What Is the Best Way to Help Dyslexic Students Improve Their Reading Skills?

As a teacher it's painful to watch a student struggle. You want all of your students to succeed! But despite your best efforts, there are some students that you try and try to help but never get anywhere. For many teachers, it is easy to feel defeated when working with struggling readers and those with dyslexia—not because they aren't intelligent, but because their minds process information in a different way.

Here is Reading Horizons Teacher Trainer and Dyslexia Specialist, Shantell Berrett, discussing how to help students with dyslexia improve reading by adapting to the way that their minds process information:

Key Points:

• Luckily, more and more teachers know that students with dyslexia need a very specific type of reading intervention. However, because students are rarely diagnosed, it is difficult to help students with dyslexia because teachers rarely know that a student actually has dyslexia.
• Since we don’t always know that dyslexia is the source of the problem, we tend to just tell students they need to read more - and this doesn't help dyslexic learners.
• Diagnosed or undiagnosed, those with dyslexia need the skills that come from explicit, systematic, Orton Gillingham-based phonics curriculum. Fortunately, this type of instruction isn’t only beneficial for students with dyslexia, it’s beneficial for every student… especially those that struggle with reading.
• One of the most important things when working with dyslexic students is to use instruction that engages all sensory modalities – visual, auditory, and kinesthetic. This helps dyslexic students make new connections that rewire their brains.
• When teaching dyslexic students how to read it is also very important to keep things as simple and as clear as possible. You need to help dyslexic students prioritize information and accommodate for their working memory issues. Use simple directions, teach once concept at a time, help them isolate words and lines on a page. 

1 Comment

Leslie said 12 years ago

This is very informative. Thank you Shantell for sharing your expertise!

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