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How to Teach a Dyslexic Child

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Dyslexia is now a widely accepted condition that is prevalent in many classrooms. However, defining dyslexia is difficult as it can be described as a continuum. Although experts largely agree that dyslexia is identifiable as a developmental difficulty of language learning and cognition (Rose, 2009). Dyslexia can pose a host of difficulties for the child and can make daily activities and school life very challenging. The NCLD (2013) states children with dyslexia may have difficulties with ‘accurate and fluent spelling, accurate and fluent written expression, phonological awareness, memory, verbal processing speed and information processing.’ As teachers it is vital that we are aware of the underlying difficulties as the child’s consistent …show more content…

Therefore, the teacher should ensure the child is focused before giving instructions and the tasks should be broken down into small easily remembered pieces of information (Hodge, 2000). The child should be seated where communication can be made easier and information should be repeated if needed. Visual cues may need to be provided along with the verbal to aid the child in processing the verbal information. The child with dyslexia can have difficulty with perseverance to task so providing them with diagrams and flow charts depicting the task structure and posters reminding the child of steps to follow to complete the task can help. The teacher should ensure activities are not information overload for the child making the task impossible (DENI, 2011; Gathercole and Alloway, 2008). Also ensure that tasks are not lengthy sequences but meaningful chunks (DENI, 2011, p.100). Distractions should be reduced whilst the child is working for ‘if a child is distracted or interrupted while using working memory the process is lost and the child cannot resume from where they were interrupted’ (Gathercole and Alloway, 2008).The plenary should also be used to summarise main teaching points so that the learning is more likely to go from short term to long term memory.

Within the Primary School setting the teaching of phonics is a significant part of the curriculum (PMBNI, 2009).

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