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?