder. We are supposed to be having an Assistive Technology eval and I assume she will begin keyboarding soon. With word predicting software and spell checkers how useful is it really to have her spend a lot of time on spelling?

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I wouldn't have her spend too much extra time on it. We went to great lengths in first and second grade to get the words in her head. It resulted in a lot effort and stress without much payoff. By third grade, we only had her do the spelling packet sent home by the teacher. It included varied exercises -- making other words out of the letters, writing the words multiple times in the shape of a star, etc. She didn't do any better or worse than when we spent hours on it. Last year, they used a curriculum that was based on learning letter patterns. That worked somewhat better for her.

Keyboarding takes a lot of pressure off of our DD. We still are working on her typing skills. She finds the word predicting software annoying but spell check has been a godsend. When she sees the red squiggle, she usually can pick the correct word out on the list of suggestions. If she hasn't gotten close enough for spell check to help, she will ask for help. Right now, she is experimenting with using dictation to get a first draft on the computer and then editing. Unfortunately, the dictation software has a hard time recognizing her voice so she may go back to typing more.

We have found a long-delayed response. DD learns the words for the test, aces the test, then promptly mis-spells them the following week. However, I'm seeing them creep into her writing correctly over a number of months later.

*You still need to get close enough for the prediction/spell check software to work.
*Lack of automaticity of writing makes it very cumbersome to compose a thought.
*Thank you cards and condolence cards are best done by hand. That won't likely change over the coming few decades.
*Poor spelling makes a bad impression. It comes across as sloppy and lazy.

The approach in our house has been to put in place accommodations to lower the barrier to learning other skills. We're still working very hard on the spelling.

Whether or not the spelling correctly creeps into writing later is going to depend on the root cause of the spelling challenge. Our dysgraphic ds is able to learn spelling words for spelling tests and he is able to retain the correct spelling knowledge so that if you asked him to tell you how to spell a word correctly later on he can, but his spelling breaks down tremendously during the act of writing.

We have found that when you're dealing with 2e you're often faced with the decision of having too many things to do to remediate and not enough time, as well as trade-offs on how much remediation do you do at the expense of being able to have your child work in areas of their strength. At the end of the day, our primary goal has always been to raise a child who is able to function in the world and who has retained their sanity and happiness along the way. For our ds, all the ability to spell correctly when quizzed one word at a time will never result in his being able to spell correctly while writing, and that's ok - he's got spell-check, he's got voice-to-text that spells correctly as it goes. We've read a lot of stories about successful adult dyslexics, and many of them state that they rely on other people to check/edit their writing for them before sending letters/memos at work etc.

I doubt my ds will ever ever feel comfortable sending a handwritten thank-you note, and he'll always feel a little bit self-conscious about having other people see his handwriting. But that is who he is, and he's ok with that. To be honest, I rarely receive handwritten thank-you notes anymore, they most always come through email and I'm ok with that!

polarbear

ps - Pemberley - for your dd, I'd probably continue to memorize words for spelling tests, do it at a rate of words/week that is reasonable for her, and if she's being asked to memorize too many call an IEP meeting to add an accommodation limiting the # of words. For her other writing assignments, request that she not be graded on spelling and that she have access to word prediction and spell-check software.

Technology is great, but it's not the ultimate solution, and cannot be relied upon in all situations.

Last week I had to write out a note to the DMV by hand, per their requirement, due to legal nonsense. During the same week, the cash register at the drive-thru died, and I had to mentally calculate my own change.

This is my husband. When he can't get close enough for spell check, he calls me. He never writes anything by hand except "to do" lists for himself. When I forced him to hand write thank you notes to a few critical people, i.e. his boss, after our wedding, I had to proof them. He spelled the same word three different ways that were phonetically correct in the space of a paragraph. His dyslexia reflects the lack of automaticity described in Shaywitz's Overcoming Dyslexia. I think that this is the root of his disability and my daughter's too. Having lived with him, I've had to re-evaluate my own attitudes about people who can't spell. His inability to spell is not due to laziness or lack of intelligence, it is something that his brain just can't do. He spends a lot of time and effort compensating for his short-comings in this area because he knows people will perceive his mistakes as "lazy and sloppy." Despite his spelling challenges, my husband still managed to get a master's degree in mechanical engineering and is a successful professional in his chosen field.

Agree.

