- Background
- Visual Tracking
- Reading Focus
- Sequencing
- Following Instruction
- Remembering
- Graphic Organisation
Background
When my mother learned that children with ADD lack the internal motivation to do many types of tasks because it is difficult for them to stay stimulated, work through frustration, organize the steps to accomplish the task, ignore distractions, control impatience, and maintain attention, she began to understand that the conventional way of learning to read and write acceptable to normal children would not work for me. With guidance, my mother started to provide daily lessons that allowed me to re-learn the key foundation reading, writing and comprehension skills that were taught to me in the 2 years of kindergarten education. This section described some of the visual aids provided by my mother which helped me to make remarkable progress in reading and writing from the end of primary 1.
Directionality is the ability of the eye for reading and the hand for writing to move from left to right and from the top of the page to the bottom. Understanding that I need support to manage directional confusion from the 1 to 1 support session, my mother coached me to practice, on a daily basis, the following visual tracking exercises:
- Copying within a line – worksheets with grid lines. Initially, my mother would indicate the place where I should start the direction with a dot. With such guided practice, I manage to move on to writing without any lines or directional aid.
|
|
 Guided Writing |
- Dot-to-dot – worksheets where I practiced joining one number to another which helped to direct my vision from one point to another starting from left to right.
|
|
 Dot-to-dot exercise |
- Word search – where I practiced finding a word by tracking a word horizontally, vertically or diagonally.
|
|
 Find the word |
Given to learn a list of high frequency words from learning support teacher in school, my mother taught me the 100 most common sight word using flashcards. Learning 5 new words each day, I could recognize many of the high frequency words after 3 months.
With the ability to recognize common sight words, my mother started to direct my focus whilst reading any given comprehension worksheets. My mother would separate the vowels and consonants in any words that I could not read with a color pencil. The color directed my attention to segments of the word. I was then able to recognize and blend the sounds of the word. With this guidance, I began to figure out any new words by breaking them down into syllabus.
|
|
 Color coding letters |
Understanding my difficulty in keeping my visual attention on the rows of text, mum made a “spectacle”, which is a rectangular “window” cut into a piece of cardboard. The “spectacle” allowed me to concentrate on a few words at a time.
After some time, as I do not get overwhelmed by the rows and rows of text in any written passage, I learned to place a ruler under the line of the text as I read. With the assistance of the “spectacle” and ruler, I began to read short illustrated story by the end of Primary 1.
Sequencing is the ability to perceive and control serial groups, such as the alphabet, a series of verbal instructions, letter order when spelling a word and sound order when pronouncing a word.
My mother uses exercises that allowed me to practice identifying order of events in a story or the steps in a process.
|
|
 Exercise on sequencing |
As I had difficulty following through on instruction independently, especially when it is multi-step due to organizational and attentional difficulties, it will be necessary for the teacher to split the task into manageable pieces, which can then be done, one by one and put together.
My mother started with single step instruction.
|
|
 Following instructions |
Moved to multi-step tasks, where I am guided to complete a step and ticked off the instruction as I completed them.
 Following directions |
With many such practices on following instructions, I gradually developed the ability to break tedious and boring tasks into small steps and eventually developing my own task analysis skills, which lead to independent learning at the higher education level.
Remembering facts is a foundation skill for understanding a piece of writing. My mother used simple comprehension exercises to help me to practice remembering facts. Knowing that I struggled with writing, my mother allowed me to skip the writing of the answers, and I just indicate by number the answers to the questions.
|
|
 Remembering what I read |
After learning the use of a butterfly concept map, my mother used worksheets that provided lots of practice in organizing and identifying main ideas. As my skills in reading and comprehension improved, I proceed to worksheets that helped me to recognize the overall point made in a piece of writing.
 Main Idea-classification |
 Main Idea |