Abigail Marshall, webmaster at ‘Dyslexia – the Gift’, describes the Davis approach.

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Five years ago, my son’s life was turned around when we tried a few simple exercises that we found in a newly released book, The Gift of Dyslexia, by Ron Davis. After years of struggle, tears, frustration and anger, my son’s reading problems seemed to dissipate almost magically, within less than an hour after we began the first exercise described in the book. The pain of reading gave way to a joyful rush of discovery, with my son eager to practice new-found skills. The little boy, then 11, who had struggled with 3rd grade material became a voracious reader, coming up to his grade level within a few weeks, and exceeding grade level within months.

My life changed, too, because I soon found out that despite the fact that the book’s author, Ron Davis, had a 15-year proven track record with the methods he wrote about, working with dyslexic people of all ages, few people seemed to know about his work. In fact, Davis had written his book after being rebuffed by educators and established dyslexia organizations for his innovative and novel approach to dyslexia. If he couldn’t get leading educators to investigate and implement his methods, he reasoned, at least he could write a how-to manual to let parents do what I did – open the doors to reading for their kids.

Within a year, I had given up my own well-established career – I was a lawyer – in favor of spearheading the newly created Davis Dyslexia Association International (DDAI), an organization formed to provide information about the Davis approach, to develop a set of standards for the Davis program, and to train teachers and private providers in the use of these methods. That was in 1995. Today at the end of 1999, DDAI has affiliated organizations in Mexico and five European countries, more than 120 individuals worldwide have become licensed providers and instructors in Davis methods, and hundreds more teachers and parents have received introductory training through workshops regularly given in five different languages. And best of all, thousands of children and adults with dyslexia and related problems have successfully completed the Davis program. Many, like my own son, are now honors students in high school and college.

In this article, I will summarize some basic aspects of the Davis approach including Davis Theory and the Basic Davis Methods for Dyslexia Correction.

Davis Theory:

Ron Davis, himself a severely dyslexic adult, figured out how to ‘correct’ his own dyslexia before he ever came up with any theories about dyslexia. Until the age of 38, he had always accepted the official pronouncements of the experts who had diagnosed him as mentally retarded. Although he had a measured IQ of 160, he understood that he would never be able to read or write without an arduous struggle, because there was something terribly wrong with his brain.

Then he noticed that sometimes his dyslexia got worse. An engineer by training, it occurred to him that if he could figure out how to make his dyslexia worse, he might somehow stumble on the key to making it better. His first clue, while working as an amateur sculptor, was that when he was at his artistic best, he was at his dyslexic worst.

So he locked himself in a hotel room, and practiced making his dyslexia worse. Then he worked on making it better. After three days, a moment arrived when the letters on the hotel room guest card suddenly became legible to him. Stunned that the letters were all the same size, and that there were spaces between the words, he went to a public library, picked up the book ‘Treasure Island’ from the shelves, sat down, and read the book cover to cover before the library closed that day.

This was not the solution to dyslexia, but it was the beginning of a journey. Davis shared his ideas with others, discovering to his surprise that most of his artist friends were also dyslexic, and through a trial-and-error approach developed a reliable method for helping others to overcome their own dyslexia. About a year later, he opened his first reading clinic.

The Davis theory came out of the trial-and-error approach, as a way to explain why the Davis methods work. It can be summed up as follows:

All dyslexics are primarily picture-thinkers: they think through mental or sensory imagery, rather than using words, sentences, or internal dialogue (self-talk) in their minds. Because this method of thinking is subliminal – faster than the person can be aware of – most dyslexics are not aware that this is what they’re doing.

Because dyslexics think in pictures or imagery, they tend to use global logic and reasoning strategies, looking at the ‘big picture’ to understand the world around them. They tend to be very good at strategizing, creative endeavors, hands-on activities, and solving real world objective problems, but tend to be poor with word-based sequential, linear, step-by-step reasoning. When you look at a picture of a dog, you do not move your mind from tail to haunches to legs to shoulders to head to ears to nose to figure out you have a dog. You see all parts at once, and conclude ‘dog’. If most or all of your thinking is in pictures, you would become accustomed to figuring things out by looking at the whole object or situation at once.

Thinking primarily with images, dyslexics also tend to develop very strong imaginations, and to use a picture or feeling based reasoning process to solve problems rather than a verbal one. If they are at first confused (or intrigued), they will mentally turn an object around to look at it from different viewpoints or angles. From this thought process, they develop many unique abilities and talents.

