When we were trying to figure out why she couldn't manage reading, she went to a Title One program, a pull out reading remediation class, in second grade. I visited, observed, and realized they were focused on all the wrong things for her. She couldn't decode. But she could listen to a passage and answer questions, pick out themes, plot, character, setting, and fucking design the costumes and stage set for the live musical she composed based on the story.
Seriously, the girl could think. She just couldn't read.
We got her diagnosis in 3rd grade, wrote a 504 plan, and I tutored her at home in the Orton-Gillingham method of spelling.
We turned it around.
She became a capable reader within a year, but she still didn't like reading very much, the private act of consuming literature (she loved a read-aloud for sure, but didn't even like sitting with headphones and listening to a story that way).
Then came Percy Jackson. And everything changed. Rick Riordan gets kids with LD, better than any author I've been exposed to. He writes confessional first person adventure novels hung on the framework of ancient mythology.He made her heart sing. He made her a reader.
My boys loved these books, too. Don't you love finding the gateway books that work with a kid? (Right now I need to find the gateway book that will get my 20-year-old back into reading. He lost the habit, and nothing has prodded him back into it.)
ReplyDeleteHumorous light essays is what got me back. Short chapters about ridiculous things like the histories we never knew or terrible ways people did things back then or very light popular science. I became a non reader when I went back to work in 2013 and I'm just now digging my way back.
DeleteLove this happy ending!
ReplyDeleteI definitely remember Orton-Gillingham from my teaching days.
ReplyDeleteI've not heard of this author.
I think I read one of these on someone's recommendation, and liked it, but which one, I wonder?
ReplyDelete17??? It's amazing me how long we have known each other ... albeit online. I remember hearing a friend, a voracious reader herself, wondering why her son wouldn't read. JK Rowling brought him to reading. Authors that do this open the world to these kids. Wonderful!
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