How to Get Rid of Reversals!
Kids with dyslexia struggle with reading and spelling even though they are bright children with a lot of promise. However, if they don’t get the help they need, their self-image suffers, school work continues to decline, and they often simply give up.
Children with dyslexia typically struggle with reversals as part of their condition. This means they perceive words, letters, or figures backward, upside down, slanted, or any other combination of ways. Obviously, this interferes with their school work!
Usually, kids with dyslexia have a difficult time with reversing the letters “b”, “d”, “p”, and “q”. It’s simple to see why! These are all the same figure shown in four different ways. Of course, almost any letter can be reversed but we do see some letters and words reverse with more frequency than others.
Images Move in the Brain
Did you know that images in a dyslexic child’s mind can move…that they aren’t stationary? You might have a difficult time reading, too, if the letters were constantly moving – if a “b” looked like a “d” or if a “p” looked like a “q”.
Kids don’t just struggle with individual letter reversals, either. They can also see words in reverse…or perhaps slanted, or upside down. A common word reversal for children with dyslexia is transposing “saw” for “was”. But any word or letter combination can be reversed while reading.
These perceptual skills are skewed or incorrect. It causes a misreading of information. Even though one of the symptoms of dyslexia is average or above average intelligence, these perceptual issues cause them to perform below grade level.
The Flow of Learning
When a child figures out that a letter or word has been reversed in reading – either alone or by someone pointing it out, a pause occurs. The child has to look back at the letter or word, determine what it was, what is was meant to be, and then try to correct it.
This little pause may not seem like much, but it interferes with the flow of learning. It takes the focus away from the book or reading passage, just enough to cause problems. Fluency is interrupted, which indirectly affects comprehension, because kids with poor fluency struggle so hard to sound out words they often forget the meaning of the words.
It’s too laborious…just too much work!
Even worse, once learning is interrupted this way, it’s often difficult to find the readers’ place in the reading passage, to remember what was being read, or even what the original letter might have been.
This little lack of learning flow places the dyslexic child at a disadvantage. Other children don’t have to do this; they see images clearly without perpetual motion, slanting, or reversals. And sadly, all too often, kids with dyslexia are told to try harder or to quit being lazy.
How Perceptual Skills Affect Reading
Perceptual skills refer to how a person perceives or “sees” information coming in. We see with our brains and take in light with our eyes, so the actual perception is done in the brain for visual skills. The same is true for auditory skills. We take in sound with our ears but process auditory information in our brains.
Kids with dyslexia struggle to correctly process visual and auditory information, both which are perceptual skills. If your perception is skewed, then the information is skewed as well. Often, kids with dyslexia will tilt their heads as they read or write, most likely because their perception is slanted. They are compensating for this by the tilt of their head. Their writing might also slant up or down on paper.
Did you know that kids with dyslexia can “see” a shape in over forty different ways? And that they might see it one way one day and another way a different day or time?
Because of this, these children don’t have a lot of predictability in their lives. When they are asked to read, that predictability is even worse, as they are at a disadvantage from the start due to those skewed perceptual skills. Letters and words simply don’t have consistency.
Children with Dyslexia will Often Panic
When asked to read, these kids will often get nervous, anxious, or agitated. They struggle to know what letters or words might be because they don’t have consistent perceptual skills. The word might be “not” one moment and “hot” the next. Frustration mounts, and they often lash out, avoid reading, or retreat.
Reading transfers to every subject in school and is a necessary life skill. At some point in their lives, kids with dyslexia must read road signs, pass driver’s exams, and navigate the internet. Because of this, they need a system to help them overcome reversals issues. A quick, fun, and easy route to reading and writing success! One that makes sense to them, that caters to their mode of learning, not their peers’.
Overcoming Reversals Issues
Traditional methods fail to help children overcome reversals issues. It’s common to offer these kids”crutches” like holding up their fingers to form a “b” and “d” to determine which letter they might be reading.
Oh goodness!