This ability can also be the foundation for a problem. When disoriented, the individual will perceive their own thinking as reality. Most people experience a state of disorientation when looking at an optical illusion, or when exposed to misleading sensory stimuli, such as that created by virtual reality amusement rides. But dyslexics become disoriented on a day-to-day basis; it is their natural mental response to any confusing sensory information – as well as to creative problem-solving.

Dyslexics tend to have difficulty with unreal and symbolic objects, such as letters and numerals. In their effort to comprehend symbols as they would an automobile engine or an engineering diagram, they can become disoriented. This leads to the familiar symptoms of substitutions, omissions, reversals or transpositions in reading or writing letters and words. Disorientation is not limited to visual input; many dyslexics commonly mishear or garble words or the sequence of words in sentences. Their sense of time can seem distorted and their motor coordination can appear delayed or clumsy.

The repeated mistakes that result from misperceptions due to disorientation inevitably lead to emotional reactions, frustration and loss of self-esteem. In an effort to solve this dilemma, each dyslexic will begin to develop a set of coping mechanisms and compulsive behaviors to get around these problems. Ron Davis calls them “old solutions.” Rote memorization, the alphabet song, getting Mom to do the homework, acting out, illegible handwriting to cover up poor spelling, skillful deception and avoidance of any task related to school or reading, are some examples. These can begin to develop as early as ages six or seven. An adult dyslexic will have an entire repertoire of such behaviors. Now we have the full range of symptoms, characteristics and behaviors commonly associated with dyslexia.

The most significant aspect of the Davis Theory in resolving dyslexia is the observation that when an auditory symbol – a word – lacks a mental picture and meaning for the dyslexic, disorientation and mistakes are the result. When we show a dyslexic how to turn off the disorientations at the moment they occur, and then help find and master the stimuli that triggered the disorientation, the reading, writing and spelling problems start to disappear. So do the “old solutions.”

The Basic Davis Methods:

If dyslexics are picture thinkers and prone to perceptual disorientations in the senses of time, vision, hearing or balance/coordination, then the solution to dyslexia is two-fold:

* A method for controlling perceptual disorientation.

* A method for eliminating the causes for perceptual disorientation.

Resolve the Disorientation.

Fortunately, it is very easy to stop the disorientation. All we have to do is teach the student how to recognize when they are disoriented, and then how to use their own mind and awareness to turn off their disorientation – or, in other words, to become “oriented.” This really is no more difficult than teaching a child how to hold their breath while swimming underwater; it is simply a matter of learning to consciously control something that usually happens in our minds without our awareness.

Over the years, Davis providers have developed several methods for teaching this control. The most common and reliable way is called Davis Orientation Counseling®, and is described in detail in The Gift of Dyslexia. Using this technique, the student learns to mentally move their ‘mind’s eye’ to a different vantage point, until they find the optimum point for focusing attention, called the orientation point. Students who have difficulty with the visualization approach can achieve the same effect through a kinesthetic approach, called Alignment and Fine-Tuning. Both are followed by an auditory approach called Auditory Orientation.

Resolving disorientation is necessary before the student can progress, because otherwise the student will continue to misperceive letters and words. If one word sometimes looks like bat, and at other times looks like tab or pat or tap or tad – there is no hope that the student will ever be able to recognize the word. A parent or teacher might think that the student has memory problems and encourage drill and repetition, whereas the student is confused and frustrated because the tutor seems to be showing him different words each time.

Fortunately, the methods are easy to teach. Since it involves a skill that dyslexic children are good at – using their imagination – they usually catch on very quickly.

Sometimes, especially with older children and adults, the results from Orientation Counseling are extremely dramatic, resulting in an immediate jump of several levels in reading ability. This is because for these children, their disorientation has been the major barrier to progress. They may have already had years of education or tutoring; once disorientation is resolved, all their past experience clicks in to place, and progress is typically extremely rapid.

However, learning to control disorientations does not resolve dyslexia. All it does is resolve a key symptom of dyslexia, not the underlying cause. Until you fix the cause, the symptoms will inevitably recur.

Resolve the Factors that Trigger Disorientation:

The reason that controlling disorientation is not enough to resolve dyslexia is that the disorientation is a response to confusion, frustration or stress. In the case of reading, this response is triggered by confusion over letters or words. As long as this confusion exists, and there is no picture for what a word represents, the student will continue to become disoriented when reading.

