How to Teach Reading to Dyslexic Students: Effective Strategies

Dyslexia is a specific learning disability that is neurobiological in origin. It is characterized by difficulties in accurate and/or fluent word recognition and by poor spelling and decoding abilities. These difficulties typically result from a deficit in the phonological component of language that is often unexpected in relation to other cognitive abilities and the provision of effective classroom instruction. Secondary consequences may include problems in reading comprehension and reduced reading experience that can impede growth of vocabulary and background knowledge. Researchers at the Yale Center for Dyslexia and Creativity estimate that approximately 20% of students have dyslexia. However, they found that many of the students are undiagnosed, and less than one-third of students with dyslexia were receiving school services.

Fortunately, students with dyslexia can learn to read with the right kind of instruction. Here are some strategies to help dyslexic students learn to read and thrive.

Understanding Dyslexia and Its Impact

When people are able to read quickly and effortlessly, their brains process the basic sound elements (phonemes) that come together as letters (graphemes) in words that ultimately make up written language. People with dyslexia have difficulty translating letters into their corresponding sounds. As a result, correctly identifying words on a page is a challenge, which impacts a student’s ability to read and write. Unfortunately, even though students with dyslexia usually have average or above-average intelligence, school staff members sometimes consider them less intelligent than their peers. In addition, students with dyslexia are often forced to focus on tasks they are unable to do well. It’s important for teachers to look at students with dyslexia holistically.

Dispelling Common Misconceptions

It is important to dispel some common misconceptions about dyslexia. A 2011 survey found that the majority of PreK teachers believe that dyslexia is a visual processing disorder, but this reading disorder doesn’t have to do with vision problems at all: dyslexia is a language processing disorder that originates in the brain, not the eyes. While educators often believe more boys are diagnosed with dyslexia than girls, they are mistaken. Dyslexia is not a sign of low intelligence, nor is it something that children will simply outgrow. It is a chronic condition that requires specific interventions and support.

Early Identification and Intervention

Decades of scientific research show that early identification of dyslexia, intensive instruction using evidence-based reading strategies, and continued practice and scaffolded supports help improve the reading skills of students with dyslexia so they can achieve school and life success. It is recommended that schools administer a valid and reliable screener for dyslexia before grade 3. Dyslexia screeners should consider a student’s developmental history as well as the student’s current skills when screening for dyslexia. For example, infants and toddlers may exhibit a delay in speaking. Children in the preschool years may have difficulty in pronunciation, omit sounds, invert sounds, be insensitive to rhyme, have poor word retrieval or word finding ability, and have difficulty naming the letters and their sounds.

Read also: Understanding Teach Nevada

Effective Instructional Strategies

Instructional interventions for students with dyslexia should be diagnostic, explicit, systematic, sequential, cumulative, and multisensory. Many individuals with dyslexia benefit from targeted small-group instruction or one-on-one help so that they can move forward at their own pace. In addition, students with dyslexia often need a great deal of structured practice and immediate, corrective feedback to develop automatic word recognition skills.

Structured Literacy

The most difficult problem for students with dyslexia is learning to read. Unfortunately, popularly employed reading approaches, such as Guided Reading or Balanced Literacy, are not effective for struggling readers. What does work is Structured Literacy, which prepares students to decode words in an explicit and systematic manner. This approach not only helps students with dyslexia, but there is substantial evidence that it is more effective for all readers.

Structured Literacy encompasses several key elements:

Phonology: The study of sound structure of spoken words and is a critical element of Structured Language instruction. Phonological awareness includes rhyming, counting words in spoken sentence, and clapping syllables in spoken words. An important aspect of phonological awareness is phonemic awareness or the ability to segment words into their component sounds, which are called phonemes.
Sound-Symbol Association: Once students have developed the awareness of phonemes of spoken language, they must learn how to map the phonemes to symbols or printed letters. Sound-symbol association must be taught and mastered in two directions: visual to auditory (reading) and auditory to visual (spelling). Additionally, students must master the blending of sounds and letters into words as well as the segmenting of whole words into the individual sounds. The instruction of sound-symbol associations is often referred to as phonics.
Syllable Instruction: A syllable is a unit of oral or written language with one vowel sounds. Instruction includes teaching of the six basic syllable types in the English language: closed, vowel-consonant-e, open, consonant-le, r-controlled, and vowel pair.

Systematic and Explicit Instruction

Structured Literacy instruction is systematic and cumulative. Systematic means that the organization of material follows the logical order of the language. The sequence must begin with the easiest and most basic concepts and elements and progress methodically to more difficult concepts and elements. Structured Literacy instruction requires the deliberate teaching of all concepts with continuous student-teacher interaction. The teacher must be adept at individualized instruction, instruction that meets a student’s needs. The instruction is based on careful and continuous assessment, both informally (for example, observation) and formally (for example, with standardized measures. The content presented must be mastered to the degree of automaticity.

