Getting extra help...

We have so much on our plate that I am finally caving in and getting help from DAS (Dyslexia Association of Singapore). Stacey's OG journey has been short and very interrupted. I have failed to give her the regular support that she needs, and so I have finally signed her up for classes with DAS. I hope I am not too late. At the same time, the new SNO or AE, as they are now called, has arrived at her school. However, she is not OG trained, so it's just as well that I signed Stacey up for classes at DAS. Ah well.

Zach is also going for classes with DAS but I am hoping that they will give him Maths support. He already gets language support at school, which is great.

We go for Induction this Saturday (oddly though, we only have to attend one session, whereas everyone else I know who have attended this in the past always attended two), and hopefully soon after they will be assigned a class near home. The nearest DAS centre from our home is a direct bus journey away, so if the going gets too tough, I'll get the kids to make their own way there and back if necessary. :) That's part of the advantage of having them of an independent age I guess.

Update on the Irlen Syndrome

So Stacey received her Irlen lenses late Jan... there was a huge delay but she finally got them. I think the glasses do help her because in the last two weeks or so she was starting to get lazy about wearing them... I often caught her without and had to remind her to do so... and correspondingly, she was also getting more tired and grumpier... even her ballet teacher commented that she was not "getting it" as she normally did. So I reminded her to put on her glasses as often as she could, and things have improved tremendously since...

On the same topic, Zach is going for his first appointment with Irlen Dyslexia Singapore. I decided that I would give Irlen Centre a go, and see how things are different. With Zach, the results of the testing with the overlays are not as obvious, but I think there are other benefits besides reading, just as Stacey gets other good "side effects" out of them too. Hopefully, I will remember to come in here and update on his findings and what we do in the end. I am also thinking of getting myself tested as well, because my eyesight is really getting "wonky" especially when I have been looking at the computer screen for far too long.

2nd Optometrist Appointment

Tomorrow Stacey goes for her 2nd appointment with the Optometrist, to use the Intuitive Colorimeter to determine the exact shade she needs for her Irlen glasses. She's excited and so am I... more because I'm hoping that this will make a difference to her reading speed and her comfort with reading books.

We are going with the lenses simply because since it was obvious the overlays helped, this will hopefully help her in reading things off the board, off the computer screen as well as when she is doing her exams and having to write on white paper as well. If her brain doesn't have to work so hard compensating for the perceptual "interference", then it can apply itself to the task of comprehension and expression better, I suppose. In other countries, you can request that the schools support you by printing on coloured paper (notes, test papers and so on), but I think for that to happen in Singapore, you'd need to find yourself a teacher who is willing to go that far out for you... and while there are many many lovely teachers in her school, I wouldn't dream of asking them to go to that extent just for one child, when I can simply help her by giving her the filters right there in front of her eyes.

So far, she's preferred books where the print are nice and big and the line spacing is also far apart. This means that she normally ends up with books for younger readers. I've tried buying her books meant for kids her age, but she dislikes certain kinds of print... font that are too small, or the words look too "crowded"... she has steadfastly avoided all such print. So I'm hoping that with the Irlen glasses, we can "graduate" to books meant for bigger girls, and she can then be exposed to more ideas and sentence structures and hopefully that will help her more in her writing and expression as well.

Ah well. We'll see. I better not count my chickens before they hatch. :p

Visual Stress or Meares-Irlen Syndrome

Brought Stacey to see a pediatric optometrist because despite having generally very good eyesight, she would consistently complain that her eyes hurt after reading for a short while - usually around 10 minutes, and never longer than 15mins at a stretch.

I had read about how some eye problems can translate into a child being diagnosed as dyslexic and heard also from the Educational Psychologist that there was an optometrist here who could look into such things, and so, after hearing her complain again, for the umpteenth time, I decided to sign her up for a full eye examination.