For reading, writing and spelling improvement, the Davis method involves three basic steps:

* Mastery of the alphabet and basic language symbols.

* Mastery of words for which the dyslexic has no picture or meaning..

* Building sequencing and comprehension skills during reading.

Resolving Letter Confusion — The Clay Alphabet:

Disorientation is often caused by individual letters that are visually or auditorially confusing to dyslexics. For example, my son found it difficult to distinguish c from e because of their similar appearance; others have problems with c and s or c and k because they often represent the same sound.

Thus, the first step toward resolving dyslexia is to create the letters of the alphabet in clay. We use clay because it is a three-dimensional medium and also involves a creative, participatory act. By molding the letters in clay, the alphabet is no longer something arbitrary but something the child (or adult) has made, and thus becomes a part of them.

Through observation of how the student forms the letters, and how they react to saying the names of the letters, we can find which are ‘triggers’ for disorientation, confusion and misperception; and help the student overcome the confusion aroused by that letter.

The student models two complete alphabets, first upper case, then lower case. As each set of letters is mastered, the student explores and discovers the correct shape, name and sequence of each letter.

Alphabet Mastery is followed by similar work with punctuation marks and pronunciation or speech sounds. With this knowledge, the student is equipped to use one of the most important tools for learning that we can provide the picture-thinker: the ability to explore the meaning of words with the dictionary.

Putting Pictures to the Words: Davis Symbol Mastery®

The words that cause the most confusion for dyslexics are common words, such as it or from. Often a student will easily read a longer word in a story, such as crocodile, but hesitate or stumble over a word like the. Because these words lead to disorientation, we call them trigger words.

This is because the dyslexic student thinks with pictures. It is easy to envision a crocodile in one’s mind, but very difficult to imagine an ‘of’ or a ‘this’.

We resolve this problem through a process called Davis Symbol Mastery. After looking up a word in a dictionary and discussing a definition with a helper, the student models an object or set of objects which accurately represents the meaning of the word, as well as the letters of the word in clay. This process goes far beyond the multi-sensory and phonemic awareness strategies that are recommended for dyslexic learners. It engages the creative process and establishes a lasting mental image for a specific word and series of letters. It produces comprehension and long term retention of the spelling and meaning of a word without the need for phonetic decoding or memorization. It stops the word from causing any future disorientations.

There are more than 200 trigger words in the English language that have to be mastered, but once this is done the student has developed a working arsenal of sight words – words that are both recognized and understood as soon as they are seen. All you have to do is count the number of small, abstract words in this sentence to see what a difference that will make.

The other goal is that the student has learned a method that can be applied to any word or concept. Davis Symbol Mastery can also be used to master the vocabulary of any subject. The word ‘polygon’ or ‘cytoplasm’ can be mastered even more easily than the word ‘by’. As the student grows older, he has a method that will enable him to master any concept that causes problems in school. My own son, now age 16, no longer needs the clay, but the dictionary remains in constant use.

Three Steps to Easier Reading.

To help dyslexic students master the mechanics of reading, and increase reading speed and comprehension, we use a set of three techniques: Spell-Reading, Sweep-Sweep-Spell, and Picture-at-Punctuation. One problem that dyslexics have is that it is not natural for them to sound out words letter by letter, or even track the letters of a word from left-to-right, taking in one letter at a time. As picture thinkers, they want to look at all the words at once. Their struggle to sound out written words leaves them unable to comprehend written material and usually necessitate re-reading the same text numerous times often at the cost of severe headaches. These exercises allow dyslexics a way to quickly, comfortably and easily learn to visually track, decode, and comprehend written material using their natural abilities.

A detailed explanation of the Davis Theory of dyslexic thinking and development as well as a step-by-step instructions for the Basic Davis Methods can be found in the book ‘The Gift of Dyslexia’. This book is widely available, and can be found in most public libraries or purchased through any major bookstore.

Other resources available from DDAI include:

“Dyslexia, the Gift” video: This one-hour video provides an overview of Davis theory and methods, and features interviews with students and providers.

The Gift of Dyslexia book and audiotape set

Supplemental Instructional Materials, including:

* Davis Perceptual Ability Assessment® Video

* Davis Orientation Counseling® Video

* Davis Symbol Mastery® Kit

More information about Davis methods is available at the Dyslexia, the Gift website.

