When a child gets diagnosed with dyslexia, it can leave many caregivers feeling unsure of what to do to help the child. Below are 14 ways to help a child with dyslexia.

4 SOCIAL AND EMOTIONAL WAYS

Normalize that everyone has things they struggle with and work to improve on. Share your own difficulties. Keep in mind that when something is hard, typically people just don’t want to do it. Pressure from home & school can give struggling readers anxiety. Sharing your struggles helps take the pressure off and makes their struggle less lonely.

4 ACADEMIC INSTRUCTIONAL TOOLS

– Using bookmarks to track while reading. Also, using a bookmark to cover up all the letters in a word except for the letter you are trying to sound out helps the brain sort & organize what it is reading.

– For Orton-Gillingham based phonics instruction, PRIDE and Take Flight are 2 programs. It is important that the program provided for children with dyslexia is multi-sensory.

– At home practice with words: rhyming games, ISpy a certain letter games, etc.

6 GOAL SETTING STRATEGIES

– Celebrate every success with a “good job” or high five. Every success: reading a single word correctly, increasing a reading level, knowing sounds that letter combinations make, when they self-correct an error. Praise when reading should be given constantly.

– ideas for goals: learning lowercase letter sounds; lowercase letter names; capital letter sounds; capital letter names; what the vowels are; sounds that the letter combinations make; being able to read for 5 minutes uninterrupted, 10 minutes, 15 minutes, 20 minutes; their first chapter book; moving up levels in their leveled books. Track their growth until their goal is reached. This allows them to see that they’re capable of reaching a goal & that they can be successful.

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