Dyslexia Treatment

While there is currently no cure for dyslexia, there are a range of specialist interventions for dyslexia treatment that can help children with dyslexia with their reading and writing abilities. The amount and type of intervention and dyslexia treatment that they will need will depend on the severity of their condition.

Most children with dyslexia will only need to miss a few hours of their regular classes each week in order to receive specialist dyslexia treatment in the form of one-to-one teaching, or teaching in small groups. A minority of children with dyslexia may need to be transferred to a specialist school for their dyslexia treatment. Many specialist schools charge a fee, although financial support may be available from your Local Educational Authority (LEA) (in the UK).

Dyslexia Treatment – Educational Intervention – Early Years

Research has found that early educational interventions (dyslexia treatment) ideally before a child reaches seven or eight years of age, are an effective way of achieving long-term improvements in their reading and writing.

A wide range of educational interventions and programmes are currently available. For example, a recent report looking at effective ways to improve literacy in children with reading and writing difficulties found that there are currently 60 types of interventions and programmes currently being used in England.

With so many different programmes available, it can often be confusing for parents when deciding which ones would be most beneficial for their child.

There is a large body of good quality evidence that interventions that focus on improving phonological skills (the ability to identify and process sounds) are the most effective way of improving reading and writing. These types of educational interventions are often referred to as phonics. Phonics is a system that is widely used to teach all children to read and write, not just those with dyslexia.

Dyslexia Treatment – Phonics – Core Elements

Phonics focuses on six core elements:

• phonemic awareness
• phonics instruction
• spelling and writing instruction
• fluency instruction
• vocabulary instruction
• comprehension instruction

These are explained in more detail below.

Dyslexia Treatment – Phonemic Awareness

Phonemic awareness teaches children how to recognise and identify phonemes (sounds) in spoken words. For example, it helps a child to recognise that even very short words, such as ‘hat’ are actually made up of three phonemes ‘h’, ‘a’, and ‘t’.

Another important part of phonemic awareness involves understanding that you can manipulate phonemes to change words, such as changing the ‘h’ to a ‘c’ to create the word cat.

Dyslexia Treatment – Phonics Instruction

Phonics instruction teaches children how to sound out printed words by recognising the written letters that correspond to spoken phonemes. Letters that correspond to phonemes are known as graphemes.

Phonics also teaches children how to decode multisyllabic words, such as ‘crocodile’ and apply previous learned rules so that they have a better understanding of new words.

Dyslexia Treatment – Spelling and Writing Instruction

Spelling and writing instruction encourages children to combine letters and graphemes in order to create words and then, over time, to use the words to create more complex sentences.

Fluency instruction

Fluency instruction provides children with practice in reading words accurately. The goal is for a  child to be able to read with a good level of accuracy and speed.

This is important because if a child spends a lot of time trying to focus on reading individual words, it is easy to lose track of the text as a whole, and they may not properly understand what they are reading.

Vocabulary Instruction

Vocabulary instruction teaches children to recognise the words they are reading while building and understanding new words.

Comprehension Instruction

Comprehension instruction teaches children to monitor their own understanding while they read. They are encouraged to ask questions if they notice gaps in their understanding, while also linking what they are reading to information they have previously learned.

Phonics – Important Features

There is also a large body of good quality evidence to indicate that the most effective methods of teaching phonics to children with dyslexia contain a number of important features. These are explained below.

Dyslexia Treatment – Structure

Teaching needs to be highly structured, with development made in small steps, building logically on what has been learnt before.

Multi-sensory

Children with dyslexia learn better when they can use as many different senses as possible. An example of multi-sensory teaching is where a child is taught to see the letter ‘a’, say its name and sound, and write it in the air (all at the same time).

Reinforcement

Skills should be reinforced through regular practice because children with dyslexia often have to ‘overlearn’ skills that they have already mastered. This helps to improve their automatic recognition of the correct phonemes, letters, and rules in reading and writing.

Skill teaching

Early interventions in children with dyslexia should focus on the development of useful skills that can be transferred to other areas. Trying to teach children to learn and retain big chunks of information instead could place, arguably unnecessary, pressure on their memory.

Metacognition

Metacognition is a word that essentially means ‘thinking about the way you think’. In practice, metacognition involves encouraging children to recognise that there are several different learning methods and approaches available to them, and then thinking about which ones would be best for them to use in different circumstances.

Dyslexia Treatment – Breaking down emotional barriers

Another important feature of any educational intervention is to recognise that many children with dyslexia can develop emotional barriers that can make learning more difficult such as:

• anxiety
• frustration
• low confidence

Therefore, it is important to break down these barriers through encouragement, empathy, and fostering the child’s self-esteem.

Dyslexia Treatment – Older Children

Many older children with dyslexia feel much more comfortable working with a computer than with an exercise book. This may be because a computer uses a visual environment which corresponds more closely to their method of thinking.

Word processing programmes can also be very useful because they have a spellchecker, and an auto-correct facility that can help to highlight any mistakes in your child’s writing.

Most web browsers, and word processing software also have ‘text-to-speech’ functions, or available ‘plug-ins’, where the computer reads the text as it appears on the screen.

Speech recognition software can also be used to translate what a person is saying into written text. This type of software can be a useful aid in dyslexia treatment for children with dyslexia because their language abilities are often much better than their writing skills. The software can take a considerable amount of time and effort to use before it can be used with speed, but some children may find that the effort is eventually worthwhile.

There are also many educational interactive software applications which may provide your child with a more engaging way of learning a subject, rather than simply reading from a textbook.

Dyslexia Treatment – Adults

Much of the advice and techniques that are used to help children with dyslexia are also relevant for adults. Making use of technology, such as word processors and electronic organisers, can help you with your writing and to organise your daily activities.

The best way to learn something is to use a multi-sensory approach. For example, you could use a digital recorder to record a lecture, and then listen to it as you read your notes. It is also recommended that you break large tasks and activities down into smaller steps.

If you need to draw up a plan, or make notes about a certain topic, you may find it useful to create a ‘mind map’, rather than writing a list. Mind maps are diagrams that use images and keywords to create a visual representation of a subject or plan.

You should let your employer know that you have dyslexia because they are required by law to make reasonable adjustments to the workplace in order to assist you.

Examples of reasonable adjustments include:

• providing you with assistance technology, such as voice-recognition software
• allowing you extra time for tasks that you find particularly difficult
• providing you with information in formats that you find accessible

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