Dyslexia Gold Review

Dyslexia Gold has given my family a lifetime subscription to their Dyslexia Gold Full Bundle. Having a child who struggles with reading I was excited to get started and see what it could do for my 16 year old daughter. 

When you log in you will see this page

Dyslexia Gold Full Bundle includes: Engaging Eyes, Fluency Builder, Spelling Tutor, and Times Table Tutor. I also recieved a pair of red/ cyan 3D glasses to use with the Engaging Eyes program.

Dyslexia Gold recommends this to students who know how to read and should know your phonemes. It can be used with other reading programs also.  The recommended age is 5 to adult with the ability to read. The program has several games that should be appealing to several ages.

If you have diagnoses of dyslexia or suspect it or maybe you want to use this with a student who is struggling with reading then this may be a good fit for your student. You can also do an online test from Dyslexia Gold for a minimum cost.

There are several reports throughout each area for you to see the student progress. 

Engaging Eyes 

Engaging Eyes recommends that you have a monitor 13” or larger. This game will also only work on a PC or laptop. Keep that in mind as it won’t work on a tablets or an iPad. This game requires the red/ cyan 3D glasses that will be sent to you once you have purchased the game. This is suppose to help with comprehension, reading speed, and help with reading accuracy.

My daughter is playing Target Practice

Engaging Eyes is not recommended for someone who has strabismus or the common term is cross-eyed. The reason behind this is your eyes not being able to align under normal conditions. While playing Engaging Eyes you are trying to train your eyes to track.

All the game options in Engaging Eyes

Within Engaging Eyes there are 4 games that have different levels: Target Practice, Eye Tracking, Speed Fix, and Whack an Alien. They recommend no longer than 10 minutes a day to prevent eye fatigue. 

Target Practice has three Practice areas A, B, and C. You put on your 3D Glasses and you have targets that you need to shoot. To be able to successfully hit your target you have to use your arrow keys on the keyboard to maneuver the shooter by matching them up to the target you are shooting. Once you are ready you press your space bar to shoot your target. This is meant to help exercise your eyes with tracking and working your eyes together. 

Eye Tracking

Eye Tracking has two levels on is. The first one is dots (Practice A) and the other is words (Practice B). For the dots you will several rows of dots. For the dots you are supposed to pay attention and follow the screen, when you hit start the individual dots revert to a letter and soon revert back to a dot again. You are to hit the space bar when you see the letter you are suppose to find. For example the game will tell you to press the space bar when you see letter b. It mimics reading as your eyes are following this across the screen line upon line.

For the words it’s basically the same and more advance as the words don’t disappear. The words are highlighted as they move across the page. You may have one that says press the space bar if the letter begins or ends with the letter e. This is much harder as you have to look at the complete word and not just a letter while there are other words that are still on the screen. 

Speed Fix

Speed Fix may be part of the Eye Tracking but stands alone when you are in the Engaging Eyes games there are Level A and B to challenge you. Basically you see colorful animals that speed across the screen and also mimic reading as it goes from left to right line upon line. However you don’t press the space bar you just follow using your eyes. 

Whack an Alien

Whack an Alien has a planet background and aliens pop up one at a time all over the screen. Each time you spot an alien you click on it quickly using your mouse. The aliens are timed and disappear quickly. There are two levels in this section. 

Fluency Builder

My daughter doing several of the activities in Fluency Builder

Within Fluency Builder you have 50 lessons. Each lesson will focus on a different phonological sound. The main focus is creating phonological awareness. To make sure you hear all the sounds within a word. 

Phonics 

When you hear the sound of the words you can sort them by sound or spelling. At the same time the words have picture and the word that you can practice reading.

 

Fluency Builder

Another game is you hearing the word and clicking on the correct words.

 

Speed

Speed is where you read the words as fast as you can. You can speed it up or slow it down. 

