What should one to one dyslexic tutoring consist of

[TheBrightBear]

If I hire a tutor to help my dyslexic 9 year old for an hour a week what should the tutoring session consist of? Spelling and writing are her biggest issues.
We are doing toe by toe at home ourselves.
There's a shortage of dyslexia tutors around here. I've found someone who might be able to help but it is so expensive that I want to be sure we are getting value for money and time and effort!

I'm sure other people will share their experience of tutors as a parent but as a dyslexic person I would say that it's pointless and demoralising to have any tutoring/training that is just repeatedly going over things you struggle with. An hour of extra spelling practice won't help in the long run. A tutor who understands dyslexic strengths and initially assesses your child's strengths and uses these to teach them alternative ways to approach tasks and learn will be more beneficial in the long run and give your DC more confidence. For me that's visualisation and using visual mnemonics and mind mapping techniques, and approaching things from the end goal and working backwards, but it may be different for everyone. What you'd want to avoid is DC doing an hour of what they find most difficult every week over and over. They'll always be dyslexic so rote practice just moves you on a step to the next difficult thing, whereas learning alternative ways to reach the same end using their strengths gives them techniques they can use for life. At 9 also I think any tutoring should be approached as a fun thing. Remember they are working at least twice as hard at school as everyone else for less achievement so extra work outside of school can feel overwhelming if it's not enjoyable.

I can highly recommend finding a specialist and trying them on for a month or two. They need to have experience (loads of it), just going over the same topics/skills in the same way will do nothing.

In Bristol there's a "Dyslexia Centre" which has been operating for 30+ years for good reason. The children I know that have been there describe it as being more helpful than the other 30 hours they spend at school that week.

I also know several adults that have been there too.

Thanks so much we are in Ireland so the options are limited. We don't have any dyslexia centers here unfortunately.
It is very hard to find a tutor and hard to tell how good they are as I don't have enough knowledge myself. I really need some kind of guidance with a step by step structure that will help. I can even do it myself with her but I don't know where to start.
We are doing toe by toe as I don't know what else to do but school is very tough for her at the moment because she struggles so much with writing.
I am hoping that a tutor might be able to direct me as to what does and doesn't work and create a structured realistic plan.

Thank you yes I'm trying to avoid a wasted hour each week. I don't know specifically what good dyslexia tutoring looks like.
The only things that seem to have worked for her so far is teaching her a bit of spelling through mnemonics via Stareway to Spelling and we are working through Toe by Toe. They are boring but apparently effective. I really don't know what else to do. School reading programmes like words their way are very expensive and I don't know how to use them.

I guess you have to think about your goal for the tutoring. What do you want to get out of it? You can't tutor her out of dyslexia so having a purpose for it, such as a specific exam to pass, will help you not to waste money. At 9 it may be less useful. I had dyslexia tutoring at uni so I could learn how to cope with the large volume of reading material and how to structure essays to pass the coursework expectations for my specific course. I'm not sure I understand what the benefit of general dyslexia tutoring is on an ongoing basis for a young child. It would just feel like more school work focused on weaknesses to me, which is very hard on dyslexic children. My DC are dyslexic too but I don't do extra schoolwork with them or tutoring, I'd rather pay for them to do extra art or sports training and build on their strengths.

Specialist dyslexia teachers are trained to teach reading/spelling in the way that dyslexics learn best eg systematically and in a multi sensory way. So it's back to basics starting from the exact point the pupil started to struggle. They will do some tests to identify 'where they're at' with reading and spelling and start from there.
They are expensive but the training course is very hard and very expensive and the lessons take a long time to plan and resource properly as they are so bespoke.

There isn't enough learning support in her school. She is extremely anxious in class trying to keep up with the written work. She dreads school every day. Her spelling could definitely improve as she has responded to some of the concepts from Stareway to spelling and I believe she can make more progress with writing which would mean that she would be less anxious in class. If I had a good tutor to guide me I would be able to advise the class teacher too. At the moment it just feels like we are totally alone in this. She has had minimal learning support and it hasn't been helping.

Thanks so much this is very helpful.

My DC has had a specialist tutor for a year and it’s really really helped grow confidence. As a PP said it’s back to basics and then the tutor has helped DC understand how they best learn and it definitely has been using a multi sensory approach. It’s been less about extra time learning the ‘normal’ way that has been taught in schools but more about finding alternative ways but more importantly for us enabling our DC to realise they are not ‘thick’ and embrace the fact they need to learn a bit differently and that’s totally cool.

Thanks so much. That sounds great.
I really hope I can find someone to help us. I've only found 1 person that isn't booked up for the foreseeable and I'm not sure about their level of experience.

There are several groups on Facebook for dyslexia tutors/assessors. Maybe ask if someone would do zoom classes and/or give you advice?

Thanks this is a great idea!

Have you considered the Nessy programme which is an online subscription

Yes thank you we've just bought it! It looks great

They're often dyslexic themselves!

I'm a teacher and trained as a specialist dyslexia tutor to support my son when he was about 8. He wasn't really getting any support in school.

