The other answer has nothing to do with your question.

Try using a ruler or strip of paper placed under the math problem you’re working on. It will help keep you from losing your place.

That is a mild disability.

Mostly schools in prosperous suburbs are better resourced than those in poorer areas.

I don’t know where you live, but try this…they may help you locate a program that is appropriate for him:

http://proliteracy.com/NetCommunity/Page.aspx?pid=298&srcid=191

Good Luck

There is not a ‘cure’ but there is improvement, and you learn to work around it. Go back to the doctor for ADD: I think there are other medications now. For your textbooks, learn through listening. Go to Recording for the Blind & Dyslexic: www.rfbd.org. You can get all your textbooks downloaded to your computer. If you follow along, your reading speed will pick up by listening and reading at the same time.

You can make it through college with audio books: thousands of people do it every year.

I flunked algebra three times before I made it through. Finally, I took a class that taught it a different way: it turns out I just can’t process it when it’s told to me, but a self-study book that was written for self-study made all the difference.

The student with dyslexia needs to learn systematic strategies to approach reading, not remediation. An accommodation with the reading/writing problem and the speech to text (and obverse) is helpful. It is physically exhausting for a student with reading problems to read for an hour. It is equal to a five-mile hike in physical impact. The PDA takes the place of lists and paper calendars, which pretty much rule a successful person’s life.

My son writes in cursive using D’Neilian style because it has no fancy loop and is taught with connectors on all lower case letters. This helps him recognize that a group of letters forms a single word and does translate easily to the manuscript print he reads in textbooks. He was tutored following the Orton-Gillingham method. He learned letter sounds and to write them as he heard/said them. The trained tutor followed this multi-sensory approach which gave my son what he needed to succeed. He was tutored three times a week in one-hour sessions from third grade. This was continued during the summers and school years until 7th grade. He also learned sight words. In middle and high school he was in the Beta Club.

He is a successful college graduate with academic awards in his areas of concentration. He will be in graduate school in the fall. He uses MS Word with grammar and spellcheck for his research papers, followed by a final edit by a skilled English student. He also relies on his Franklin Speaking Spelling Dictionary which also reads definitions aloud. (When he was in grade school he used a Franklin Spelling Ace that spoke words aloud and suggested words for whatever misspelled word he typed into the program.)

The bottom line is, the student learns a strategy, or group of strategies, that help accomplish the goal of making him/her literate. It may not be in a conventional sense of what most of us perceive as normal, but in fact we all have little idiosyncrasies in different areas. The student needs to do what works for him/her. The sooner he/she can develop a Standard Operating System for him-/herself, the better. I know many teachers are not receptive, but a strong parent advocate can make them see the light.

Also, remember to teach the child to stand up for him-/herself as early as possible. Self-advocacy will prepare him/her for many situations in life, even if the parent has to follow-up throughout k-12 schooling. College is different and parents no longer have a say in what happens, so the sooner the child can calmly state his/her needs, the better.

Also, try Recording for the Blind & Dyslexic: www.rfbd.org. They should be able to tell you; they provide books on audio to blind and dyslexic students, so you can learn through listening.

Your not supposed to recognize function words your brain supplies them from the surrounding text. Surely you have had the experience of learning a new word, then suddenly you see the word all the time whereas before you didn’t even know it existed – because your brain was skipping it.

The trick is finding where your strengths are and then using that as much as possible. If reading is going to be slow for you, then set aside more time, try reading out loud yourself, or following with your finger.

If you are seriously concerned about this, talk to your school counselor and see if you qualify to be evaluated for learning styles by your school psychologist.

Good Luck!

–Cindy