Reading Help For Children- Teaching Reading Strategies For A Child With Learning Disabilities
Reading help for children with learning disabilities can be a time consuming and expensive exercise. With various tutors and teachers teaching reading strategies that vary in style and effectiveness, the child with learning disabilities may find themselves confused and frustrated by the entire experience.
For the child with learning disabilities teaching reading strategies of different kinds may help in their reading. Some children are auditory based, some are visually based, the reading help for children needs to reflex the different styles of learning.
As a Behavioral Optometrist, my emphasis is obviously the visual side of things when pondering reading help for children. I believe that all the best teaching reading strategies available will still not allow a child with learning disabilities to reach their full potential if their visual skill development is lacking.
Reading help for children does not simply mean forcing the child with learning disabilities to read more and more. This is not true reading help for children, it is torture for both the child with learning disabilities and the poor parents who are teaching these reading strategies! the result is unhappy, stressed, frustrated and discouraged parents, and children who feel the same way about reading.
To provide real reading help for children we need to step back and, instead of making the child with learning disabilities go through the agony of repeated reading tasks, we should take time out to teach them the visual skills necessary for their success. These involve things like focus, eye coordination, eye movement control and tracking, visualization for learning spelling, sequencing, left right awareness and a whole host of other skills.
Training these essential visual skills can provide reading help for children by giving them the raw skills to do the tasks they need to do when reading.
If you wanted the teach your child the piano, the answer is not to make them sit at the piano again and again, is it? The answer is to get training for them, so that they can develop the skills they need to play.
It is the same thing with reading. Simply making them do the task over and over is not the answer. To provide real and significant reading help for children, whether a child with learning disabilities or even a normal reader, we are far better to teach them the essential visual skills they need rather than teaching reading strategies that help them to cope with the lack of visual skills they are grappling with!
Teaching reading strategies to help them cope is a band aid, attempting to cover the problem rather than solve it. Making the child read with a ruler under the words, or their finger under the words may improve their reading, but how much more will we help that child if we train their eye movements so they can read fluently without artificial aids!
Does this mean that I believe there is no place for teaching reading strategies? Not at all, because if we take a little time out to sharpen the visual skills of a child with learning disabilities, it is then time to apply the reading strategies, and they will meet with great success because the child has the skills to do the task!
So, there is real reading help for children available, and my program “Learning @ Lightspeed” can provide the basis upon which teachers and tutors can build. With the right skills developed, and the correct teaching reading strategies in place, there is hope for the child with learning disabilities to reach their full potential in school.
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
Related posts:
- First Grade Reading Help- Vision Therapy Cost For A Child With Learning Disabilities
- Learning Disability Testing For Diagnosing Learning Disabilities In A Child
- Children Learning Disabilities and Vision Therapy
- Diagnosing A Child With Learning Disabilities
- Learning Disability Testing- Diagnosing A Child With Learning Disabilities
