Teaching Dyslexic Kids to Read the Easy Way

What is the best way for teaching dyslexic kids to read?

When it comes to teaching dyslexic students to read you will need to take a modified approach. Dyslexia is a condition that causes a person to struggle with reading and writing.  It can also cause a person to struggle when they focus, their memory skills, and their organization.  Because of these it is important to help build a student’s self-awareness, cognitive skills, and use modified teaching methods that have a multi-sensory approach. 

 When it comes to teaching dyslexic students to read, the Orton Gillingham approach is one of the oldest and one of the best researched for dyslexia reading programs.  This program was developed in the 1930s by Samuel Torrey Orton and Anna Gillingham and is most often used because of its effectiveness. Some teachers like using the Multi-sensory Structured Language [MSL] approach when helping teach dyslexic students how to read.  This method is often used most for teaching children with dyslexia and it is beneficial for all children.  MSL will teach phonics, comprehension, vocabulary, and accuracy in writing and spelling.  

The student is encouraged to use tough, sight, movement, and sound as a part of this learning process. Through these programs teachers and parents can receive MSL training and certification. When teaching dyslexic students to read BE direct and explicit.  

Explicit means teaching including describing, modeling, breaking the skills down into steps, providing clear instructions and feedback, providing demonstrations, and presenting all the information in a logical order.  

While this may be a tedious step it will greatly help the dyslexic student to understand.  These steps and process must be done until the student masters the skill.  Never assume that the student has any previous knowledge or understanding of the subject matter. 

 It is far better to have to repeat a few steps when teaching a dyslexic student how to read than to forge ahead and have them not understand the material. 

 When teaching dyslexic students how to read be sure to repeat yourself often.  Some dyslexic children struggle with short term memory so they may have difficulty remembering what you said.  Be sure to take extra time to repeat the instructions, key words, and concepts so they will be more likely to remember what you said and write it down. 

 As you build these new skills continue to use any previously learned information.  The repetition will help reinforce older skills. 

 When teaching a dyslexic student how to read you will want to use something known as “diagnostic teaching.”  Be sure to continuously assess how well your student understands what’s being taught.  If something is not understood you should re-teach the skill.  Students with dyslexia, when learning how to read, may require more time and intense instruction to learn.  

When teaching dyslexic students how to read you may have to modify your teaching approach as something may be caught on quickly while another takes some time. Be sure to use time wisely when working with dyslexic students.  Avoid rushing through a lesson as this can confuse them and not make the information stick. During your time of teaching dyslexic students how to read, DO your best to stick to a daily routine.  If you can write down and illustrate each day’s lesson on the wall so the students can see what they can expect each day.  

These routines should include information from previous lessons to help reinforce the lessons. Be sure to use lots of positive reinforcement when helping dyslexic students.  Children with dyslexia may suffer from low self-esteem or feel that they are not as smart as their classmates.  Because of this it is very important to build them up and to use positive reinforcement. There are some programs that are NOT meant for teaching dyslexic students how to read.  This is NOT saying that these programs are bad or ineffective but they are not equipped or meant for teaching dyslexic students how to read. These programs are:

• Kumon
• Sylvan Learning
• Hooked on Phonics
• Reading Recovery
• Accelerated Reader
• Vision Therapy
• Brain Gym
• Special Diets

Don’t be afraid to experiment around on what works the best for teaching dyslexic students how to read.  With a little work you will find what works best for teaching dyslexic students how to read!

Top Dyslexia Software to Improve Reading and Writing

 

Looking for Dyslexia Software?

New and emerging technologies are helping students with dyslexia surmount learning obstacles and learn to read and write more easily and with less stress than ever before. These tools include dyslexia software and online applications, which can be used in addition to traditional therapeutic methods to help students stay engaged. With all of the dyslexia software now available for students, parents, and teachers it would appear to be easy to find the right combination of instruments to help. Instead many parents and teachers find themselves overwhelmed trying to keep track of the available options. Understanding dyslexia software is not difficult, but it’s important to become aware of the types of software available before choosing. From text-to-speech to word processors, these tools are the most common and easily accessible types of software available to dyslexic students today:

Text-to-speech:

This type of software for dyslexia reads back text using a computer generated voice and is especially helpful for dyslexics who have difficulty reading, focusing while reading, or are looking for direct feedback. Helpful features to look for in text-to-speech software include highlighting capabilities, local dialects or accents, spellchecker, and the potential to use on multiple devices. There are many text-to-speech programs currently available on the market and different programs may be helpful for different students.

Note-taking and speech-recognition:

Students with learning disabilities may have a hard time keeping up with note taking or even later on recognizing their handwriting. Tools such as the Livescribe smartpen allow student to record lectures, take pictures of all written notes during the lecture, and upload finished notes to a computer afterwards. In addition, speech-recognition aids such as Naturally Speaking for PC and Dragon Dictate for Mac allow users to dictate text directly to a computer.

