As an educator, it is essential to cultivate your skills and ability to handle all types of students, including dyslexic students within the classroom. A great way to hone in on your skills is to join in on communities of educationists online, such as The Tech Edvocate and The Edvocate. Apart from that, here are other ways to accommodate students with dyslexia.
Accommodating with Materials
Whether you’re a college or high school teacher, your students will have to interact with many materials for their daily work, such as a GPA calculator for college and high school or even a final grade calculator.
To help accommodate your dyslexic students, you can equip them with a tape recorder, which they can then replay whenever they feel the need for clarification. If your student with dyslexia is easily visually distracted, then a good way to counter that would be to cover parts of the workbook that doesn’t have to be worked on with a piece of blank paper.
You can even develop a reading guide to provide a road map for all of the relevant content that they will be working on.
Accommodating with Interactive Instructions
While teaching students with dyslexia, it is vital to utilize interactive instructions to keep them engaged. Some successfully used interactive instructions include the repetition of directions, always providing a copy of the notes, and maintaining routines daily to provide structure.
You can also divide their instructions step by step and provide them with a graphic organizer, including an outline, key information, and related information. A great way to accommodate students with dyslexia using interactive instructions is to use mnemonic instructions. This is the ideal way to equip them with an effective learning strategy and retain essential information.
Accommodating Using Student Performance
No student is the same, where some students might excel in giving presentations while others in writing reports. Students also process information differently, and so these are tools you can use to enhance the student’s performance.
Dyslexic students who struggle when using their fine motor skills, such as writing, can change their response mode from writing to underlining. You can also ask them to rotate their lined paper when solving mathematical questions so that they can write each number in each column.
You should also allow them to use aids, such as number lines, counters, samples of assignments that have been completed, and more.
Concluding Thoughts
All in all, the best way to accommodate a student who has dyslexia is to work on a case-by-case basis. So, you must evaluate where the student excels and where they need help and aids.