What is Dyslexia ?
Dyslexia is a difficulty with reading and writing caused by the brain being unable to see the difference between some letter shapes. A child that have problem with dyslexia always find it difficult to understand the shape of the letters of the alphabets. When he/she sees a words, the look in his/her eyes is always different to what is actually written. A child looking at letter 'b' may see it as letter 'p' or letter 'd'. This difficulty is not always detected at the very early stage, as the child grows up, he/she becomes more frustrated in learning .The child with this may not be able to copy from the board and will also be unable to read and call the letters in words.

Dyslexia children do need a multi-sensory approach in order to make them to be able to understand the letter shapes. The multi-sensory approach is mostly used in Montessori schools. It involves the effective usage of the three sense organ. The sense of seeing, the sense of hearing and the sense of touching.


When learning the letters, make a big print of the letters on a paper for the child to be able see it very well. Allow the child to feel the letters by giving him/her a plastic letters, he/she may even trace the letters on the print with finger to know the formation of the letters. Trace on sand tray is also effective. When writing, gently show step by step approach of writing the letters. Another way is by relating the letters with object that can easily be remembered and also telling them the sound and demonstrating the gesture of the sound made by the letters.   

TYPES OF READING METHODS

There are two major types of reading methods. They are:
1. Phonics and
2. Whole word method

1. Phonics is considered the best teaching method due to its simplicity and flexibility. It is a student centered method of teaching reading. The children learn the letter names and their sound simultaneously. Then learn to blend the sound of the letters to form words. Children don't depend heavily on teachers and mostly pronounce words that they haven't seen before when reading.

2. Whole word method is another way of teaching children to read. Children do lot of memorization with this method and they do rely heavily on teachers to assist them. There are two way approach to this method. The first approach is by reading interesting stories to children, as the child read the stories over and over again they get familiar with the words used in the stories. The second approach is by treating the words in the stories before reading.

READING FOR CHILDREN

The child in the video below is taught using phonics. Check it out