Dyslexia
The gifts of children with dyslexia & how they learn best
The best way to help a child with dyslexia is to help them understand their giftedness and to teach to their strengths. Children with dyslexia are brilliant visual thinkers and have the potential of imagining far more than they can put into words. Their primary means of learning are through visuals and tactile or kinesthetic activities.
- They learn most easily through hands-on work
- Demonstrations of how something is done (rather than explanations).
- They learn by observing, and they love visual aids.
- Children with dyslexia need to learn to read using a multi-sensory approach rich with visuals.
- They will successfully learn math if they can see and understand what is happening instead of memorizing rules for solving problems.
- They need manipulatives rather than relying on pencil and paper for doing math.
- Memorization is not their friend, but they can learn instantly by snapping a mental picture of content that is embedded in images or other visuals such as charts, graphs, organizers, and more.
What is hard for them & why they struggle
Children with dyslexia struggle with learning for specific reasons. They don’t learn by listening to a teacher talking, so when they find themselves in a situation that requires learning by listening, they may tune out, act up or push back. They also find it difficult to learn steps to solving a math problem or dealing with sounds and letters (such as when sounding out words when reading). Unfortunately, all the things that are hard for them are the trademarks of traditional education.
The gifts of children with dyslexia & how they learn best
The best way to help a child with dyslexia is to help them understand their giftedness and to teach to their strengths. Children with dyslexia are brilliant visual thinkers and have the potential of imagining far more than they can put into words. Their primary means of learning are through visuals and tactile or kinesthetic activities.
- They learn most easily through hands-on work
- Demonstrations of how something is done (rather than explanations).
- They learn by observing, and they love visual aids.
- Children with dyslexia need to learn to read using a multi-sensory approach rich with visuals.
- They will successfully learn math if they can see and understand what is happening instead of memorizing rules for solving problems.
- They need manipulatives rather than relying on pencil and paper for doing math.
- Memorization is not their friend, but they can learn instantly by snapping a mental picture of content that is embedded in images or other visuals such as charts, graphs, organizers, and more.
How we can help
Easy-For-Me™ Teaching Kit, Grades 0-1
Child1st learning resources are ideal for children with dyslexia. Letters, words and other symbols are embedded in visuals, math is hands-on and is designed to show the child what is happening, which is important for the child with dyslexia. Often they can just see a solution in their imagination once they understand the problem. Easy-for-Me™ Reading is fully multisensory – meaning all modalities are stimulated at one time. And our Children’s Readers fully prepare the child to succeed before they attempt to read each title.
Recommended Resources
ABC's
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Phonics & Spelling
Reach for resources that help children with dyslexia learn from their strengths.
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Reading Programs
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A multi-sensory teaching approach makes it possible for children to learn through more than one of their senses: sight, hearing, touch, body movement. Most teaching in school is done using sight (words in books) and hearing. In addition, because children with dyslexia are visual (picture thinkers) they needs visuals that carry the meaning of the lesson, and graphs and charts that organize details in ways that make sense. Read more about multi-sensory lessons and why they are important.
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Many visual and kinesthetic learners have trouble managing a sequence of symbols (letters in words). They start to sound out a word and three letters in, they have already forgotten the beginning sounds. It works very well to teach the whole word inside a picture that shows what the word means and then later to break the word apart into its spelling patterns. Example: ground > ground. Teach also other OU words such as round, cloud, mouse, couch. In this way the child can learn that OU is a pattern that appears very often in words.
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Experts agree that best practice for teaching dyslexic learners is to teach them via all their senses (multisensory teaching). Studies have shown that dyslexic children draw from various regions in their brains while engaging in reading, so it stands to reason that using teaching approaches that stimulate various regions in the brain would ensure success for these learners.
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We have come to the point in our society where every child seems to need a label and one that details specifically how he learns or doesn’t learn. We have visual learner, tactile learner, dyslexic learner, autistic, and many many other labels. The implication is that each of those types of learners requires a specific set of directions for how to teach them successfully. In doing research, however, and as I have read the experts in each of the most common areas of disability, one element keeps on showing up: the fact that so many of these non-traditional learners learn best through pictures and hands-on lessons.
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Experts agree that best practice for teaching children with dyslexia is to teach them engaging all their senses (multisensory teaching). This means using visuals, motion, body movement, hands-on, and auditory elements in their learning. Studies have shown that children with dyslexia draw from various regions in their brains while engaging in reading, so it stands to reason that using teaching approaches that stimulate various regions in the brain would ensure success for these learners. 8 Ways to Help a Child with Dyslexia
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Experts agree that best practice for teaching dyslexic learners is to teach them via all their senses (multisensory teaching). A reading program that will work for children with dyslexia will teach whole words before breaking them into their parts. The program will utilize tactile activities and will be heavy in communicating through visuals. It will teach every concept explicitly so the child won’t have to make connections on their own. Easy-for-Me™ Reading fits this description and has a track record of bringing reading success to children with dyslexia. Read more here