This can certainly help, but as a child with dyslexia reads, having to stop and hold up fingers to form letters to remember what a “b” or “d” might look like is slow and clunky. Once again, this pause is enough to stop the flow of learning.
It slows reading fluency way down as well. And that directly affects comprehension. It can also be social suicide, especially for older children. Kids will tease them for reading with their fingers in the air.
Here’s the truth. “Crutches” are better than nothing, but reversals need to be stopped if you want to help the dyslexic reader learn to excel at reading, writing, spelling, and math. If you want your dyslexic child’s grades to soar, to allow your child to work up to obvious potential, reversals must be eradicated!
Kids with Dyslexia can be Taught to “See” Letters, Numbers, and Words Correctly
Although perceptual skills can be worked on so your child can “see” letters, numbers and words correctly, this is a long, arduous process. There’s a quicker route, or one you can use while working on those pesky perceptual skills issues.
With the same methods that we use in Bravo! Reading, we can help your dyslexic child learn to recognize and form letters and numbers quickly and easily. Without reversals!
Get the Race from Reversals Pack as Part of the Complete Bravo! Reading System and Save Money!
When you order the Complete Bravo! Reading System, you will receive not only the Race from Reversals Pack but all eleven levels of the Bravo! Reading System, the Bravo! Beginner, and all other Bravo! Reading Expansion Packs for just $399.99!
The expansion packs you’ll instantly receive are the Bravo! Booster Pack, the Bravo! Super Booster Pack, the Bravo! Decoder Pack, the Race from Reversals Pack, and the “Seeing” for Reading Pack.
The Complete Bravo! Reading System Turns Your Child Into a Reading Shark!
Get the Race from Reversals Pack, the Bravo! Beginner, and the Other Bravo! Expansion Packs
Value: $1969.83
Your price for the entire package: $399.99
Movement is King
Kids with dyslexia are typically hands-on or tactile learners. This means they learn best by “doing” instead of “seeing” or “hearing”. To help them understand which direction letters face, they need to move to “feel” this.
But small motor movements aren’t enough for these kids. Sure, these smaller movements can help, but kids with dyslexia thrive on large motor movements. Getting their hands, arms, and shoulders involved helps set in learning.
“Telling” Kids with Dyslexia Won’t Work Most of the Time
Simply “telling” children with dyslexia which direction a letter faces is like blowing wind through their ears! This isn’t how they learn and retain information. They learn by doing, and movement is a form of doing something. This sticks with them.
You can tell children with dyslexia something a million times over, and it might never stick. But let them move, let them get involved with their own learning, and you’ll get results. Because now you’re speaking their learning language instead of expecting them to speak yours.
Large Motor Movements Work Best for Kids with Dyslexia
In the Race from Reversals Pack, your child will practice using gross motor movements, learning the direction of the letter by using a dot dabber and following a scripted arrow path. Kids with dyslexia start to internalize the letter direction from these large motor movements.
But that’s not enough!
Add in visual and auditory cues, color, pictures, and predictability, and soon kids with dyslexia or others with reversals issues will automatically know which direction a letter faces.
A Sample Page from the Race from Reversals Pack
Learning Their Way, Not Ours
Kids with dyslexia don’t learn the same way as their peers. They must get into the groove of feeling the letter to actually learn and internalize it. They also need a multi-sensory route for learning success, because most kids with dyslexia are weak in visual and auditory processing skills.
With the Race from Reversals Pack, your child uses gross motor movements along the letter path but also needs more! By using stop and go sign cues, color, pictures, predictability, brain based learning, buttons that tell them when to lift or when to back it up and drive in reverse, easy “saying” clouds, and arrows along the letter path, kids with dyslexia learn letter directions and formations…their way. Quickly, easily, and with smiles on their faces!
We all know that when kids are happy and having fun, they will stay with something longer. And kids with dyslexia, love doing the Race from Reversals Pack. You don’t have to fight them to sit down and work on it, because to them, it’s not work. It’s fun and games…spoken in their learning language!