I've done some tutoring and always try to keep it fun - I know that dyslexic children (and adults) can be exhausted by the end of the day and just don't have any more to give, however hard they try. Lots of games to improve working memory, lots of confidence building. Maybe some auditory processing tasks. Tutoring really needs to be tailored to the individual and even when I'm tutoring 11 plus (which i do more of these days) I'll teach different children in entirely different ways if that's what works for them.

A couple of things that might help at home:

Talk to text when using Google docs (or similar) - children can get the story/idea down without compromising on using rich language just because they can't spell it.

Audio books - accessing that fabulous language without the mental exhaustion of reading it! This was a real game changer for ds.

Story cubes. TELL the story. Oracy is so important. Don't always focus on writing it down.

Word bank for subjects at school that can be easily added to/accessed. I had a fabulous booklet to add to for this (great for secondary) but I don't think they're in print any more.

Reading ruler (coloured overlay type MAY help. Not like for Irlens but it can stop eye strain. The same for a computer. I know they can be downloaded.

Keep up confidence and focus on things the child excels at rather than banging on about.

Writing mini books can take the pressure off. Also if your dc is a perfectionist (we all learn from our mistakes) it's not soul destroying if they go wrong on a little page.

Read the same book together - two copies. You can read out loud if they flag.

My heart bursts with pride for the little boy I used to worry about because he felt he struggled alongside his sisters who found it all so easy. He's 27 now and an absolute star. Still adores audio books!

Sorry. Went on a bit. It's a passion of mine.

I'll send you a message OP. I think you need the focus to be drawing from strengths as others have said. Small steps, enthusiasm for learning, fun and creativity will help her to remain engaged and make progress on her terms.

My DD is dyslexic and I spent a lot of time reminding her that the most important thing was to know that about herself and it didn't matter if she couldn't spell or read more slowly than the other kids but to make sure that she had her work checked by someone who she knew could spell before she put it out in the public realm.
Dd struggled with phonics but did well with sight reading. She got no support at school (this was 18 years ago and dyslexia wasn't even properly recognized back then) so we spent a lot of time at the library and I got her a lot of audiobooks and graphic novels when she was little.
As she got older, we found that she excelled at online courses where she could work at her own pace without being anxious that she was doing things differently than the other students. The online courses were so successful and empowering for her that she ended up skipping multiple grades and graduating high school (we are in the US) at 16 with 2 years worth of college credits from courses that she had taken online during High School.
She majored in Philosophy (absurd amounts of reading and writing) at University and graduated with a degree and very respectable grades.

I think the most important thing was constant reminders from me (because she wasn't getting it from her teachers) that she was not dumb and and in fact actually quite smart but just did things differently than the others did. And emotional permission to do things in a way that was best for her.

Thank you this is really inspiring!

Thank you so much for all of these suggestions. They all sound great. I've heard of lots of people re training as dyslexia teachers when their children have been diagnosed.
A lot of people have said to focus on what she excels at.... unfortunately I just don't know what this is. She's average at sport. She likes art but doesn't seem gifted at it. I feel maybe she likes arts and crafts just because it isn't reading and writing. The educational psychologist said that dyslexia doesn't always come hand in hand with a particular strength. She's so tired after school I'm reluctant to push her to do any more extra curricular things..she does swimming, a couple of sports and one instrument. She likes them partly for the social side of it but doesn't excel or seem very motivated by any one of them in particular.

As a fellow dyslexic this is spot on.

Also technology can do a lot to help. I have no idea what is relevant for a child but I have a few things on my computer, I can change the background colour, create and manage mind maps.

I also find knowledge organisers useful.

I read on my kindle as it has a dyslexia friendly font. A friend is dyslexic and he likes the way you can have fewer lines of text on a page.

Also, and this is anecdotal, both my friend and I picked up BSL really easily. The grammar has a logic to it.

We are just at the start of the journey in our house but just wanted to say if you are anywhere near Drumshambo I could recommend you going to assist dyslexia they have fabulous tutors and even run parent classes .
I have two family members that have used the service and I have recently gone to the parents class for tips on how to support our little one. They also have workbooks you can purchases to do at home.
https://www.facebook.com/assistdyslexia/

I just wanted to add that my dd is a very talented singer songwriter, but always struggled with reading music, so never did well in formal music lessons. She found the Simply Music technique (a lot of improvisation) really empowering and conducive to her dyslexia.

This is a really good post.

I have just retrained as a dyslexia assessor - you need to do quite a lot of tutoring as part of that. The big successes for me with primary aged children have been around building confidence. I get comments from parents like 'thank you for making him believe he can do anything' - and all it really is it helping them recognise what they find difficult, helping them accept that they'll always find that difficult, but that finding things difficult, while annoying, is also fine. So many dyslexic children have had 'lost' experiences in the classroom, they just want to feel part of it, and increased confidence can do that.

Be prepared for it to take quite a bit of time to show progress. Their confidence comes first, but actual learning is still going to take time, need lots of repetition and potentially lots of different strategies to find things that stick. 8 - 10 sessions seems to be about the time needed to 'break down' their preconceived ideas about their own abilities, learning, feelings about literacy, before you can build it up again specific to them. Also be prepared for there to be possibly be really slow progress. Tiny bites. In the meantime though, they'll start feeling good in class.

I'm waffling, it's been a long week.