  Click to listen highlighted text! Davis Dyslexia Correction – a brief overview Abigail Marshall, webmaster at ‘Dyslexia – the Gift’, describes the Davis approach. Background color: Five years ago, my son’s life was turned around when we tried a few simple exercises that we found in a newly released book, The Gift of Dyslexia, by Ron Davis. After years of struggle, tears, frustration and anger, my son’s reading problems seemed to dissipate almost magically, within less than an hour after we began the first exercise described in the book. The pain of reading gave way to a joyful rush of discovery, with my son eager to practice new-found skills. The little boy, then 11, who had struggled with 3rd grade material became a voracious reader, coming up to his grade level within a few weeks, and exceeding grade level within months. My life changed, too, because I soon found out that despite the fact that the book’s author, Ron Davis, had a 15-year proven track record with the methods he wrote about, working with dyslexic people of all ages, few people seemed to know about his work. In fact, Davis had written his book after being rebuffed by educators and established dyslexia organizations for his innovative and novel approach to dyslexia. If he couldn’t get leading educators to investigate and implement his methods, he reasoned, at least he could write a how-to manual to let parents do what I did – open the doors to reading for their kids. Within a year, I had given up my own well-established career – I was a lawyer – in favor of spearheading the newly created Davis Dyslexia Association International (DDAI), an organization formed to provide information about the Davis approach, to develop a set of standards for the Davis program, and to train teachers and private providers in the use of these methods. That was in 1995. Today at the end of 1999, DDAI has affiliated organizations in Mexico and five European countries, more than 120 individuals worldwide have become licensed providers and instructors in Davis methods, and hundreds more teachers and parents have received introductory training through workshops regularly given in five different languages. And best of all, thousands of children and adults with dyslexia and related problems have successfully completed the Davis program. Many, like my own son, are now honors students in high school and college. In this article, I will summarize some basic aspects of the Davis approach including Davis Theory and the Basic Davis Methods for Dyslexia Correction. Davis Theory: Ron Davis, himself a severely dyslexic adult, figured out how to ‘correct’ his own dyslexia before he ever came up with any theories about dyslexia. Until the age of 38, he had always accepted the official pronouncements of the experts who had diagnosed him as mentally retarded. Although he had a measured IQ of 160, he understood that he would never be able to read or write without an arduous struggle, because there was something terribly wrong with his brain. Then he noticed that sometimes his dyslexia got worse. An engineer by training, it occurred to him that if he could figure out how to make his dyslexia worse, he might somehow stumble on the key to making it better. His first clue, while working as an amateur sculptor, was that when he was at his artistic best, he was at his dyslexic worst. So he locked himself in a hotel room, and practiced making his dyslexia worse. Then he worked on making it better. After three days, a moment arrived when the letters on the hotel room guest card suddenly became legible to him. Stunned that the letters were all the same size, and that there were spaces between the words, he went to a public library, picked up the book ‘Treasure Island’ from the shelves, sat down, and read the book cover to cover before the library closed that day. This was not the solution to dyslexia, but it was the beginning of a journey. Davis shared his ideas with others, discovering to his surprise that most of his artist friends were also dyslexic, and through a trial-and-error approach developed a reliable method for helping others to overcome their own dyslexia. About a year later, he opened his first reading clinic. The Davis theory came out of the trial-and-error approach, as a way to explain why the Davis methods work. It can be summed up as follows: All dyslexics are primarily picture-thinkers: they think through mental or sensory imagery, rather than using words, sentences, or internal dialogue (self-talk) in their minds. Because this method of thinking is subliminal – faster than the person can be aware of – most dyslexics are not aware that this is what they’re doing. Because dyslexics think in pictures or imagery, they tend to use global logic and reasoning strategies, looking at the ‘big picture’ to understand the world around them. They tend to be very good at strategizing, creative endeavors, hands-on activities, and solving real world objective problems, but tend to be poor with word-based sequential, linear, step-by-step reasoning. When you look at a picture of a dog, you do not move your mind from tail to haunches to legs to shoulders to head to ears to nose to figure out you have a dog. You see all parts at once, and conclude ‘dog’. If most or all of your thinking is in pictures, you would become accustomed to figuring things out by looking at the whole object or situation at once. Thinking primarily with images, dyslexics also tend to develop very strong imaginations, and to use a picture or feeling based reasoning process to solve problems rather than a verbal one. If they are at first confused (or intrigued), they will mentally