Dyslexia

Lately, I have become more interested in dyslexia for a variety of reasons. I have had several classes about the topic but have not fully understood it or the effects it has on students. At my current school, an uncommonly high number of students are labeled as dyslexic and receive accommodations for such; however, I do not believe that all of the students are, in fact, dyslexic. Many of the diagnosis are based on teacher observations instead of through formal testing. Additionally, my tutoring student, Keandria, shows signs of dyslexia and her aunt mentioned in the parent interview that she was labeled as such. My tutoring student has extremely poor decoding skills and it takes her quite a bit of time to finish reading a text; however, she remembers almost everything she reads and has astounding listening comprehension skills as well.

First of all, dyslexia needs to be adequately defined. Through my research, I have found many definitions of dyslexia. According to Tunmer & Greaney (2010), dyslexia is a “persistent literacy learning difficulty, especially…in word recognition, spelling, and phonological recoding, where phonological recoding is the ability to translate letters and letter patterns into phonological forms” (p. 231). This indicates that dyslexia is primarily a disability with decoding. In my Developmental Reading course at A&M, dyslexia was defined as a mismatch between reading ability and intellectual ability. Finally, Duff & Clarke (2010) define dyslexia as being “characterized by primary difficulties with decoding” (p. 3). Overall, dyslexia can, therefore, be classified as a reading disability affecting decoding. While this is a setback as decoding is a primary component of reading, my observations have shown that these students have excellent comprehension skills, especially in listening comprehension. My main struggle, with my own students as well as my tutoring student, has been how to best help improve the decoding skills so that these students can be more efficient and effective readers.

Students with dyslexia need specialized instruction in phonological awareness and phonics and these two components should drive the instruction of the student. In a study by Duff & Clarke (2010), students were shown to have the most significant improvements (d=.83) when working in “groups of 2-7 students, as compared to one-on-one (d=.45) or whole class basis (d=.35)” (p. 4). This information was not new to me, as a I know small group instruction is valuable; however, I did not realize that it is almost twice as helpful in phonological awareness and phonics instruction of children with dyslexia than one-on-one instruction. For my tutoring student, in which the environment is one-on-one, I can make the tutoring more effective by making the phonological awareness instruction and phonics instruction a group of two by using myself. While I already use a variety of techniques to improve my student’s decoding (like word sorts, online games, and Inspiration activities), I can include myself in the activities to form a small group to better assist my students. We will also begin playing competitive games against each other.

LaBerge & Samuels (1974) stated that students with dyslexia need to form “automaticity of the lower level components (consonants, vowels, syllables, grammatical endings, meaningful parts, and the spelling units that represent them) [to allow] attention to be allocated to the acquisition of higher level components” (p. 58). While this is exactly what students with dyslexia need most, in the middle grades and high school, the focus is on comprehension, and oftentimes, simple decoding skills instruction is abandoned. According to a study by Calhoon, Sandow & Hunter (2010), students in middle grades benefitted from direct instruction in phonological awareness, phonics and spelling. These skills then translated to an increase in comprehension skills. This study was conducted to see if explicit instruction in these skills would benefit students with reading disabilities, like dyslexia, and the results showed such. Many reading programs are not focused for middle grades, but this study indicates that focusing on the lower-level skills with struggling readers could have significant results not only in those skills but comprehension skills as well.

The implications of the research I found on dyslexia instruction for older students will help guide my tutoring with my high school student. It has been reiterated that she needs explicit instruction in phonological awareness, phonics and spelling to improve her decoding skills while adding to her already great comprehension skills. By combining technology and writing skills with word sorts, sight words and other simple decoding skills, she can increase her reading ability and show growth by at least one grade level. For my students, I can place my struggling readers in small groups and give explicit phonological awareness and phonics instruction to help raise their reading abilities.

Works Cited
Calhoon, M.B., Sandow, A. & Hunter, C.V. (2010). Reorganizing the instructional reading components: could there be a better way to design remedial reading programs to maximize middle school students with reading disabilities’ response to treatment? Ann. of Dyslexia, 60, 57-85.

Duff, F.J. & Clarke, P.J. (2010). Practitioner review: reading disorders: what are the effective interventions and how should they be implemented and evaluated? The Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry. 52(1), 3-12.

LaBerge, D. & Samuels, S. J. (1974). Toward a theory of automatic information processing in reading. Cognitive Psychology, 6(2), 293–323.

Tunmer, W. & Greaney, K. (2010). Defining dyslexia. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 43(3), 229-243.