A dyslexic child lacks the skill of reading, writing, and spelling and an inability to express their thoughts freely. A teacher can help a child with dyslexia by adopting specific teaching strategies to satisfy his/her special education needs.
A teacher with dyslexic children in his/her classroom should have a flexible approach. Teachers should understand the special need of every dyslexic child so that he/she should feel comfortable in participating in the learning process. Some teaching strategies for children with dyslexia are given below:
- When writing on the blackboard, use different colored chalks. Write in bold letters with sufficient space after each word. The writing should be clear and easily visible. Allow dyslexic children to sit in the front rows so that the blackboard is easily visible and they can easily distinguish between different letters. Make sure that dyslexic children have copied the full text from the board correctly. After finishing writing, you should speak out each word loudly and tell children to check for any spelling mistakes etc.
- Multisensory teaching technique is the best approach for teaching children with dyslexia. By this technique all senses of a dyslexic child are used. By a combination of all senses in the objective, learning should be made easy. Use vision, hearing, touch and movement together to promote effective learning.
- When comes to reading do not tell the child with dyslexia to read aloud in front of their peers. You should practice reading aloud with dyslexic child when alone. Another alternative may be to give reading material in advance to prepare for a class reading. Tell the child to prepare reading at home in front of the mirror. This will save the dyslexic child from the fear of reading in class.
- You should try to teach one rule at one time. Let the child practice the same for reading and writing. Once the child is fully comfortable with one rule, then shift to the next rule.
- When preparing to give homework assignment to a child with dyslexia, it should be according to the special needs of the child. It may take extra time for a dyslexic child to complete the same assignment as compared to their normal peers. Fix time a limit to complete the assignment. You should give an option of recording assignment verbally instead of writing.