turn an object around to look at it from different viewpoints or angles. From this thought process, they develop many unique abilities and talents. This ability can also be the foundation for a problem. When disoriented, the individual will perceive their own thinking as reality. Most people experience a state of disorientation when looking at an optical illusion, or when exposed to misleading sensory stimuli, such as that created by virtual reality amusement rides. But dyslexics become disoriented on a day-to-day basis; it is their natural mental response to any confusing sensory information – as well as to creative problem-solving. Dyslexics tend to have difficulty with unreal and symbolic objects, such as letters and numerals. In their effort to comprehend symbols as they would an automobile engine or an engineering diagram, they can become disoriented. This leads to the familiar symptoms of substitutions, omissions, reversals or transpositions in reading or writing letters and words. Disorientation is not limited to visual input; many dyslexics commonly mishear or garble words or the sequence of words in sentences. Their sense of time can seem distorted and their motor coordination can appear delayed or clumsy. The repeated mistakes that result from misperceptions due to disorientation inevitably lead to emotional reactions, frustration and loss of self-esteem. In an effort to solve this dilemma, each dyslexic will begin to develop a set of coping mechanisms and compulsive behaviors to get around these problems. Ron Davis calls them “old solutions.” Rote memorization, the alphabet song, getting Mom to do the homework, acting out, illegible handwriting to cover up poor spelling, skillful deception and avoidance of any task related to school or reading, are some examples. These can begin to develop as early as ages six or seven. An adult dyslexic will have an entire repertoire of such behaviors. Now we have the full range of symptoms, characteristics and behaviors commonly associated with dyslexia. The most significant aspect of the Davis Theory in resolving dyslexia is the observation that when an auditory symbol – a word – lacks a mental picture and meaning for the dyslexic, disorientation and mistakes are the result. When we show a dyslexic how to turn off the disorientations at the moment they occur, and then help find and master the stimuli that triggered the disorientation, the reading, writing and spelling problems start to disappear. So do the “old solutions.” The Basic Davis Methods: If dyslexics are picture thinkers and prone to perceptual disorientations in the senses of time, vision, hearing or balance/coordination, then the solution to dyslexia is two-fold: * A method for controlling perceptual disorientation. * A method for eliminating the causes for perceptual disorientation. Resolve the Disorientation. Fortunately, it is very easy to stop the disorientation. All we have to do is teach the student how to recognize when they are disoriented, and then how to use their own mind and awareness to turn off their disorientation – or, in other words, to become “oriented.” This really is no more difficult than teaching a child how to hold their breath while swimming underwater; it is simply a matter of learning to consciously control something that usually happens in our minds without our awareness. Over the years, Davis providers have developed several methods for teaching this control. The most common and reliable way is called Davis Orientation Counseling®, and is described in detail in The Gift of Dyslexia. Using this technique, the student learns to mentally move their ‘mind’s eye’ to a different vantage point, until they find the optimum point for focusing attention, called the orientation point. Students who have difficulty with the visualization approach can achieve the same effect through a kinesthetic approach, called Alignment and Fine-Tuning. Both are followed by an auditory approach called Auditory Orientation. Resolving disorientation is necessary before the student can progress, because otherwise the student will continue to misperceive letters and words. If one word sometimes looks like bat, and at other times looks like tab or pat or tap or tad – there is no hope that the student will ever be able to recognize the word. A parent or teacher might think that the student has memory problems and encourage drill and repetition, whereas the student is confused and frustrated because the tutor seems to be showing him different words each time. Fortunately, the methods are easy to teach. Since it involves a skill that dyslexic children are good at – using their imagination – they usually catch on very quickly. Sometimes, especially with older children and adults, the results from Orientation Counseling are extremely dramatic, resulting in an immediate jump of several levels in reading ability. This is because for these children, their disorientation has been the major barrier to progress. They may have already had years of education or tutoring; once disorientation is resolved, all their past experience clicks in to place, and progress is typically extremely rapid. However, learning to control disorientations does not resolve dyslexia. All it does is resolve a key symptom of dyslexia, not the underlying cause. Until you fix the cause, the symptoms will inevitably recur. Resolve the Factors that Trigger Disorientation: The reason that controlling disorientation is not enough to resolve dyslexia is that the disorientation is a response to confusion, frustration or stress. In the case of reading, this response is triggered by confusion over letters