I doubt that your child has dyslexia because of her early reading of very difficult texts and her spelling abilities. Has she ever been tested for ADHD (inattentive kind)?
My dyslexic and dysgraphic son is a terrible speller and FL is a nightmare for him. No doubt someone will prove me wrong, but FL is usually very difficult at best for dyslexic kids. I am thinking dyslexia is not the issue.
Have you explored having your son spelling and FL exempt? My older dyslexic son was FL exempt and he chose to start at a CC where it wasn’t an issue. Younger one is applying this year; he made it through 2 years of HS level Latin and I have asked the GC to include in his report that he didn’t continue due to dyslexia.
One thing we are seriously looking at is the gen ed requirements for each college. If FL is required, we look for ASL, which my son is interested in taking and/or if he could take ASL at our local CC and transfer it. Our state system (SUNY) used to required a year of FL or equivalent testing. My D took ASL at the CC, although at the time, ASL was only permitted as an FL choice for education and communication majors. By the time my next son entered SUNY 4 years later, FL was removed as a requirement, but it can be used as an option to meet the revamped gen ed requiremetns. This son chose extra history classes rather than FL,although he did fine in it in HS.
@techmom99 my son is spelling exempt and has extra time. He limped through two years of Spanish and is now done forever. They wouldn’t exempt him from FL, and in fact, his IEP was taken away a couple of years ago, though he still has a 504.
We are also in NY, and he will probably apply to Bing, so thanks for this info.
@techmom99 - your earlier post was spooky because your husband and sons sound like my husband and one son!
ETA: We looked very closely at gen-eds too. Avoided any schools which required FL for computer science.
pittsburghscribe: No, she’s never been tested for ADHD. We are having her tested soon–so hopefully we can figure out what the problem is. Now that I have read the posts here–I agree that it does not sound like dyslexia.
It’s interesting because the more I question her about her issues, the more I am finding out. As I said upstream, she is an auditory learner. She said she has difficulty taking notes whilst listening to a lecture (or whilst reading the text on her own) because she has to focus so hard on the writing. This is why her APWorld class has been challenging for her. She has to read and outline a dense text that her teacher refuses to lecture on–he only lectures on side issues and while interesting, it does not help her remember and process what she has read. So she has no auditory reinforcement of what she is reading. She has a test coming up and she is very nervous about it because of this. She has been studying for it for the past week. She did find a you tube lecture series on APWorld and that has helped her immensely because she listens to it and absorbs the content much better than if she was reading and taking notes on her own. Its funny, because she has a memory like a steel trap. If you tell her something, it gets absorbed and locked away in her head and she can recall it clearly. If she reads it herself, not so much. The challenging part of this class for her is that she has to read the text carefully because her teacher quizzes them on each chapter and asks numerous questions on the minutia of the text such that if a student did not very closely read the chapter, he/she would fail for certain. So, she can’t just listen to a you tube lecture as a sub for closely reading the textbook, but rather will have to find time to do both.
This is what concerns me the most because what can she do about that? It is hit or miss as to whether or not she gets a teacher who lectures or whether she gets one who prefers a kind of flipped classroom approach.
My goal is to first have her assessed to find out what is wrong and then to figure out what she needs to do to function within the parameters of what her diagnosis is. I am thinking that it would be difficult/impossible for a teacher to accommodate a student like her, because he/she is not going to start lecturing in a flipped classroom setting just to accommodate my DD.
OP, I’m repeating my suggestion in my post #12. See if there is an online version of your D’s World History textbook. For example look at www.classzone.com. You need an activation code which the teacher can supply if the school has a subscription to the online textbook. Then you can use a free downloadable text-to-speech app like Natural Reader to have the text read to her, albeit in a mechanical sounding voice. The other option is learningally.com but you need some documentation of a disability to subscribe to that.
Corinthian: I did download the Natural Reader app and have looked into learning ally. I agree she definitely will need to listen to her textbooks. This though, will not completely resolve her issue because as I said, hearing it and having to take notes on the text at the same time is challenging for her. Thus, she needs to do double work in a sense by reading/listening to the text and taking notes, then going back and just listening to a you tube lecture on it for it to really sink in. As you can imagine that takes double time. I think a large part of her problem is the teacher she has who does not lecture on the reading or the topics being read. And that was just luck of the draw. If she had gotten a teacher who actually lectured on the topics and/or the text, she would not have as much of an issue. I only point this out because I was the type of learner who would absorb material best if I wrote it down. DD struggles with listening and writing at the same time. Hopefully there will be some way we can address this to help her improve in this area because it seems like more teachers are utilizing more of the flipped classroom kind of approach and DD strongly dislikes that manner of learning because it causes her issues.
To be sure though, she now realizes that she needs to listen to the text and will get online versions of her texts, if available.
I’m an auditory learner and I can’t tell you how many times as an adult I would be in important meetings and someone would think they were doing me a favor by slipping me a pad of paper and a pen…it makes me chuckle. I think that every student needs to figure out how best to learn and retain materials. For me, in college and in my adult life it is to listen, listen, listen and then go to a quiet place and get my thoughts organized and jot notes to remind myself of what I heard.
My dyslexic needed to master skills also that were “personal” to him whether the teacher gave out lecture notes or not and not all professors have lecture notes or PowerPoints for students. Or at times when he had to digest large volumes of reading which was the most difficult for him and difficult to “pace” with others in the class. He also had to learn to “allow” others to correct writing to make sure he had periods at the end of sentences and capitalized the first word of each sentence…really basic things that his mind just doesn’t comprehend. For that he learned to read out loud everything he writes to himself and every time he takes a breath decide what punctuation fits. The writing center and the disabilities office at his college is very helpful with this also. They don’t rewrite his papers, but they help him with spelling which is on some level hilarious and tells you alot about the English language and punctuation. I saw something it wrote last year before corrections and I was impressed how every single year he improves 15 years into this journey.
I know what you mean about luck of the draw on teachers. My D fortunately was assigned to a World History teacher who doesn’t demand that much reading of the textbook and relies more on lectures and class participation, which my D is good at. We also didn’t put her in AP World History. We’re not sure what to do about next year when most of the kids she considers her peers will take APUSH but that will probably be too much reading for her.
Oh my gosh this drives me freaking crazy with my son. 
I’m so glad to see other parents mention this stuff. Phew. 
In fourth grade my DD tested at a 12th grade reading level and first grade spelling level. This is pretty typical of a kid who learned to read via sight reading, not phonetics. She was tested for visual processing disorders at a college of optometry and received therapy there. It was much lower cost than private and it helped a lot.
She still can’t spell anything though. Or keep a math page neat unless she uses graph paper.
Corinthian: When I compare the experience my older daughter had in APWorld (in another school district), with my D’s current experience, it’s like night and day. Older D had a truly amazing teacher who lectured on the material and did not expect the students to learn it on solely their own, as opposed to my younger D who has no relevant class notes since her teacher won’t lecture on it. Night and day.
When my D found the APWorld lecture series on you tube, she actually had tears in her eyes whilst listening to it. When I saw her getting emotional and questioned her as to why, she said that she was so relieved to be able to listen to a lecture on the topics and how everything made so much more sense to her and that it sticks in her mind more. I actually started to tear up myself because I saw how so desperately she wants to learn and how she is struggling with how the class is taught.
momofthreeboys: I will read your post to my DD! It helps her to know that she is not the only one and others learn/absorb like she does. That is why she really has not had to study much at all for any tests up until this AP class, because once she heard it in class, she locked it away and retained it. I wish I could learn like that but I need to write detailed notes or it goes out of my head.
Can you post or pm me a link to the YouTube lecture series your D is using for World History? I’m sure that would be much preferable to the mechanical voice of Natural Reader and would be great for my D as well.
