Dyslexia and reading comprehension, how to improve it?

[zebrazoo]

My son has a great deal of difficulty with comprehension.

His single word reading skills are very good, maybe above age level even (this is thought to be mainly a huge sight reading vocabulary)

His reading aloud of a text, however, is very poor as he stumbles, misses words, switches the order and substitutes opposite words, although he has improved a lot with vision therapy and glasses.

The big problem though is reading comprehension. Its not just the slight word muddling problem, he doesn't seem to be able to deduce the overall meaning of a paragraph or few sentences, cant work out the point of it or the key facts, cant link it to things he already knows, so any new work baffles and upsets him.

He has survived so far by gaining the overall gist of the meaning, which in a basic comprehension test which includes common sense answers would serve him well. But as he gets older (lower secondary) the complexity of the material and the need to deduce specific meanings means the coping strategies are no longer working.

I think I need something that works on specific comprehension skills, actually it looks like it might be the skill strands that they use in America?

A bunch of comprehension books or exercises wont help as they dont actually teach the skills (and most school lids wouldnt need the skills teaching anyway)

I have looked at headsprout/mimio - the sample lesson is very very easy and since the meaning is very clearly set out in the text it doesnt address his actual problem (eg The cat sat on the mat. Where did the cat sit? etc).

But how complex does headsprout get and do you think it will help?

Also seen Stride Ahead book by the authors of Toe by Toe and Stareway to Spelling, but I really cant see from the video how that will improve comprehension over and above the cat sat on the mat example? Any experience? [http://www.dyslexia-consultants.co.uk/Dyslexia-books-for-teachers-and-students/Reading-/-Comprehension/stride-ahead-an-aid-to-dyslexia-and-comprehension/prod_12.html?review=read#read_review Stride Ahead video]

Seen some comprehension booster pc program on a dyslexia website (about £75) but this looks quite rubbish and unsuitable, any experiences?

Looked at Jacobs Ladder books by Prufrock, book one (not the Kindergarten one) looks about right, but the later books are useless as they are addressing the wrong skills so dunno if second half of book one will be useless too.

Any experiences or ideas for me?

Sorry, maybe this was too long.

Anyone recommend some resources to help dyslexic child (early secondary) with reading comprehension.

Can read it but struggles to deduce accurate meaning, link to other knowledge, understand the overall point of the article etc.

Am mainly concerned about non fiction as it is affecting all other subjects

I'm dyslexic.

Reading comprises several skills & to me it sounds as if he's caught between technical reading fluency, and then understanding the text. I personally think you might be better using audio stories to work on understanding a passage of text and building his technical reading fluency in the meantime as totally seperate sessions?

Eventually his technical reading fluency will be at a point where he can read speedily and comfortably without having to think about it. Then he start to work on his comprehension of the text. Right now he's being asked to concentrate on 2 seperate tasks and perhaps it's too much to soon?

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/special_needs/1566842-Mimio-reading-comprehension-Headsprout Moondogs comments on this thread might help? Take a look at the Mimio reading comprehension product (part 2 of the headsprout offering).

Using mindmaps can also help greatly with understanding non-fiction texts - there's loads of different free software offerings or use A3 paper and coloured pens to create your own. Loads on the web on how to create mindmaps to aid study - it's a well recognised study technique his teachers should be able to get him started on if prompted nicely.

ahh, so you are suggesting that although his reading isnt bad at all (for a dyslexic person), it may still be hindering the comprehension - I hadnt thought of that at all - I wasnt even going to bother with reading skills.

what about this then Stride Ahead video for improving technical reading?

How quickly and easily does he "get it" when he listens to audio stories (BBC has some great radio science & history programmes btw) compared to when he reads the same data from text?

If there's a disparity between his comprehension from text and from audio only sources then I'm probably onto summat re his technical reading ability. You reading his text books and recording them onto mp3 would help him understand his schoolwork for general homework purposes and then you can work seperately on his reading fluency speed for a while.

You can buy digital recorders very cheaply. My sister (dyslexic) used one extensively at school and for Uni lectures and still carries one in her pocket for important business meetings. She then creates a mindmap with the recording when she gets home. Standard note taking just doesn't work for some people iykwim.

Using a digital recorder in class as I suggest is a VERY common technique as you get further up the education system, school shouldn't object (one student teacher on my pgce course had a pocket recorder ffs!)

If still looking for a specific product to help then I'd still go with one of the headsprout products as they seem to specifically help with combining the two skills during the course of the second product in a way that other products don't (says me with my own dyslexia hat on - my son has ASD on top so my queries to moondog were aiming in that direction iyswim).

OR take him to a behavioral optremetrist - I was horrified when I found out that 57% of all kids with reading issues age 7 in Australia were found to have easily resolvable visual tracking issues. It's standard practice to test em over there, whereas in the UK this seems to be almost unheard of by regular teachers.

Hi Zebrazoo,
I myself suffer from dyslexia and found several different types of software that really helped me with it over the years but it really depends on finding something that works for your son:

? Claroread
Claroread reads out your document word by word, meaning you can hear the word phonetically rather than having to read it. It sports a wide range of visual tools including colouring, highlighting, and focusing on text as it is spoken by the computer. It also helps written accuracy with an enhanced spell check, homophone check, thesaurus and speaking dictionary. Words can also be spoken back as they are typed.
Link [http://www.clarosoftware.com/index.php?cPath=355]

? Streamline Text
Streamline Text is a simple solution that works by adding the last word of the previous line at the beginning of the next and colouring it. It is designed to help people to move from the end of one line to the beginning of the next accurately and quickly without skipping or re-reading lines.
Link [http://www.streamlinetext.com]

? Read & Write
Read & Write has multiple features including text-to-speech, a screenshot, DAISY and PDF reader, and screen masking. The text-to-speech means that users may listen to the text phonetically rather than having to read it and the readers try to read text off less accessible document formats.
[http://www.texthelp.com/North-America/Our-products/Readwrite]

? Dragon Speak Naturally
I know less about this but hear it's very useful for reading and writing documents using speech-to-text and vice versa.
[http://www.nuance.co.uk/landing-pages/products/backtoschool/default.asp]

I found Streamline Text to be the most useful due to it's ease of use and because it was very reasonably priced - would definitely recommend it!
I think they also do a free trial on their website if you want to try it out first.

I really hope this helps and you find luck with one of these solutions,
David