Friday
One technique that my students enjoy involves writing their words - without pencil, paper, keyboard or other conventional writing tool.  The student uses his forefinger and writes the word on the inside of his lower arm.  As he forms the letters in print, he also says them aloud.  Once he has all of the letters written, he carefully slides the letters into his open palm.  The child closes his fist and gently places his closed fist somewhere on his head.  He gently taps his fist and the word is released into that particular location in his head.  When it is time for a spelling test, the child can "locate" and extract the word that he needs.  I have had students actually "find" a particular word and place it back on their arms before writing it on their paper.

Wednesday
Another technique that works for several subjects, particularly spelling, is to have a secretary or recorder who will write down what the child provides as an answer.  The recorder does not comment nor correct; s/he merely writes down for the child the answer that the child provides to the question.  This works particularly well for students whose handwriting is a problem and who become so involved in how to form the letters that they forget what they are trying to write.  I can have older students work has partners - one records while the other spells and then they switch roles.

Monday
While observing KK in the classroom, I have noticed that he struggles with the following tasks when reading:
• Visual tracking is difficult.
• Sounding out words and chunking words causes increased frustration.

When KK is spelling, he displays the following difficulties:
• Letter reversals when writing b, d.
• He often spells words phonetically.
• Rushes through spelling/ writing tasks to keep-up with his peers, not slowing down to apply knowledge he has about suffixes, vowel sounds, etc.

In the area of math, KK struggles with:
• Number reversals when writing 2, 5, often asking, “Is this the right way?”
• Organizing/ lining-up columns when subtracting or multiplying.
• Following multi-step directions/ answering multiple parts to a problem.
• Organizing his thought processes to explain how he came to a solution for a math problem.

Tuesday
Counting backwards: When my students had to count backwards from 20 they got really frustrated. We used concrete blocks on the outside of the school and wrote numbers on them with chalk. The students touched each block counting forward and then counted them backwards. We walked forward and walked backwards to count them. A great success!

Wednesday
Abdul takes a really long time to get his work completed. Iit may be math/s or English or an exam. He needs lots of reinforcement. He often tells me that he is tired and that he feels sleepy. But after I spoke to his mum and after reading the module of this course I know it is only a defence mechanism used. I had first met Abdul two years ago, when I taught him for only a month. I often remember the first day he came to school. His mum was trying to convince him that he has to come to school to study, but he was quiet adamant and disappointed. After his mum left he was not happy but the Teaching Assistant and I gave him some games and after a few days he was quiet alright. But this year there is positive change in his attitude towards school. He seems to be happy and loves to play with his best friend. His friend joined school only later last year. Abdul got very attached to his friend and loves his swimming, PE lessons and break time very much because he can spend more time with his friend.

Thursday
Elliot goes out daily for 20 minutes to our Special Educational Needs room and I asked him for his views on this. He appreciates the extra help now, although he hated it when he was aged 7. He was very angry then as he didn’t know why he couldn’t do the work the others did. Now he knows he’s dyslexic and how to tackle it, he likes the time to be able to work differently: kinaesthetically and noisily, which he enjoys, but wouldn't do this in the classroom. He didn’t feel embarrassment at coming out, "Lots of people do it so no one takes any notice". He liked me just opening the classroom door, looking at him and ‘mouthing’ his name; the teacher just nods at him, without interrupting the lesson. He never misses PE or television programs but sometimes Design/Technology or Art (which he is good at, but said - although he groans to himself - that it wasn’t very often and he didn’t miss the entire lesson.

Friday
Steven always used to put his head on his arm on the desk while he was writing. Due to this posture, very often his paper would slip away under his pen. I spoke to him about the right posture in writing and explained to him to use his free hand for holding the paper in its place. I also told him that if he puts his head down, that he would feel sleepy and would not be able to concentrate on his work, as we put our head down to rest. I explained to him that he needed to be alert when he is doing his work; therefore he should not put his head on the desk when he was working but rather sit in an upright position. I corrected his posture regularly and praised him whenever his writing was neater. He is improving with his posture and also with his handwriting. He feels very happy when he sees that his work is much neater and that I give him a smiley face on his work for his handwriting and continued effort to improve.

