Jennie Sjursen 0:00
I've found a few potential service providers, but some of their promises seemed too good to be true. I'm not sure what to believe. And what's a major red flag? How long is this remediation process really supposed to take? Can they really get my child reading to grade level in two to three months?
Jennie Sjursen 0:18
I'm Jenny Sjursen, ex special educator turned dyslexia interventionist. It wasn't so long ago that I too, was overwhelmed by balanced literacy versus structured literacy, education speak, and everything in between. Fast forward after many, many hours of self driven education. And you'll see I've built a thriving dyslexia practice helping students from ages six to 18. My specialties, working with the quote unquote difficult almost always to the student, and breaking down the complexities of dyslexic to everyday language strategies and action steps.
Jennie Sjursen 0:59
Now that you know that your child needs reading, remediation, or intervention, your natural next question is, how long will it take to get my child up to grade level? I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but the short answer is as long as it takes. If you ask this question, when interviewing a potential service provider, their response should be along the lines of as fast as we can, and as slow as they need. However, if they respond along the lines with, I can have your child reading at grade level in two to three months, or my students go up a grade level between 10 to 12 sessions, a whole lot of red flags should be going up.
Jennie Sjursen 1:41
Here's why. remediating dyslexia is like solving a math problem, you need to add in all the different factors, the makeup of the brain severity, intensity of the specialized instruction, age of the student, etc. Let's first look at the makeup of the brain. When working with dyslexia, an interventionist or therapist is literally trying to build new neuron pathways in the brain, so that the person can see and process language in a new way. One that is not natural for the dyslexic. Now, as we previously discussed in episode two signs of dyslexia, and Episode Six understanding the different types of dyslexia, dyslexia is a spectrum disorder, meaning a dyslexic can be classified as mild, moderate to severe or severe. A child with severe dyslexia is going to take longer to remediate than a child with mild dyslexia. This severely dyslexic child has more neurons and pathways to build. The next factor we need to look at is intensity of specialized instruction.
Jennie Sjursen 2:49
This is often a very misunderstood factor. Intensity of specialized instruction means how frequent are the sessions? And how long do they last? For example, a 50 minute session five times a week is much more intense than a 30 minute session two times a week. All other things being equal. A child receiving the more intense specialized instruction will be remediated faster than the child receiving the less intense specialized instruction. I have worked with students who were receiving the appropriate specialized instruction, but not to the intensity they required in order to make meaningful progress. They were maintaining their skills, but not growing them. The age a child begins to receive the specialized instruction also plays a role. This is where researchers often start referring to something called the Matthew effect. The name of the effect comes from a verse in the Bible. Matthew 2529. For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance, but from him that hath not shall be taken away, even that which he has.
Jennie Sjursen 4:01
How on earth is that verse related to your child and their reading instruction you ask? It's where the idea the rich get richer and the poor get poor comes from. So in terms of reading, the longer it takes for your child to receive the specialized instruction they need, the farther behind they get. The longer you wait, the harder it will be for your child to catch up. If a child reaches the end of the third grade, and has not received the specialized instruction they need it will take four times as long to improve their reading skills. And the gap grows larger and larger each year. You wait. So now we come full circle back to the question. How long is this gonna take? Taking in all the different factors it's not uncommon to take two to three years to build a strong base in foundational reading skills. I stress foundational reading skills here because dyslexia and Orton Gillingham are Often simplified and misunderstood when it comes to the instructional piece.
Jennie Sjursen 5:05
Dyslexia is a language based disability. This means dyslexia encompasses all aspects of language, oral reading and writing. At its very base, Orton Gillingham is rooted in phonics and heavy on decoding. As a child reaches an intermediate reading level, instruction is split between reading and writing, mechanics, grammar, strong sentence building, etc. Then, as they move into the more advanced levels of morphology and vocabulary, the sessions become heavily weighted in writing. This can take several more years beyond the two to three years of basic foundational instruction. appropriate instruction for a child with dyslexia is a marathon, not a sprint. It's a process usually with several speed bumps along the way. I believe every student will get there. They'll just look different than the person next to them. If you have any further questions about today's topic, please feel free to sneak into my inbox.
Jennie Sjursen 6:02
Now. If you haven't heard, or you're new to the process, IEP season is just around the corner. In our next episode, we'll take a look at 12 questions you can ask at your next dyslexia IEP meeting. Until next time, bye bye I hope you enjoyed this episode of literacy untangled if you love this episode as much as I did, head on over and rate and subscribe so you never miss an episode. If you want to continue the conversation or share your takeaways, head on over to our Instagram at literacy untangled and comment on your favorite part. I can't wait to hang out with you again soon. Bye