I got word that the district has hired a para so DD will have someone scribing for her at school, hopefully starting soon. I'm not sure when the AT eval will happen. I certainly plan to have her work on the sight words and spelling - I just wish there was someone telling me the best/worst ways to approach it for her particular profile. We have an IEP meeting later this week with both the psych and neuropsych attending so hopefully I'll get some clearer direction.

NLD, dysgraphia, really low working memory, processing speed and visual perception, an ADHD-Inattentive diagnosis I don't necessarily agree with - I feel like her plate is full to overflowing. I think the sight words will be HUGE in helping with the reading difficulties so I really want to find a way for her to learn them without freaking her out. I see a lot of stumbling blocks with the spelling words too but also more ways to make learning them fun.

And Dude - the making change thing. The neuropsych explained that "she has no mental blackboard" so every time she has to do basic calculations she has to start from scratch.

Ugh...

Using handwriting to write a quick note and mentally calculating change are two entirely unrelated tasks (although people who have challenges with one *might* have challenges with the other). My ds *can* write legibly enough to write a note to the DMV if he absolutely has to, but he is most likely never going to want to send a thank-you note using his own handwriting... and although his handwriting is technically legible, people who have no first-hand understanding of dyslexia and dysgraphia will at first glance judge that his handwriting looks very sloppy. So he uses technology anywhere and everywhere he can. Ironically many very non-dyslexic non-dysgraphic non-physically challenge people are also using those same technologies now too simply because they make life easier

Although ds can't rely on his handwriting, he can add change easily and quickly in his head. However, if he couldn't, I expect he'd carry a calculator with him or have a calculator app on his phone or have *something* he used as an accommodation because that's what folks who have a neurological difference that prevents them from accomplishing a task that's easy and routine for the rest of us do - they find ways to work around the task, they find ways to accommodate.

polarbear

Pemberley, does your dd learn well from audio info? There's an online spelling program that was recommended for my youngest dd (she has an associative memory challenge that makes it tough for her to remember visual connections and she retains information much better if it's learned via audio input). I don't know if it would help, but I'll look up the link to it and post it for you.

I also know so well how you feel in wishing you had someone to help with a clear roadmap for your dd - fwiw, I think that you are that someone! You're doing a tremendous job of seeking answers and solutions and really doing everything you can to understand your dd's challenges - and you're doing a great job of coordinating the various information and experts so that you can come up with a plan. Hang in there!!!

polarbear

knute, fwiw, what you've written describes my dh *exactly* - right down to the degree in mechanical engineering! He is also very successful in his chosen field, and I spell-check for him frequently.

polarbear

Pemberly - I don't remember - how old is your kiddo? If she isn't too far past it, have you considered putting her through the Wilson Reading Program? It breaks things down in a logical way that helped my son a lot with the logic of spelling ... at least for the words in the English language that follow logic.

As I said in my first post, I wouldn't put hours into practice. It seems the older they get, the more that is absorbed and retained, so driving them crazy when they're young doesn't seem all that productive when there are other things that need addressed that could use that time to better use.

My husband is in his 40's, has had two successful exits from companies he co-founded and is now on his third startup. He still asks about spelling and relies a lot on spell check. It has in no way hampered his success. He's developed business plans, had to communicate with venture capitalists and angel investors and is very good at communicating.

Thank you, Captain Obvious.

There's no "being past" Wilson. DD10 is starting Wilson this year, with a reading level exceeding the K-10 reading test she did. She's starting from the beginning.

For my DD, and I was making the assumption that it was similar for Pemberly's DD, was that these sight words and spelling are on top of the intervention curriculum. In our case, we've got Wilson reading to work on the underlying spelling difficulties, but at the same time, DD is doing the regular spelling curriculum. In her case, getting a list of words that follow a few spelling rules is useful. She still can't spell the base words (that's where Wilson will help), but learning the rules is still constructive.

polarbear, I think the point that you might have missed, is that handwriting, spelling, and mental calculations are all frequently lumped together as skills no longer needed in the modern age of computers, spell check, and calculators. Each family needs to set forward their goals and priorities. In our case, DH still has the condolence cards that were handwritten to him after his dad died. The emails he got are out there somewhere in the digital ether, but they certainly aren't on his bedside table. Looking at our daughter's strengths and weaknesses, being able to write a short card is an important goal we hold for her.