A surprising success with my right brained reader!

I have had a slow road in teaching my 12-year-old daughter how to read. Part of our journey is here and here. 

So we’ve been trudging along and she is able to read with a lot of help, coaching and preparation – but it’s just not easy for her.

Last summer I attended a conference by Diane Crafton reading recovery and teaching the right brained child. When she started describing the right brained learner it was as if she knew my daughter; Izzy had so many of the same characteristics. Ms. Craft described the right-brained learner as being very creative. (Hello- Izzy art!)

But she also said that because of the way their brains are wired, the left brain is not transferring the information into the right brain effectively, in a way that the right brain could remember. So that is why whenever Izzy comes to the word “W A S”, she has to relearn it.

This drives me crazy.

 Ms. Craft said that for these kids to get reading, you have to speak to their right brains and get those words into their long-term memory. The way to do that is by teaching the word with a creative story and colorful picture – but the word has to be PART of the picture, not above, below or beside it.

 So I bought Ms. Craft’s right brain sight cards an her right brain phonics program. We started doing the exercises and the program about three weeks ago and I have already seen quite a bit of improvement. Most amazingly to me – Izzy learned all of the sight words. All of them. And to test it out, after we ran through the picture cards, I wrote the plain words on flash cards without pictures, and she could still read and remember them!

 This has worked out so well for us that last night I also ordered 300 more cards. This might just be the trick for Izzy to get her up to grade level- and to make reading fun instead of drudgery.