Teaching Children with Dyslexia

See also: Supporting Children with Dyslexia and Dyscalculia

Our page on Understanding Dyslexia explains that dyslexia is one of a family of conditions known as specific learning difficulties. It affects how information is processed in the brain, and particularly how people take in and remember information. Clearly—as the name of the family of conditions implies—this has implications for anyone teaching someone with dyslexia.

Dyslexia screening is not routine in schools and many teachers only have a very superficial understanding of the condition. Unfortunately for many children with dyslexia, this often means that they are either not diagnosed at all, or their diagnosis only comes when their dyslexia has already caused them significant problems.

This page is designed to help teachers to understand more about how dyslexia affects learning, and what they can do to support children and older learners with dyslexia.

Recognising Dyslexia

The general perception of dyslexia is that it causes problems with reading and writing—and indeed, this is true for some people.

However, other people with dyslexia develop strategies that enable them to read, for example, drawing on their vocabulary to predict new words from the context. Teachers therefore cannot rely on ‘having problems with reading’ as a predictive strategy for identifying people with dyslexia. This is particularly true once children are past primary school age.

There are, however, some signs that may be indicative (see box)

Signs of dyslexia


Children and young people with dyslexia may show ‘obvious’ signs of dyslexia, such as:

  • Problems with spelling;
  • Poor handwriting, including confusing ‘mirror image’ letters such as ‘b’ and ‘d’;
  • Being unwilling to read out loud, or struggling to do so.

However, they may also show less obvious signs, such as:

  • Seeming forgetful or dreamy;
  • Struggling to follow instructions or directions, especially when complex;
  • Finding it hard to concentrate, or being easily distracted;
  • Failing to meet homework or classwork deadlines; and
  • Not being organised.

They may also withdraw socially, because they feel ‘different’, and/or show behavioural problems.

There is more about the signs of dyslexia, and particularly how these signs may vary with age, in our page on Understanding Dyslexia.

It is important to understand that these signs are not, in themselves, diagnostic.

The only way to be sure that someone has dyslexia is for them to be assessed by a specialist dyslexia assessor.

The Effect of Dyslexia on Learning

Dyslexia has some key effects that influence ability to learn. In particular, it affects three key areas:

  • Phonological awareness, or the ability to pick out and distinguish sounds within spoken language. People with dyslexia may find it hard to identify rhyming words, or count syllables. They may also find it difficult to identify and cope with the individual sounds within a word. All these issues can affect ability to read and write.

  • Verbal memory, or the ability to remember a sequence of words. This makes it hard for children with dyslexia to remember and follow instructions. A sequence of instructions may be next to impossible.

  • Verbal processing speed, or the pace at which words and information can be processed within the brain. This again affects ability to follow instructions, but can also affect how work is structured, and speed of response. Fundamentally, everything takes longer with dyslexia.

It is also worth stressing that the concentration required to process information and ‘keep up’ in a classroom is extremely tiring. Children with dyslexia can easily become overwhelmed by the amount of information they are being asked to take in. They may then ‘switch off’, which in practice looks a lot like they are daydreaming—and this can often get them into trouble for failing to concentrate. They may also be accused of ‘not trying’, which is in practice the opposite of what has actually happened: they have actually tried so hard that they are simply incapable of putting in any more effort.

A frightening statistic


Children with dyslexia often end up feeling upset and frustrated with a system that doesn’t seem to support or help them—or even recognise that they are trying to work. This can lead to mental health problems.

Frighteningly, some estimates suggest that up to 40% to 60% of young people with dyslexia have some kind of additional psychological problem.



Supporting Learners with Dyslexia

It is important to understand that everyone with dyslexia is slightly different. There is no one presentation—and there is also no single solution that works for everyone. However, there are some strategies that may help people with dyslexia to learn more effectively.

The real question for most teachers faced with a child with dyslexia is—or should be—how best to support their learning.

The difficulty that many teachers face is that they do not really understand the condition, and therefore don’t know how best to help. They may also struggle to find time or focus to support one individual faced with a class of 30 or more children demanding and needing their attention.

However, many of the strategies that will help people with dyslexia will often also help others. The answer is perhaps to consider that you are finding ways to support everyone’s learning, and not just one individual.

Useful strategies include:

  • Breaking tasks up to use less working memory. Many children, and not just those with dyslexia, become overwhelmed if they are presented with too many tasks at once. Teachers can help by breaking tasks down into smaller chunks, to make them seem more manageable.