Since the time she was little and was starting to read a little after starting OG lessons, she would complain of being tired after reading or doing work. So this has been a consistent complain for the last 4 years or so. One day, her cousins and my kids were having a read-a-thon, and they were competing to see who could stay reading the longest... and oddly enough, after reading for about 10 mins or so, she stopped, saying that her eyes were too tired to go on. She was also reading one of her favourite books - from the Magic Puppy series, so I knew that it was not the book or the story that was boring and causing her to stop. Her competitive spirit would also usually push her to go on no matter what, so for her to have stopped was a big deal. This was when I knew that the discomfort was real and not just an excuse.

At the optometrist's, she went through a whole battery of tests and was given a completely clean bill of health as far as her eyesight and condition of her eyes were concerned. However, the optometrist was concerned that she was complaining of discomfort after only such a short period of reading... so he decided to try out another test. This one involved the use of coloured overlays on a page - designed to ease the strain of reading. The explanation is a rather technical one, but I immediately knew what he was talking about because I find certain colours more soothing compared to the glaring white of a page on a book. This is especially so when the fonts are messy and complex. I don't like reading off a computer because of the illuminated screen, which is why I prefer the Kindle to the ipad for reading and so on.

So it was no surprise when she readily responded to the overlays and when she finally settled on a colour that she preferred (that caused her eyes to be more comfortable) the optometrist conducted the test, but getting her to read a paragraph that was really a string of about 6-8 easy words that were put together (seemingly) randomly.

With the overlay, she read more quickly, more fluently and covered more words in a minute, compared to without the overlay (same words, different order, different card) where there was obvious hesitance and more faltering with the reading. She also covered fewer words in the one minute. I think she also made more mistakes. So it was quite obvious that the coloured overlay helps. This is called the Meares-Irlen syndrome.

While this syndrome is not widely recognised as yet, more and more research and studies have shown that children are helped by the use of overlays and coloured tinted lenses during reading and work and so on... and it was obvious in the simple test conducted that day.

So we go back again for yet another test - this time to use a machine that will help pinpoint the exact shade that works for her... and we will be making her a pair of glasses that are tinted to help with her reading and work.

She's excited about the prospect of getting glasses, but also somewhat worried because she knows that she will look different from others and that her glasses will be different from that of all the other bespectacled children in her school. I pray that she will have supportive and understanding teachers who will help her cope with this change when she begins school next year. Since we will only be testing on Tuesday the 28th, I am not sure we will get the glasses in time for school when it reopens exactly one week later, especially over the New Year holiday... but we'll see.

Missing AE...

The hubby received a call today from Stacey's school - asking about the kind of support Stacey was receiving... and hubby referred them to me. Only, they didn't follow up and call me back. So I called the number that was logged on his phone.

Turned out it was not the AE for dyslexia... it was another lady - and she is the Learning Support Coordinator for the LSP. She was apparently collating data on the children, asking who needed support from the school in dyslexia. Stacey was supposed to have seen the AE at her school this year for support and OG lessons during her MT periods... but she only went for one lesson, after which, all was quiet. I only found out today that the AE had left in June or July. Quietly. Without so much as a word of farewell or accountability. Am not happy.

So the school is waiting for a new AE to be assigned, and meanwhile, there is simply no support whatsoever for the girls with dyslexia... and the new AE is not expected to come in until the 2nd half of next year.

Which accounts for my new resolve to reinstate Stacey's OG lessons to their rightful place. Sigh.

This blog keeps dying...

Yes... because my commitment to my own children's OG lessons is so lax. Oh excuses abound... somehow, when it's your own child, and not a "paid" (or even FOC) intervention slot for someone else, it's so easy to push it aside - oh, someone else needs help with schoolwork, which is more urgent... they need to complete their school hw... I am simply feeling lazy... or I simply didn't get down to preparing the next lesson! Argh.

In June, I stepped up the lesson prep for Stacey, since her need for OG is greater than Zach's... and had a 2-wk lesson plan all drawn up... but we never made it past lesson 2. Sad.

