Audio Books and the Reluctant Reader

originally posted 02 DEC 2014

My daughter has dyslexia and because of our great success with homeschooling, I often have parents messaging me. Generally, they want to discuss their own reluctant readers. Sometimes they know their child has dyslexia and other times they are not sure but are looking for some advice.
My daughter, a sixth grader, now loves to read but it wasn't always so. In school, she hated reading and attempts to do so would leave her in tears. She had an IEP which would provide tutoring and take her out of class for tests and quizzes but that did more harm than good as it lowered her self esteem quite a bit.

We discovered that when we began homeschooling, we had a flexibility that our former school (as much as we loved it) did not have. We could tailor an education to fit our daughter's needs. One way we did this was to incorporate audio books or use text-to-talk apps that would read her lessons to her. The results were almost immediate. She retained far more of each lesson and began scoring easy As on her exams.

If you have a reluctant reader, make use of audio books. Often you can download fun books from your local library for free. Find a good text to talk app that will read to them as well.
In this day and age, with technology, we have so many ways to help our reluctant readers discover both a love of reading and learning.