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Dyslexia is a learning disability that affects reading spelling and writing.

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Dyslexia is a disability that affects the brain structure and is at times hereditary.

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Sign/Symptoms

· Mixing up the order of letters

· Difficulty spelling

· Having trouble reading from left the right.

· Struggles with telling time.

· Trouble putting sounds with the correct letter.

· Difficulty understanding written questions.

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History

· “Learning disability” 1963.

· Dr Samuel Kirk

· Adolf Kussmaul “world blindness”

· Rudolf Berlin 1887

· Critchley and Miles “The world Blindness Center”

· Sandhya Naidoo Wrote “Specific Dyslexia”

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State Legislation
· Numerous Laws in place for dyslexia

· Identification is required here in Texas (Kinder/First)

· “Requires screening and testing in all public schools.”

· Texas Dyslexia Handbook

· House Bill 3928

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The Yale Center for Dyslexia & Creativity 

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The Yale Center for Dyslexia & Creativity 

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This resource is full of tools that will help parents at home.

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Dyslexia is defined as an unexpected difficulty in learning to read. Dyslexia takes away an individual's ability to read quickly and automatically, and to retrieve spoken words easily, but it does not dampen their creativity and ingenuity.

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Instructional and Intervention Strategies

· Small ground

· Step by step Instructions

· Lots of examples

· Buddy system

· Avoid long reading periods.

· Pre- Teach

· Highlight everything! / Color code

· Audio books

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Advocates for students with dyslexia are finally gaining more attention, in both the media and legislation. Dyslexia, they note, is more prevalent than many realize, and students with dyslexia are too often experiencing reading instruction that just isn't working, as my colleague Elizabeth Barker noted in a recent blog post.

So here's a critical question: How can we provide good reading instruction that better helps students with dyslexia?
Class-wide instruction in learning to read
Let's start by remembering that young students with dyslexia are learning in regular primary-grade classrooms, where the job of teaching kids to read is central. The job is not teaching only the kids who don't struggle; the job is teaching all kids to read, and that includes children with dyslexia. While many students with reading disabilities will need more instructional intensity, that baseline of class-wide instruction matters. Regular classrooms-tier 1, in the language of RTI or MTSS-need to provide effective, research-based reading instruction to all.

Eons ago, I was trained as a teacher in a joint elementary and special education teacher preparation program. As I moved from elementary education methods classes to one taught by a faculty member focused on learning disabilities, it was easy for me to see that two paradigms were at work. But how could there be two truths about what worked in teaching reading?

[S]econd-guess that you were taught everything you should know.

One beloved professor offered an insight that I hang onto to this day: for the most part, good teaching is good teaching. If something works with kids who struggle more to learn to read, it is likely to work with all students. If something doesn't work for the kids who struggle more, it's worth asking why it belongs in our whole-class instruction.
Two critical elements of effective reading instruction
The International Dyslexia Association (IDA) has been clear on this front. They concisely lay out what effective reading instruction for students with dyslexia looks like. In their discussion of a best practice, they also note something worth reading twice: "This approach not only helps students with dyslexia, but there is substantial evidence that it is more effective for all readers."

When we want to review what's effective for all readers, we have several good places to turn. One is something our tax dollars built: the federally run clearinghouse dedicated to vetting and summarizing research on effective instructional practices. As it happens, one What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) practice guide details what we know about effective instruction in foundational reading skills in primary-grade classrooms.

Looking at the WWC practice guide and the IDA fact sheet on teaching students with dyslexia side by side is useful. There is huge overlap in their recommendations, with the two clear IDA emphases corresponding to the two WWC recommendations with strongest research evidence. IDA and WWC encourage us to focus on two critical elements:
Teachers aren't prepared to teach all young readers

1. Phonological awareness: Both documents note this is an essential early instructional focus. The sounds of spoken language are the focus here, with the smallest sound unit being the phoneme (like the "f" sound in "fish"). Learners need to be able to distinguish and segment just that "f" sound so that they know what this letter F we are teaching them is for.

2. Phonics and word decoding: Both the IDA and WWC also call out the fundamental importance of phonics instruction, where the patterns of letters that make sounds go beyond the single letter sound level. There's a "sh" sound in "fish," but there's also a pattern-following "sh" sound in "motion." The IDA and WWC point to phonics for teaching multi-syllable words, including analysis of word parts, like prefixes and suffixes.

