It’s Dyslexia Awareness Month

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I’m delighted to have been published in Magic Town as their  guest blogger, as October is dyslexia awareness month, so I have some guidance for parents whose children may be struggling with reading because of dyslexia .

Have you ever studied a foreign language and been confused by the words in the textbook? Now, imagine what it would be like to feel that way every time you picked up a book even in English. This will give you some idea what it means to be a child who is dyslexic.

Children with dyslexia see letters on the page but can have trouble “breaking the code” to make sense of the words. Reading, writing, comprehension and spelling can be challenging. Children with dyslexia may also struggle to discriminate differences in letter sounds, and may reverse letters in a word, or words in a sentence. It’s important to emphasize, however, that dyslexia isn’t the result of a lack of intelligence or laziness.

If your child is dyslexic, hopefully he or she was diagnosed early and is receiving special help with reading at school. But as parents you can also help your dyslexic children at home. Your attitude, interest, enthusiasm and patience are crucial to your child’s success with reading.

Read Regularly

Children with dyslexia need to practice their reading skills regularly. Encourage them to read all types of materials: books, comic books, magazines and newspapers. They should read out loud to you and siblings. The type of reading material is less important than the fact that they are improving their reading skills. So let them choose what appeals to them, without judgement.

Find Interesting Books At Just The Right Level

Find books specifically made for dyslexic readers that have an appropriate reading level and interesting topic matter. Look for books with short chapters and sentences, and a controlled vocabulary level. Many publishers produce books that pair interesting topics at just the right reading level.

Try Audio Books and Apps

Audio books that enable you to listen to a narrator while following along with the printed words at the same time, are excellent for all developing readers, especially dyslexic children. While listening to the narrator’s intonation and expression, children will also learn how letters and words are “chunked.” Following along will also help children learn to recognize words.

Magic Town has just this sort of mechanism in its stories, or “Livebooks.” The gently animated illustrations seem to make the characters leap off the page and the text always appears below the illustrations. And in three of the four reading modes (Watch, Play and Explore) children can listen to a narrator and see the words on the screen. The fourth mode, Read Together, enables either an adult or a child to read the words out loud. This is helpful for practicing reading skills.

Read the full article here in Magic Town where stories live 🙂

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