Ear Reading
Skilled readers are strong in two areas: language comprehension and word recognition. While I work with your student building the skills necessary for automatic word recognition, it is critical to be building language comprehension at home in-between sessions. You can best do this by reading aloud to your child or using audio books daily. Please do not require outside reading for your students in levels 1-4 of Barton Reading & Spelling. See Advice for Parents for more information regarding outside reading.
My favorite FREE audio book sources:
The Ohio Digital Library (Overdrive)
Audio Books
Audible Subscription. Human-narrated audio books.
Learning Ally Human-narrated and synthetic voice audio books. Yearly subscription with documentation of print disability (IEP is qualifying documentation). Textbooks available.
Bookshare Audio plus highlighted text. Textbooks available. Synthetic voice with growing catalog of human-narrated books. Free for qualifying students.
Kindle Audio Books Human-narrated audio books with highlighted text.
Tools
Headstrong Nation: check out the Tools sections in both the For Adults and For Parents tabs.
Google Chrome Extensions: text to speech and readability features and more! Control Alt Achieve: Chrome Extensions for Struggling Students and Special Needs
Learn More about Dyslexia
Overcoming Dyslexia by Sally Shaywitz
The Dyslexic Advantage by Brock Eide
The Dyslexia Empowerment Plan by Ben Foss (I highly recommend listening to audio version of this book. It is read by the author, Ben Foss, and he includes a demonstration of what it was like to read his own book for the audio as a profoundly dyslexic individual.)
Pronouncing Phonemes
Modeling the correct letter sounds is critical when working with your student. Learn how to pronounce the 44 phonemes in the English alphabet here!
Fun resources for young learners:
Explicit Phonics Series (be sure to watch the intro video for teachers/parents)
Reading 101
To learn more about the science of reading, phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension check out this free course at Reading Rockets. Reading 101 provides basic information needed to help young children learn to read and write, and how to support children who struggle with reading.