Humor will not be tolerated!! -Portia

Do any of you have experience working with dyslexic children? I have a bright eight-year-old boy in my class whom I've informally "diagnosed" with dyslexia. He does well in math and science, but has strange difficulties with reading and writing -- he mixes up letters, can't sound out words, has atrocious spelling. He hates reading, but loves to have other people read aloud to him. He hates writing, but is an excellent story-teller.

I have no actual training in this area, but I doubt there's anyone in Uganda who does. His family will be going to the States for a few months next summer and I'm going to recommend that they take him for an actual assessment then. But I still have a whole semester with him before that and I'd like to know what I can do for him between now and then. What strategies are out there for working with dyslexia?

No, but this site has concrete things you can do in the classroom (like writing different lines in different colored chalk): http://www.dyslexia.com/library/classroom.htm

When my aunt (who is dyslexic) was learning to read, my grandmother bought her a bunch of small letters (maybe 1" tall) cut out of wood. It helped her learn the shapes of the letters because she could feel them, even though the shapes didn't always look the same to her. Maybe you can find a similar solution out of whatever materials you have access to.