A good dyslexia tutor typically spends time each session having their dyslexic students read aloud to them. As I mentioned in the previous post, this is a tremendously valuable activity for parents to do with their dyslexic children as well. Certain strategies used in dyslexia tutoring can prove useful for this activity.
One great strategy that you can use at home while reading with a dyslexic child is to trade off pages. For example, your child reads page 1, you read page 2, etc. Dyslexia tutors often do this because it makes the experience less tiring for the child, because they get little breaks in between the sections that they have to read. In addition, if reading is still quite a struggle for them, being able to listen as you read every other page may make it more enjoyable as well.
In the last post, I mentioned how advantageous it is to find reading material that your dyslexic child is interested in. Dyslexia tutors often try to gear their reading material towards a student’s interests, because the student will then have more motivation to read. However, what can you do if there is no reading material available on a subject that is near their level? Fortunately, reading material above their level can still be valuable in this case. Try having your child read as much as they can in each sentence, and help them out with the words that are difficult for them. Even if they are only able to read half the words, they will still be getting reading practice, and will feel excited to be reading about something that they are interested in!
Peter