Monday
Pupils in my school have always been tested the “formal” way before, i.e. pen + paper, which made it quite hard for the weak or dyslexic child. However over recent years we have started to review our assessment recording policy. Dyslexic pupils are now allowed 25% extra time for the exams in a separate and cosy room without a clock - as one child said: “Miss, I just panic when I hear this tick-tack of the clock!” For last year’s exams, Gary, a boy with dyspraxia, was allowed a scribe in most of his subjects. A teacher just wrote everything he said. Without the stress of writing his exams, Gary produced good results to the great surprise of all his teachers. With the review of our policy, teachers are now being asked to assess pupils on different criteria, i.e. on oral work, group work, etc.

Tuesday
I noticed one boy the first day I started working as a Special Needs teacher. He used to bunk classes, play the fool in class, make nasty remarks, not do his homework, and was always saying “Oh, I’m sleepy, I hate school!” He always had something to say, annoying his classmates by hiding their pens or teasing them. He was the center of attraction as if the only thing he wanted was punishment. Instead of punishing him, one day I decided not to teach maths but talk to my students and on that day he told me “All teachers think that I’m stupid and that I’m only good at getting into trouble, it’s like a sticker on me! So, why should I change? And why don’t you punish me like the others?” I talked to him on an individual basis saying that I believed in him and that I was not here to judge him but to help him. He burst into tears and said thank you. Since that day, he tries his best and is the first to come into class.

Wednesday
Peter is very good at using a computer. He has one at home and access to several at school. However, the first lesson I observed him using a computer I noticed that he was totally distracted, bored and switched off. When I watched in trying to transcribe a piece of text onto the computer, the problem soon became evident. He had no idea that he could set the computer up for his own personal needs. We spent half the lesson changing settings. Changing the font size/type, altering the screen brightness, learning how to use the spell checker and the right click for alternatives has made a huge difference to him. I cannot believe the difference in his confidence. He now really enjoys working on the computer and has even taught his mum to use the right click. More of his work is coming into to school having been word processed - not perfectly, but we are getting there! Dyslexia Parents Resource - Software

Saturday
After looking through a few examples of David's schoolwork I have identified that nearly all of the common spelling errors among dyslexic children (any, many, does, because, friend, island, eyes, said, enought) give him trouble at some time or another. 'Any' is spelt 'eny, with 'many' following on as 'meny', 'said' becomes 'sed'. Remarkably I noticed that not only does he spell them wrongly but also that he is not even consistent with his mistakes. For example he spells the word 'does' as either 'dus' or 'dose'; 'friends' becomes sometimes 'frens' and at others 'frends'.

He appears to attempt most (especially unknown) words phonetically and I am guessing that this makes it difficult for him to associate any pattern with the word. Consequently, the next time he attempts this word it is as if he has never spelt that particular word before.

David enjoyed acronyms and even participated in their construction. He was much amused to find that his acronym for 'any', Ants Never Yawn, was already listed in the book I use. Others that we came up with were: 'Many' - Men Always Need Yoghurt; 'Does' - Dogs Only Eat Sausages. For 'Friends', we used - I to the End will be your Friend - as we found that trying to make up such a long acronym was not only difficult, but difficult to remember, even once we had!.

Monday
The old name for dyslexia - word blindness - is very apt in describing one of the symptoms: difficulty with word recognition. One little boy I am working with is completely baffled when confronted with a word starting with Wh, they all look the same to him. His solution is to run through a list of all the Wh (what , where, why, etc.) words he knows until he lands on the correct one. This may be connected with a problem recognizing the sounds that letters make (phonics), a problem which is compounded by the many bizarre sound and letter formations which have grown up in standard English over several centuries, or the problem may be related to visual recognition and the actual structure of parts of the brain.

