Reasonable Homeschooling

On my FB page today, I mentioned that I can help you get started with Learning Ally. One reason why having dyslexic kids listen to audio books is because they can help bridge the gap between what they need to know and what they can easily decode. This becomes more and more important the older your student gets. This is one of the problems that comes when students don’t get the help they need. Here’s more information about this great tool and how audio books can help.

Please note that many of these resources are only available during COVID pandemic. Some of them have specific requirements for their use. Please honor the publisher’s requests.

Fly Leaf

SPELD-SA, Australia

Scott Foresman 1st Grade

I have several sets of decodable readers that I like to use with students, but now that everything has gone online due to COVID, parents may want to purchase their own copies. The following list of sets are just the ones I have on hand here that are still available for purchase. There are many others available. Sadly, my all-time favorite series for teaching comprehension (once decoding is fairly set) is out of print and I no longer have any spare copies. We’ll be sticking with the document camera for that!

High Noon Phonics Based, Sound Out Chapter Books

Early Readers sets 1, 2, and 3 from Alpha Omega

All About Reading (FYI, you can use the readers with All About Spelling, too!)

Spalding Level 1 Readers as well as the Level 2 set.

Cigdem Knebel has several decodable readers available, which can be bought in “real” and in digital format. You may not have known that she teamed up with the amazing Emily Gibbons to provide phonics and comprehension lessons to go with the books! Check them out here!

Goodreads has a list here. Emily Gibbons has a list here. I can heartily recommend Fish in a Tree. The author even provides a teacher’s guide at the link I provided! Excellent book!

Executive functioning skills are another area where kids with language disorders often struggle. Not all of them, of course, but enough that you really ought to look into it. Here’s a good screener. Here’s an even more comprehensive one. If you think this is something you need to work on, look up any of the books by Peg Dawson and Richard Guare. Most have “Smart but Scattered” in the title. The one I linked you to is the general book, but they have one for teens and one for teachers, as well as ones that are geared to adults. Good stuff!

If you want to assess whether your child may have dysgraphia, look no further than this page. I’ve already mentioned that dyslexic children usually present with other issues, dysgraphia being one of them. (Yes, I can see this as part of the TILLS, but you may be doing this on your own.)

I have a new formal assessment tool, TILLS, and I’d be happy to help you figure out what’s going on with your child’s literacy and language skills. Better still, the SLS, which I brought up yesterday, perfectly complements this comprehensive tool.

It can help to know what your child’s strengths and weaknesses are. Here’s a great assessment tool for this. Another excellent one is the SLS, which I can administer if you like.

If you have a baby in the house, here are some ways to help language develop.

If your child is school-aged and in a hybrid or virtual learning environment, these are some good ideas that can help.

Here is some information for you so that you can learn all you can about these disorders, of which Dyslexia is one.

This page explains the differences among LLDs and Speech problems.

Be aware that many kids with dyslexia will present with other issues as well.