or words. As long as this confusion exists, and there is no picture for what a word represents, the student will continue to become disoriented when reading. For reading, writing and spelling improvement, the Davis method involves three basic steps: * Mastery of the alphabet and basic language symbols. * Mastery of words for which the dyslexic has no picture or meaning.. * Building sequencing and comprehension skills during reading. Resolving Letter Confusion — The Clay Alphabet: Disorientation is often caused by individual letters that are visually or auditorially confusing to dyslexics. For example, my son found it difficult to distinguish c from e because of their similar appearance; others have problems with c and s or c and k because they often represent the same sound. Thus, the first step toward resolving dyslexia is to create the letters of the alphabet in clay. We use clay because it is a three-dimensional medium and also involves a creative, participatory act. By molding the letters in clay, the alphabet is no longer something arbitrary but something the child (or adult) has made, and thus becomes a part of them. Through observation of how the student forms the letters, and how they react to saying the names of the letters, we can find which are ‘triggers’ for disorientation, confusion and misperception; and help the student overcome the confusion aroused by that letter. The student models two complete alphabets, first upper case, then lower case. As each set of letters is mastered, the student explores and discovers the correct shape, name and sequence of each letter. Alphabet Mastery is followed by similar work with punctuation marks and pronunciation or speech sounds. With this knowledge, the student is equipped to use one of the most important tools for learning that we can provide the picture-thinker: the ability to explore the meaning of words with the dictionary. Putting Pictures to the Words: Davis Symbol Mastery® The words that cause the most confusion for dyslexics are common words, such as it or from. Often a student will easily read a longer word in a story, such as crocodile, but hesitate or stumble over a word like the. Because these words lead to disorientation, we call them trigger words. This is because the dyslexic student thinks with pictures. It is easy to envision a crocodile in one’s mind, but very difficult to imagine an ‘of’ or a ‘this’. We resolve this problem through a process called Davis Symbol Mastery. After looking up a word in a dictionary and discussing a definition with a helper, the student models an object or set of objects which accurately represents the meaning of the word, as well as the letters of the word in clay. This process goes far beyond the multi-sensory and phonemic awareness strategies that are recommended for dyslexic learners. It engages the creative process and establishes a lasting mental image for a specific word and series of letters. It produces comprehension and long term retention of the spelling and meaning of a word without the need for phonetic decoding or memorization. It stops the word from causing any future disorientations. There are more than 200 trigger words in the English language that have to be mastered, but once this is done the student has developed a working arsenal of sight words – words that are both recognized and understood as soon as they are seen. All you have to do is count the number of small, abstract words in this sentence to see what a difference that will make. The other goal is that the student has learned a method that can be applied to any word or concept. Davis Symbol Mastery can also be used to master the vocabulary of any subject. The word ‘polygon’ or ‘cytoplasm’ can be mastered even more easily than the word ‘by’. As the student grows older, he has a method that will enable him to master any concept that causes problems in school. My own son, now age 16, no longer needs the clay, but the dictionary remains in constant use. Three Steps to Easier Reading. To help dyslexic students master the mechanics of reading, and increase reading speed and comprehension, we use a set of three techniques: Spell-Reading, Sweep-Sweep-Spell, and Picture-at-Punctuation. One problem that dyslexics have is that it is not natural for them to sound out words letter by letter, or even track the letters of a word from left-to-right, taking in one letter at a time. As picture thinkers, they want to look at all the words at once. Their struggle to sound out written words leaves them unable to comprehend written material and usually necessitate re-reading the same text numerous times often at the cost of severe headaches. These exercises allow dyslexics a way to quickly, comfortably and easily learn to visually track, decode, and comprehend written material using their natural abilities. A detailed explanation of the Davis Theory of dyslexic thinking and development as well as a step-by-step instructions for the Basic Davis Methods can be found in the book ‘The Gift of Dyslexia’. This book is widely available, and can be found in most public libraries or purchased through any major bookstore. Other resources available from DDAI include: “Dyslexia, the Gift” video: This one-hour video provides an overview of Davis theory and methods, and features interviews with students and providers. The Gift of Dyslexia book and audiotape set Supplemental Instructional Materials, including: * Davis Perceptual Ability Assessment® Video * Davis Orientation Counseling® Video * Davis Symbol Mastery® Kit More information about Davis methods is available at the Dyslexia, the Gift website.    Powered By GSpeech