Wednesday
The letters most frequently reversed by Andrew are b, d, p and the number 9. Being a teenager the exercise of 'writing' the letters on a carpet or cloth is a little immature for him so other methods of learning these have had to be invented. To distinguish between 'b' and 'd' he will tend to quietly place his hands under the table and form the letters with his fingers. He does also remember to himself the exercise of imagining a bed with 'b' for the head and 'd' for the foot. This is funny on occasions as he giggles thinking of the letters the wrong way around and imagines the 'person' falling from the bed! The reversal of 'p' and '9' is something that has been more of a challenge to correct. This may be due to the fact that as soon as he has written them incorrectly he realises his mistake and alters them. We have not yet found an effective solution to correcting this reversal but no doubt he will himself come up with a way of remembering which way around they are meant to go. Dyslexia Online Magazine - Multi-sensory Teaching Methods.

Thursday
At school LK gets very embarrassed if he is asked to read out his work to the rest of the class. The teacher and myself are very aware of this, so the teacher will always let me know before each lesson if he is going to ask LK to read, or I let the teacher know when LK has done a good piece of work that he could read out. Because I know when LK is going to read out his work, ten minutes before the lesson ends I will take LK out of the classroom to pracise what he is going to read. LK knows that he will not be asked to read out his work unless he has gone over it first with me, this makes him less nervous at the end of each lesson and he is more confident when reading his work out.

Monday
I made up 10 sets of pairs of cards, using words that LK was struggling with in his reading book. He was very eager to play the game because he thought he was getting out of doing his school work. LK soon realised that after choosing the correct cards to make a pair, he could win the game, knowing this made him concentrate more. I gave lots of praise when he turned the correct cards to make a pair and when he finally won the game he was very pleased with himself and asked if we could play it again.

We played the game again, but this time when LK turned a card he had to read out the word on it. By the end of the second game LK could read all the words correctly, he was so pleased with himself that he asked if he could play the game with a different set of words. The game was so successful that we now play it each time LK gets a new reading book, using the words that he finds difficult to read.

Tuesday
I had a chat with Andrew about what embarrassed him in the classroom. Straight away he said reading out aloud in front of the class. Especially when some children laugh if he makes a mistake, it really makes his reading worse. Also if he has to read any of his written work aloud, it has the same effect. Spelling is another area in which he can be embarrassed. He is the only one in the lowest group, so when the teacher reads his words out for a test he is very conscious of his low level. When the homework is up on the board and the teacher asks who hasn’t finished, Andrew says that he is always last. No, the teacher was not aware of his feelings. Andrew and myself went to see her and since then she has told him that he does not have to read to the class. His friend can test his spelling and his teacher will print out his homework.

Wednesday
Several students I have worked with experience varied difficulties distinguishing left from right. Even after years of daily saying the pledge to the flag, they are often confused as to which hand to place over their heart. They compensate by looking at a nearby student and copying them. Another frequent problem is a lack of awareness as to which side of their notebook paper to begin writing on. They begin on the back side with the holes turned to the right. This looks correct to them. I often use colored re-inforcements to help them "see" the correct side.

Friday
When I first discussed the idea of writing the things that Andrew was good at and the things he was not so good at, he was not very keen on the idea at all. He kept saying it was a dumb thing to do. When we started on the 'Things I can do well' side he said that he couldn’t do much. By the time we had finished he was quite amazed. Then we started on the other side - 'Things he was not so good at': after spelling, reading and writing he had trouble coming up with any more ideas. Andrew never showed any emotion about his work, but the next day I saw his parents and they told me how excited he was when he showed them the results. Then he told them "I’m not dumb after all". Since then he has started reading chapter books, which he would never attempt before we did this confidence-building exercise.

