Tutoring your own child or another child can make a huge positive difference for the student. About 15% of all students experience some amount of dyslexia, or struggle to learn to read even though they are just as intelligent and curious as the other children. Dyslexia can also affect math and writing performance.
This is not something that is wrong with the student not at all! It just means that their brains are designed for 3-D big picture thinking more than linear, one thing at a time thinking. These students see forests, not trees. They see context, not text. They need to master the meaning before they memorize the parts.
It means that to learn well, a different approach needs to be used: something more wholistic than phonics. Phonics is a great tool for most student readers, but if it is not working, it only makes sense to try some other tools.
If math and writing are affected, different methods can be used for those subjects as well. As a tutor or parent, you work with only one or two students at a time, so you can do things that would never work in a classroom setting.
Sometimes parents feel that only a paid tutor has the expertise to help their child and they panic because they cannot afford or find a qualified tutor. But parents can be very successful in helping their own children by using some or all of the tools below and by remembering that all instruction should be happy! If the child is not enjoying the lesson, then it is not working, so stop and do something different.
Children naturally love to learn and want to feel successful at new tasks. So effective teaching produces happy, excited students. Blaming a student for not learning, or telling them to try harder is not helpful. Students almost always want to learn and are trying very hard already & unless they have given up because their best efforts did not pay off.
Once suitable candidates have been selected by your UKTRS consultant you will be sent a file containing: - A front cover sheet containing a summary of the candidate's qualifications, experience, age, location etc.
Here are tips for teaching reading to a struggling student, taken from Dyslexia Tool Kit for Tutors and Parents: What to do when phonics isn't enough, by Yvonna Graham, M.Ed. and Dr. Alta E. Graham.
Most important tip of all: Read happy! If reading involves anxiety, anger, tears, avoidance, or frustration, then stop. This will only pair pain with reading; not what you need to do! Forcing a child to read aloud before the child is confident of success can be extremely counterproductive.
Sensory Integration: Before reading, juggle a stuffed animal or cross march, touching hands to opposite knees. Crossing the body midline openes up neural pathways between brain hemispheres, making it easier to recall previously learned material.
Cognitive Skills Games: Increase processing speed by playing SET or Qwirkle which use color in the right hemisphere of the brain and logic in the left hemisphere, further strengthening connections between the two sides of the brain. This is beneficial for any learner, but is especially powerful for students with dyslexia.
Tracking: Rather than forcing the child to read aloud, which can be painful for all involved, have the child read along silently while an adult or an audio book reads aloud. Apps such as Farfaria are great for this. So are grandmothers! By having the child look at the words while they are read aloud, the child will begin to painlessly pair the image of the word with the meaning — thus building sight word vocabulary and reading comprehension.
Dyslexic students do this far better than the rest of us. In fact, research has revealed that although it takes a dyslexic student 1000 repetitions to learn a word on flashcards, it only takes 30 repetitions of that word in context (seen and heard simultaneously in a meaningful story) for the student to remember it. Yes! Silent reading can be taught first, and oral reading can follow later if needed. The book, Dyslexia Tool Kit for Tutors and Parents, provides specific instructions in how to teach tracking, and you can even read it on the Amazon website because we made the entire book available in the preview!
These tips are enough to get started on the wonderful journey of teaching your dyslexic child to read. Many people have successfully taught their children with only these four tips! But there are 24 techniques, all easy, described in the book. It might just save you years of grief and piles of money :) Plus, you and your child could be reading great books and having fun instead of dreading reading or having tummy aches when it's time for school!