Today, I made a new commitment to Stacey to put aside time for OG. On her part, she must eat lunch quickly, and come in for "class" every Monday and Thursday at 2.40pm (she returns home from school at around 2.10pm)... and I, on my part, will keep up with lesson prep as if she were an "outside" student... I need to be accountable... and I need to make her OG lessons a priority. Argh! The same must go for Zach too... even though with him, I'm a little more uncertain because his powerful visual memory makes getting him to blend and learn rules difficult. He doesn't play by the rules. He approaches syllabication and reading in a topsy-turvy manner... sounding the word based on what he thinks is the correct spelling, rather than breaking it up by the sounds he hears. Then again, he could possibly have CAPD, which means that I will have to rethink my strategies with him. Ah well.

I haven't taught Kasser in almost a year. I've had to go to his home a couple of times, to counsel him and on one occasion to scold him, because he threw a tantrum when I asked to speak on the phone and defied his mom's request to come to the phone. Sigh. But there's been a breakthrough. Recently, I spoke to the Form Teacher on the mother's request, and I told the teacher my suspicions. As with most teachers unfamiliar with Dyslexia, she didn't see him as being LD... merely lazy or not trying. In any case, she was reluctant to do anything until the father agreed to the school referring the child to the counsellor... and that was a big hurdle in itself, because the father has "washed his hands off the children" of late, in exasperation and in an attempt to protect the children from his own temper. So, it was with great joy that I received the news that Kasser's mom successfully spoke to his dad and got him to give the approval to refer Kasser to the school counsellor and AE for Dyslexia. On Sunday, I helped Kasser's mom fill in a dyslexia screening form from the school... and I hope that he will get the help he so desperately needs.

Updates....

It's been forever... Sep was the last entry, and things have moved on.

Kasser, my one and only non-family student, has his lessons on hold for the time being. This is because he has moved on into the morning session at school, having been promoted to Primary 3 this year. As such, his mother is still waiting for his schedules to be more firmed before embarking on finding two afternoons or evenings for me to give him lessons. The biggest problems in finding a suitable time arise from the fact that I do have to take care and help my 3 children in the afternoon when they come home from school, which is when Kasser is now free, and because I have to be home with my kids, Kasser's mom now has to bring Kasser to me instead of my going to his place (since that would mean my 3 children would be left home alone). During the holidays, when my children were home, Kasser came over to my house for several lessons. My OG classroom is now set up, and I have a place for all my resources and materials, as well as a proper setup for lessons with us facing each other on either side of a table. I can also close the door and shut out the noise of having 3 other children in the house. So I am still waiting. Waiting to see how keen they are in finding a good solution to the obstacles that currently stand in our way.

Stacey's and Zach's lessons also took a back seat towards the end of last year as well because we switched on the "preparing for exams" battlemode. They were swamped with homework and just getting all that work done and trying to ensure that they still had time to take a break and be a kid was tough... never mind making time for OG lessons twice a week. Some days, they worked till bedtime (8pm) and didn't have time to play. Sad.

Stacey and Zach did reasonably well in their exams, and I am proud of the tremendous improvements they made. Despite their difficulties, both managed to score within the Band 2 range... with Stacey making an almost 10% jump!

Kasser also had a 5% improvement in his scores, so I was thankful for that too!

This year, Zach will continue having group lessons on Comprehension with the SNO in his school during Chinese once a week. Stacey is supposed to have her OG lessons with her SNO but nothing has been arranged yet. I really must email her. I find that the support in Zach's school seems slightly better than in Stacey's... but it's probably too early to tell just yet. We are having Stacey do OG in school to see if she responds better in the mornings rather than in the evenings when she's already tired from a long day at school. Also, it is guaranteed to be more consistent, so that will probably help her as well.

It is Official!!!

"Application for exemption from Mother Tongue - APPROVED"

Finally... we are free from the burden of Chinese... for Stacey that is... so no more Chinese exams this year and forever more! Yeah! My heart leapt with joy when I saw the official looking envelope from Stacey's school today... and when I saw the words above, I did a happy jig all the way to the kitchen to announce it to hubby... who was most amused by my dancing. Haha. But I am so glad that our battle with Chinese homework and Chinese teachers is now over!!!!

Update on Stacey

Stacey's Psych report finally came out at the end of July... the EP had just had a baby, and we had just returned from a H1N1 affected country, so we postponed the meeting till end of July.

Happily, the EP recommended an exemption for Chinese... much to Stacey's and my relief... sadly, the Special Needs Officer in her school has gone on long leave, and there is apparently no replacement for the time being, so I actually had to email the school's General Office to enquire about the status of the SNO's absence, and how that would affect Stacey's application for her exemption of Chinese. Thankfully, they were able to send in the application anyway, and we are now just waiting for the official approval from MOE for her to finally drop Chinese as a school subject.

The reason I am eager to have her drop Chinese is because the school is looking to bring up their results in Chinese, and they are piling on the homework and raising the bars... unfortunately for Stacey, this leaves her drowning in the process. Homework time is made so much more frustrating because there is so much homework, and she is unable to do it... and it frustrates me even more that we are spending so much time doing homework for a subject that she will eventually drop. So we look forward to the day when we can officially say byebye to the subject.

We have reinstated OG lessons to their rightful place - taking priority over homework and all other things, on the days that it is assigned. Still, it being done at home, it still gets pushed out of the way here and there... but we are back at it with much greater regularity now.

I'm also trying to work more now on fluency and automaticity... the EP revealed that Stacey seems to have trouble truly blending sounds... she tends to rely more on visuals than on blending, trying to "see" the word in her head before "sounding" out the word she is given. So we have been told to step it up on the visual memory side of things, as well as to train her to have a keener sense of visual differences - esp in letter positions. It was suggested that we use "spot the differences" games to train her to pick up on visual differences.

So I'm trying to do that more, besides playing more games that help her to distinguish between words that sound the same but are spelt different... a challenge because she's gotten to the stage where she has quite a few different ways to spell the various long vowel sounds.

I've also taken to spurring her on by giving her a reward system - to encourage her to try her best during class and to work towards her goal - receiving "cute paper" (something that is the rage now in her school apparently) when she finally accumulates enough stamps on her reward sheet. :)

Dead blog... but going to be revived...

Firstly, I must apologise, because this blog has effectively been dead for the last almost 4 months. Sorry about that.

I will now update in several nutshells about the various kids I have.

Kasser:
Kasser has stopped lessons for the time being. The economy has hit his family hard, but his dad is one of those who must pay for lessons and hesitate to accept when I offer to teach for free (until Kasser's mom finds a job). So I have not seen Kasser since the school holidays began, and I will not be seeing him for the next 2 weeks since I will be away, then on self-quarantine together with my children.

Zach and Stacey:
Lessons have been very haphazard in terms of frequency... homework got in the way most of the time, as well as a lack of discipline on my part. I have to do something about that. Next week, after we return, I am determined to set them back on track with OG.

Stacey's Psych Report:
We finally have exemption for Chinese more or less in the bag! Stacey went for a follow up session with the EP over the June Holidays, and the EP said that she would be giving her the diagnosis as well as asking for exemption for Chinese, and longer time during exams. So now, I'm waiting for the report to come out (we will only receive it after we return from our trip and after our LOA - cos the EP has a new baby and we don't want to bring any germs over...). This is a huge relief because Stacey's homework woes this semester has also been in part due to the Chinese teacher's habit of giving homework in chunks... 5-7 pages of work and writing, plus extra writing practice... and we are talking 2-3 pages worth. All due the next day. So not funny. And the task of writing is particularly difficult for Stacey, so she usually ends up in a meltdown on Chinese homework days. In fact, I took to not helping her and just asking her to treat her homework like the exams - so that her teacher would have a better idea of what she knew and did not know... otherwise, I would just end up giving her the answers and that made homework meaningless.

Exam Results:
This year, Stacey didn't have any special accomodations arranged like she did for last year in P1 (because she had a very enlightened teacher who provided her with good support. Unfortunately, we lost that teacher this year - she taught the P1s again) so she bombed her Spelling and (unseen) Dictation and brought home a score of only 66 (1/15 for S&D) when she could have scored 75 had she scored full marks for just the spelling section. Ah well. Still, she managed a 83 for Maths, which was wonderful, and of course, a fail for Chinese, which was expected.

Zach did reasonably well too - 74 for English, 70+ (can't remember now) for Maths... I think it was close to 80... then 66 for Science (where he got completely tripped up by the language and the fact that the answers had to be super precise). Without Chinese, his average score jumped up dramatically and he found himself ranked somewhere in the middle of his class, as opposed to the bottom 5 where he usually found himself in the previous years due to Chinese pulling his marks right down. So we're pleased with his work too.

Proud moments...

Zach came home a while back with a top score in his Topical Test 1 Composition Writing, scoring an impressive 15/20, being one of 2 top scorers in his class (the other top scorer is also the other dyslexic in the class).

This round, with the CA1s just over, he also came home with another top score, this time in his English CA Paper... an impressive 36/40... which translates to 90%! Good on him. Again, this is the top score in his mixed-ability class. He lost 3 marks in Comprehension, which is something that is expected, and he didn't know "canoeing" and "trekking", and so missed one MCQ. But overall, very good!!!

Stacey also came home with an impressive 48/50 for her latest Maths CA1!!! This was apparently also the highest in class, she said.

So I'm very proud of the two of them... they have worked really hard and done well. Good job! And all this without any accomodations to their dyslexia!

Stacey & Zach on Spelling Rules

I've been trying to integrate more games into OG lessons... on Saturday, we did the session entirely in games, moving away from the standard OG lesson for that day. We used spelling cards and I got them to verbalise the rules whenever they made a mistake. We used sorting cards for the "tch vs. ch", "dge vs. ge" and "ck vs k" words, explaining over and over again when to use what.

Zach was a challenge because he would keep relying on his visual memory to tell himself which words were correct instead of using the rules to sort out the words.

Zach is constantly a challenge because he has such a good visual memory bank... there are so many words that he already knows, so I'm constantly trying to find words that he doesn't know so he can rely on sounding them instead of on his pre-knowledge of the spelling. argh!

Backblog - Catch up Posts...

Oops, sorry, I haven't been updating this blog regularly... it's been almost 10 days since the last post. Anyway...

Friday 20th February
Kasser had his lesson again... I think we moved on the the -nk sound (which is essentially 4 sounds really, because it's 'ank', 'ink', 'unk' and 'onk') and also started him on the concepts of "letter", "word", "sound", "syllable", "vowel" & "consonant"... It was quite tough going at first, because he used "letter" and "word" interchangeably... and would also confuse "letter name" and "sound" as well... So we had to go through quite a few times with various words, having him identify the number of words / letters / sounds / syllables / vowels / consonants... I played a game from the 'Go Phonics' set at the end of the lesson and he was thrilled... and at the same time he got in some much needed "th" reading...

Saturday 21st February
Stacey & Zach had their OG lessons during our "campout" at Dance School - I call it a campout because we are at Dance School from 0930 to 1600h on Saturdays... thanks to the various classes and so on.

Zach had his 4th lesson and he did OK, considering he's still very new to OG and I'm going at a blistering pace in order for him to quickly move on to syllabication and affixes. I've also had to tweek the OG lesson a little to fit his needs and to challenge his strong visual memory. He had a habit of going about things backwards... and that was highly frustrating, both for me and him... for example, I gave him the word "lute" to spell. He was supposed to listen to the word, break it up into its sounds /l/, /long u/ and /t/, and use his fingerspelling to keep track of his sounds. But somehow, he already knew in his head that it was spelled l-u-t-e, so he kept on referring to his visual memory, and ended up fingerspelling it /l/, /short u/, /t/ and /short e/! And what made it worse was that after saying those 4 sounds, he could "combine" it back into "lute"! Argh! It's an ongoing process... we are still struggling to settle into the skills of fingerspelling and sounding without relying on visual memory and learned spelling.

Stacey has moved on to Penny words... she's quite happy to have gone on... so now we're moving into spelling of rabbit, reptile and penny words... she's quite pleased with herself and the accomplishment of being able to spell longer words... LOL.

Tuesday 24th February
Only Kasser had his lesson today - so we moved on to -ck words... he's best when he's alert and ready for class... but lessons become so draggy and such a chore when he is tired. Still, the lesson went on fairly well, and we played some spelling games with the cards. We also read from a simple phonics based reader, meant for younger children.

Kasser's mom expressed concern that he is very poor with his comprehension - something that is very common with dyslexics. She was relating how his father would just go at him because he didn't know how to answer the comprehension questions, and didn't seem to get it... and whenever his father would press him to get an answer, he would panic and be even far less able to get the answer right.

It reminds me of a time when we were given a passage written by a dyslexic, completely bad handwriting, bad spelling that took a very very long time to decipher... and we had to do a comprehension based on that "passage". It really opened my eyes to what the dyslexics struggle with on a day to day basis. And I am so tempted to write a passage in gibberish, give it to his father and make him do a comprehension based on that... then he will seriously know what his son is up against on a day to day basis. Now to find myself a dyslexic who writes badly enough... then there is authenticity in the passage. Heh.

Zach and Stacey didn't have their lessons today. So much for top priority. But I'm determined not to let things slide again.... sigh.

Stacey's progress

It's a fine line as usual, treading between challenging Stacey and not demoralising her... but she's getting a little complacent with the easier words and complains whenever the words are a little more complex and she's required to think... and she hates making mistakes...

So in order to motivate her to put her whining and attitude aside, I've got to entice her with games and such...

We've moved into the vowel digraphs... having just covered "oy" yesterday... and with that came the concept of positions...

We also recapped syllabication because I want her to move into Penny words on Saturday... and that will lead us into open syllables with long vowels... but she already knows long vowels, so I don't think that will be a problem.

We're also working on more spelling words based on rules... so looking at what to look out for, so that she knows when she has to apply a rule. But really, it's also building up her visual memory bank, so that she's exposed to the words many many times over so that she gets so familiar.

I had a proud mommy moment the other day when she successfully applied the FLOSS rule to her tamagotchi pet in naming it Bess... when I heard her say she wanted to name her pet /bes/, I thought that she would spell it as "Bes"... so I was pleasantly surprised to see that she had applied her floss rule successfully and had remembered to double the "s" at the end...

Moving along nicely...

Stacey is finally moving into the vowel pairs... this one will be really tricky.

The last lesson, I taught her the rules for /k/= c, k and /j/ = dge, j, g, ge. And because her first vowel pair was "oi", I also had to teach her that it came in the middle of the word, to be followed up the next lesson with "oy" which is essentially the same sound, different position.

So there we go... and because I promised her a game after, she zipped through the lesson, even right through the difficult dictation and spelling, and so we worked on more spelling without her "feeling" the burden of spelling by using the spelling cards... heh.

So we happily made words back and forth, using the new and old sounds, and examining the rules behind each word that was formed... she so enjoys manipulating the cards.

I need to keep bumping her up... her reading is getting more fluent now, even though we don't do much reading per se (meaning passages) in OG classes... so despite that her reading is improving, and that pleases and encourages me and her. All in all, good!

Reptiles, Rabbits and Rules...

On Saturday, Stacey went through more Reptile words, Rabbit words, and learnt a new rule regarding the -ld, -nd and -st words... so no new phonogram for her.

It occurs to me that she should also be learning the rules for the c/k/ck sounds, the j/dge/ge sounds, the ch/tch sounds and so on... because she's starting to get confused about which sound to use, as her repertoire of sounds expand. So I will be looking to see where exactly it falls in the Scope and Sequence of things, and how to incorporate it all in. I also need to look into making lessons more fun... now that I am trying to follow the OG lesson plans more closely, I find myself not having enough time to do the fun things and cover everything in the lesson plans as well. So it's going to be a little give and take. Otherwise, OG lessons become such a chore.

I bought the Go Phonics set of games and readers and stuff, so I have to start incorporating all that into the lessons. Stacey is always thrilled to play games, even if she is exercising the very same skills, just that she doesn't have to write it out on a sheet of paper. *grin*

Reptile Words

Moved Stacey along in the Scope and Sequence of things... she's been stuck far too long in the basic level, in part due to our lack of time, in part due to our using most of OG sessions to tackle her Spelling tests.

I have decided that OG lessons will be strictly OG lessons. Spelling Test Preparation will just have to be on another day, at another time. Because otherwise, Stacey will never move on.

Today she moved onto Reptile Words, having done the magic-e words for the longest time. She learnt to draw a rainbow for the v-c-e vowel, as well as to swoop for bigger words so as to be able to keep track of the patterns that are in the word.

Her face lit up as she successfully dissected 3 3-syllable words, made up entirely of the vccv patterns, including reptile words. Wonderful!

I haven't moved her on to spelling the words yet. That will be my next goal. Once she's very familiar with the rabbit and reptile words, I will try spelling these words with her.

So today, she tackled a new phonogram "all", a new syllabication pattern as well as a new learned word (which admittedly she was already half familiar, so it wasn't difficult at all).

She's coming along nicely... I'm so proud of her.

Oh, and I beamed with pride when I realised that she had named her Tamagotchi pet "Bess" and had remembered to double the "s" at the end because it is a short word after a short vowel. Beautiful. And she did that without reminder or asking. I remember her saying she wanted to name her pet "bes" but somehow, I thought she'd spell it "Bes"... so when I saw that she doubled the "s", I was most pleased... : )

Being Accomodated...

Stacey's teacher just called. It's the end of Week 4 now, and she and the EL HOD have finally decided to accomodate Stacey's needs by giving her only 5 spelling words instead of 10, in addition to the dictation passage that she has to learn.

I also requested that Stacey's teacher move the Spelling Day to Tuesday or Wednesday in order for Stacey to have more time to learn her spelling because having it on a Monday meant that she had to learn it way before and hope that she still remembered it by Monday since we don't have any time on Sunday to really learn it... and now Stacey's teacher has told me that next week onwards, the Spelling will be moved to Tuesday!!! Woohoo!!! That would help make all the difference in the world! Yay!

Her teacher this year is a little less systematic though... in that last year's teacher chose the 5 words based on words that Stacey would more likely need... but this year's teacher is just picking the top row (her words are organised on her list in two rows) for her to learn. Guess that will do too...

All in all, good news!!!!

How it all began...

This blog will chronicle my newly hatched journey in the Orton-Gillingham method of teaching Dyslexic children...

When Stacey, my middle child, was in Kindergarten, I wondered why she was struggling so. She seemed bright enough... able to out-talk and sometimes out-wit those older than her, yet, she couldn't seem to get her hands (or tongue, or mind) around sounds. I sent her for Phonics lesson with her ex-kindergarten teacher who specialised in teaching Montesorri style phonics from home. My son, Zach, had gone to her and was doing well, so I started her too when she was in her first year of Kindergarten. At that time, she was only 4, for she is a Nov baby, and while her peers in her class were already 5 or reaching their 5th birthday soon, she was, in reality, only 4y1m when she started life in K1.

Zach seemed to zoom through his Phonics... he read the lists easily enough... and seemed to learn the sounds easily enough, and he didn't seem to have problems reading. He could even read long complicated words that he encountered in his books and worksheets and school life. No big deal. Sure, occasionally he got words wrong and read them weird, but after a quick correction, he was usually spot on after that.