Monday
I had noticed that certain children whisper to themselves when working out mental math problems. I wondered if this would help dyslexic children. Over one week I had a 20-minute session each day with a 10-year old child, James. I started day one, by giving him five mental math problems to be worked out in his head, then five more where he was encouraged to scribble down the numbers spoken and the operation of the sum. I explained to James how to whisper the information to himself while he was working out the answer. The marks for the second five were higher than the first. This showed him that better results could be obtained by the second method, so this is what we worked on each day. By the end of the week there was a definite improvement in scores and James was also much quicker with the working out.

Tuesday
Worksheets printed on yellow paper rather than white are commonly requested by my dyslexic learners as this is easier to read. If using handouts these too could be printed on yellow paper or have relevant or important parts highlighted. It is important to think about the font used when producing worksheets, as both style and size should be selected to aid the dyslexic learner. Using a picture or two on a worksheet not only gives visual clues but can also give a professional look. Think about different forms of worksheets other than just write the answer in a sentence. Cloze exercises are popular, multiple choice is a frequently used form of questioning in the adult world and marking the correct answer to a sentence rather than having to write the correct answer will enable the dyslexic child to keep up with their classmates.

Wednesday
I feel that one of the biggest obstacles that anyone, and particularly a child who is dyslexic, has to overcome is what other people say about them. It can even be what they perceive other people are saying about them. As a teacher, I have to be careful what I say even when joking with my students because what I mean and what the student perceives may be two different things. As teachers work with students, praise and being very precise in conversation is an absolute necessity. I have found that I can joke with some students and not with others.

Saturday
Last year my students were allowed to use a computer program which can read out loud (through headphones) for the first time to take their state assessment. Our state was the only one to do it and only 180 students in the state elementary through high school took the test “on-line”. I had 10 of those students. We took the practice test in the fall: multiple-choice questions and open response questions. Passages were read and questions ask. We practiced at least once a week taking a passage and having it read on the computer- a story, science lesson, reading test, etc. In the spring state testing these students took their test on the computer on-line; at the same time their peers took theirs with pencil and paper. When asked after the test how they felt, one student responded, “I felt I had control of my work and my answers.”

Monday
I asked Elizabeth how she finds copying from a white board in class. This is what she told me: “It is awfully hard having to copy from the board. There are so many words and they all get jumbled up. It takes so long to write because you have to keep starting at the beginning again to find where you got to on the board, after you have written the word on paper. I always run out of time and the other children in class get annoyed with me because I am so slow. The teacher has to rub off the beginning to put the rest of the work up, so sometimes he is then waiting for me, so he can rub off where I’ve got to.”

Wednesday
Some students with dyslexia are bothered by bright lights. Some of our classrooms have white walls, mostly white tiles on the floor, and white ceilings with many bright lights. The students prefer it when some of the lights are turned off, and there is less glare on the pages in their books. I did not realize students had difficulty looking at the text on a bright screen from overhead transparencies. Since I move from one room to another for my classes, I very rarely use an overhead projector.

Thursday
A.B. is nine years old and has a fantastic imagination; he loves stories, so we spend a lot of time on a word processor. He will type out a story and,of course, all his spellings will be correct because he will use the spell checker. The best thing about using a word processor is that even if he only types a few lines you can enlarge the writing and make it look like a whole page was written. He gets lots of compliments from the other students as they will say things like "did you write all that by yourself?" and of course his confidence grows and that, to me, is half the battle.

Friday
At the beginning of the year I explained to my students that their brains may remember things easier if they speak them out loud. I also explained that this technique can be used when reading, writing, and completing mathematics work. The entire class, Steven. included, was very surprised by this. I have taught them that they can also trick their brains into thinking that the words are being said aloud by moving their lips, but not making noise. This is a strategy I utilized in school a lot and still use to this day. It enables me to “hear” the words without distracting other people.

Steven and I have done extensive work with this technique from the beginning of the school year. I recognized that he needed to hear what he was reading and, often times, thinking in order to process it. It is very common for Steven to raise his hand when needing help with something and, when I arrive, he asks his question or states what he understands and finds that he has the answer without needing my help.

