Making reading a richer and more interesting experience

One of the biggest challenges a parent has, is to find books for their dyslexic child which are interesting and within their reading level.

When I first started my course, I remember walking into Kinokunya in search of a book for a 7 yr old child I was teaching. It was early days for me so I didn't put much thought into the font; I was more concerned about the book content and reading level.

It was only when he began reading that I realised that he was unfamiliar with the font and this made reading that much more difficult.

Despite the vast number of books on sale for children in bookshops, Malaysia does not have much in the way of books for children with dyslexia. Ordering books online is expensive so what can one do to make  books and reading a richer and much more interesting experience?

The first thing you can do is to show your child that books are creations; creations of a person's thoughts. There are many children's books available on DVD which they can listen to and enjoy. This is a fun way to help with vocabulary development, listening skills and to enable them to enjoy books which are higher than their reading level but are of interest to them. Before they start listening, talk about the author. I will be posting some interesting information about a few children's writers in articles which follow.

After listening to the book, you can talk to the child about the story and expand on the ideas within. The site enchantedlearning (www.enchantedlearning.com) has some wonderful ideas for this. One thing you can do, is to give the child an A4 piece of paper which you can fold into 4 sections. They can draw pictures about the story. Emphasize the fact that the story has a beginning, a middle and an ending.

The next thing you can do, is to use existing books you have at home. Make this a joint project with you and your child. If the words are too difficult and beyond their reading level, colour photocopy the pictures and re-write the story so that it is less complicated. You can use MS Word to print out the text; it has a large number of fonts which can be used. It is a good idea to make sure your child is familair with a font such as this one used here. If not, you can use a font such as Comic Sans.