by Deede Hinckley Cauley (M. Ed., LPC) from the Real Reading Company

 

There are many ways that beginning readers and writers can learn foundational skills that can make a world of difference. Early learners need access to many hands-on materials and quality books. I will highlight three techniques that are important to early learners.

 

Hand and Eye Coordination 

Reading and especially writing requires hand eye coordination. Reading and writing accurately in English is a left-to-right activity. There are dozens of activities to build this skill. 

  • Providing building blocks with individual letters and numbers on them. 
  • Chatting about one letter at a time using plastic, wooden, or magnetic letters (or blocks) will build an understanding of alphabet letters and numbers. 
  • Taking a plastic letter ‘S’ and throwing it into the bathtub while hissing like a snake “ssss, sssnake” introduces the letter ‘S’ and its sound. 
  • Coloring an image of an apple and saying the short-vowel-a sound introduces the sound of the letter ‘A’. Coloring the letter ‘A’ provides the hand eye coordination needed. Actually, coloring in general is a step in the right direction. 
  • Making a snake with Play-Doh can introduce the letter ‘S’ while practicing the hand eye coordination of rolling the Play-Doh. Be creative as letters and numbers are slowly introduced. 
  • Singing the alphabet song is always a good way to ensure the individual letters are learned as well.

 

Using Everyday Activities 

Use everyday activities that match your young learner’s interests. For example: 

  • Choosing to receive their help when you mix up Jell-O and Pudding. The act of stirring is a chance to continue to practice the hand eye coordination required for reading and writing. 
  • Bouncing a ball, rolling it back and forth, playing catch with a soft toy, jumping up and down,is, believe it or not, one-step closer to the ability to blend letters into words. 
  • Learning to write the letters and to pronounce the letters is an early step to reading and writing. Drawing, coloring, chatting about, and laughing while riding in a car; also contribute to these skills. “The letter ‘T’ makes the ‘T’ sound, and what do we see that starts with the ‘T’ sound?” One might see a ‘tree’ or ‘tent’ or ‘tar’ on the road. 
  • Learning is enhanced by colorful and pleasant videos that introduce the letters of the alphabet as well.

 

Read, Read, Read

It is also important to read, read, read, to your young learner. Read silly stories, happy stories, restful stories, stories with a message, poetry, nursery rhymes are very important for learning concepts. “Jack and Jill went UP a hill. Jack came tumbling DOWN.” 

 

Relax and use everyday moments and activities to build the skills needed for life. If learning is engaging and fundamental, your early learners will have the basic skills they need to be successful.

 

Deede Hinckley Cauley (M. Ed., LPC) is the author and creator of the phenomenally successful Reading and Spelling Pure & Simple series (RSPS) and C.E.O. of the Real Reading Company (RRC). For nearly forty years her heart for struggling readers has led her to research, focus on what works, and teach reading and spelling to children, teens, and adults. Her experience included a teaching career that started in 1972 and provided her an opportunity to experience instruction at nearly every level (university, junior college, high school, middle school, and elementary). In the I980’s she became a charter member and officer of a local adult learn-to-read organization, and she had the privilege of homeschooling her son for several years.

 

 

 

 

Kathy Kuhl

 

A woman told me her son had been accepted into a good college even though he had the handwriting of a six-year-old. Happily, this sharp young man and his mother knew how to get accommodations to get his thoughts on paper.

 

Can you imagine the effect on this child if his mother had said: 

“Sorry, dear. Until you stop reversing your Es, I’m not going to teach you to write.” or “Until you pay attention and print more neatly, I’m not teaching you any new words.”

 

Many gifted people have dysgraphia, dyslexia or other learning disabilities. We should work on the problems, as I discussed last week. But we also work around them. That means you accommodate the student’s areas of weakness.

Accommodate doesn’t mean coddle. It does mean you give help that gives them a fair chance to develop their abilities. It means you don’t let a disability hijack your homeschool.

Though we work hard to strengthen weaknesses, it is vital not to focus on them.

We build lives based on strengths, not weaknesses. We don’t look at  Charles Schwab, Richard Branson, or  MacArthur ‘Genius’ Award winner Mimi Koehl, and think of learning disabilities. They built their careers on their strengths.

We don’t build our lives on what we do poorly. Neither should our kids.

 

Accommodation #1: Learn to Type

The first accommodation you may think of for a child who struggles with writing is teaching your child to type.

How do you know if your child is old enough to touch-type? Pediatric occupational therapist Laurie Chuba told me this trick: ask your child to close her eyes and see if she can touch her left thumb and each of her other left fingers in turn. Then repeat with the right hand. If she can, she’s ready to learn to touch-type.

Not every keyboarding program is well-suited to children and teens with learning disabilities. For instance, the first one we tried used a small font size on the screen. It was hard for my son, who has dyslexia, to read.

There are many typing programs, but Keyboard Classroom is unusual. It’s a typing program designed at the Ben Bronz School in Connecticut, a school especially for students with learning disabilities. It keeps practice exercises to one minute, building fluency without as much stress as longer exercises. [Disclosure: I was given, but have not used, a sample of Keyboard Classroom and the finger guides. My review is based on trying a free demo. Typing programs vary and kids vary. I recommend trying demos and reading reviews to see what’s best for your child.]

It was researched with students with learning disabilities for twenty years. By keeping its plastic finger guides between the middle and ring finger of each hand, the learner’s hands don’t drift out of place.

I met Keyboard Classroom President Carrie Shaw at LEAH Homeschool Convention a few years back and got to try out the program. I was intrigued. You can see a demo and explanation of Keyboard Classroom here.

Carrie wrote, “I reduced the prices on all my licenses so it would be more affordable for homeschoolers.”  At their site, you can contact Carrie Shaw and learn more.

If your child is not ready to touch-type, let her record answers with a digital voice recorder or into your phone. You can also have her dictate to a sibling who can type.

 

Accommodation #2 – Word Prediction Software

Dictation software is notorious for goofy transcribing errors. WordQ does a superior job, providing a drop-down list of words to choose from. Even better, at the end of each sentence, WordQ reads the sentence aloud, which can help your student notice when words are incorrect or are omitted. Get a free trial of WordQ from Quillsoft here.

 

Accommodation #3 – Dictation Software

SpeakQ dictation software is an add-on for WordQ that turns it into a powerful dictation program. Designed for folks with learning disabilities, it is easier for your child to train to his or her voice than other programs, like Dragon. WordQ and SpeakQ both offer a free trial. Dragon Naturally Speaking also takes diction from you or your student. See  www.Nuance.com for details and a demonstration.[The advantage of SpeakQ over Dragon is that to train the software to recognize your child’s voice, Dragon provides paragraphs that may be difficult for your challenged learner to read. But SpeakQ lets you upload anything your child can read well, and use that text to train the software.]

Not everyone who struggles with writing struggles with handwriting. Other writing problems require different solutions. Next month we’ll look at some. This series continues here.

 

This article was originally written on Learn Differently at https://www.learndifferently.com/2015/10/20/accommodations-for-struggling-writers/

 

Some of the links in this article are affiliate links.

 

This article is part 3 in  a in a series of articles aimed at helping struggling writers. Part 1 is here, and part 2 is here .

 

 

 

 


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