Two Types of Reversals
There are two major ways that reversals present themselves. They can appear while reading or writing.
Obviously, it’s easier to determine if a child is reversing in written work than in reading. With written work, the reversed letter is right there in front of you! Reading is a bit more difficult, as we can’t truly be sure what the child is perceiving while reading print.
However, there are ways to determine if a child is reversing letters while reading or writing. With the Race from Reversals Pack, you will get a quick, easy to use evaluations for reversals in both reading and writing.
Bravo! Reading offers these evaluations for free as well. It’s a great starting place if you want to check on your child’s reversals. You can click on these links to download the evaluations and help determine which letters your child is reversing.
Reading Reversals Evaluation
Give your child or student our FREE Reading Reversals Evaluation and find out which letters and numbers are being reversed while reading. It only takes a few minutes to get this figured out, and it’s a great starting point on which letters to work on in the Race from Reversals Pack!
Writing Reversals Evaluation
With our FREE Writing Reversals Evaluation, you can determine which letters and numbers your child or student is reversing while writing. It’s quick and easy to do. Once you know which letters and numbers are causing the problem, you can get going right away on the Race from Reversals Pack!
It’s important to know what letters or numbers your child is reversing, whether in reading, writing, or both. Once you know what letters or numbers are being reversed, you can take steps to helping your child overcome this pesky problem. This, in turn helps reading, writing, and spelling skills increase. The benefit of that, of course, is increased grades in general.
When report cards are fantastic, your child feels great. Homework quits being a battle, and self-esteem soars!
The Race From Reversals Pack
Reversals don’t have to be an academic death sentence!
If your child, whether suffering from dyslexia or not, is struggling with reversals, don’t despair. Bravo! Reading offers the Race from Reversals Pack where kids use tried and true Bravo! methods to stop reversals in their tracks!
Right from the start, your child uses gross motor movement to set in the correct letter formation as well as internalize which direction it faces. Directionality – the ability to know whether something faces left, right, up, or down – can be hard for kids with dyslexia, and since they need to move to learn, we let them move!
Traditional Methods Don’t Work for Children with Dyslexia
Traditional programs and workbooks use extremely small letters and fine motor movements to help kids with reversals issue. This isn’t enough for the dyslexic learner, who must move to learn. And the movement needs to be large motor movement, not small or fine motor movement.
Fine motor movements are fantastic for kids who don’t have dyslexia, but a dyslexic child learns differently. This child needs a different way to learn!
Each page of the Race from Reversals Pack contains only one letter. This means your child engages in gross motor movements with the gigantic letter. By using the hand, the arm, and the shoulder, these large movements set in learning.
Each time your child practices, the letter direction becomes a natural “feeling” for your child. It is internalized. It is learned for good, not for temporary. And it is taught in the dyslexic child’s learning language!
The Auditory Component
We also add an auditory component in the Race from Reversals Pack, because most kids with dyslexia struggle with auditory processing skills. Each letter has a “saying” cloud that goes with each letter or number, guiding your child through the path with the dot dabber.
Your child says the “saying” cloud chant out loud while sliding the dot dabber over the letter path at the same time, following the arrows. This simple process adds one more learning route to help your child overcome reversals issues! While doing these things at once, your child engages in multiple modes of learning. This is what works for the dyslexic reader!
The auditory saying cloud for each letter is just what your dyslexic learner needs to truly learn which way a letter or number faces and is formed. As your child uses a dot dabber or bingo marker (using gross motor movements), a “saying” is chanted out loud at the same time, explaining the letter or number path in short, succinct words. This is just what dyslexic kids need to intuitively know where to go on the letter path as well as enjoy the auditory component – making the Race from Reversals Pack a truly multi-sensory learning experience!
The Visual Component
Obviously, there’s a visual component to reversing letters and words. Because of this, kids with dyslexia need visual cues to help them along the letter or number path. The Race from Reversals Pack uses stop and go signs to help your child know where to start and where to end on the letter itself.
