Srainmcblg the ltteers in tihs snetecne mkaes it vrey hrad to raed at frsit. Yuor biran siltl fnids a wya, btu it tkaes a lto of effrot. Nwo iamgine rdenaig lkie tihs eevry day.
In the classroom, after school and at home, we read thousands of words every day, often without even realising we’re doing it. TV subtitles, social media posts, websites, emails, adverts, street signs, tube maps; the world around us requires us to see symbols (letters), decide what sound they make (decode), put them together to make a whole word (blend), and decide on their meaning (comprehend). For most non-dyslexic people, this happens without us even thinking about it – our brains have learnt to automate this process. However, for people with dyslexia, this can be a life-long struggle.
Understanding dyslexia
“You’re dyslexic, so you can’t read?” Almost every dyslexic learner will have heard this phrase, which assumes dyslexia is a ‘reading problem’. That’s not entirely wrong, but as the British Dyslexia Association puts it, dyslexia is a set of processing difficulties that affects more than just the acquisition of reading and spelling. These processing difficulties include:
- Working memory (the ability to hold information in the brain for short periods)
- Phonological processing (the brain’s ability to understand and manipulate sound)
- Processing speed (how fast the brain can organise information)
- Orthographic processing (recognising visual patterns of letters in words).
Dyslexic people may have difficulty processing and remembering information, which can impact learning and organisational skills more broadly.
Despite the challenges dyslexia creates, one key thing to remember is that dyslexia is not connected to intelligence. Many children with dyslexia exhibit a ‘spiky profile’. This means that they might score highly in areas such as comprehension, maths and non-verbal reasoning, but score low in spelling and verbal reasoning. It is also important to remember that people with dyslexia are often highly creative with strong and unique problem solving skills.
Many young people facing the challenges associated with dyslexia struggle with self-esteem, believing that they cannot achieve success. It’s our job as parents, carers and teachers to help them see that they can.
For dyslexic students, classes that require note-taking or quick processing of information can quickly become tiring, causing them to lose concentration or motivation. Children with dyslexia can also struggle to remember information that they’ve been taught, affecting their performance in tests and exams. They might turn over written work that appears messy or unorganised, and struggle with deadlines or organisational tasks. Often, children experiencing these difficulties have low self-esteem or school-related anxiety, making an already stressful classroom experience even harder. However, young people with dyslexia often have strengths in art, design, drama, sports, music and problem solving. In the words of Benjamin Zephaniah, “they see the world differently, flexing their creativity muscles to find out-of-the-box solutions. Dyslexic students are often great leaders who find different, creative ways to remember and convey information, in and outside the classroom.”
Dyslexia affects every individual differently, so there is no one-size-fits-all approach to creating a dyslexia-friendly learning environment. However, there are ways classrooms can be adapted to support dyslexic students, creating a space where all young people can succeed and celebrate their strengths.
Creating a dyslexia-friendly space
The right environment
Would you rather work in a bright white room with bold colours, glitter, and fluorescent lighting, or in a room with warm lighting, grey walls and muted colours? Which room would you concentrate better in? Which room would make you feel most welcome?
A calm, uncluttered environment is beneficial to the learning and attainment of all students, dyslexic or not. Appropriate lighting, clear visual display boards and organised spaces for stationery and equipment support students to process the information in their environment and feel confident and comfortable entering the classroom. Having clear, set routines with visual timetables and timers also help children to organise themselves, reducing stress and allowing them to focus on learning rather than where to put their bag and coat. These tools support all children in feeling calm, settled, and ready to learn – dyslexia-friendly teaching is teaching for all!
Display boards add colour, allow you to display children’s work, and are visually appealing to visitors. However, they can often be bright, cluttered, and visually distracting for children, especially those with dyslexia and other special educational needs.. Avoid overstimulating displays and choosing a few well spaced boxes or pictures with clear headings on a pastel or neutral background to reduce visual clutter, ensuring key information is accessible to all students.
The great thing about dyslexia-friendly resources is that all children can benefit from using them. Small tweaks like cream paper, dual coded key word sheets and scaled scaffolding activities (purple = easy, yellow = tricky etc) can be helpful for all students and support dyslexic learners to access the same work as their peers, without them feeling singled out or ‘different.’
The right strategies
Teaching dyslexic students is not so much about adapting to individual needs, but rather teaching in such a way that makes adaptations the norm. All students can benefit from dyslexic teaching because it is clear, structured, scaffolded and multi-sensory.
Multi-sensory teaching
This does not mean throwing water balloons at letters to spell words (although that would be fun!) In practice, multi-sensory teaching involves things most of us do every day: Using our senses to explore, understand and communicate knowledge.
