How Bee Smart Games Support Students with Dyslexia in Reaching Their Full Potential

Multi-sensory

Multi-sensory teaching techniques stimulate the brain in a variety of ways thereby improving the

essential functions of the brain. The essential functions of the brain for learning include: visual,

tactile recognition, movement, listening skills and conceptualization.

Inspiration

Bee Smart boards games and cards games were inspired by the Orton-Gillingham approach to

structured literacy. O-G is a multisensory approach to reading, writing and spelling. It moves from

the simple to the complex in a systematic, cumulative fashion allowing the student to move at his or

her own rate beginning with phonological skills in which listeners are able to hear, identify and

manipulate phonemes, the smallest mental units of sound that help to differentiate units of

meaning. Separating the spoken word “cat” into the distinct phonemes requires phonological

awareness. Bee Smart games support phonological awareness with a multi-sensory technique.

Listening to Learn

Sound Fishing games reinforce the sound symbol relationship of single consonant as well as

consonant blends and digraphs. With sound fishing the student practices the automaticity of

articulation as well as identification of the sound using auditory, visual and kinesthetic senses.

Some board games provide the opportunity to develop listening as well. Using a multisensory style

for spelling, the player taps out the sounds listening to identify the missing vowel letter or letters

and moves to the letter symbol for the sound. A sneaky way to teach spelling! Each board game is a

different syllable pattern.

Beyond Sounds

The Alpha Chips game starts at the ground floor of understanding the sequence of the alphabet and

recognizing the role of consonants and vowels. Some students have trouble recognizing individual

letters or the group of letters that make their names. They may confuse letters that look similar, like

b and d, or mix up uppercase and lowercase letters. The game reinforces visual perception of

individual lowercase letters. Understanding where to focus attention in a sequence is the first step

to identifying syllable patterns that can be demonstrated with the chips.

Other board games address the non-phonetic words for memorization such as Football. Then there

are word family boards, question words and grammar. Those high level games provide the

opportunity for the child to use cognitive skills that are important to critical thinking. The ability to

analyze information is key when looking at any almost anything.

Executive Function

Proficient readers continually monitor their own thoughts, controlling their experience with the

text and enhancing their understanding. The frontal lobe is responsible for capacity to plan,

organize, initiate, self-monitor and control one's responses in order to achieve a goal. Playing a

board game will help lengthen the child’s attention span when played from beginning to completion

without interruption. In addition the child learns to focus attention to rules, waiting his or her turn,

how to cope with winning and losing, and being flexible. These executive skills that are controlled in

the frontal lobe are not only for playing the game but are life skills.

Tricky Words and Patterns

Snap is a card game that works on short term memory, the capacity to store a small amount of

information in mind and keep it readily available for a short period of time. These high-frequency

words are memorized in grade school because they are the most used words in context but can be

confusing. Snap words are a mixture of grade level words that are decodable by sound and symbol,

word families and non-phonetic words. They are color coded accordingly. These are read only

words. Hint: remembering the word before snap is the best strategy for winning.

The gift

After years of tutoring children to become proficient students and training tutors for Bee Smart, it

was the games that opened the channels to the joy of learning and tutoring. Any Bee Smart tutor

will share that the games provide the repetition necessary for “rewiring the brain” without the

monotony of the “drill and kill”. I can speak for the Bee Smart tutors in saying that watching a

student learn to read and opening his or her to a world to self confidence, mental strength and the

joy of learning and the skill to reach his or her potential is the greatest gift of all.