Pathway Readers & Dyslexia

I sat on the floor, criss-cross applesauce, cradling my sobbing eleven-year-old. I prayed, patted her hair, and tried to be the encouraging mama. But nothing soothed my student. What caused all the tears? A boring reader.

Dyslexia is hard. When your child enters tweendom the differences between kids show more fiercely. My child was noticing. Not body types or fashion sense but her lag in reading ability and speed. Then, on top of all of that, after battling with dyslexia through a tutoring session her reward was a boring, kindergarten reader. The same boring and senseless sentences. It was so hard on my student I began writing my own short stories for her. Those too came across too babyish for my struggling kiddo.

Enter Pathway Readers.

Paced more slowly these became a sparkle in our reading remediation. The first book, First Steps, is a bit on the juvinile side. However to combat the boring, stunted senteces… the only kind my kid could read at the time… there’s a page or two of story that You, the mama/teacher reads. It gives context to the “baby” sentences and makes finishing the page a treat.

Pathway Readers suggests reading each new word and writing them until your student KNOWS the word and then reading the story/sentences that contain those words. Sadly, I did not scratch that immediately!

I figured the curriculum creator knew what they were doing, better than I did. So I followed their procedures for a long and painful week. Then I chunked those to the side and focused on the fun of the story.

Pathway Reader stories contain real life drama.

At least kid drama. Kids fight over toys, chores, and friends. Then they get in trouble and make amends. Much better reading than Pat and his rat sat on the mat. a for my reader and for these mama’s ears. It also gave us something to talk about once the story is over, building comprehension.

Mom’s read aloud time always ends in fun discussion. Older brother/sisters the same. Now my struggler juvenile’ have to miss out. She had characters to introduce to the family and situations to talk about.

Pathway Readers gave my child confidence.

Their stories and gentle progress treats my student with dignity. They don’t talk down to the student or assume they have no taste. They keep their characters real to life and hilarious.

How we use Pathway Readers

As I said before, I chunked the suggested use of Pathway Readers. They’re written for the classroom, anyway. Instead, we got right to the good stuff, the story. Early on, I read the new words aloud to my kid and had them repeat them before jumping into the story. But we’ve both grown since the beginning and here’s how we roll.

1. We start with Victory Drill Book fluency practice for only 3 minutes. We stretch and then whip out the workbook that corresponds with the reader we’re currently using.
2. We do not do every page of the workbook! We spend about five minutes working with the new sounds and practicing them together. I’ll write an answer then my student writes one. This is not penmanship practice time. That’s a different issue and to combine the two tuckers us all out before we get to the ah-ha moments.
3. Then we read… to a timer. At first, I started with 3 minutes. And every few weeks I moved it up until we’re now at 15 minutes of reading from our Pathway book. Sometimes I read a page and then my student does. Sometimes we swap every other sentence. Sometimes my pupil does all the reading. We mix it up. I offer more support for harder days. I back off on days when my student is focused and determined. More and more, the timer is becoming obsolete, as my student is too excited to finish the story. (YES!!! WOO WHOO!!!)
4. When we get to a word that my kid stumbles on, I say it for them and stealthily write it down for later. If one word causes my child to stumble more than twice I move it to another place in our remediation session. But that’s another blog.

The big win for Pathway Readers is that they are easy readers with wholesome real plots! They make my struggling learner feel more like their peers because their readers include actual stories and not baby sentences. For those reasons, they’ve become our primary primers for reading remediation.

What do you all use for reading remediation?

How do you, MOM, handle slow progress and/or boring stories in reading practice?

Next time, I’ll fill you in on what we do with those trouble words. 🙂

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