The American Dyslexia Association Offers Free Worksheets for Children With Dyslexia

This week, I would like to feature a guest blog by the American Dyslexia Association (ADA), a wonderful resource for teachers, parents, and individuals with dyslexia.

ADA is a not-for-profit organization that provides help for individuals with dyslexia and dyscalculia by offering free online printable worksheets to help children improve their reading, writing, spelling, and calculating difficulties. The worksheets, which are based on the Attention Function Symptom (AFS) Method, help children improve academic challenges. This scientifically proven method has been helping children with dyslexia worldwide for over 20 years.

Livia Pailer-Duller, Executive Director of the American Dyslexia Association, emphasizes that children with dyslexia see (perceive) things differently than non-dyslexic children because of genetically inherited differences in brain functions. This causes children with dyslexia to have difficulty recognizing and processing letters, numbers, and symbols. Based on this scientific fact, the AFS-Method goes beyond working on the symptoms of dyslexia (mistakes in reading, writing, or arithmetic) by focusing on the development of the children’s attention and sensory perceptions as well.

The AFS worksheets help children with dyslexia by training the different sensory perceptions in the areas of visual word recognition, memorizing the sequence of words, and acoustic perception, or the sound of singular or groups of letters. The worksheets also address spatial perception, the ability to perceive size or distance between objects. The ADA offers over 1500 free worksheets designated to train each of these specific areas.

“The AFS-Method is unique firstly because it focuses on all areas that cause the dyslexic child to make mistakes in reading, writing, and doing arithmetic, and secondly because it is designed to be used in a home setting. However, teachers can certainly implement this training as well,” Pailer-Duller said.

Before beginning the training and selecting a worksheet category, it is important to determine the problematic areas for each individual with dyslexia. The ADA also offers directions on how to detect challenges in the different sensory perceptions.

“To achieve success, continuous training of the deficit area is important. It is recommended working with the child 10-20 minutes a day up to five times a week,” Pailer-Duller said.

Within a few months, there should be noticeable improvement characterized by the lack of mistakes in the writing and reading of words or basic arithmetic. For more information on these free learning aids and helping children with dyslexia, visit: http://www.American-Dyslexia-Association.com

Cheers, Dr. Erica Warren