In my last post, I discussed the advice that dyslexia tutors often give to parents who wish to find books to read with their dyslexic children. In this post, I thought that I would offer some other tips on choosing books that I have come up with in my years as a dyslexia tutor.
One important aspect of choosing reading books for a dyslexic child, in addition to them being at the appropriate level, is the question of whether they are interested in the books. For children with dyslexia, having a book that is about a subject that they are interested in gives them one more reason read, despite the fact that reading may be difficult for them, and fairly slow going at times. As a result, it’s beneficial to introduce books or magazines that they are interested in as soon as possible. For example, is the dyslexic child interested in cars? Try finding the most basic level of reading material on cars that is available. If you are unable to find anything at a basic level, you can get some more complicated books or magazines and simply help them read words that they have difficulty with. Even if they are only able to read a certain percentage of words, they will still be getting a lot of practice with those words, and they will be excited because they are reading about something that they are interested in. As a dyslexia tutor, I have seen the benefit of catering reading material to a student’s interests many times.
If you are unsure about what your child is interested in, check out one of my older posts titled “Discovering Interests”; it will give you a some good ideas to help in discovering the interests of your child.
Peter