Phonics and reading software:

A student who is just learning to read will get great assistance from phonics software such as Earobics. This type of reading software helps teach students basic phonics, from speech sounds all the way up to vocabulary and sentence-building. The programs are also highly customizable and suitable for a wide range of ages.

Spelling and writing software:

Word processing tools such as Franklin handheld devices and text editing software allows students to check their own writing for spelling, grammar, and punctuation mistakes. Many of these applications come with a built-in dictionary and thesaurus, while more sophisticated programs come with their own text-to-speech and note-taking abilities. Fonts 4 Dyslexia has created a fantastic toolkit to alleviate dyslexia in just months. See it here. 


 What is your favorite dyslexia software?  

Dyslexia Fonts: Easy Read - Easy Write - Easy Brain Games

Beginning readers, people with dyslexia and students that learn differently have a tendency to add, rotate, transpose, reverse, swap and confuse symbols within words throughout the learning process. Unlike other readers, dyslexics maintain these issues throughout time, making it difficult for them to properly write and to comprehend what they’re reading.

 

EasyRead/EasyWrite is a collection of 12 unique typefaces may bring some relief.  Inspired by scientific studies, good typographical design, extensive teaching experience, and keen intuition, we have developed a comprehensive collection of 12 different fonts that may help dyslexic [and students who learn differently] read, facilitating handwriting practice, and stimulating thinking skills.

These San-serif typefaces offer a standardized character width on all styles, which means lines of text remain the same length. This useful feature allows users to change type styles on-the-go without re-flowing a text body. 



Description:

A new collection of typefaces designed for dyslexics and special needs students makes it easier for them to:

• Recognize characters (improve legibility)
• Comprehend what they read better (improve readability)
• Practice their initial handwriting
• Avoid common reading and writing mistakes

EzRead/EzWrite/EzBrainGames is divided into three unique categories:
 
EzRead: 
In this category there are two fonts:


1. Dyslexia Font: EzRead Adults 
2. Dyslexia Font: EzRead Kids

Contrary to the majority of typefaces, which pay attention to aesthetics and symmetry reusing the same shapes for multiple letters (such as b, d, p and q), EzRead makes each letter significantly unique so that readers can more easily distinguish one character from another.

The form of the letter must be generic and familiar, yet still stand out and be unmistakable. Characters are simplified, meaning the “cleaner,” the better. This means NO QUIRKS and no serifs.
Other unique characteristics are (see main page in detail): greater space between letters, words and lines; open counters (the inner space of letters such as a, e, a, o, p or d); heavier capital letters, diacritic marks and punctuation marks; wider stroke at the bottom; capital letters fall slighty under the baseline; ascenders are shorter that descenders; large x-heigth; letters are heavier and flatter at the bottom and curved and thinner at the top; variable angle of inclination; letters do not all seat straight over the baseline….

This category contains two fonts variations, where three letters (a, g and q) have been adapted according to the user’s age:

EzWrite:
These typefaces focus on the child natural problem to recognize shapes and properly orienting them. The student will practice copying the character in each box or row.  You may wish to show how to form the letter before he does it on his own.

3. Dyslexia Font: EzWrite Box 
4. Dyslexia Font: EzWrite Box Dots 
5. Dyslexia Font: EzWrite Write Lines  
6. Dyslexia Font: EzWrite Lines Dots  
7. Dyslexia Font: EzWrite Dots

EzBrainGames:
These practice worksheets are very easy to create and will be very beneficial to children who tend to reverse and confuse certain letters and numbers.  These exercises are fun but can be overwhelming for the mind if the child is pressure to complete several pages at once. So, start with simple drills, and do not overload the child unless he asks for more.

8. Dyslexia Font: EzBrainGames A
9. Dyslexia Font: EzBrainGames B
10. Dyslexia Font: EzBrainGames C
11. Dyslexia Font: EzBrainGames D
12. Dyslexia Font: EzBrainGames E
 
The main goal of this category ones again  is to help readers to better decoding the characters  facilitating reading comprehension and reducing.

See some examples in comparison to other commonly used fonts in education:

 

Phonics Skills: Sounds and Spellings

This package includes 26 worksheets to reteach phonics skills such as all the sounds and spellings of the alphabet.

 

  Students will practice writing and learn or review the names of the colors. In these activities all you have to do is to trace the letter of the alphabet, lower and upper case, color the picture with a given color and copy the sentence.

Reteach Phonics Skills: Beginning Alphabet Sounds

Here you will find 26 fun tracing and matching activities for grades pre-k and kindergarten. Although they can be also used in first and second grade for students who are below grade level, newcomers to the country, English learners and special education. 

   
Matching activities help children develop fine motor skills, visual discrimination and critical thinking. Providing children with a strong background in simple languages arts concepts through fun activities and games will help prepare them to perform more complex tasks later. 

In this set of activities students have to trace the word and draw a line from the word to the dotted silhouette. Finally, students trace the dotted silhouette and color the pictures.