lexia computer software

[iwanttoscream]

I have looked at a school for my dd for y7, y5 at the moment. She has speech and language disorder and learning difficulties will this programme help her. Her brother has dyslexia will it help him to. She's still working at p7-p8 at the moment. She is statemented.

MRZ knows lexia, so hopefully she'll be along soon. I've only briefly looked at some of the games on it.

How severe is your DSs dyslexia?

Lexia won't do anything to help her speech and language disorder, or her learning disorder, or his dyslexia - all it will do is teach them phonics.

Phonics is the best way to teach children to read. But if there is a reason (like dyslexia) why the child isn't learning to read, more phonics won't help cure the underlying problem.

However teachers can't really do much to help whatever it is that is causing your children's difficulties, so instead they just do what they can - which is teach synthetic phonics.

he does well on weekly spelling test, but independent writing is bad, he tends to jumble his letters in words , but he's just like my dh. They have been doing toe by toe with him last year, continuing. The teacher says he tends to not always sound out the ends of words. He hasn't been totally diagnosed dyslexic but dh has, dd's last iep meeting i asked the senco about ds it was the first time dyslexia was actually mentioned.

I wouldn't expect lexia to help him any more than toe-by-toe has.

He might like it more or less. He might use it more or less often.

But the principle behind both of them is the same. Lots of phonics practice.

There isn't anything particularly magic, or innovative, about either of them.

We use Lexia in school and as Indigo says it won't help with Speech and Language difficulties because it is computer based we find some children more willing to put in the practise but find that it needs staff backup to get the best out of it. Personally I wouldn't suggest it as the primary method for a child with difficulties

We use www.speechlink.info/

iwanttoscream

Could be auditory processing disorder (APD), a listening disability. APD is also a possible underlying cause of many speech and language issues.

Children who have APD are not able to process the gaps between sounds, the sounds which can make up words and even the gasps between sounds between words in rapid speech. Children who have APD are not able to use phonics. According to the UK Medical Research Council 10% of children have some degree of APD including those who had Otitis Media with Effusion (Glue Ear).

Those who have APD may prefer to use colours as a visual method of learning to use alternative visual compensating abilities. some like letters to be different colours, then vowels and consonnants to be different colours, then nouns and verbs, etc to be different colours, and then different phrases, and eventually as adults different sentences, as can be seen by the APDUK web site. Also extra spacing between words or sentences, so each new sentence begins on a new line.

Living with these types of disability is about identifying the cognitive barrier and then finding alternative compensating skills and abilities to work around the problems. Which in turn can develop into skills and abilities which many others do not develop, and some mistakenly call the gifts of dyslexia, but are more like too much hard work at times. it would be easier if others could communicate wit us using our preferred alternative forms of communication rather than insisting on using a form of communication our disabilities make difficult for us to use