Wednesday, August 8, 2018

A Letter to Another Mother Who Wants to Homeschool Her Dyslexic Child


Hi Laura,

Any friend of Ann’s is a friend of mine! 



How old is your son?



My son, Edmund, is now a sophomore in high school. We pulled him out of parochial school in the beginning of 5th grade.  The first year we did a lot of unit studies, and I tried and rejected several curricula.



Edmund saw a private Orton Gillingham tutor too, so I never did much language arts. All About Spelling was helpful though.



We used Saxon math, but I purchased the lessons on DVD, quite expensive, but worth it for us. I would check his math, we would re-do all the incorrect ones, I would then make notes of which lessons were the ones his mistakes had come from and only assign the necessary problems, as well as the problems coming from the current lesson. Saxon has little lesson numbers by each problem in the workbook, making this very easy to do. One of Edmund’s accommodations is reduced number of problems, or reduced assignments.



For science, I was able to join a local class taught in the home of another homeschooler, and we were able to get an audio version of the textbook through bookshare

Do you have Bookshare? Does he have a ipad or tablet for reading? Bookshare is simultaneous audio and visual books for the tablet. There are tens of thousands of books available on Bookshare and it’s free for anyone with a diagnosis of dyslexia. The program highlights each word of the text while speaking it. Edmund still reads with Bookshare. He got an ipad mini and a good set of headphones 5 years ago, and he still uses the same ones.



We were so blessed in Chicago to have a boys program called Riverside. Check out www.rside.org . Edmund attended two or three days a week in throughout middle school. It was an excellent supplement to my sparse home schooling.



For religion, Edmund did Faith and Life online for a few years. It does read the text to you, but it was boring and tedious. My husband worked for Word on Fire at that time (now we live in Denver and he works for the Augustine Institute), so he was able to bring home loads of educational dvds like the Catholicism series, and Chosen (which we used for confirmation) so in 8th grade we just watched lots of those. Edmund was also an altar server and attended lots of parish functions, pro life group etc.



History I bungled for a few years, and then we used Homeschool Connections. Edmund took some really great history classes online with Homeschool Connections. Again, I was able to find the textbook on cd. If you don’t have one, you might want to locate an old fashioned discman. We got ours from a garage sale. Also, I do not mind reading out loud, and often it was easier for me to read his text to him. I still have to do that for some of his high school assignments.



I have also found a few facebook groups to be very helpful: homeschooling with dyslexia, and homeschooling with Netflix.



I never worried about socialization, between Boy Scouts, Riverside, baseball, football, hockey, swim team (Edmund has many many athletic gifts) and our family and neighbors, that was never an issue.



Some books that I found very helpful for me are The Theory of Multiple Intelligences, and Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers and David and Goliath.



Illinois was a hands free homeschool state, and I was not required to report anything. When it came time to apply to high school, I fabricated a transcript with records from the science teacher and homeschool connections. I guesstimated his math and religion grades, and added a letter of recommendation from his tutor and our pastor. 



One thing I did do consistently and well was I had the tutor administer the CAT (California Achievement Test) to him every year, with his accommodations. This was helpful to see where he was in relation to the rest of the world, and great for his transcript.



At the time I was doing all of this, I was blogging fairly regularly. 







Best of luck to you and your son!

Let me know if you have any other questions!



Jessica

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Wednesday, August 8, 2018

A Letter to Another Mother Who Wants to Homeschool Her Dyslexic Child


Hi Laura,

Any friend of Ann’s is a friend of mine! 



How old is your son?



My son, Edmund, is now a sophomore in high school. We pulled him out of parochial school in the beginning of 5th grade.  The first year we did a lot of unit studies, and I tried and rejected several curricula.



Edmund saw a private Orton Gillingham tutor too, so I never did much language arts. All About Spelling was helpful though.



We used Saxon math, but I purchased the lessons on DVD, quite expensive, but worth it for us. I would check his math, we would re-do all the incorrect ones, I would then make notes of which lessons were the ones his mistakes had come from and only assign the necessary problems, as well as the problems coming from the current lesson. Saxon has little lesson numbers by each problem in the workbook, making this very easy to do. One of Edmund’s accommodations is reduced number of problems, or reduced assignments.



For science, I was able to join a local class taught in the home of another homeschooler, and we were able to get an audio version of the textbook through bookshare

Do you have Bookshare? Does he have a ipad or tablet for reading? Bookshare is simultaneous audio and visual books for the tablet. There are tens of thousands of books available on Bookshare and it’s free for anyone with a diagnosis of dyslexia. The program highlights each word of the text while speaking it. Edmund still reads with Bookshare. He got an ipad mini and a good set of headphones 5 years ago, and he still uses the same ones.



We were so blessed in Chicago to have a boys program called Riverside. Check out www.rside.org . Edmund attended two or three days a week in throughout middle school. It was an excellent supplement to my sparse home schooling.



For religion, Edmund did Faith and Life online for a few years. It does read the text to you, but it was boring and tedious. My husband worked for Word on Fire at that time (now we live in Denver and he works for the Augustine Institute), so he was able to bring home loads of educational dvds like the Catholicism series, and Chosen (which we used for confirmation) so in 8th grade we just watched lots of those. Edmund was also an altar server and attended lots of parish functions, pro life group etc.



History I bungled for a few years, and then we used Homeschool Connections. Edmund took some really great history classes online with Homeschool Connections. Again, I was able to find the textbook on cd. If you don’t have one, you might want to locate an old fashioned discman. We got ours from a garage sale. Also, I do not mind reading out loud, and often it was easier for me to read his text to him. I still have to do that for some of his high school assignments.



I have also found a few facebook groups to be very helpful: homeschooling with dyslexia, and homeschooling with Netflix.



I never worried about socialization, between Boy Scouts, Riverside, baseball, football, hockey, swim team (Edmund has many many athletic gifts) and our family and neighbors, that was never an issue.



Some books that I found very helpful for me are The Theory of Multiple Intelligences, and Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers and David and Goliath.



Illinois was a hands free homeschool state, and I was not required to report anything. When it came time to apply to high school, I fabricated a transcript with records from the science teacher and homeschool connections. I guesstimated his math and religion grades, and added a letter of recommendation from his tutor and our pastor. 



One thing I did do consistently and well was I had the tutor administer the CAT (California Achievement Test) to him every year, with his accommodations. This was helpful to see where he was in relation to the rest of the world, and great for his transcript.



At the time I was doing all of this, I was blogging fairly regularly. 







Best of luck to you and your son!

Let me know if you have any other questions!



Jessica

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Post a Comment