Multisensory Learning

Multisensory phonics-based approaches are designed to reinforce learning by hearing words, seeing them, saying them, writing them in a sentence, even incorporating gestures and movements. Kinesthetic learning, such as using wood or plastic letters or writing symbols in the air, can help young learners link sounds to symbols and build their awareness of written language.

Strategies for Improving Reading Fluency

One of the hallmarks of dyslexia is slow, labored reading and a lack of fluency when students read aloud. Here are some strategies to improve reading fluency:

Modeled fluent oral reading: The teacher reads the text aloud with emphasis on expression and intentional pausing.
Repeated oral reading: Students read and reread a text multiple (for example, three) times. This is most effective with a model.
Prosody development through teaching phrase boundaries: Students learn the appropriate placement of pauses around phrase boundaries, which contributes to understanding meaning.

Enhancing Reading Comprehension

Once students become more automatic and fluent readers, they are better able to attend to the meaning of the text to build comprehension. Encourage students to be active readers through all phases of reading-before, during, and after reading the text. Before reading, ground the student in the necessary vocabulary and background knowledge. Identify the purpose and have students make predictions. During reading, engage students with creating and answering questions about the story, making connections with themselves or with other topics, and checking that they understand the gist of what they are reading. Finally, after reading, have students not only retell the events of the story, but summarize and analyze the text more deeply. Provide opportunities for students to write text into outlines, charts and other visual elements. This gives students a way to process information and concepts beyond the written word. Skeleton outlines provide a template that consists of keywords and phrases students can incorporate into a piece of writing. For students with dyslexia, skeleton outlines can serve as a prompt to help them start writing.

Accommodations and Assistive Technologies

Providing appropriate accommodations and assistive technologies is crucial for supporting students with dyslexia. Some helpful accommodations include:

Extra time: Students who struggle often need extra time. In fact, sometimes, extra time is all they need. Although it might take one student 30 minutes to take a test, it might take a student with dyslexia two hours.
Audiobooks: Suggest listening to audiobooks or identify a willing adult to read the assigned book to the student. Recommend that students read along with the audiobook version or to follow the words alongside the reader.
Typed class notes: Provide typed class notes for students who can’t listen and write at the same time.
Assistive technologies and software: Suggest and/or provide the use of assistive technologies and software for help with spelling. Something as basic as Microsoft Word can help with regularly misspelled words. If the classroom has access to iPads or other tablets with speech-to-text capabilities, encourage struggling writers to use speech-to-text apps to help them get their words down on the page.

Fostering a Supportive Learning Environment

It is important to create a supportive and encouraging learning environment for students with dyslexia. Remember: Students with dyslexia are bright-they just need more time to complete tasks that involve reading. While dyslexic students may struggle to read independently, they benefit greatly from someone reading to them. While they may be reading below grade level on their own, their listening comprehension is usually equal to or above that of their peers.

Building Confidence and Self-Advocacy

Teach your children to advocate for themselves. Teach them how to ask for help. Teach them how to understand their strengths and weaknesses. Teach them about available resources and how to ensure they receive the accommodations they need for success. If you teach your children to do this at school, they’re going to go into the world feeling confident and expecting success; they’ll know how they fit in and what they need to do to keep up.

Read also: Fulbright Application Guide

Celebrate every success with a good job or a high five. Every single one. Don’t rely on report card grades to be the judge of your student’s progress. Celebrate his or her reading a singular word correctly. Meet your child on his/her reading level and celebrate the successes at that level.

Activities to Make Learning Fun

Activities are a great way to make reading fun while reaching students with dyslexia who may need added academic support.

Letter Painting or Drawing: Students with dyslexia often benefit from visual aides while learning to read and recognize letters. Assign a letter for your students to paint or draw-maybe a letter they’ve had trouble writing or one they often mistake for a different letter.
Rhyming Activities: Rhyming is one of the best phonological awareness activities because it helps students with dyslexia learn letter-sound connections. Try reading a picture book with plenty of rhymes to your students.
Tactile Activities: Many students with dyslexia benefit from tactile activities so they can rely on more than just words on a page while learning to read.
Syllable Clapping: Another common symptom of dyslexia is issues with phonemic awareness, or the ability to identify specific sounds in words. For this activity, have your students gather in a circle. Choose a student’s name and sound it out one syllable at a time while clapping in-between syllables.
Online Reading Games: There are a variety of online reading games that are made for students with dyslexia or early learners in general. Plan computer lab sessions with your students to play online reading games and strengthen literacy skills in a non-stressful environment.

tags: #how #to #teach #reading #to #dyslexic