E-mail Questions answered by the author, Don McCabe

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As a general rule, words (no matter how many syllables) that can be reduced to one meaningful syllable follow what we call the rules of "Simple Phonics."  For example, the word misunderstanding can be reduced to "stand."  Words that cannot be reduced to one meaningful syllable follow what we call the rules of "FANCY Phonics."  For example, the word crucial cannot be reduced to one meaningful syllable so the "sh" sound is not spelled sh but ci.  The letters "car" happen to be in carry but it is not a meaningful syllable as fish is in fisherman, fishery, and fishing.  The letters "not" and "ice" are in notice but notice doesn't rhyme with hot mice.  Barry, Carry, Harry, Larry, and Marry do not reduce to one meaningful syllable.  Starry reduces to star, tarry reduces to tar, etc.  The "airy" sound is difficult because it can be spelled ery as in very, erry as in merry, ary as in Mary, arry as in marry, as well as airy as in hairy. 

For faster results, yes.

Sorry.  I'm just one little old man.

It shouldn't hurt, especially if you point out to him that I am a dyslexic and I wrote To Teach a Dyslexic.

Why bother with books.  Show him my translations of the fancy definitions that are up on our website.  Also tell him that dyslexics have three things in common that most "good readers" don't.  One, they are logical.  Two they believe what they're taught.  Three they try to logically apply what they've been taught to believe about our language, and it just doesn't work.  Good readers are not logical.  They only half-heartedly believe what they're taught.  And they just ignore what they're taught when it doesn't work.  Try sounding out left to right, letter by letter, the word magician.  ma, mag, magi, magic, magici, magician!

Don't bother.  Testing costs money and doesn't get help.  You already know what you need to know.  He needs help and the schools don't know how to help him.

You might be interested in reading my story of doing what you're thinking about doing.  It's in my autobiography To Teach a Dyslexic.  I do have free lesson plans for such a course for parents.  Remembering that the first session will be the session in which parents will have the greatest amount of enthusiasm and the least amount of expertise, I recommend that they be shown how to use If It Is To Be, It Is Up To Me To Do It.  The first seven lessons are on our website.  This way, when the parents come back for the second class they will have success stories to share!  Occasionally, you will find a parent who couldn't follow directions, but at least you will be able to convince that parent of the necessity of giving the correct spelling of each word immediately after each word is given.
You might even want to spend a little time looking at Starting At Square One.
If you can talk your school into spending a little money, you ought to get them to purchase The Teaching of Reading & Spelling: A Continuum from Kindergarten through College.  It is filled with practical things you can use in the classroom.

If the "severely" dyslexic student is a small child, it seems to really work well.  With children that have no speech and/or hearing problems, good listening comprehension, then I personally see no reason to spend so much intensive training into phoneme recognition, especially when I, myself, cannot pass most phoneme recognition tests that use nonsense words.

Say what?  I'm sorry if I offended you, but that was my gut reaction to a common pedagogical concept held by most university professors about memory being either short term or long term.  Everybody has a highly sophisticated computer brain with many types of memories.  Some last only hundredths of a second.  Some last only seconds.  It probably only took you two or three seconds to read to where you are in this paragraph.   When you get to the end of this sentence close your eyes and repeat exactly word for word what I have written.
See what I mean.  Your computer brain was processing and deleting as you were reading.  What might be necessary is finding a way to trick that student's computer brain into more processing and a little less deleting.  There are memories that last for minutes, others for hours, some for just a day or two (what did you have for dinner last Tuesday?), some for weeks, some for months, some for years, and some for life.  Getting the brain to place specific stimuli (data) into the proper file and folder isn't all that easy using conventional instructional materials.

Individualized Keyboarding with a peer tutor reading the words as the student types.  Directions for this are in the manual that you should ask for if you decide to order.
If the student does not know cursive then I would recommend that the student be taught cursive using Let's Write Right or if you're interested in being one of the first to ever use a system specifically designed to work with students like the one you have mentioned, get the lessons free off our website:   Starting At Square One.

Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging is, in my not so humble opinion, pseudoscientific voodoo.  The problem is that you don't know exactly what it is that you are measuring.  There is no way to really determine if there is an improvement that it is not the result of a placebo effect.   On the other hand there is no doubt that there are changes that can be measured by fMRI if proper intervention has taken place.  You might (by using the Freedom of Information Act) get some data from the NIH.  I do know that Philip Bergman, a dyslexic who is part of a longitudinal study by NIH and who has had numerous fMRI's done, has learned to read and spell quite well.  His greatest gains came when his father, Eldo Bergman, M.D., who directs the Texas Reading Institute, sent him to AVKO. You can read about him in my autobiography, To Teach a Dyslexic.

Your child is merely having difficulty with the "logic" of both math and reading when it comes to directionality.  We count from left to right 1 to 10 by ones, 10 to 100 by 10's, but when we put our numbers down we put the ones to the right (the pennies' column), the tens' next (the dimes column) and the 100's next (the dollars column).  We add the pennies first, then the dimes, and then the dollars.  It just takes practice and time to make it automatic.

I would suggest practicing speed reading with easy reading books.  At least once a day but never more than twice, have him set the kitchen timer for ten minutes and read as fast as he can silently.  He is to underline any words that are difficult for him.  When the timer rings, he is to stop and then compute his words per minute rate.  Have him make a chart.  Have him keep pushing at least until he gets his speed up over 110 words per minute.  300 words per minute is an ideal target.  Really good readers read over 1,000 WPM.

If It Is To Be, It Is Up To Me To Do It would have been my choice for him, so I just have to agree with you.  Individualized Keyboarding is in book form.  When you order, make sure you ask for the free manual that goes with it.

First of all, even if the learning center were to be located next door to you and even if you were a millionaire, chances are that it would not work.   From your description of your child, I am rather certain that your child needs at least 30 minutes of help every single day, Saturdays and Sundays included.  Have you considered having your husband homeschool your child?  You also might want to consider trying the freebie on our website, Starting at Square One and teach him reading and spelling AS you and/or your husband teach him to write the alphabet slowly and methodically.
If you would like to use the Let's Write Right series that has student pages and has already been written and is for sale, I wouldn't say NO.
You also might consider teaching him to use the keyboard using Individualized Keyboarding.  He will also learn to read and spell AS he slowly and methodically learns the keyboard.

I would start with Sequential Spelling 1, a Student Response Book, and Word Families in Sentence Context.
So that you better understand why it is that school systems are failing the children who are dyslexic, I do suggest that you read my autobiography To Teach a Dyslexic.  After that, you might consider ordering The Teaching of Reading and Spelling: A Continuum from Kindergarten through College.  But please, don't order all of these at one time.  It might be a bit overwhelming.

Too many, way too many.  One last thing:  Please do NOT waste your son's precious childhood play time by having  him study whatever spelling words his teacher gives him to take home.

Over the years, I have discovered that most "guessing" is the result of a the fantastic God-given computer doing what it is designed to do.   I devoted one chapter in my book The Teaching of Reading and Spelling: A Continuum from Kindergarten through College to that subject.  The chapter?  "Statues and Sanctuaries or a Practical Use of Miscue Analysis:  Building Egos/Self-Esteem."  It tells of how a young man I was tutoring asked me the question, "How could I confuse the word statues with sanctuaries?"  If you'll notice every letter in statues occurs in the word sanctuaries.  They have the same beginning and ending letters.  And most importantly they both have a religious subtext.  Believe me, your daughter's "guesses" are not wild guesses.  Her mind needs a little more "programming" to respond quickly and automatically to the patterns of English spelling.

My guess is that her lack of speed is tied to her fear of making mistakes.

Fear of making mistakes rears its ugly head again.