Phonological Awareness 

You listen to the sound drag the word to the correct area to match the sound. You have two choices to choose from. You can hit the audio button several times if you need a reminder of what the sound of the letter/letters sound like. There are two pictures that have an audio button if you need to hear the sound. Example if you word is paper you have to match the phoneme to the correct picture. The pictures below are cat and baby and it will give you a series of words to work on. 

Reading Passage 

You read short non-fiction paragraphs. If you get stuck on a word you can click on the word to hear it. You will read the story four times but not all at once. The first day for the lesson you read it twice followed by day 2 you will read it two more times. Once you are done reading the passage you click next. It will time you and tell you how long it took for you to read it. The passage also has a box off to the side of key words. 

One of the reports in Fluency Builder

Spelling Tutor 

Using the most common words used with a word bank of 1,000 words. The neat thing is that it customizes the words based off your mistakes. You will have several opportunities to review the words. You have to check off the words that you miss yourself. This is supposed to make your student more aware of their mistakes.

You need paper, pencil, or even a whiteboard to write down the sentences. You click on the audible button to hear a sentence. After you write it down you bring up the next screen that allows you to check your words. If you’re correct you hit the check mark for wrong spelling you check the X. Afterwards you write down the words you didn’t spell correctly 3 times. 

Times Table Tutor 

Times Table Tutor uses the Singapore technique to help your student learn the multiplication tables up to the 12 x 12.

It is set up to teach mastery of the times table. With the Singapore math style you will learn by concrete, pictorial, and abstract. There are several multi-sensory activities from flashcards, to clicking on the correct answers.  There are several other activities to work on multiplication. It’s not timed so you can work through the problems at your own pace. It works on one set at a time. So if you are learning your fours, it will only go over those multiplication facts. At least that is where my daughter has had at this point. I’m not sure if it changes as the lessons progress.

My daughter is working on her 6 times table

You click on the correct answer to practice your multiplication facts

First off let me tell you there is a lot in all of the programs and with each game. 

How did I use Dyslexia Gold in my homeschool? 

Several years ago my daughter did vision therapy through our eye doctor. I saw her improve drastically in her reading and eye tracking skills. That was when she was 8 years old and now she is 16. I felt she needed some more therapy to help her out more with the struggles she has with reading, spelling, and tracking. She gets lost often while reading and gets pretty frustrated.

Logging in is very simple and navigating the site was easy for my daughter. I had no problems getting around either.

Once you log in you just click on the area you want to focus on. I decided to start her out with Engaging Eyes. She put on her nifty 3D glasses and was completely confused at how to work the keyboard to hit her targets. I was at a lost also. I ended up getting my 13 year old son and he figured it out quickly and showed use both how to move the shooter around and how to adjust it for each of the targets. After that we didn’t have any other problems figuring out the rest of the areas.

My daughter struggled for around 2 weeks with the 3D glasses and found out that she had sore eyes. Once she got use to them she was good with them. They recommend not longer than 10 minutes with them.

Each day we switched off doing different areas. Monday we did Engaging Eyes. Tuesday she Fluency Builder. Wednesday Spelling Tutor, and Thursday Times Table Tutor. On Fridays she would do anyone she wanted to do. Which usually was the Times Table Tutor. Sometimes in the evening she would start Dyslexia Gold by herself. Typically the lessons were around 10-15 minutes.

My daughter’s only complaint was the Spelling Tutor and she would cry with this one. She has dysgraphia and the writing part I had to have her just work the program and not do the paper portion. That made it doable for her.

My daughter has some pretty significant eye problems. One of them being strabismus which I missed when looking over for this review. Granted she has had eye surgery to correct it and wears a pretty hefty eye glasses prescription to help her out. I’m not sure how much this affected her with the Engaging Eyes Target Practice. She did the program but it was hard for her. When she did it at the eye doctor I don’t recall how they did it or if it was a computer program as I was in the waiting room.

My daughter regardless enjoyed the program and wants to continue using it.

When I look at her reports it does show a lot of improvement. Watching her read lately I have noticed that she is doing better with not getting lost within the lines of a book. 

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