Following the Yorkshire Publishing Organisation course on tackling dyslexia last week, we had our first skype lesson with a seven year old, his teacher and his father. Due to technical hitches, we had sound from me, but not from the school, I started to explain spelling to Peter, as we'll call him, with him indicating whether he understood by gestures, and his teacher telling me if he'd read the words correctly. Peter picked up everything first time, and seemed relieved to know that the reason he couldn't read words like where, kind and are was that the letters did not indicate the sounds we'd usually expect. Peter's teacher and father were delighted, and he was literally jumping for joy.
We moved to the Gruffalo, with Peter reading to me down the phone, as we still didn't have sound with skype. Peter learned to spell buffalo. His first attempt, bflo did not contain any wrong letters, but had missed out two vowels, so we said the word carefully, and he built it up. Then, looking at Gruffalo, he was able to identify the extra letter he needed and insert it. When we got to the end of the first page, he asked to do another - and pointed out that we'd missed out the last two lines. We finished with the French connection in the gruffalo's terrible tusks, claws etc.
More next week, and thanks to Jodi for her improvisation and support. Good fun, and seems to have done some good too.