Read our three tips to support and understand your child with dyslexia. Watch them flourish.
# 1 Celebrate
#2: Understand
#3: Take Action
#1 Celebrate Dyslexia
Ahhh, *exhale* you can breathe a sigh of relief. There is finally an explanation for the frustrations your child has been feeling at school. Although daunting when first diagnosed, you are among good company. Some of the greatest minds and talents in history were dyslexic, including Albert Einstein, Stephen Hawking and Steve Jobs. There are Hollywood stars such as Tom Crusie, Keira Knightley and many, many other successful dyslexic individuals.
Dyslexia is a reason to celebrate as most individuals with dyslexia have enhanced brain creativity, an ability to see the big picture and strong problem-solving skills. This is because they are right-brain dominant allowing them to make connections across a larger distance. Other strong associations with dyslexia are great people skills, extraordinary entrepreneurial skills, artistically talented and intuitive.
#2 Understand Dyslexia
Dyslexia is a neurobiological, common learning difficulty with statistics suggesting it impacts 15% of the population. It is the most common cause of speaking, reading and writing difficulties. Mild dyslexia may just mean a student has to work harder than his/her peers to decode and encode, while severe cases can result in complete interruption to learning because of difficulties in reading and writing. Dyslexia is not related to IQ.
#3 Take Action
For students who are struggling with dyslexia, one of the most important factors in helping them achieve their full potential is providing explicit instruction of systematic synthetic phonics.
Learning to read and spell is essentially a code and the student needs to 'crack the code,' by learning the relationship between the letters of the alphabet and the speech sounds they represent. It is important for the teacher to have a personalised program for the student and utilise evidence-based strategies in this program.
A high-quality program will also include explicit instruction in vocabulary, fluency and reading comprehension.
Without action, dyslexia can remain a challenge throughout life and cause secondary issues with reading comprehension and vocabulary. In turn this can also impact social and emotional skills.
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