@Corinthian: I certainly will! I will ask her tonight when she gets home from school/activities…
PurplePlum, my college housemates hated me at exam time 
because I never crammed. I didn’t even know how to cram. I did HAVE to learn more skills in college because so much material is not covered by college lectures so I did have to learn how to digest written materials and retain it, but again I did it bit by bit…no cramming for me. I got to hang out alone at exam time and per my housemates preferably not in the house. I do not have a learning disability I don’t think. People are definitely unique in how they learn…the key is to identify, embrace, and prosper with a style that works best for you.
Also many kids hit a wall so to speak in the last couple years of high school as work loads increase and as content becomes more difficult and they need to adjust from what carried them through middle school and early high school. Alot of kids at this time start finding their core competencies, too, whereas in earlier years they were good at everything…now maybe they are discovering their strengths are math, or science, or history or English or languages. Even the best of the best of a high school class will have strengths and weaknesses. Some can work and process fast, and some will never work “fast” because they have perfectionist tendencies or because they are simply born with slower normal processing speeds, which can be a hurdle for timed tests. Finally kids that were precocious as youth find that their classmates have developed and caught up to them which can be difficult for a kid who was always “ahead” and their self-esteem was based on that thinking. The vision things is important, too, as kids whose vision has declined through puberty might not know what they aren’t seeing.
Stop Climbing, Start Swimming: The hidden advantages of dyslexia: Jonathan Buchanan at TEDxWarwickED
This is an interesting TED Talk
“People are definitely unique in how they learn…the key is to identify, embrace, and prosper with a style that works best for you.”
I love this statement–this is so true!
And thanks dragonkids for the TED talk reference–I will check it out.
Re punctuation and capitalizing things, my son would write nothing but run-on sentences for the rest of his life if he could. He had the vocabulary of a 21 year old when he was 11. But his writing still looks like a seond grader’s :))
My DD has dyslexia. She couldn’t read at all until 3rd grade. She went to speech and special ed in grammar school. She learned to read by sight so taking a foreign language like Spanish was impossible. She took Chinese in high school and did fine since she worked with symbols.
In junior high school they took away her 504 plan because it did not effect her gpa. Once it is taken away it is very hard to get back. English will always be a struggle for her especially spelling but she excels in science and math. I was so worried about the ACTs(didn’t even consider the SATs with the vocab and how lopsided the numbers reported would be.) I tried several things to get her accommodations for more time even going to a psychiatrist for anxiety but due to the fact her dyslexia didn’t negatively effect her gpa they wouldn’t do it. I do not get that logic because with extra time she would be able to read everything and possibly do better. The first time she took the ACTs she got a 24 and told me she had to leave a lot blank since she didn’t have time to finish the sections and got very overwhelmed and couldn’t focus. I said just take it again and don’t worry about it. Well, she got a prefect 36 on science and ended up with a 32 overall. I asked her how she did it and she said since she didn’t have time to read everything and just used her reasoning skills. I will say after one of those tests she is drained mentally for hours.
I was so worried about college with all of the reading. She wanted to be retested for college since her last test was over 5 years old but I said just try and do it like you did in high school. I got the whole I can’t keep up when the teacher puts up a power point etc… I told her that was normal some teachers go too fast. I said record the class and rewatch it. So far she has 4 A’s and a B this semester and I haven’t heard I need accommodations in awhile from her. She has to work hard and be prepared because she can’t cram since it takes a long time to read. She uses index cards because she is a very visual learner. In the real world she will not get accommodations so I am very happy now that she learned to deal with her dyslexia in high school
I am so proud of her. I can’t tell you how frustrated I was when she couldn’t even read a simple word in 3rd grade. If you asked me back then if she would ever get out of special ed I would have been shocked now she goes to a top university and is doing great. Thank goodness for spell check and for computer programs that fix grammar.