Stacey, on the other hand, struggled. She struggled to rhyme. She struggled to sound letters. She struggled with vowels. Whatever she didn't know, she guessed. Sometimes she was right on target. Many times she was outrageously wrong. She relied on the pictures in her books to give her clues as to what the words might say. And because half the time she got it right, the other half of the time, those who taught her felt that she was playing the fool... that she was not concentrating, that she was not trying hard enough. Her writing was wonky... often she reversed letters... b d p q... even the s in her name got turned around. She would reverse her numbers too... often confusing 2 with 5, and writing 3 so that it faced the other way. My teacher-trained mind shouted out that something had to be wrong... yet when I brought up the suggestion that perhaps she needed special support, her educators felt that I was making a mountain out of a molehill... that she couldn't be a special needs child... she was too bright to be one... she was not slow. No, she was just lazy or not taking her work seriously.

In 2007, when Zach started Primary School, I quit my job as a full-time teacher to stay home with my kids. This led to much more time with the children, and I saw how hard Stacey struggled with her reading... sometime in June, a friend who was also my children's godmother, suggested that perhaps Stacey might be dyslexic... her own son had been described as one by a friend... and had put him through an informal OG assessment which had surfaced his problems. FF, the children's godma, went through a course to be trained as an OG teacher... and offered to take a look at Stacey after her training.

So started our encounter with OG. Stacey began weekly sessions with FF, who felt that she needed the support. I stopped Stacey's lessons with the Montesorri Phonics teacher - those lessons were putting her under tremendous pressure and stress... it was not doing her any good. Under FF's kind encouragement and a method of learning that suited Stacey's learning style and needs, Stacey flourished. In no time, Stace went from a child who studiously avoided books and who declared that "I cannot read, only korkor can!" to a happier and more confident child who said "Mummy, I will read to meimei (younger sister)...". For half a year, Stace attended weekly sessions with FF, and she began to deal better with worksheets and work... learning to use her sounds and blend more systematically. Her writing and awareness of letter formation improved, and her reversals lessened.

Encouraged by her progress, and realising that her lessons with FF couldn't extend beyond that year (for she would soon go on to Primary School and only come home at around 2pm - a time when FF started her private piano classes at her home), I quickly made the decision to join the OG Associate Program offered by the Orton-Gillingham Centre, taught by Ron Yoshimoto. It didn't come cheap... but it was well worth the investment.

In Dec 2007, I attended the 2 week full-time course, and came away enlightened and raring to go. I picked up where FF left off with Stacey (who by this time had had about 16 or so lessons with FF) and tried to continue. However, I decided also to have Stacey seen by an Educational Psychologist, to see if she could be assessed and possibly obtain an exemption from Chinese Mandarin Testing in school, seeing as to how she was truly struggling with Mandarin at that time.

Thus, in order for her dyslexia not to be masked by her OG training, I stopped her lessons for 2+ months, until she had her assessment in March. Unfortunately, it was no soon enough. It was revealed that Stacey had a high average non-verbal IQ, but anything that had to do with language was brought down to just within the Average range... but the Average scores were not good enough to have her formally diagnosed as having Dyslexia... despite the Psychologist feeling that she does present as being dyslexic... so we wait. Meanwhile, we continue with her lessons... the first year has been somewhat rocky and inconsistent - in part due to our having moved out of the house for almost 4 months then the move back in, in part due to my just settling into the role of a Stay-Home mom.

So right now, Stacey is still not very far from where she left off in terms of Scope and Sequence with FF, having progressed only by a few sounds and into Rabbit words (under Syllabication), but she has made great leaps and bounds in terms of coping with spelling thanks to techniques like finger-spelling and sky-writing.

This year, I intend to make her OG lessons with me a priority, and try to have lessons with her twice a week. Something else may have to give... I have not decided what... but we definitely need more time for her to work on OG.