Learning disabilities are an important aspect of today’s education settings. Dyslexia is regarded as one of the learning disabilities. When we look at dyslexia’s meaning, we are able to clearly see that it comes out of greek wods. Dys refers to “difficult,” and lexis means “word”.
When we analyze the definition of dyslexia, it is thought to be a learning disorder. It typically involving reading Difficulties, writing & spelling difficulties, math and general academic skills, cognitive processing issues
We would like to mention each of those features mentioned previously in a detailed way.
1)Reading difficulties: This aspect includes various components. Before mentioning them, it is good to give an example in a classroom to create a clear picture in your mind about reading difficulties.
Classroom examples:
- Reads “horse” instead of “house.”
- Skips lines or entire sentences
- Gives up easily during reading activities
In this category we are going to mention slow reading speed, word decoding problems, and reading comprehension problems.
Reading comprehension problems: Reading comprehension addresses the skill to understand and interpret the main idea from a given text. Children with dyslexia struggle to understanding the meaning of written text during the exams.
Word decoding problems: word encoding is a capacity for breaking down given words into their individual sounds. Children with dyslexia commonly struggle to apply phonics rules to read new words
slow reading speed: Their reading speed is significantly slower compared to their typically developmental peers. Due to word decoding problems.
2) Writing & Spelling Difficulties: we see this category in problems with writing. They often struggle the structure of thought that it is consistent. For example, children write, “I go park. Fun. Dog runs fast. I am happy.”
In addition to this, we should not ignore the spelling challenges. They experience a difficulty in spelling words. For instance, a student writes “frend” instead of “friend”, or “skool” instead of “school”. These are two main writing issues.
3)Math and General Academic Skills: As we mentioned earlier, dyslexia in children/adults causes individuals to experience problems with writing, reading, and math. It affects their academic life in school settings.
4) Cognitive Processing Issues: The most common features of all learning disabilities is are cognitive processing issues. This domain evolves: Language processing problem, phonological processing, and visual processing disorder.
Language processing problem: It might impair both the production and comprehension of language in terms of writing and speaking.
Visual Processing Disorder: It causes them to perceive letters incorrectly.
Phonological processing: Dyslexia regularly difficulty with phonological awareness. For instance, they cannot see the phonetic distinction between “bat” and “pat”.
Additionally, we would like to underline another important topic about dyslexia in terms of attention, memory, and IQ.
Dyslexia and IQ: dyslexia does not mean low IQ, according to research.
Dyslexia and memory: This relationship is a bit of a different story. This is the part in which cognitive processing issues Working memory—the skill to hold information temporarily and apply information at the current present time while working on something—plays a crucial role in reading comprehension. Their working memory is not as good as their typical peers. Due to this reason, they face reading difficulties and reading comprehension problems
Dyslexia and attention: Children with dyslexia frequently face attention-related problems. sustained attention is crucial in learning and reading. It includes visual materials as well. They have problems paying attention to visual stimuli. It causes visual processing disorder.
In order to meet the needs of children with dyslexia, some instructional techniques. Two of them are specialized reading instruction and phonics-based learning.
Specialized Reading Instruction: Helps the children by creating supportive learning experiences with multisensory techniques.
Classroom example:
Step 1: Visual: The student writes the word “dog” in large print on a whiteboard.
Step 2: Auditory: The student then says the sounds /d/ /o/ /g/ while tracing the word in the air.
Step 3: Kinesthetic: The student practices writing “dog” while saying the sounds out loud again.
Phonics-Based Learning: This approach highlights the bond between letters and their corresponding sounds.
Step 1: The teacher writes the word “start” on the board and breaks it down into its individual sounds: /s/ /t/ /ar/ /t/.
Step 2: The student practices saying each sound and blending them together to form the word.
Step 3: The student then reads similar words like “smart”, “part”, and “chart” to practice the same sound patterns.
As a team, we designed our app by paying attention to these scientifically proven methods to meet the needs of children with dyslexia. You can check this link to visit Dystherapy:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.arda.dystherapy