Dyslexia Back to School
Tools for a Successful Year
Remember: Dyslexic Students Work Hard
- Keep in mind that students with dyslexia work hard each day just to keep up with the class, sometimes working much harder than other students just to complete the same amount of work, leaving them mentally exhausted. Give breaks while they are working on homework.
Read with Your Child
- Children tend to dislike doing things they feel they do not do well. For kids with dyslexia, that is reading.
- So, try to nurture their love for reading as much as possible. Encourage them to collect their own books and build their personal library. Help them pick the books they like so that you can read them together. Make reading a family activity that you all enjoy.
Word-building Activities
- Start with shorter words that are easier to pronounce and try to make activity as fun as possible. Make it multisensory, colorful, engaging
- You can do this by writing in the sand, cutting out the letters from paper or cardboard or making them out of clay or playdough. Putting letters on pebbles, bottle tops or Legos is another thing you can do to make them more fun to combine.
- By helping your child “build” simple words, you are not only helping them learn how to spell words, but also how to recognize the similarities between how they are pronounced. With that, you are also helping with phonological awareness. Model proper pronunciation.
Activities for Working Memory
- Working memory allows us to hold on to and manipulate information that we have in our short-term memory. Kids with dyslexia usually have deficits in their working memory, which makes it hard to retain the image of letters, match them with sounds and perform the task of pronouncing or reading the word out loud.
- Activities such as riddles, solving logic problems, playing board games, listening actively to stories and retelling them, and doing a task that involves giving or following instructions (such as building, creating or cooking something) are just some of the activities that can help with boosting the capacity of your child’s working memory.
Activities for Phonological Awareness
Phonological awareness is the ability to identify, think about and manipulate sounds in spoken speech. This skill is crucial for being able to read. Kids with dyslexia struggle to recognize syllables and sounds in words and to identify the words that begin with the same sound or rhyme.
The children can improve their phonological awareness through listening to and learning poems and songs, and connecting movement such as clapping with segmenting words by syllables or identifying the first and the last sound of the word.
Activities for Improving Comprehension
Learning new words does not only mean knowing how to pronounce it, but also how to use it in context. Children with dyslexia usually need more time understanding the differences between similar words, not only when they sound alike, but also when they have similar meaning.
To help them understand the word better, you can give more examples of how one word could be used. Put it more often in the context that is familiar to them. You can play a game in the car while you are driving and they are sitting in their car seat: you think of a word and start describing it, while they attempt to guess what it is. After they guess right, you can be the one guessing the word.
DYSLEXIA PARENT LIBRARY
Become a stronger advocate by educating your family with these informative books that address students with dyslexia and address their social/emotional needs.
Dyslexia Advocate
Dyslexia Advocate, written by Kelli Sandman-Hurley helps guide parents to advocate for their child with dyslexia within the public education system.
What is Dyslexia?
Trapped
Trapped, written by Judy Spurr is a story about a middle school boy that is balancing the struggles of his reading difficulties, with the pressure of making grades to play soccer and bullies at school. Help comes from a creative teacher and a new friend.
KidsRead Kids
Check out this website that helps kids with learning disabilities overcome their reading struggles by hearing other kids read popular books.
Talking Book Program
Texas State Library and Archives Commission's audiobook program for students with reading disabilities allows your students to access books at their interest and intellectual levels.
Learning Ally
Ask your school about Learning Ally!
Learning Ally has partnered with the state of Texas to offer audio books to struggling readers. You may access over 80,000 books, including your district's textbooks. in both English and Spanish.
Bonnie J. Villarreal
Email: villarreal_b@utpb.edu
Website: https://utpbstemacademy.org/
Phone: (432) 552-2580