Steven is now beginning to utilize this strategy without my direct influence all the time. He has told me that it makes the problem more understandable. He also informed me that whispering while he works or at least moving his lips has made him feel like he has more mastery of the material being covered. Furthermore, I have noticed that he is now less likely to make an omission or careless mistake when he talks the problem out.

Sunday
Tracy suffers from low self-confidence and takes what other say to heart. If another child (or teacher, and it has happened) says that Tracy is stupid, she really believes it and I have to start reassuring her all over again. As she suffers from low self-confidence she uses various strategies to avoid what is difficult. She "forgets" books and must get them from her locker, she drops her pencil on the floor and takes a while to return to her chair. She will ask to go to the bathroom (she uses this for two reasons, i.e. to avoid starting work and to think about the instruction from the teacher). Sometimes this avoidance can cause problems with teachers and at home, e.g. she did not complete an English homework sheet (as she believed she couldn’t do it) and, when asked for it, said she hadn’t done it; she then had to complete it along with another worksheet. This of course compounds the problem because she believes that if she were not so stupid she would not have been in trouble

However, when I did the confidence-building exercise with her, Tracy was surprised that there were more items in the 'Good at' column. She said she felt glad that she was good at so many things, and of the things in the 'Not so good at' column math and spelling were the only two important things! She took a copy of the table and pinned to the door in her room so that she can look every day and see what she is good at. She also taped a copy inside her homework diary. We also left blank boxes so that she can add things to the list as time goes by. Later that day, she telephoned her dad at work to tell him all the things that she is good at and left the room afterwards with a big smile on her face.

Wednesday
I heard a little girl called Nancy read to me; she is eight years old. She came from her classroom with a book which she declared that she hated. When I asked her why, she said it was too hard but her teacher had said she had to read it. We began to read it together but, of course, Natasha was exactly right and the book was indeed far too difficult. I experimented by prompting her on the unknown words but discovered I had to do it on twowords in every three! I immediately asked her teacher if I could change her book, and she agreed, offering a pile of far easier books for Nancy to try. Nancy chose one and the transformation in her was astonishing; since it was a book on moving house, which she had herself done so recently, she was interested and keen and was happy to read several pages with far less prompting on my part. Dyslexia Parents Resource - Hearing Your Child Read

Thursday
10-year old James uses 'Read and Write' in school and sometimes at home. He likes the word prediction feature and says that it helps him quite a bit. He also uses the spell checker feature, when he has completed his assignment he uses the spell checker to correct his spelling. He highlights his sentences as he completes each sentence and uses the talking feature (Genie) to read it back to him. Whenever he has something to write in school he uses this program. At home he will use this program as well, but also uses the regular word processing program when he doesn't want the distraction of the other program. Learning to use the computer is very important to dyslexic children so the can overcome some of their downfalls and learn in a way that is best for them. They should continually experiment with technologies and various methods of accommodating their learning difference so that they can always work to their fullest potential. I truly believe that a computer will be the key to optimal learning and success as the dyslexic child grows and moves on to higher education, but they need to be comfortable and successful with it at an early age so that they can grow with it as a learning tool.

Saturday
I have been working with William, helping him with letter sounds and letter recognition. He was having difficulties with some letters - b,d,p and high frequency words. He needed more than just a visual or auditory input. I am now using some multi-sensory ways to help him. We have been writing large letters in various media such as on the carpet, in sand and in the air involving both touch (tactile) and movement (kinetic) senses.

Another approach has been to use plasticine to mould the letters and then produce a model of an item with the same initial phoneme, relating the sound to the letter with visual and tactile stimuli. Using the water tray, magnetic letters and a rod we have fished for letters to spell out simple words like 'log'. All these multi-sensory approaches have proved of some value to William, who is making sure but steady progress.

Dot's Diary continues