Supporting Children with Dyslexia: A Practical Guide for Parents and Educators

Updated: Aug 5

Are you a parent of a child/ children with dyslexia?

Don’t panic! This is great news; your child has finally been given an opportunity to succeed.
It has nothing to do with intelligence – many people with dyslexia are very bright and creative.
It does affect how the brain processes written language.
Strategies to overcome difficulties enable people to make progress.
Many, many leading figures are dyslexic and have overcome barriers to become successful.
Make sure you understand the diagnostic report! The assessor should offer support with this but if not get in touch with a Reading Doctor for more advice.
Look at the strengths of your child. This is key for building the child’s confidence.
Look at the areas of difficulty, e.g. poor working memory, slow and effortful reading, difficulty decoding words, struggling with spellings. The Reading Doctor lessons can help with these areas and support the child.
Talk to the school and discuss with them what is possible with regards to helping your child. Be realistic and don’t expect your child to receive 1:1 help throughout the day. The school may agree to a Reading Doctor to come into school either paid for privately or in some cases the school and have weekly sessions with an experienced teacher.
BUILD CONFIDENCE! Children often feel frustrated and label themselves as ‘stupid’ so focus on their strengths, praise effort over results and help them see that they learn differently not worse.

Are you an educator?

Give extra time: allow more time to read, write and complete tasks and don’t put the child on the spot to read aloud unless they want to.
Use clear instructions: small simple steps, verbal and written instruction, check they have understood by asking them to repeat the instructions back. Don’t say ‘do you know what you’re doing?’ as they will often say yes even when they don’t.
Multi-sensory teaching. Learning by seeing, hearing and doing.
Reduce copying off the board. Provide the learner with printed notes or an iPad with the board mirrored on it.
Support reading by promoting they track the text with a finger or ruler.
If using a class set text, allow a dyslexic learner to listen to the story on audio books prior to reading.
Use accessible fonts e.g. Arial, Comic Sans, or a dyslexia friendly font.
When marking focus on key words not every mistake.
Allow typing rather than handwriting if needed.
Scaffold work using word banks, writing frames.
Use tech were possible e.g. text-to-speech or speech-text tools, spell checkers and predictive text tools.
Invest in specialist support such as The Reading Doctor who can set up Reading Doctor Hub’s in your school.
PRAISE! Celebrate even the small steps.