My youngest son, Carter, has always been a struggling reader. Well… I guess I shouldn’t say struggling but definitely a late reader. One amazing thing about homeschool is that, that’s ok. They are able to take their time and work at their pace to achieve the goals you set for them. He reads above grade level now! I am so thankful when The Review Crew is able to provide a program for us to review that will help Carter with his reading. For the past few months, he has been working with Dyslexia Gold, as they so graciously provided us with a family license and lifetime subscription to Dyslexia Gold Full Bundle.
Dyslexia Gold is a supplementary reading program designed to help your dyslexic child, as well as struggling readers. It is designed to improve your child’s reading by using the program for 10 minutes a day. We were given a lifetime subscription to this online program. Dyslexia Gold has 4 parts to it: :Engaging Eyes, Fluency Builder, Spelling Tutor and Times Table Tutor.
Engaging Eyes. They will send you a pair of 3D glasses that your child will use to help their eyes track the targets with Target Practice. There are 3 other games in this category including, Speed Fix, Eye Tracking and Whack an Alien. These will help your child improve their vision and tracking while reading which will help them better their reading score. Carter did get a headache when he wore the 3D glasses so we did not spend as much time on this category.
Fluency Builder: In this part, your child will work on building their reading fluency, speed and comprehension. Here, you can see the screen where you are able to choose easy, medium or hard for their reading level. You can see example of words and the reading passage. You are also able to change the accent here. We started off with the English accent because that is the default since this is program is based in the UK. Carter did have some trouble with understanding some of the words with the accent but I was easily able to change it to American.
Below, you can see a few screenshots from the Reading Fluency portion. Each lesson has a set of words and the program goes through different prompts and activities with the same words. I really love this because it has a lot of repetition as far as the words but the activities are different and keep it interesting for your child.
Spelling Tutor: The 3rd part of the program is designed to help your child improve their spelling skills. This is really great for a child who is already able to spell some. Carter REALLY struggles with spelling so we did not spend as much time here but I plan to in the future when his reading skills improve. There are different activities with this part too. Below you can see where they say a word and your child will type the word. The other activity pictured has your child write down a sentence the computer says and they self-correct their work by clicking the green or red circle. They include punctuation too which I LOVE!
Times Table Tutor: The 4th part of the program is not reading based but is designed to help your child practice their times tables. It uses Singapore Math technique and I really like it. Carter will be spending time here over the summer to practice his multiplication tables. Below, you can see some of examples of how it is done.
Although this program isn’t designed for only dyslexic children, it did help me realize that maybe Carter has dyslexia. I had him tested by a psychologist and he is in fact, dyslexic. It wasn’t the best news to get but I know he will be able to overcome the challenges he will face because of it. I really enjoy this program and think it has a lot of good things about it. There are however, a couple of things that I wanted to mention that I was not ok with. It may be a culture thing because this program was developed in the UK, but I was not happy with some of the words they chose to use. One example is the word “stupid.” That is one of the words used in repetition in the lesson. I do not like for my children to say this word. Of course, there are times they do say it but I strongly encourage them not to. So to have my 8 year old say it over and over in a reading program made me uncomfortable. There are a lot of words that children need to learn to read and I just think the program could use a different word here. There were also pictures and words of wine and champagne. I am not a prude by any means and definitely enjoy a glass of wine now and then but these are adult things and in my opinion should be left out of a children’s reading program. I really do love so many things about this program but I did notice myself not wanting to use it as much because of some of the word choices.
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