Quick Facts about Dyslexia

•Dyslexia is hereditary. Children with a dyslexic parent have a 50 percent chance of inheriting the disability.

•Dyslexia affects one in every five people in America.

•Reading disabilities are estimated to compromise 80 percent of all learning disabilities.

•Forty-percent of those with dyslexia have a secondary condition, such as Attention Deficit Disorder.

•Children are usually not identified as having a reading disability until the third or fourth grade.

•Children with dyslexia can be identified as early as 5 years old.

Source: www.readlearnservices.com

Closing the Gap in Reading

Closing the gap between your child’s reading level and grade level expectations

Time is of the essence – especially when it comes to reading ability. Typically students make reading gains that are year for year. Every year a child is in school, they will make one year’s gain in instructional reading level. That’s great if the student is already reading at grade level. What happens when a student is reading 1-3 years - or more, below grade level? How do these students ever catch up?

Reading research reveals that students with dyslexia need research-based, multisensory instruction in phonemic awareness and reading skills. Research also shows that 95% of reading failure is preventable when students are given the right type of instruction. The International Dyslexia Association supports the Orton-Gillingham sequence and methodology as best practice when working with students who have dyslexia. This type of instruction is explicit, systematic, intense (one-on-one is best), and delivered by a trained individual with consistency (minimum of two 50 minute sessions per week).

This excerpt is taken from an article I had published in the Camas/Washougal Post Record. You can find the rest of the article using this link: http://www.readlearnservices.com/Testimony---Specialist-Profile.html

"Unscrambling Dyslexia"

I recently earned a grant to purchase a specialized reading, writing and spelling program for students in my classroom that have dyslexia. The program is the Barton Reading and Spelling System.

This story is featured in the article, "Unscrambling Dyslexia" and can be found in the April 19th edition of The Columbian Newspaper. I was delighted to see it was the front page story. "Research supports that the more methods used when learning, the better chances the brain will retain the information." This is a quote from the article, and is referring to multi-sensory teaching. It is important that students with dyslexia are given research based programs to help them succeed in reading. This program is simultaneously using auditory, tactile/kinesthetic, and visual learning to train their brains to decode new and multi-syllabic words.

Being able to offer an Orton-Gillingham based program is like a breath of fresh air for the students I am working with. It gives them a chance to succeed and offers hope for their academic future. My student Andrew, who has used the system with a private teacher for 3 years stated, "It's changed my life..."