How do you help your dyslexic children to revise?

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My son is in Yr8, so things are stepping up a gear in terms of frequency and duration of tests. He's choosing his gcse options now, so gcses are feeling closer. His dyslexia means that his ability to read through large volumes of information and distill them into notes/flashcards to revise from is limited. It's painfully slow. At the moment, I am having to revise with him and act as a scribe for the flashcards/notes. I can see this will need to continue. Are there any methods that can help him to revise as he moves towards gcses? Any resources that we can tap in to? The sheer volume of information to process and remember for science, for example, is huge and seems like an impossible mountain to climb.

Does DS use assistive technology? Text to speech software and maybe speech to text? Can DS touch type?

For certain subjects, especially science, Tassomai is helpful for some.

Some do need someone to help with making revision notes, no matter what support is put in place.

There are some online sites which can make flash cards/revision cards. I haven’t used any so can’t comment on any specifically.

Has DS had any study skills support from school?

Thanks for your reply. He doesn't use assisted tech and is not confident with tech or looking different to his peers, so doesn't like the thought of even using a chromebook. I'll check out Tassomai.

Yes, I have accepted I will need to continue to be hands on with it all. But would love to find ways of him being more independent with it all, even if it's just for a few of the subjects! I'm already supporting his older ADHD brother through his gcse years so I already have revision fatigue 😆. I've been recommended a site to produce revision cards so will explore this a bit more.

He has curriculum support at school twice a week in place of learning a second language. I don't get much feedback about what they do, but essentially reading and writing practice. He also has a dyslexia tutor for half an hour at school, who goes over spelling techniques, which I am feeling is not very useful but hate to give up any support he is provided with. I am not sure if they cover study skills, but imagine they must.

Would DS at least use assistive tech at home? Peers wouldn’t have to know. Lots will be using tech to make revision resources, anyway.

I would speak to the school about study skills support. And also support for becoming more confident with using tech to support his difficulties and promoting assistive tech.

When you get to GCSE courses, there are revision cards you can buy. That might not be so helpful at KS3 because curriculums vary.

Thanks. Spookily school have just emailed to say they are going to start offering him a chromebook in lessons. We have one at home so will try to get him practising on that. I'll ask them about study skills support. In the meantime will just keep plugging away with the random revision!

Have a look at Katie’s Classroom audio revision guides

It's likely the school will provide loads of materials including flashcards online so it will be more a case of finding what is best to use. If he is visual then one of the free mind mapping softwares like Ayoa might be good and is really easy to use. Also for GCSEs it's worth thinking tactically about what to focus on. So in science for example they need to get their spellings close enough to be understood, but in certain case like mitosis/meiosis they need to be accurate. There are lots of good youtube videos for trying to make things more memorable. My son is year 10 with Dyslexia/Dyspraxia/ADHD so I've already accepted that GCSEs aren't designed in a format that suits him and ultimately his well-being is more important than how many 'good' grades he comes out with. We are emphasising that if he fails GCSE English he will have to repeat it again and again so it's best to put in effort now and get it over with.