In what ways could Happy Cheetah help my 7-year-old autistic son? We have used (with some success) the K level of an Orton-Gillingham reading program.
Reading Assessment:
He is autistic and has excellent decoding/encoding skills. He can read one word at a time but has difficulty with short phrases and sentences. Since he enjoys being read to, he is processing and comprehending information that he hears. His vocabulary is at a preschool level so retelling stories is not on his radar yet.
Conclusion:
2) Autistic children have globally low muscle tone. That always includes eye muscles. He needs an excellent pediatric eye exam from an OPTOMETRIST (NOT an ophthalmologist). [He can read (decode) single words, but not phrases.]
3) Low muscle tone also effects stamina in copy work. He needs to practice (meaningful) writing EVERY SINGLE day so he can build up those hand muscles. Start with two-or-three minute periods initially and build up to ten full minutes.
4) The copy work MUST be taken (connected to) the new story so that his brain has an alternate and meaningful way to process the new information.
5) This is NOT auditory processing (i.e. dyslexia) because he’s decoding well and processing information comfortably.
6) All children, but this one in particular, MUST be read to at least an hour a day and should have a listening device so that he’s hearing great stories all day long. That’s the best and most effective way to build vocabulary.
7) Any kind of screen or laptop usage is extremely harmful and will exacerbate any neurological growth moving forward.
Remedy:
Happy Cheetah is the ONLY reading curriculum on the market that will work for this child. It is multimodality. The lessons are short (ten to twelve minutes) and tightly woven together so that everything sounds right and makes sense. The letter boxes (phonics) are big and easy to navigate. We work on one thing at a time. The lessons start with a fun/interesting story that the child can actually relate to. It is read to the child first, so they don’t have to struggle trying to sound out high frequency words that are not phonetic. All the daily exercises are directly connected to the story. Copy work is taken directly from the story and done daily. Because all learning starts kinesthetically, research is telling us that if the copy work is taken directly from the new passage, we can double reading levels in half the time!! Students read each story a number of times during the week so there is adequate review, and they can get fluent quickly.
]]>“My 10-year-old son seems to be reading fine and loves to listen to audio books. But it’s like pulling teeth to get him to read a book on his own. And lately I’ve noticed that he’s having some trouble with math. It seems like there is some sort of problem, but what is it?”
Reading Assessment: I quickly realized that he was having a really hard time keeping his place. He was rubbing his eyes; he was concerned about the size of the font in the books, and he asked right away ‘how much more’ he was going to have to read.
There was a lot of head movement as he read. We call that ‘head pointing’ - a common accommodation when children are having trouble with print. He turned his head sideways and moved back and forth trying to get the print focused properly.
His decoding of new words was excellent, and he read fluently from a Magic Tree House book. I only helped with three new words. I gave him a short spelling test as well. He could sound out the words easily.
Conclusion: This is a visual alignment problem. Even though he likely has 20/20 vision in each eye separately, his eyes aren’t working well together. That makes the print blurry. Every time he sees a word it looks different. It’s also interfering with his fluency because he keeps losing his place. That, in turn, creates terrible fatigue and effects his comprehension.
This problem will not go away over time and needs to be treated by a knowledgeable pediatric optometrist. It is a muscular misalignment that creates neurological confusion and neurological fatigue. Their eyes are like popcorn all over the page, the smaller the font the more quickly they fatigue, and their comprehension tanks because they are working so hard to keep the print clear. Sometimes children just shut one eye down (suppression) and can hobble along a little while longer, but eventually, if left untreated, this condition bleeds into all subject areas, especially math, because they can’t keep the numbers lined up or remember story problems.
Remedy: I have referred the family to a local pediatric optometrist who can diagnose and treat this issue. Sometimes it can be fixed with glasses, sometimes children will need short term vision therapy to correct the problem.
Karen J. Holinga, Ph.D.
Reading/Curriculum Specialist
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What is dyslexia?
The medical definition of dyslexia is actually auditory processing. It is rooted in the language center of the brain and is very developmental. It’s not unusual for as many as one in five children to lag behind while their neurology is catching up with their body. (Some children walk at nine months and others at fifteen months.) ‘Body clocks’ cannot be altered. Happily, there is NO correlation to IQ!
Children that lag behind in auditory processing sometimes have trouble matching sounds to the corresponding letters, hearing rhymes, clapping syllables, retrieving sounds and words they know, and often have delayed or unclear speech. Sometimes they have a lot of trouble holding their pencil properly and writing.
Over time these kids catch up, but often not until the age of nine or later. Because it’s neurological, there isn’t a lot we can do to rush the growth.
What we CAN do is immerse these children in language. Read delightful stories daily, teach nursery rhymes, let them practice letters and numbers orally and on a dry erase board, give them opportunities to narrate what they’ve learned, and provide them with a listening device so they can listen, listen, listen to great books.
Remember to talk SLOWER, NOT LOUDER!! They are s l o w processors! Do all your subjects (especially reading and math) as kinesthetically as possible. Use copy work to reinforce the new stories they’re working on and use letter boxes to teach the sounds because they don’t feel so overwhelming.
Teach new concepts in bite sized chunks and keep lessons SHORT! Remember to teach ONE concept at a time. Don’t overwhelm them with a lot of memory work. They overload fast! Let them read new stories over and over. It creates fluency, automaticity, and builds myelin on those neurological pathways.
Do NOT label your child ‘dyslexic’ It often becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Don’t teach reading with rules. They’ll forget them or dump them the first time the brain sees a ‘rule breaker.’ Keep lessons short and fun so they’ll be willing to come back again soon.
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