What is Dyslexia?
- Dyslexia is a language-based learning disability.
- Dyslexia causes an individual to have learning difficulties in the areas of language, specifically reading, but it can also affect spelling, writing, and pronouncing words.
Symptoms of Dyslexia
Symptoms of Dyslexia can commonly include difficulty with:
- Learning to speak
- Learning letters and their sounds
- Organizing written and spoken language
- Memorizing number facts
- Reading quickly enough to comprehend
- Keeping up with and comprehending longer reading assignments
- Spelling
- Correctly completing math operations
Common Misconceptions about Dyslexia
- It is a myth that individuals with dyslexia reverse letters or see the letters and numbers backward. It is not that they read or see things backward or reversed; it is because they have trouble remembering letter symbols for sounds and letter patterns in words.
- There is no cure for Dyslexia, but remediation and support can help students learn methods to work around the challenges they experience.
- There is no correlation between Dyslexia and intelligence. Students with Dyslexia could have typical or advanced intelligence.
Accommodations Involving Materials
The International Dyslexia Association has published a manual called “Dyslexia in the Classroom: What Every Child’s Teacher Should Know”. This manual provides the following list of recommended accommodations for students with Dyslexia.
- Clarify or simplify written directions
- Present a small amount of work
- Help students set realistic goals for themselves
- Block out extraneous stimuli
- Highlight essential information
- Provide additional practice activities
- Provide a glossary in content areas
- Develop reading guides
- Use an audio recording device
- Use of assistive technology
Accommodations Involving Instruction
- Use explicit teaching procedures
- Repeat directions
- Maintain daily routines
- Provide a copy of lesson notes
- Provide students with a graphic organizer
- Simultaneously combine verbal and visual information
- Use balanced presentations and activities
- Use mnemonic instruction
- Emphasize daily review
Accommodations Involving Student Response
- Change response mode
- Provide an outline of the lesson
- Encourage use of graphic organizers
- Encourage use of assignment books or calendars
- Have students turn lined paper vertically for math
- Use cues to denote important items
- Design hierarchical worksheets
- Allow use of instructional aids
- Display work samples
- Use peer-mediated learning
- Use flexible work times
- Provide additional practice
- Use assignment substitutions or adjustments.
Effective Instruction
Structured Reading Instruction is an instructional approach that is highly recommended and very successful for students with Dyslexia. This approach focuses on helping students learn several different skills necessary to overcome the challenges they experience. This approach includes the following necessary components:
Phonology
Phonology is the study of sound structure of spoken words. This also includes studying Phonological awareness which is further divided into rhyming, blending, and segmenting words.
Sound-Symbol Association
Once students have developed the awareness of sounds (phonemes) of spoken language, they are ready to learn how the sounds associate with the graphemes or written symbols.
Syllable Instruction
The syllable is the smallest unit of language and consists of one vowel letter. Students need to explicitly learn the six syllable types in English.
Morphology
A morpheme is the smallest unit of meaning in the language. Morphemes can be further divided into prefixes, affixes, and suffixes.
Syntax
Syntax is the set of rules that indicates how words function in a sentence and convey meaning. This includes grammar and mechanics of the language.
Semantics
The purpose of reading is to derive meaning from what is written on the page. Semantics involves reading for meaning and reading comprehension.
How Is Structured Reading Taught?
Systematic and Cumulative
The material taught to the student must be taught in a systematic way. In other words, it needs to follow a logical progression of skill development. Cumulative means that the new information must be based on what was previously taught.
Explicit Instruction
This means that the teacher must provide direct instruction that models for the student exactly what to do as the student will not be able to determine what to do on their own.
Diagnostic Teaching
High-quality instruction requires the use of consistent and frequent data collection through assessment. A solid Structured Reading program includes the collection of data through the delivery of assessment either informal or formal, formative, or summative. The goal is for the student to read fluently without much support as well as fully comprehend the material being read. If the student has not mastered this skill, the teacher should go back and reteach concepts until the student has acquired mastery.
Additional Resources:
International Dyslexia Association
https://dyslexiaida.org/
Dyslexia Foundation
https://dyslexiafoundation.org/
If you have additional questions about a student with Dyslexia, please contact the student’s Case Manager.