For students with dyslexia, barrages of small print text that they’re expected to read, memorise and regurgitate, would probably be their worst nightmare. By the time they’ve managed to decipher the letters and words on the page, their brains are exhausted and actually understanding the content is the last thing they’re thinking about.
Instead, breaking up lessons with practical, engaging activities involving mini whiteboards, competitions, physical movement and games can take the pressure off and allow students to celebrate their strengths and express their understanding in different ways. Multi-sensory teaching improves engagement and supports all students to participate in learning with ‘easy win’, low stakes tasks. Combined with clear instructions presented verbally and visually, all children can feel confident to participate in lessons and engage in learning.
Dual coding
Dual coding involves using images to support the understanding of written content. Even if you haven’t heard the phrase before, you’ve probably come across dual coding with children already, in the form of explanatory pictures or icons alongside written text. Dual coding supports embedding information in the long term memory by forming additional connections in the brain, and can be key to supporting dyslexic students with severe reading difficulties. Struggling with reading does not mean they will struggle to understand the concepts you’re teaching, they just may need to express their knowledge a little differently.
Clear instruction and scaffolding
Clear instructions and scaffolding ensures that a class stays together, and learns together. t While all students benefit from expectation-setting and having tasks broken down into smaller steps, this is particularly important for dyslexic students who struggle to process, organise and prioritise tasks, as it reduces demands on working memory.
Scaffolding is the process of ‘stepping up’ to more difficult tasks –- you can’t expect students to reach the roof without it. Sometimes scaffolds can be individual, taking the form of additional support, example problems or step-by-step guides. However, whole-class scaffolding should always be applied when teaching a new topic. We’ve all seen the handwriting books (with dots in the shape of letters). When you first start drawing the letter, all the dots are present and you follow them. Then, the dots start to disappear and, suddenly, you’re writing the letter ‘a’! This is probably the first example of scaffolding children encounter at school, but the idea applies right through their education journey. Things like model answers, sentence starters and discussion groups are great for incorporating scaffolding into classes of all ages.
Dyslexic students may benefit from having scaffolding for longer than their peers to support their processing of new information, but also to build their confidence. This doesn’t mean they are learning slower or haven’t mastered the content, they just may need a little more support than their peers.
Literacy support
As a literacy support intervention teacher, I find myself regularly teaching phonics, spelling rules and punctuation to 16-18 year olds. Often, this is something they are open to 1:1 but definitely wouldn’t appreciate in a whole class scenario!
For students with mild dyslexia, universal tools and classroom approaches may provide the support they need to succeed, without personalised or targeted assistance. However, for students with more complex needs, further support may be needed. Access to assistive technology such as laptops, text-to-speech and speech-to-text software, spellcheckers and coloured overlays are incredibly beneficial for dyslexic students and adults alike. In my lessons, I always like to model myself using these technologies to encourage students who would benefit to embrace them.
How to understand and accept our differences can be a tricky topic to navigate with young people. A lot of students don’t want to appear different from their peers, but gentle encouragement, relationship building and collaboration between home and school can help students feel confident using the tools and support they need to both understand and be understood in their learning journey..
A collaborative approach
It takes a village to build a dyslexia-friendly classroom. Students with special educational needs have a team of people around them who must work together effectively to support their learning, emotional wellbeing and progress.
- Teachers: Understand individual student needs and create a dyslexia-friendly classroom as the norm.
- Support staff: Build strong relationships with the young person, understanding their needs and gently encouraging them to access the support they need.
- Specialists: Provide diagnostic support and individual strategies and support teachers to create a dyslexia-friendly classroom.
- Parents: Work with school staff to advocate for your child’s needs and build their confidence by reinforcing learning at home. Celebrate the small wins and big successes equally and gently encourage the use of assistive technologies. Provide lots of opportunities for reading practice (Barrington Stoke are a fantastic dyslexia-friendly book company!) and remind students of their strengths.Many young people facing the challenges associated with dyslexia believe that they cannot achieve. It’s our job as parents, carers and teachers to help them see that they can!
Annie Crerar is an English teacher with significant experience specialising in supporting students with special educational needs. She currently teaches Key Stage 5; Reading Intervention, Functional Skills English, GCSE English Language and Literature, and A Level Literature. Annie holds AMBDA accreditation and Accredited Practitioner Status from the British Dyslexia Association, and is the Dyslexia Intervention Lead at Burlington House School, Sixth Form. Having worked in both state and independent schools, she is passionate about ensuring that all students develop strong literacy skills and leave school with the English qualifications they need to access the next stage of their journey.
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