Does Additional Reading Assist Individuals With Dyslexia

Strategies to Support Struggling Readers Which Don't Crave a Ph.D. in Neuropsychology

I accept a confession to make.  It involves a bones failure on my behalf.  What'southward worse, my failure impacted students whom I care deeply about: students with dyslexia and other language-based learning challenges. It involved waiting for exam results before putting accommodations in place for students who were struggling in my class. Of class I didn't fail them intentionally, and by nearly the third fourth dimension I got an evaluation back that pretty much said what I imagined it would, I started putting help in place for the student right away. The discovery of my own bullheaded spot led me to wonder if other teachers were accidentally failing their students in similar ways.

For many years, this is what I did: I would place a student who was having problems, make some bones observations about what was peculiarly difficult for him, and and so request further information almost the educatee in the grade of screening, special tests, and/or a learning evaluation.  I would so wait for a report earlier taking farther action. I  am frequently haunted past memories of a particular former eighth-grade history educatee whose contributions to our discussions put him at the top of the class, simply his written answers on tests and essays were ever weak and minimalist and put him only in the high C range.  At the time, I thought information technology was sufficient to characterization this descrepancy and recommend that he get a formal evaluation.  I suspected a exam would reveal that he was dyslexic.  His English teacher concurred.  Unfortunately, his father would accept nothing to practice with exterior testing, then my brilliant student received low Bs in my form and never got the help he needed to express what he knew.

But actually, what was I waiting for? If asked, I would have responded that I needed more than specific data nearly the student before I could know best how to support him. To many readers, I am certain that response sounds legitimate and reasonable. However, my confession is aimed at boyfriend teachers who volition understand why my filibuster was unnecessary.  I know that I am not lone when I admit that I tin can usually make general assumptions most what a learning evaluation is going to say before the results are in.  Most often the report confirms what I had intuitively guessed nearly the pupil.  Every bit personally validating and satisfying as that confirmation often is, it should not exist a prerequisite to providing timely critical accommodations to my students.

Immediately employing accommodations makes sense for many reasons.  First, evaluations take time to schedule and consummate.  Why waste time waiting to have suspicions confirmed before helping a student?  Secondly, there are those untidy problems of cost and access.  Testing and evaluations are expensive and for many an unobtainable luxury.  For a diverseness of reasons, public schools can exist stingy with these resources, and many contained schools wrongly assume that parents tin beget this expense on meridian of the price of the school's tuition.  Consequently, many students who demand the help that an evaluation can provide are denied information technology.

I need to exist clear about something—I remain an enthusiastic proponent of testing and evaluations.  Teachers are profoundly assisted by the critical information that they yield. Outside testing provided by learning specialists offers a unique opportunity to isolate many classroom variables and specifically reveal and identify students' academic strengths and weaknesses. Additionally, testing helps assess how extreme students' gaps are, and what level of response is necessary.  That data is a real gift to teachers, parents, and most importantly, students, and information technology is a gift that keeps on giving because tests permit futurity teachers to sympathise the student's contour.  Lastly, evaluations are required for students to qualify for accommodations on high-stakes tests such every bit SATs, ACTs and land exams.  All indentified students should be provided access to them.

Meanwhile, without test results in hand, here is what teachers can do to support their struggling students (in improver to trusting their instincts)…

Advise the use of assistive technolgies, like E-readers, that read material aloud to the student.

For A Student Struggling with Understanding the Classroom Reading Assignments

• Suggest listening to audiobooks or place 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.  The more ofttimes a struggling reader is exposed to the way they words await, the amend. Exposure to the page helps students learn the compages of sentences.  This also helps with spelling and conventions.
• Suggest utilize of assistive technologies currently available that read material aloud to the student.  The Kindle, the iPad, or Google'due south Nexus tablet, would be examples of this kind of technology, but there are many like devices being introduced into the market all the time. Click hither to read a comparing of these tablets.
• If the book/content has been made into a film or covered in a film, suggest that the student watch it to assistance give a context to the story or content.
• Offer extra time to terminate reading assignments. Dyslexic and struggling readers need more time to read assigned fabric.
• Provide class syllabuses in advance. Allow the student to read assignments ahead over the school breaks and the summer. This can help the student get a head showtime so that when the school yr takes on its full momentum she is prepared and has had an opportunity to work ahead to absorb the increased book of piece of work.
• Recommend reading books with larger fonts.  Hardback versions from the library are visually easier and Due east-readers offers the power to arrange the font size as well.
• Recommend books that may be shorter or less dumbo but as rich in ideas and story for independent reading time. (Click here for a kid-tested reading list.) It is important to recommend the book with enthusiasm, the same enthusiasm typically reserved for more sophisticated titles. Read well-written, easier books yourself, out loud to the class, and recommend them to all students so the struggling students can read them without shame.  The objective is to go struggling readers to read AND to similar it.(For more on creating a classroom culture for struggling readers, click here.)

• Recommend graphic novels. (Click here for a listing of kid-approved ones.) Graphic novels provide struggling readers with a way of strengthening their vocabularies, build their reading conviction, and foster their appreciation of story. Graphic novels can likewise help support a reader's understanding of everything from Greek Mythology to Shakespheare.Dictating ideas to an developed tin assistance a pupil get started with their writing by generating an idea bank that they can describe from. (They as well won't get defenseless upward  worrying about how to spell those words).

