Answer: Students with dyslexia should be placed in a classroom that is structured for multisensory, small group instruction. Most classrooms engage students through sight and/or sound. Information is presented in written and/or spoken form.
A dyslexia-friendly classroom environment encourages dyslexic students to follow their strengths and interests. While it holds high expectations for dyslexic students, it allows reasonable alternatives beyond timed tests and text-heavy materials to demonstrate their knowledge.
Incorporate Multisensory Learning
Multisensory learning engages students in movements and activities that involve touch. This, coupled with the use of visual and auditory materials, creates multiple opportunities for students with dyslexia to absorb and retain information.
Use multisensory methods to explicitly teach new content.
This goes for letters, sounds, spelling patterns, grammar, even math. It's easier with phonics to make things multisensory but you can find ways to integrate multiple senses into any activity. Some ideas include: color coding & highlighting.
Use dark coloured text on a light (not white) background. Avoid green and red/pink, as these colours are difficult for those who have colour vision deficiencies (colour blindness). Consider alternatives to white backgrounds for paper, computer and visual aids such as whiteboards. White can appear too dazzling.
Use flashcards or play matching games to let your child see the words lots of times - the more times they see the word, the better they will be able to read and spell it. Use cut out or magnetic letters to build words together, then mix up the letters and rebuild the word together.
Drop time into your everyday speech. Say things like, “It takes ten minutes to get to school,” and “We'll have dinner in fifteen minutes.” Play games of estimating how long it will take to get to places. For more fun with clocks and time, go to easypeasyandfun.com.
Not every student with dyslexia looks the same. Some students may also struggle with staying organized, remembering tasks, and prioritizing assignments. Other students with dyslexia will be well-organized and able to prioritize assignments but struggle with completing reading and writing assignments.
Visual stress can co-occur with other additional needs, such as dyslexia, autism and ADHD. Therefore, it may be wise for teachers to opt for non-black, but highly pigmented whiteboard pens, such as blue, brown or purple ones.
Use visual aids
Color strips and visual schedules are an old-school teaching aid for a reason. They are helpful not only if you have dyslexic students but also if there are visual learners in the classroom.
Over the years, students with dyslexia may develop increasing frustration if the reading skills of their classmates begin to surpass their own. Access to effective Structured Literacy teaching will help these students, but they may still experience social and emotional problems.
As a dyslexia teacher, you work with students struggling with dyslexia to aid with reading strategies and skills. Your job duties include developing coursework to assist students in learning, teaching different study methods for students, and counseling parents on how to help their child.
Struggling to spell homophones and irregular words
e.g. 'their' and 'there', 'pane' and 'pain'. Irregular words don't follow phonic rules e.g. spelling 'does' as it sounds 'duz'.
Good spellers use a variety of strategies for spelling. These strategies fall into four main categories—phonetic, rule-based, visual, and morphemic.
Dyslexia symptoms don't 'get worse' with age. That said, the longer children go without support, the more challenging it is for them to overcome their learning difficulties. A key reason for this is that a child's brain plasticity decreases as they mature. This impacts how quickly children adapt to change.
The effects of blue light in dyslexia
It is therefore likely that blue light, selected optimally to recruit melanopsin RGCs, will have the greatest effect on improving alertness and concentration and may therefore be the best for remediating the impaired attentional responses seen in dyslexia.