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Dot Patterns – a Simple Tool to Help Deal With

Visual Letter and Number Reversals

Letter and number reversals are a major handicap for a large number of students. Those reversals make reading, writing and math much more difficult. I have devised a simple but invaluable tool – Dot Patterns – that has an amazing effect on correcting these letter and number reversals. Its success is one of the foundational principles that motivated me to create the TeachAllKids website to share this idea with others.

Since this technique has been very successful for dozens of my students, there is strong empirical evidence that at least a very large percentage of all students who reverse their letters and numbers should be using Dot Patterns regularly. There are also other benefits of this technique which was originally used as a valuable thinking-skills tool. For those students who reversed their letters, I initially used other methods but they proved to have very limited success, by comparison. However, soon after introducing Dot Patterns, I began to notice that students also stopped reversing their letters and numbers.

When a student is unable to isolate the individual lines and arcs that make up a letter, they need a tool to help them learn how to readily see these lines and arcs. Look at the letters: 'b', 'd', 'p', 'q'. Most people see the difference between the lines and arcs that make up these letters. However, some children appear to see 'b', 'd', 'p', 'q' as the same single letter or, at best, as only 2 different letters. I like to compare letters like 'b', 'd', 'p', 'q' to a chair. A chair is a chair regardless of whether the chair 'front' is facing us or the 'back' of the chair is towards us — the chair, regardless of its position, is still a chair. Yet, we expect children to know that, if the chair is facing one direction, it is a 'b' and, if it is facing the same direction but is upside down, it is a 'p'. As students become more proficient at doing Dot Patterns, they make fewer and fewer letter and number reversals. Moreover, the few reversals that do occur are quickly corrected by the students themselves. Fortunately, the results are not only extraordinary but the benefits are also long lasting — it truly is learning to see things differently (what we’d call “normally”).

Though I’ve been using this technique for years, I am still always amazed at how well this works. Seeing the difference it makes in kids’ lives leaves me very enthusiastic about Dot Patterns, not only for letter recognition but also as a great thinking-skill exercise. I use them with all my students at all ability levels from grade levels kindergarten through to working with adults. Interestingly, the students actually love to do them. I can't stress enough how important these Dot Pattern designs are to helping a student be successful.

Together, we can Teach All Kids

Linda Derman

www.teachallkids.com

16/07/2009 22:19:48
TAKlinda (Member)

To teach b vs. d I use a picture book called ''b and d are buddies.'' The picture book also has activities to use at the end to help reinforce the concept.

14/08/2011 03:58:10
bolsen19