Tips for Helping the Dyslexic Child Read and Succeed

Many children do not enjoy reading, dyslexic or not. Children with dyslexia need to read more and work on their reading fundamentals more frequently than children without a reading disorder. Practicing with a routine of reading exercises and activities can help strengthen their reading skills so reading can come more easily and natural to them. Symptoms of dyslexia can diminish greatly when the child reads on a regular basis and regularly exercises their reading skills.

Giving children reading material on topics that they are interested in can keep them interested and focused. Comics are a great idea, but if you want to stick to educational content, try an interesting book involving the child's favorite animal, sport or other topic of interest. You may want to ask them to read aloud from periodically, not necessarily in front of class but one on one while other students are taking their opportunity to read silent. That way you can evaluate their reading and answer any questions they have about any words they may be stumbling on.

Children with dyslexia are likely to reverse the consonants in any word especially if it is new. They may also have a few words they write regularly, but misspell while doing their class work or home work. Go through each child’s assignments briefly and pick out words that may be misspelled on a consistent basis and have the child rewrite the set a words a set amount of times. Regularly evaluate their work to pick out new sets of words monthly so that the child may practice writing them correctly until they are ready to move on to a new set of words.

Buy a set of reading kits that contain interesting books that have audio tapes that can be listened to while following along in the book. Let the kids volunteer each week to borrow the kits, taking them home to read on a daily basis and follow along with the audio as reading words in their mind and hearing them can help their thinking process while they read the words to themselves. Inform the students that’s using a pencil to guide themselves from word to word can keep them from losing track so easily and having the words "jumble up" as so many with dyslexia describe can happen. Make sure you communicate to the parents that you are lending the kits so you can be sure you will get them back! When a student is ready and confident with a book give them the opportunity to volunteer to read a book aloud to the class for a small prize. Assure them to take their time and pace themselves so they can read to the best of their ability and to prevent them from being so nervous while reading to their peers.

Play games with your students that promote reading and spelling. Make flash cards with words and have the students break up in groups. Have one student from each group raise their hand if they want to read the word for a point. Set a timer for 10 or 15 minutes. Which ever group accumulates the most points in the allowed time wins. Another game you can play is making a word search using a free word search creator program. Number and letter each row of letters 1-10 vertically and A-J horizontally giving each row a number. Give each student a copy of the word search. Read the word aloud and have the students search for the word. Have the student who first finds the word raise their hand and yell, "Bingo". They will read the location of the word by reading the word, then stating the location of the word such as the word was found on rows "1-J" and so on. Each student who finds a word can be given small reward like a piece of candy or a sticker.

Having your students participate in activities that help them with reading skills regularly can help them improve their reading and spelling greatly over surprisingly short amounts of time. To keep their interest, always change up the routines periodically and come up with more games and ideas so they don't get tired of doing the same thing all the time. For students you see great improvement in, you may want to hand out some free books as a reward each semester to encourage them to keep up the work.

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