Over the years, I have come across many children in my friend and family circle who have needed help with reading and other learning problems. I have put together this information to help other parents. I hope you find it useful!
If you want to help any child with reading, you cannot go wrong with ReadingKey from www.tampareads.com. I used this to help two children, ages 7 and 9, learn to read from scratch. When they came to me, both were bright and articulate but barely knew their alphabet. For the 7 year old, we met 15 minutes four times a week, and within 3 months he was reading at a Grade 1 Level. Unfortunately, I could only see the 9 year old every other weekend, but she also reached her grade level within a year. The site provides free easy-to-use worksheets which simplify the process of teaching reading.
If you suspect your child may be dyslexic, I highly recommend "The Gift of Dyslexia" by Ron Davis. This book was instrumental in helping me and a young child cope with his dyslexia. He didn't show the stereotypical symptoms which is why, I think, it took me such a long time to diagnose him. One symptom he did show was his inability to rhyme. I would ask him to find a word to rhyme with cat, or to pick rhyming words out of a list, and he would never be able do it.
Ron Davis is dyslexic himself. He compares the dyslexic mode to being dizzy or disoriented, and he teaches a method of 'switching off' this disorientation. It sounded strange to me, and when I tested a few other little people, none of them responded. But, when I took the child through the exercises, they made perfect sense to him, and once I taught him the technique, I noticed an immediate and drastic improvement.
Before, he would look at a page to read and stumble and hesitate over the words. There were simple words that he wouldn't seem to see. I could not understand how he would leave out the word "at" and "the". He just didn't seem to see them. When he used Davis's technique, however, his reading became a lot smoother and suddenly he could see all the words. I could tell even tell by listening when he was using it. In addition, remarkably, I noticed that his sense of balance improved, and even his ability to catch and hit a cricket ball. His sense of time and sequence also approved. When I asked him to describe a movie he had watched, before he used to say, "um, there was a boy." Now he would say, "There was a boy who met a talking dog and they saved the world ..."
Although his reading improved, I still saw gaps in his performance. When I took him to be formally evaluated, tests revealed that he had very poor short term memory, and poor logic skills. At this stage, after research on the internet, I ordered a programme called Audiblox2000 (available from www.audiblox2000.com) created by a teacher in South Africa. This was a set of cards and blocks. There were about 7 exercises which we did for about an hour a day for about six months. These helped to drastically improve the child's short term memory and logic skills. It was a bit expensive, but worth every penny.
Other books I have used and personally recommend: "Bright Minds, Poor Grades: Understanding and Motivating your Underachieving Child" by Michael D Whitley, PhD, "Have A New Kid By Friday" by Dr. Kevin Leman, and "Children Are From Heaven" by John Gray, PhD (author of the excellent "Men are from Mars Women are from Venus" books).
"Listen to the mustn'ts, child. Listen to the don'ts. Listen to the shouldn'ts, the impossibles, the won'ts. Listen to the never haves, then listen close to me... Anything can happen, child. Anything can be." -- Shel Silverstein