Using Clay in our Homeschool -

Learning how to cope with and use dyslexia isn’t a walk in the park. It’s an epic trek across foreign lands rife with new foes and hidden dangers. Or at least it can feel that way.

In the past two posts about reading remediation we’ve chatted about fluency practice and Pathway Readers. In the Pathway Reader post, I told you I write down words that stump my student. This post will explain what I do with those words.

When my child was first diagnosised with dyslexia, our assessor offered many techniques and solutions to get us started on the road to reading and understanding. One of the methods suggested was the Davis Method.

I had no clue what any of these methods were and so I dove into educate myself before educating my kiddo. When I arrived at the Davis Method, my first thought was HA, that’ll never work! How can playing with clay help my student learn to read? I set the method aside and went forward with more phonics based programs.

Fast forward to now, my child knows a grip of phonics and spelling rules but still can’t seem to master new, difficult, or rule breaking words. (AKA sight words) We’ve attempted arm tapping, trampoline chanting, comic book defining and so on and so on to help them grasp the meaning of spelling of these frequently used words. Things stick for a week or two and then fall away.

Praying, one day, at the CHEA convention, I stumbled into an exhibitor’s workshop. The speaker demonstrated and explained the benefits of the Davis method. It sounded it great. It sounded like my kid. It sounded… expensive. And it is.

Shaking off my disappointment, since I would not be able to enroll my kid in a local workshop, I attended the convention’s last night of fun which included a huge curriuculum giveaway. Did I win the workshop? Nope, but I did win the book explaining the techniques and how to incorporate them at home.

Again I read it and laughed.

Nowadays, we’ve modified and use a lot of the techniques explained within the book.

While reading, I keep a journal tracking words that stump my student. I also tally mark the number of times that word has triggered my student.
Choosing the five most aggravating words, my child and I hit the clay. First, we recreate the alphabet in clay. This takes a while, for my kid, and counts as day one and sometimes day two of our clay time. Once that’s conquered, we start forming the hard words out of clay. But we don’t stop there. We also add a definition.
I explain the words’ meaning to my kiddo. (this isn’t easy with sight words… no wonder their tricky) They take the definition and create a tableau of clay showing the definition. Doing so creates a mental picture of the symbols in the word alongside the meaning of the word.

This process takes a bit of extra time, but it’s so worth it! When we trip upon one of our clay defined words in our reading, I can slow my student down and ask them to remember their clay model. Questions like… what do you see when you hear this word? Help them remember the experience and link the word to the meaning and to the print on the page.

Plus, it’s fun. The only thing that makes the process straining to my kid is my desire to push through and get it done. When I slow down and enjoy the time and allow my student to think and create in their own time, it can become a great healer and a tool for me to understand my kiddo all the better.

Do you use the Davis Method in your reading remediation? Have you gone through the full course? Let me know your experience in the comments.

Here’s the books and clay we use. (These are Amazon affiliate links)

Here’s a link to the CHEA Convetion: http://www.cheaofca.org/