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Some of the problems a dyslexic child has in the classroom include:
· Organisation
· Memory
· Reading
· Time
· Direction
· Sequencing
· Self-esteem
these are performance or behavioural responses to visual/auditory memory difficulties
Building a profile of the child’s performance may well show that the difficulties are:
mainly auditory processing difficulties
· Discrimination of speech sounds
· Sound blending
· Naming
· Auditory sequencing
· Serial memory (auditory)
Pupils’ difficulties are centred in processing any information via the auditory mode
and/or mainly visual processing difficulties
· Discrimination of size and form of letters, numbers
· Reversals e.g. b/d, p/q, letter order e.g. saw/was
· Scanning left to right
· Recognising letter characters
· Serial memory (visual)
Pupils’ difficulties are centred in processing any information via the visual mode.
Support in the classroom is aimed at providing strategies to mitigate the effects of dyslexic difficulties and to help all pupils to achieve their potential. Multisensory teaching methods, which are good for the dyslexic pupil, are actually good for all pupils!
Provide achievable tasks and praise success –so helping the self esteem of a child who feels that they repeatedly fail
Some Further Suggestions for the Classroom
· Give instructions at a steady pace and make sure you have undivided attention.
· Keep instructions to a minimum and check he/she has heard them correctly. It helps to ask for the instructions to be repeated (verbal rehearsal).
· Try to avoid giving important instructions if he/she is tired, anxious or hurrying to finish something (eg instructions about homework!).
· Teach him / her how to verbally rehearse information needed for a short while such as when taking a message.
· When asking questions give him/her ‘thinking time’.
· Allow him/her to mutter the words quietly to himself when copying from a book or the board.
· Mouthing the words helps if he/she is reluctant to say them. This can also help when reading text for information.
· Show as well as tell the pupil how to do something – the board may not always prove the best way of doing this for your pupil with dyslexia.
· Have him / her sit near you during shared activities and attract his / her attention to the part being discussed by pointing to it frequently.
· Make sure instructions for homework are written down correctly and include what equipment may be needed to complete it.
· Provide a ‘Dyslexia Friendly’ Timetable – use pictures to represent the lesson topics, e.g. a pyramid for history, violin for music. Put an enlarged version up for everyone.
· Colour-coding is very helpful for the younger pupil with dyslexia to manage the classroom resources.
Working memory is an enormous difficulty for a dyslexic person – teach them how to remember things more easily
· We all remember things more easily if we organise them into groups, patterns, or categories.
· We remember unusual things, things that interest us most and it is hard to remember things we do not understand.
· We can only remember a few things at a time, and if we chunk the information it is more manageable.
· Our memory works by building links and we remember things better if we already know something about them.
Learning is an active task – we all (dyslexic or not) have to think about how we can remember something. This is reassuring for a pupil with dyslexia!