  • Repeat instructions and check understanding. If you are only giving oral instructions, make sure that you don’t give too many at once, and repeat them carefully several times. Better still, write them on the board or on a slide, and leave them up for children to refer back to if necessary. Be prepared to repeat them again after a while.

  • Provide support tools and visual aids. Use aids like multiplication squares and glossaries, or lists of keywords. Give everyone memory aids, such as mnemonics, rhymes and songs.

  • Provide lesson summaries and outlines. Plenty of children are likely to benefit from having access to lesson summaries and outlines, both before and after the lesson. It may also be helpful to provide a list of key points or takeaways.

  • Focusing on the positives. It is extremely disheartening if you only ever receive feedback about what you are doing wrong—but this is the experience of many children with dyslexia. Instead, focus on the positives. Tell them what they are doing right, and praise effort, not achievement.

  • Be inclusive in your choice of activities. To inject a bit more fun into lessons, and engage children more, teachers often use activities like games. However, some of these are really difficult for children with dyslexia (see box). Before you decide on a new activity, take a moment to think about whether using it is inclusive.

Activities to avoid


Games that will often be harder for people with dyslexia include:

  • Games that involve matching information, such as Snap, Dobble or Pairs;
  • Games that reward speed of response, such as buzzer-based question sessions;
  • Games that involve recognising patterns, such as word searches or bingo; and
  • Any kind of memory-based activity such as Kim’s game (the game that gives a set time to memorise items before they are covered, and participants have to recall what they saw).

  • Avoid talking at length. The longer you spend talking, the more children will have switched off. Children with dyslexia might do so first, but you can be certain that others will also do so before long. Keep what you have to say short and sweet, and back it up with something in writing that can be digested later. If possible, help learners to engage more than one sense at a time, because this makes it easier to focus—for example, using mind maps to make notes engages both eyes and ears.

  • Don’t ask ‘Do you understand?’ Almost no child is going to say no. Instead, check understanding of concepts by asking questions about the concept. For example, if you were explaining the concept of speed, ask the children to identify fast and slow things.

  • Don’t discourage the child’s coping strategies. Some children have specific strategies that they use to cope. For example, they may find that using a fidget toy or doodling can help them to concentrate. A teacher telling them to stop and pay attention can cause frustration and upset, so try to avoid doing this until you are certain that it’s not helping.

  • Support the use of assistive technology. There are various tools that may help children with dyslexia, ranging from using a laptop to take notes, to recording devices and voice recognition software, right down to low-tech aids like coloured overlays and cards to hide all but the immediate sentence. Encourage and facilitate their use where this is helpful.

  • Use dyslexia-friendly fonts. When giving out written information, use fonts that are more dyslexia-friendly, such as Dyslexie.

  • Keep instructions simple, and use keywords. One of the best ways to help learners is to keep instructions simple. However, with the best will in the world, sometimes issues are complex, and need long instructions. When this happens, encourage all your learners to pick out and highlight the keywords—the most important words that tell them what they need to do.

  • Give more time. People with dyslexia simply need longer to process information. One of the most powerful things that you can do is to give them more time. This is why most children with a dyslexia diagnosis are allowed extra time in exams—but it also matters in classrooms. If you always ask the child who puts their hand up first, learners with dyslexia will feel discouraged.

Dyslexia robs a person of time, and accommodations give the time back.


Sally Shaywitz, MD, co-director of the Yale Center for Dyslexia and Creativity

Supporting Individuals

These strategies are all designed to support learning in a general way. However, children who have a diagnosis of dyslexia may also need specific support.

In the UK, schools are expected to draw up an Individual Education Plan (IEP) for children with special educational needs. This sets out how the school will support the child’s learning, and also what the child and parents agree to do. If a child struggles to organise themselves and meet homework deadlines, the plan might say that:

  • Teachers will check that the child has written down their homework, and remind them to hand it in when it is due;

  • The child will write down their homework in a particular notebook, and show their notebook to the teacher;

  • The child’s parents will check the homework notebook once a week to make sure that it is complete.

If you have a child with dyslexia in one of your classes, you should therefore make sure that you check their IEP, and take all the required action. You may also find it helpful to liaise directly with parents, especially if there are important deadlines to meet, such as those for coursework.


In Conclusion

Having a specific learning difficulty like dyslexia is intrinsically unfair.

It loads the dice of life against that person by making learning significantly harder. Teachers have, if not precisely a duty, at least an opportunity to level the playing field a little by finding ways to support learning. It seems only fair to try to do so.


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