Did you know Einstein had dyslexia?
From Competence to Confidence: 4 practical tools to empower struggling readers
“It seems like higher education won’t be in your future.”
Oh how wrong they were. With the help of caring & supportive educators, Simbi’s co-founder Aaron Friedland defied early predictions of his success.
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Your students, too, can achieve great things.
Give them the tools and the belief.
Dyslexia may be a common household term these days, yet due to its often difficult-to-define nature, it remains a learning struggle that often flies under the radar. However, Dyslexia International (2017) suggests that approximately 700 million people worldwide experience dyslexia.
So how does dyslexia appear in our classrooms?
It can take many forms.
When kids don’t feel confident in their reading skills, they can express frustration, lack of motivation, anger or a lack of desire to try. Students often learn to cope with their reading struggles, learning how to get by without achieving their full potential.
What can you do to lift up struggling readers? Give them the tools they need to really show their stuff.
#1 — Make connections between sight and sound
Simply not recognizing letters doesn’t cover it — rather, dyslexia is a neurological factor that affects how a student processes language & text.
To help learners connect what they successfully hear to what they see on a page, reading-while-listening can be a great strategy. This goes for reading books at story time, but can be a helpful guide in other areas of the classroom as well. For example, you can offer many points of access to the material during instruction. If you project a slide or pass around handouts, read directions or questions aloud, pointing to the page if possible. This will make a huge difference to your struggling readers, while offering an added benefit to the rest of the class.
#2 — Narrate stories with the “production effect”
As with many learning challenges, dyslexia is not a reflection of a child’s intelligence. Students are often capable of understanding the concepts of a text, but may need to expend extra effort decoding prior to focusing on meaning.
Studies have shown that reading aloud increases focus and pushes sentences read into long-term memory more quickly than scanning the page silently (Forrin & McLeod 2017). They’ve coined this memory trick the “production effect,” and it goes beyond hearing someone else read. Researchers found that the combination of “a motor (speech) act and a unique, self-referential auditory input” led to superior retention and comprehension.
#3 — Reduce distractions through highlighting
Using a pointer or a highlighter seems to be an obvious tip, but don’t underestimate its power.
Think of highlighting textbooks in college — your eyes were immediately drawn to the colourful selection and your brain could focus on these important words without being distracted by the rest of the page. Ikeshita et al. observed that children too “found it easier to read along when audio was synchronized with text highlighting” (2018). Focusing the eyes on certain words, phrases or whole sentences can drastically increase reading success.
#4 — Be mindful of how text is presented
Similar to highlighting words, adjusting the presentation of text on a page can bolster focus and comprehension.
When creating in-class resources, use features that help distinguish between individual letters and words. British Dyslexia Association suggests choosing sans-serif fonts with good letter spacing like Arial, Calibri, Open Sans, or even Open Dyslexic. These are fonts without “feet,” meaning they don’t have little ticks that move the eye from one letter to the next. Bolded letters may be preferred to italics or underlines, and white paper or backgrounds are suggested to be too bright, making letters jump on a page. Using a reading technology that allows students to adjust settings according to their own preferences may be the most efficient help!
High expectations, high support.
With all these tips and tricks, it’s important to find a combination that works for your readers. As teachers, we are often tasked with ensuring students reach high expectations and learning goals, yet it’s vital to pair these high expectations with high support. It is likely safe to say that no child wants to struggle in the classroom. In today’s typical education model, reading stands as a skill that builds the base for nearly every other subject. To foster positive, inquisitive and curious relationships with reading, prioritize building confidence, and normalize using strategies to get there step-by-step. Like we mentioned, what’s done to help some students will likely benefit all.
Finally, we’ll leave you with this last piece of advice: celebrate every success. Unlearning coping strategies and training the brain is an immense task; be your students’ cheerleaders as they set achievable goals and work hard to reach them.
We’ll be your cheerleaders along the way, too 🎉
Check out how Simbi helps you bring all of these tips to your struggling readers:
Resources:
Noah D. Forrin & Colin M. MacLeod (2018) This time it’s personal: the memory benefit of hearing oneself, Memory, 26:4, 574–579.
IKESHITA, Hanae et al. Effects of Highlighting Text on the Reading Ability of Children with Developmental Dyslexia: A Pilot Study. International Journal of Emerging Technologies in Learning (iJET), [S.l.], v. 13, n. 09, p. pp. 239–251, sep. 2018.
British Dyslexia Association. “Dyslexia Friendly Style Guide.” British Dyslexia Association, 2018, www.bdadyslexia.org.uk/advice/employers/creating-a-dyslexia-friendly-workplace/dyslexia-friendly-style-guide.
