Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Dyslexia and eReadingPro

I often get asked about how children with Dyslexia learn to read, and why it can be so difficult for them.

One of the best books I've ever read about Dyslexia is called "Overcoming Dyslexia" by Sally Shaywitz. She explains that individuals with Dyslexia are very 'right-brain learners', and see words as a pictures. This is why the whole-word approach works so much better in these cases, and phonics is so painful.

Like any visual learner, it is much easier to learn how to phonetically decode a word AFTER the whole word is mastered. It's like assembling the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle - it's much easier when you can refer to the entire picture, and know what the final outcome is supposed to look like!

eReadingPro was created using the whole-word approach, FOR the visual learner, and therefore works very well with individuals with Dyslexia. Once the child has mastered the whole word, I recommend sitting down with the flashcard and discussing the letters and sounds that make up the whole word. Have them match letters up underneath the word as they reassemble it. Once they understand what letters make up the word, do the same exercise with phonetic components. You should find that your child begins to recognize words easier, AND understand how the pieces fit together to make up each word.

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