For a Student Struggling with Written Expression

• Suggest that the student dictate an outline or brainstorm ideas to another adult (teacher or parent) who can record them. Depending on the circumstances, this can help students get started with their writing and aid launch their ideas by generating an idea bank that they can draw from (they as well won't become defenseless up worrying about how to spell those words).
• Offer an opportunity to do piece of work on a keyboard.If students are so labored in their handwriting and/or symbolic memory that everything they write is minimalist and/or incomplete, keyboarding can free upward expression. Instead of worrying about what shape each letter is, the computer determines that for them.  Word processing likewise helps tape ideas in a standard readable font and allows a student to recognize more than readily what they accept just written. Note: if students are meliorate served on the estimator, accept them immediately go to work on their keyboarding skills.  This is not only a very important mechanical skill for all students, but too crucial for students who have handwriting problems.
• Suggest and/or provide the apply of assistive technologies and software for help with spelling. Something every bit basic as Microsoft Word can help with regularly misspelled words. It is a huge relief for students not to take to worry near the correct spelling of every give-and-take.  Information technology corrects basic words automatically. Franklin Spellers or similar handheld devices that aid in the spelling of words are too helpful, particularly when students are non using a computer to write.
• If the classroom has access to iPads or other tablets with oral communication-to-text capabilities, encourage struggling writers to utilize speech-to-text apps to assistance them get their words down on the page. They can brainstorm or do the actual composing without existence hung up about spelling and the mechanical struggle of writing. (Learn nearly how using oral communication-to-text on the iPad transformed a pupil's fifth-grade year…click hither.)
• Encourage the student to find a personal spelling strategy that doesn't depend on memorization of give-and-take lists. Some students are never going to exist spellers, regardless of their heroic outcomes on Friday tests.  Take the time to reassure those students that spelling is a mechanical, not an intellectual, skill.  Considering misspelled words do negatively impact clarity, students need to understand that it is important to discover ways to identify misspellings and correct them.  Editing may involve using the spell cheque on a reckoner, a handheld speller, or a helpful peer or developed in their lives.  Every poor speller needs to detect his/her most efficient and effective proofreading strategies. The world is total of people who will approximate students negatively if they turn in work with misspellings.  Consequently, they must figure out how to go the help they need, bated from carrying the correct spellings around in their heads.

Students who Struggle with Written Assessments and Tests

• Experiment with offering means to provide Actress Time… . Students who struggle frequently need actress time.  In fact, sometimes, extra fourth dimension is all they need.  Is there a style to offer your pupil who lacks a formal diagnosis extra time in a way that doesn't create equity issues or logistical ones? Bated from timed tests that are designed to check automaticity of a special skill, there are few instances that justify making speed more important than giving a student a full opportunity to limited understanding.  However, this can be challenging.  Sometimes offering a chance for all students to render to finish an assessment upwardly at recess, or during a study hall, is a style to make that work.  Well-nigh often, students who do not need actress time will non take it. This is plain an private call considering in sure situations extending the test time may raise the potential for cheating or equity complaints.
• Make it transparent to the student what is being assessed.  Is it automaticity?  Is information technology a spelling test?  Is it understanding of the material?  Is it a measure out of writing skills?  The pupil should exist clear about what is being evaluated and and then should the teacher. For example, if the pupil can orally explicate what he or she knows, merely cannot brand that clear in writing, consider having the student demonstrate his knowledge orally, in addition to the written version.  If testing for geographical noesis and the pupil mispells many of the countries, yet it is obvious that he knows the right answer, that should count.  Conversely, if the student turns in a final draft of a paper with misspellings, penalties should stand.  Students need to observe effective editing strategies.  Giving struggling students a pass in that situation is misleading and doesn't ultimately help them.
• Provide typed class notes for students who tin can't mind and write at the same time. This is not cheating.   Some students need to focus all their attention on listening and attending to the information being explained.  Writing impedes their ability to take the information in.  If teachers are interested in facilitating an understanding of the content, and so we need to be willing to practise whatever is necessary to make sure that happens.  Sharing notes can liberate struggling students to concentrate in course, while note-taking helps others consolidate the information through another modality. Students who use the instructor'south notes should also read them aloud into a recorder and play them dorsum, discuss them, or rewrite them on their ain time in order to reinforce their learning through another form of processing.
• Some other modified option is to provide the whole class with a structured outline of the main ideas with room for students to fill in the residuum (it also helps to model a note-taking format).Each educatee is unlike, only everyone benefits from processing data in multiple forms (listening, discussing, writing, drawing, reshaping, rhyming, applying, sorting, etc.). The teacher's job is to assist students identify how they process information nearly efficiently and finer.

Employing these strategies has immune me to proactively help students accomplish the goals that I have ready for the grade.  In many cases, these changes have been humbling as well as validating. For instance, when I allowed a kid extra fourth dimension on a test and discovered she did in fact know more and so she had been demonstrating in the timed situation, or when a educatee brilliantly explained orally what he had failed to convey in writing, I felt thrilled for the student, but shamed by the missed opportunities to make earlier adaptations.

Almost importantly, these strategies help me address the access gap betwixt the haves and the have-nots with learning issues in my class.  Since no i tin claim that every student who deserves accommodations is receiving them, I want to know that I offer my students who don't have formal evaluations any tools they need to succeed, especially when I intuitively know they need something different.  I will proceed to recommend formal evaluations whenever I tin can, just I don't predicate certain accommodations on them anymore, and neither the gods of teaching nor my division head has struck me downward for not waiting to help a student.

See more study tips— from dyslexic students for dyslexic students.
updated 4/29/14

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Source: https://dyslexia.yale.edu/resources/educators/instruction/kids-cant-wait-strategies-to-support-struggling-readers/

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