What devices do I need for dyslexic age 8

[sweetiepie1979]

Hi all please help I have a lovely 8 year old DD and she is severely dyslexic. She hates doing any school work with me or anyone else unless it’s super super fun games type things. I’ve bought a book to help with that but what assistive devices do I need? A tablet, a kindle?? I’ve just seen the paper white kindle has a whisper sync this would be brilliant does anyone know about these?
Can anyone help she can barely read or write. Thanks

have you tried her with colour overlays? they really help some dyslexic students. there is an online test here to see if any colours help her, and if so you can order colour overlay sheets to put over worksheets. if they seem to work you can get glasses like these with coloured lenses. the colours dont work for everyone but might be worth a try x

Hi yes we’ve had all the tests for those she uses a sort of yellow paper.

My ds has a touch screen pc. It has been great for him. I think it is the only tech thing he would really miss. He also loves his Amazon echo spot. It has a screen so it can tell him and also show him how to spell words. He uses it alot and has been useful when he is doing his school homework.

The other thing he likes is a small word processor which is good for typing school work but I am not sure they make them any more. It has a very small screen so he does not see many words when he is typing. It also speaks to him.

Ds has a fine motor difficulty so can find it difficult using technology which is probably why he has never really got into using phones and tablets.

My DS used a chromebook in primary to type and loved it. The school supplied it and I have just bought a similar one for him to use in secondary. Dragon (speech to text) is really fantastic. He uses that on his laptop at home for homework and personal use. Not sure whether you can add it the chromebook. Just never tried! Using assistive tech really changed his attitude to school and learning. Good luck!

My sons school gave him a chrome book at the start of year 5, it really helped him to produce longer prices of written work.

My daughter has dyspraxia - so while she can read and work with phonics till the cows come home - the motor movements of getting it all down on paper are buggered!

She uses an iPad and uses an app called Snaptype Pro where you can photograph a worksheet and tap and type anywhere on the screen (and if you're connected to the net you can use voice dictation - we've never gone in for that much because she has verbal dyspraxia as well) and uses Clicker Docs to word process - which is primary child-oriented, reads a sentence back as you complete it and just minimises the "I've hit a button and something gone funny" factor a bit. She's also got a free dictionary app which again you can use voice dictation for and copy and paste the word into her work - called DD's dictionary or Didi's dictionary or something similar.

Toe by Toe has had amazing results with my daughter over the last 10 months. It's not fun, it's fairly boring but only 10 mins a day, in tiny, tiny steps, I can't overstate how much it has helped her. I would recommend it.

I also let her listen to audio books from the library, we bought her a cheap diskman to listen to them on as want to encourage her love of stories as well as letting her access the vocabulary.

Nessy reading and spelling is great. A kindle would be great as you can also go into settings and get the kindle to read aloud to your DD. Also another vote for Toe by Toe

I used various Dyslexia Gold programs with my DS for 6 months when he was 10 and he had a reading age of 5, he made 2 years progress in reading age which I was happy with and over the past few years he has continued to improve. My DS did like it so I guess he found it fun.

Before that I got him to read Barrington Stoke which which are books for Dyslexics because of the font and such. Also would agree with users above about the benefits of an iPad or Chromebook with text to speech.

Would stress the best way to help is to teach them to read via Dyslexia Gold or some of the other interventions listed.

I came on this thread to say toe by toe.

Ok thank you everyone...... overwhelmed but ok.... I’ll start with the kindle and hopefully that will help if it has immersion reading......
toe by toe I have heard of but the school is using read write ink intervention programme and I don’t think they want me to use a different programme maybe I could get hold of some of those materials though.....
She is so tired when she comes home frown school it is hard to get her to do anything.....
I will get her a windows computer and then get the software for various assistance.
She should be in a private school we just can’t afford it!

Also a word for the Open Dyslexic font whichever technology you go for - it's free and has the letters specifically designed to have "weight" at the bottom so you don't get the issues with b/d and the like as much. There's a variant called "open dyslexic alt a" which has the handwriting style primary "a" as well if they're still getting confused by the a in typeface.

I'm just about to go out but some of these might be of interest on the PDF (not all of the links are current still but it's a good starting point) www.callscotland.org.uk/Common-Assets/ckfinder/userfiles/files/Wheel_0f_Apps_V1_0.pdf

www.onenote.com/learningtools - worth a look at for their immersive reader in some Microsoft software which can do things like text background colour, read aloud and isolate a line of text reading ruler style

docs.google.com/document/d/1n4BWpDIDtjdWT5-vdVF0w5wsR6CitJxQeCnjlsFQl9s/mobilebasic not used these ones but a friend who works for a dyslexia project swears by some of them if you're using google docs

Thank you very much Kuponut