Unfortunately, phonological awareness and phonics and word decoding are getting short shrift in many elementary teacher preparation programs, despite ample research evidence of their value. That's not just my grumpy pessimism; that's the finding of the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ)'s 2020 report, which describes and rates US teacher preparation programs' early reading instruction. Using a science-of-reading framework, they review all courses and requirements against five research-based core components of good early literacy instruction. NCTQ found that both phonological awareness and phonics are left out of all coursework in far too many teacher training programs. In graduate level licensure programs, only 36% are training teachers in phonological awareness and only 49% are training in phonics. Undergraduate programs are doing better in the last several years, but they, too, are very weak in phonological awareness. Alternative training programs are doing a dismal job, with half earning an F in early reading instruction overall.

Keep learning all you can about phonological awareness and phonics, and make sure to focus on how to teach them well.

How to teach those critical elements
That sounds to many of us like a crisis. Those of us who can, need to be pulling on those more systemic teacher preparation levers. But in the meantime, what does this mean for a classroom teacher, whose leverage point is twenty-some actual little learners? It means this: second-guess that you were taught everything you should know. Keep learning all you can about phonological awareness and phonics, and make sure to focus on how to teach them well.

The IDA's research-based guidance goes beyond what to teach; it also includes how to teach. It offers three principles that benefit students with dyslexia: instruction should be systematic, explicit, and diagnostic. But remember, the IDA also asserts that much of this is effective for all students. Which parts? The effectiveness of two of these principles for all early readers becomes clear by looking to the foremost professional organization for literacy educators. In 2019, an International Literacy Association (ILA) brief on phonics instruction was crystal clear about its support for two key how-to-teach principles. While the ILA is writing about class-wide instructional practices, their guidance echoes two of the IDA's recommendations on how teaching should look to best benefit students with dyslexia.
Why screening for dyslexia still matters-and what to do with results

Systematic: A planful sequence of phonics instruction deliberately moves through building-block skills with consonants, easy vowel sounds, harder spellings of vowel sounds, and word parts. This is the opposite of a fully incidental approach, where today's fun picture book might have some long vowel teams to talk about, or maybe a PH digraph (who can say, until we open it up?). That's not systematic; that's willy-nilly. Systematic instruction can still be full of fun and games, but it is about following a methodical sequence of decoding skills.

Explicit: Instead of waiting for kids to discover patterns in words, explicit instruction includes directly stating patterns and rules and designing opportunities to try them. "The TION letters in this word work together to say SHUN," a teacher says and shows explicitly, following up with chances to read and build words containing the TION pattern of letters. Kids aren't left to discover these patterns on their own, which is very hard for some kids to do.

If teaching phonological awareness and phonics in systematic and explicit ways benefits all students, not just those with dyslexia, why do we screen for dyslexia at all? Because while students with dyslexia benefit from what my professor called "good teaching," they are also likely to need additional support.
Our students need us
When a student is flagged as possibly having characteristics of dyslexia, follow-up by schools and families should increase their communication and their collaboration. Next steps should be characterized by a push toward additional assessment, both informal and possibly more formal, and by more individualization of instruction based on those observations or data. Recall that the IDA guidance on how to teach includes a third principle, one not shared by guidance on what to do with all students. The final emphasis is more specific to students with dyslexia and other reading disabilities: our teaching should be diagnostic. That means informing instruction with ongoing skills diagnostics.

Fighting for research-backed reading instruction to become more pervasive is a good fight. Improving class-wide instruction in systematic and explicit phonics needs to happen. But even when it has, there will be students for whom this instruction will not be enough. While not all students with dyslexia will need specially designed instruction, ensuring the capacity to deliver that is our responsibility in protecting every student's right to learn to read.

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Best practices in reading instruction for students with dyslexia

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When teaching kids with dyslexia to read, a systematic, explicit approach focused on phonological awareness, phonics, and ongoing skills diagnostics is key.

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It's important to understand that dyslexia is not just a reading disability.

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Dyslexia Dysgraphia involves the physical part of writing.

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What to look for?
· Ineligible writing

· Poor spelling grammar

· Trouble gripping pencil.

· Lack of punctuation

· Slow letter formation

· Struggle organizing letters in a straight line.

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Neurological disorder in which someone has difficulty writing for their age level. The brain system that executes writing skills have a dysfunctional coordination.

