Two of the most important concepts any parent or teacher of students with dyslexia should know are: remediation and accommodation.

What is Remediation?

Remediation refers to the remedy-ing of a student’s areas of weakness.  Some examples of remediation are Orton-Gillingham reading instruction to remediate reading ability or teaching students how to organize their thoughts with graphic organizers so they can write better.  Remediation can be very time consuming.  In many cases there is no one curriculum that just ‘works’.  Rather it is the implementation of individualized instruction, at the child’s pace and at their instructional level – day after day.

What is Accommodation?

Accommodations are methods that accommodate a particular weakness so that the student can perform at their intellectual ability.

Examples of accommodations are:

• allowing a student to listen to an audio version of a reading assignment
• allowing a child with dysgraphia to dictate a writing assignment
• allowing more time for testing
• allowing a reader in situations where an audio version isn’t available

Kids with learning differences aren’t the only ones who receive accommodations.  If a child has a broken arm, they may be allowed to dictate a paper.  If a child is blind, no one would expect them to read without the accommodation of books written in Braille.  Likewise, kids with learning differences should receive accommodations so that they too can perform to their best ability.

Remediation can be looked at as fixing the foundation of a child’s learning.  All children need a strong foundation in the basics.  Kids with learning challenges, like dyslexia, just need more time to build that foundation.

Balancing Accommodation and Remediation

In the traditional school setting, it can be difficult to get the right kinds of remediation and as the grade-leveled assignments come in day after day, oftentimes more attention is given to providing accommodation than remediation.

As homeschoolers, we have the freedom to individualize our kids’ instruction time and methods so that we can spend enough time on remediation while gradually implementing accommodations so that our kids can learn material at a level with which they are capable and begin to work more and more independently.

Read the post below for a list of the most effective and helpful accommodations to help your child with dyslexia learn.

How have you learned to balance accommodation and remediation in your homeschool?

The Importance of Parent/Teacher Education

This site exists to educate and encourage families with dyslexia.  Dyslexia does not need to be a disability if the teacher understands how dyslexics learn and the right teaching methods are used.  For more in depth understanding about teaching kids with dyslexia, consider taking one of my parent dyslexia courses.