Many kids struggle with reversals simply because they are forming letters or numbers incorrectly. The Race From Reversals Pack takes care of that. As an added bonus, kids learn to form letters and numbers correctly as they practice. Handwriting improves, which is always a bonus!
The visual cue of having a go sign on the letter or number itself helps your child “see” and intuitively understand where to begin the letter or number path. This helps with reversals, as your child imagines where the “go” sign will be on any letter or number that it’s appeared on and transfers this to reading and writing. A perfect starting point cue is the best “start” to perfect letter and number formation.
Another cue that’s necessary for helping kids with dyslexia stop reversing letters is a clean and clear stopping cue. Our “stop” cue is the familiar stop sign kids see all over the place. The bright red sign lets them know in no uncertain terms that it’s stopping time. This keeps kids from guessing at when and where to conclude the formation of a letter or number.
One of the most difficult things for kids with dyslexia to do when forming letters and numbers is to back up on the letter or number path. This seems easy to the rest of us, but these kids want to do anything but back up. They will lift, form the letter or number differently, or write something messy just to get it over with. Our Reverse Cue is one these kids have probably seen before as well. It gives them a firm cue to back up or put their car in reverse. They love the race car analogy and backing up doesn’t seem so bad after a while.
Another visual cue we give kids with reversals issues is a number sequence button. They start at the Go Button with the dot dabber, slide to the Number 2 Button, then go on to the Number 3 Button, and so forth. Along with the gross motor movements, the other visual cues, the auditory saying cloud, and the number paths, kids with dyslexia get multiple avenues of learning. These number cue buttons help them internalize the number and letter path.
Another tricky thing for kids with dyslexia is knowing when to lift the pencil while forming letters and numbers. They don’t like this! It’s as though they are hanging on for dear life to keep that pencil on the paper. Or, sometimes kids will lift too many times, and this is another one of those pauses that stops the flow of learning. With our Lift Buttons, kids know exactly when to lift the pencil while making letters and numbers…and exactly when not to! This eases so much stress for them! Once they have clear directions that they can understand, kids with dyslexia can flourish…and reversals can disappear!
We already explained our Reverse Cue to help kids back up on the letter or number path. Since this skill is so difficult for kids with dyslexia, we also include a Reverse Button to help your child know exactly where to back up on the letter or number path. This double dose is enough to help this difficult skill set in and give your child tons of steam to know it’s time to put the car in reverse and back up!
Giant arrows in bright red bring the dyslexic child’s attention to which way letters and numbers face. These giant, red arrows pop up on appropriate letters and numbers, showing your child exactly which way to make the path go. This is yet one more visual cue to place in the dyslexic learner’s visual tool box!
Smaller, regular arrows are placed strategically throughout each letter or number path as a visual reminder where to move the dot dabber. This takes the guess work completely out of it for the dyslexic learner, who struggles with directionality and gets nervous wondering which direction to make the pencil go while writing letters or numbers. Some of the regular arrows are straight, while others are curved, depending on how the letter or number is formed.
More than Just Reversals…
There’s even more good news. Even though the Race from Reversals Pack was designed to help dyslexic children overcome reversals issues in reading and writing, there’s another amazing benefit.
It helps your child’s handwriting skills improve.
And, even better, it’s been proven to help kids with dysgraphia issues.
Dysgraphia is a sort of writing “dyslexia”. It is the inability to write coherently and is thought to be a symptom of a neurological condition, similar to dyslexia, only it affects writing instead of spelling and reading.
Whether your child has dysgraphia, dyslexia, or simply has messy handwriting, the Race from Reversals Pack will help improve handwriting and writing skills. This is because your child uses a lot of large motor movements to practice forming letters and numbers correctly in the Race from Reversals Pack.
As the muscle movement sets in, your child begins to comprehend how to form the letters and numbers. From there, it transitions into better handwriting. Forming letters and numbers easily and correctly isn’t so hard anymore because the information was finally presented to your child in the right way.
In a way that works for your child. Not the masses.
