Over the past two months my children have been using the Dyslexia Gold Full Bundle by Dyslexia Gold to increase their reading and multiplication skills. Today we’re sharing our review of this supplemental program with you.
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Aim of Dyslexia Gold
You don’t need to have dyslexia to use this program – my children aren’t dyslexic, but they have both seen improvements. However, those with reading difficulties will see the greatest results. The age range is from 7 – 11, although of course, there’s some play with this, depending on the child. Dyslexia Gold claims to improve reading by 12 months in a term of use at 10 minutes a day, and improve reading by 10.5 months. The goals of Dyslexia Gold are to improve the skills needed for successful reading by:
- increasing phonological awareness
- focusing the eyes to track them across the page correctly
- learning correct spelling
What we received
We received a generous lifetime subscription to the Dyslexia Gold Full Bundle, which is an online subscription so that both of my children were able to use it. The Engaging Eyes game requires the use of 3D glasses (the older style with blue and red lenses), which were sent out to us – both a child-sized pair, as well as an adult-sized pair.
The Dyslexia Gold Full Bundle contains access to all four of the available programs:
- Engaging Eyes
- Fluency Builder
- Spelling Tutor
- Times Table Tutor
The Dyslexia Gold Programs
There are four main programs available (the Dyslexia Gold Full Bundle contains them all, but they are also available in different packages, as well as separately – see their store for full options).
Engaging Eyes
Engaging Eyes works on having children focus and track their eyes on the same letter at the same time and track their eyes across the page in the correct manner. There are four different exercises within this program, and each day it chooses two for the student to work on. So far, Kallista has only encountered two of them.
Before using Engaging Eyes, you need to calibrate the monitor you are using so that it works correctly. This is very easy to do by holding up a credit card to the screen and making the necessary adjustments.
Target Practice has Kallista wear a pair of 3D glasses, line up the target along both horizonal and vertical plains, as well as the correct depth. Her eyes are a little tired after this exercise, but that’s expected as she trains the muscles.
Whack an Alien is like Whack a Mole – it helps the eyes to move well and not erratically to keep on target.
Eye Tracking hasn’t come up yet for Kallista so I can’t comment on that other than to say it helps children learn to track their eyes across the page.
Fluency Builder
Fluency Builder helps children recognise the different phonetic sounds which in turn will help them to read and spell.
Fluency Builder Results from Dyslexia Gold Dashboard are above.
Spelling Tutor
In Spelling Tutor, Kallista was given either words or sentences to listen to and write down. Then she marks her own work, making herself accountable, and lets the program know if she was correct or not. The words that she has had trouble with are then repeated at frequencies until it’s satisfied she’s kept the spelling in her long-term memory.
I like that she needs to write them down on paper to help her muscle memory and hand-eye coordination rather than just simply typing a word into the PC.
Another thing that I love is that you can choose from English or American spelling, as well as choosing English, American, Scottish or Australian pronunciation. It’s not often I come across a curriculum that can align with the UK standards, but Spelling Tutor includes the words for UK primary school pupils aged 4 – 11 (Y1 – Y6).
Times Table Tutor
This is the program I had Tristan use to help him improve his multiplication recall and become more confident and speedier. Choose the multiple you’d like to practice, then answer the questions as they come up – and if you get one wrong it will be repeated over and over again until you have the answer ready in the allocated time.
How My Children Used These Programs
The recommended time to spend on Dyslexia Gold is 10 minutes a day, and on the days my children worked on it, this is what they did. The program itself ends the task at about that time so that they either don’t stop too soon or work for too long. We were back home overseas for a month during this review period, and the travel times were horrendous (35 hours in one direction including layovers). So the children weren’t able to log in quite as often as they should have, but they did on every possible occasion (however, even schools have holidays). On the other hand, they didn’t complain about spending time on vacation working on these programs.
Dyslexia Gold Results
As I said earlier, my children aren’t dyslexic, and they don’t specifically have problems reading – in fact, they’re little bookworms. What I wanted was for Tristan to improve his automatic recall of his multiplication tables, so he worked on Math Tutor almost entirely. And yes! Tristan’s answering quick-fire questions much faster than he did previously (when quick-fire were more like a snail’s pace snore-a-thon). His recall has greatly improved. He still has a little work to do, but there is absolutely a very noticeable difference.
For Kallista, although she reads a lot, I wanted her to become better at reading aloud and to figure out the words she wasn’t familiar rather than just guessing at them and rambling on. When reading aloud, she had a bit of different way of doing it, so I was hoping that this would help her sound more natural and make her reading flow better.
After about a month of using Engaging Eyes and Spelling Tutor combined, Kallista’s reading aloud improved and was a little less halting and she wasn’t guessing so often at unfamiliar words, which makes us all happier. She’s also regularly coming to me and telling me that she knows how to spell a particular word or another that had previously given her some trouble. This really makes us both very happy. I can’t wait to see her results later this month.
Final Thoughts
What I would like to see is a way for children to see how they’ve been doing in the Times Tables Tutor so that they can see their own improvement and feel a sense of achievement.
Also, I would have loved to have had a parent’s dashboard so I could keep on top of things from one place…however, I have been advised that just such a tool is in the works and should be available soon.
Those small matters aside, as I mentioned earlier, because Dyslexia Gold takes so little time and is mainly presented in game format, my children weren’t put off by spending a few minutes each day during their vacation working on it. This is a program you could use over the summer vacation and improve reading fluency and multiplication before heading back to the books full-time in the autumn.
I wasn’t sure if we would see any progress as my children were holding their own quite well in general, so I was really pleased to see improvement and confidence in both of them over the past 8 weeks. That says it all for me!
How To Purchase Dyslexia Gold
You can purchase the packages or individual programs directly from the Dyslexia Gold store.
Read More Reviews
Click here to read 45 more reviews about Dyslexia Gold from a variety of families in the Homeschool Review Crew.
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