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History/Foundation
· Mid 20’s

· “Impaired with written expression”

· Dr. Josef Gerstman

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Instructional and Intervention Strategies

· Playing with playdough

· Using the eraser to trace letters.

· Use connect the dots when writing.

· Pencil grips

· Provide handouts.

· Allow speech to text.

· Allow for quiet time.

· Create lessons that focus on oral knowledge.

· Allow for customized assignments.

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Policies

· The department of education wrote a letter to the states letting them know it's important to use the term dysgraphia.

· Schools have adapted to use more multiple-choice questions, so children don’t have to write as much.

· Students with dysgraphia can quality for accommodations under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act

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Does your child struggle with handwriting? Has he been diagnosed with dysgraphia? These exercises from handwriting specialists are fun, effective and easy to practice at home.

Taking away one sense experience often heightens the others. Experts advise trying activities that help your kid focus on feeling-not seeing-how a letter is made.

For example, use your finger to trace a letter on your child's back. Or he can close his eyes while you trace a letter on his palm. Then see if he can reproduce that letter on your back or on a piece of paper.

You can make things more challenging by writing a capital letter and asking him to write it as a lowercase one, or vice versa.

Kids with dysgraphia usually have trouble remembering how to form letters correctly. One way therapists make the process more memorable is by having kids write in ways that use large motor movements and multisensory materials.

At home, young kids can spray big shaving cream letters on the tile wall at bath time. Or they can smooth out the cream on the tile and write letters in the foam. They can practice making letters in a plastic tub of damp sand. Adding sand to finger paint is another way to increase sensory input.

Clay is a wonderfully versatile medium. It's dense and responsive. And mistakes can disappear with just a pinch.

Roll clay into ropes and practice making letters with your child. It builds hand strength and boosts fine motor skills. And it reinforces the shapes of letters in his mind, too.

Another option: Smooth a layer of clay on a cookie sheet. Then invite your child to etch letters into the surface with a pencil. The clay provides sensory feedback, which gives more information to the brain about how the letters are formed.

Holding a pencil properly is a challenge for many kids with writing difficulties. Your child can strengthen his fingers and improve his "pencil grip" using "pinching" tools found around the house. These include tweezers, children's chopsticks (joined at one end) and ice tongs.

Try this game: Toss pieces of cereal, balled-up scraps of paper or small pencil erasers onto a tabletop. Then see how many you and your child can pick up with a pinching tool in a minute.

Another option: Play board games and use pinching tools to move the playing pieces.

5. Start cross-body training.

For a child to write properly, both sides of his body need to work together: One arm holds the paper stable. The other does the actual pencil work.

Any activity that encourages coordinated movement on both sides of the body provides good reinforcement. This includes crafts that use scissors: One hand holds, the other cuts.

Physical exercises that require cross-body coordination are helpful, too. See if your child will give windmills, jumping jacks, touching alternate toes, and mountain climbers a whirl before sitting down to write.

6. Build strength and stability.

Writing may not seem physically demanding. But sitting properly and controlling pen and paper require muscle strength and stability in the shoulders and core.

Activities that condition these areas can help. These include planks, push-ups, wheelbarrow walking, crab walking, shooting baskets, hanging from monkey bars and rope climbing. Even reading while lying tummy-down on the floor builds strength.

So set aside time for your child to include activities like these in his day. He can do them at a local gym, at the playground, or right in your own backyard or playroom.

7. Practice "organized" storytelling.

Kids with dysgraphia often have trouble organizing their thoughts. You can help your child by practicing structured storytelling.

At bedtime, ask him to tell you about his day. Have him start with an introduction, like "Today was Thursday and boy, was it a busy day for me and my friends." Ask him to describe what he did in the morning, the afternoon and the evening. Then he can wrap things up with how the day went overall.

You can use this approach with just about any experience your child wants to share with you.

Kids with dysgraphia may be brimming with great ideas. But putting those ideas into written words can be a frustrating hurdle for them.

Encourage your child to record himself (on a smartphone or other device) while he talks through his thoughts or the story he'd like to tell. He can then play the recording back when he sits down to write. This can be a helpful and confidence-boosting tool.

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8 Expert Tips on Helping Your Child With Dysgraphia

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Learn about skillbuilding and strengthening activities that can help kids who struggle with handwriting. Get tips for helping your child with dysgraphia.

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Six ways to support students with dysgraphia—a learning difference that affects a person’s ability to produce written work.