Teaching Strategies and Materials for Dyslexic Learners
How to teach dyslexic kids
Welcome! Supporting learners with dyslexia is one of the most rewarding journeys in education. Because traditional "print-heavy" methods can feel like climbing a steep mountain, our gold-standard approach relies on Structured Literacy and the Orton-Gillingham methodology. This framework focuses on teaching language explicitly, systematically, and using multiple sensory pathways simultaneously.
The Core Pillar: Multisensory Engagement
When we teach multisensorialy, we engage three main neural pathways at the exact same time: Visual (what we see), Auditory (what we hear), and Kinesthetic-Tactile (what we touch and move). By wrapping these pathways together, we help students build stronger brain connections to anchor abstract to their written symbols (graphemes).
Grapheme
noun
A written symbol or letter (or group of letters like 'sh' or 'ch') that represents a single phoneme (sound) in a writing system.
To bring these strategies to life, we can generate custom, research-backed physical activities and visual structures tailored to your specific goals. Here are some of the most effective tools we can build together:
- Read-Build-Write Mats: A highly tactile workspace where students read a word card, physically assemble it using magnetic letter tiles, and then write it using a dry-erase marker.
- Air Writing & Tactile Tracing Guides: Step-by-step instructions for "muscle memory" activities where kids trace sandpaper letters or write giant letters in the air while vocalizing the sounds.
- Color-Coded Phonics Sheets: Activity sheets that visually chunk prefixes, suffixes, consonants, and vowels to prevent letters from "swimming" on the page.
- Diagnostic Lesson Plans: Explicit, step-by-step scripts that introduce a single sound at a time, incorporating multisensory checks.
To design the perfect resource for your teaching session, I'd love to ask you a quick question: