Incorporating Enhanced Lateralization in your lessons:

The first thing you say to a new pupil on the first day he comes for a lesson goes something like this: "Before we begin, I want to explain why a smart kid like you is having reading problems." And you launch into your speech on how the brain has two halves, a right half and a left half, each programmed to do different things. He is in trouble because he is using the right side by mistake to try to read, and it doesn't work.

What you plan to do is to give him exercises that will help him switch sides and start using the left side, where the proper programming is built in. You will stress that dyslexia is not stupidity but rather a quirk like color blindness or a tin ear. Now if you are color blind you don't try to make a living painting portraits, or if you can't tell one pitch from the other, you don't try to play the violin for a living. But if your problem is in telling one word from another, you are in a pickle, because in this world there is no way to get away from words.

Stress that dyslexia is probably the most inconvenient quirk you can have, and you two will be working together to reduce this nuisance as fast as you can.

Next, start going through the exercises on pages 13 through 19 in the Teacher's Manual. These are done without EL and are preliminary exercises in phonemic awareness, or "ear training" to get the student to begin to hear the separate sounds in a word. When you have completed them, it is time to get out the earphones and begin EL.

Put the student in the earphones, which you have connected up with your Y cord so that each ear gets its sound from one of the recorders. Turn on the music. Have him point to the ear that is hearing the music. Don't ask him whether the music is in his left ear because he will say yes, wherever it is. Make him point. ALWAYS check for music in the left ear before he begins a spelling exercise, and ALWAYS make him point. Hand him a pre-numbered worksheet like the ones in the Spelling Book and then turn on the words. He is to leave the music going throughout the spelling exercises, even when he is writing down the word, but he can stop and start the words if the voice is going too fast or he wants it to repeat. To stop and start the tape, it is best to use the pause button, and if he wants to rewind it to hear a word again, he needs to be FAST. Down UP!

There are directions on how to correct these exercises in the Introduction to the Spelling Book.  When he makes several mistakes on an exercise, he corrects it and then does the whole thing again.  This is because he will probably make different mistakes the second time, anyhow, and what he needs is endless practice in sound-symbol matching.

The first word list is very long and probably should be done in two sessions. After that he can probably do one list in a session. They generally take ten to fifteen minutes to complete. The time doesn't matter as long as he is working and contented. The ONLY time your student will be in earphones is while he is doing a spelling exercise from one of he RfS tapes.

Once he has done the exercises on pages 13 to19 in the Teacher's Manual, he is also ready to work with the cardboard. Get out the phonics book, open to page 1, have him put his cardboard against his face properly (see the web site for a picture) and have him read the syllables. First ad, ed, id, od, and ud, then ad, plus bad, dad, etc across the line. Then ed, and bed, fed, etc. When he has done those, have him read the other syllables down the columns. Make sure he uses only short vowels: --go--, sounds like the first two letters in got, and so on. The ONLY time he will use the cardboard is when he is reading columns in the RfS Phonics book. He doesn't need it for reading sentences.

You will have him work in the phonics book using the cardboard or do a spelling exercise in the earphones for about fifteen minutes every day. How many pages or columns he gets through in a day doesn't matter. You just make sure of your fifteen minutes. During the other half-hour of his lesson he will be working in the rest of the material without the equipment. All the spelling rules you need are in the back of the Teacher's Manual. Directions are in the introductions in each part of the material. For best results, read them thoroughly.

If you are teaching two students at a time, work with one in the Phonics Book while the other is in the earphones. When they are finished, you can either switch them or do dictation, workbook exercises or grammar with both at once.  they do not need to be in the same place in the material, and in fact, they don't even have to be the same age!