About "Passport to Reading"

Passport to reading is maintained by two secondary English teachers, Rachel Bowers and Julia Woodward, who are both graduate students at Vanderbilt's Peabody College. This blog site was designed for other middle and high school teachers seeking to learn more about students with dyslexia. Since reading and writing form the core of the secondary English classroom, it is imperative that all middle and high school teachers understand the unique challenges that students who have dyslexia may face. By using research-based strategies and accommodations, secondary teachers can give students with dyslexia the “passports” they need to succeed with reading and writing throughout their middle and high school years.

What is dyslexia?

Dyslexia is brain-based learning disability that specifically affects a person's ability to read, write and spell (Guerin & Male, 2006). Students with dyslexia may exhibit weaknesses in reading and languages at school, yet they are often particularly strong in other areas.

Research has shown that children begin developing dyslexia as early as at their mothers’ sixth month of pregnancy. Dyslexia develops when neurons in the cerebral cortex of the brain migrate and form abnormal connections to different areas in the brain (Bassick & Guth, 1997).

Students with dyslexia typically struggle with (Bassick & Guth, 1997):
• Reversing or missequencing words such as b for d, forming words such as “abertisement” instead of “advertisements.”
• Perceiving or pronouncing written words
• Understanding spoken words
• Handwriting
• Spelling
• Written Language
• Math Computation

Although the so-called “rewiring of the brain” that causes deficiencies in students’ abilities to recognize the sound structure of words, it also often causes students with dyslexia to be gifted in areas such as the arts and sciences.

How does dyslexia affect secondary students?

Thirty percent of eighth graders and 25 percent of 12th graders read below grade level (McCray, Vaughn, & Neal, 2001), and many of these students’ delays result from learning disabilities like dyslexia. By the time students with dyslexia reach the secondary level, many of them have had negative experiences with reading and writing, especially if their learning disability was not diagnosed at an early age. But even those students who participate in reading intervention programs in the primary grades will still experience learning programs in secondary school.

For example, middle school students with dyslexia might have trouble implementing the reading strategies they learned in primary school interventions, and negative attitudes toward reading might prevent them from doing well. (McCray, Vaughn, & Neal, 2001)

Students with dyslexia often dread going to school, feel isolated from their peers and do not understand why they keep falling behind. These negative experiences can contribute to low self-esteem and a sense of failure in school that secondary school teachers must address in order to help their students feel successful.

You can help your students have a better school experience and make important academic gains in reading and writing by relying on research-based strategies, as well as common educational wisdom. By focusing on students strengths and drawing on their abilities to build instruction, you can help students learn techniques for overcoming their unique challenges. Keep in mind that some of the world’s best and most creative thinkers had dyslexia – Albert Einstein, Thomas Edison, Rodin – and that your students possess similarly impressive skills and talents.

How can I identify secondary students with dyslexia?

Although teachers will need a special education specialist to properly identify a student’s learning disability, indicators to look for might include (Pollock, Waller, & Politt, 2004):

• Discrepancies between test scores on reading tests with graded words or that are of a narrative form with contextual clues
• When observed while reading, the student acts anxious, fidgety or unwilling
• Student relies on pictures and contextual clues in reading
• Student shows signs of having memorized the text after hearing a peer or the teacher read it
• While reading, the student has difficult identifying letters and keeping his or her place on the line
• The student omits or adds words to a sentence, and confuses certain letters including b and d, p and g, and u and n
• The student has trouble reading consistently in a left to right direction
• The student gives little attention to punctuation
• The student has a lot of difficulty understanding what he or she has read

Steps toward Intervention

Early intervention (by third grade) is ideal. However, even if students obtain services at a young age, they will likely continue to need them into the middle and high school years.

Additionally, some students struggle through the primary grades without being identified as students with dyslexia. Therefore, if you notice a student struggling with reading and suspect he or she might have a learning disability like dyslexia, there are several steps you can take to initiate the appropriate intervention:

1. Document the signs. Provide as much information as you can that will quantify the symptoms of a learning disability: reading and writing assessments, personal observations of the student's personality, student comments about reading, and descriptions of the student's behavior when under stress as well as when succceeding. (Stowe, 2000)
   
2. Check the student's record. Find out if he or she has a history of any problems with reading or if this is a new or isolated concern.
3. Consult with colleagues. Particularly at the secondary level, find out if other teachers notice the same signs and symptoms.
   
4. Contact the parents. Parents often know more than anyone else about their children's development.
5. Make a referral. The school and district should have procedures in place for making a referral for formal evaluation of a student who might have a learning disability.
   

Recommended Accommodations for Secondary Students

While many students with dyslexia, when given the appropriate specialized education, will have made significant gains by the time they reach middle or high school, these students will still need and benefit from several accommodations to facilitate their learning. Accommodations will differ depending upon the student, but common aids include:

• Allowing students with dyslexia to use a laptop to take notes during class and to help with organization
• Give students who use laptops written tests on a disk or CD format, so the student may use a keyboard rather than have to grapple with difficulties in handwriting
• Give students tests untimed
• If possible, find time to tutor the student one-on-one, or help the student find his or her own tutor outside of class
• Tape record lectures to give to students if needed
• Look into dictation software that allows students to give oral answers for tests or assignments and types wording for them
  
• English teachers can have books on tapes available for students if needed
  

Strategies for Instruction

The following are a few strategies for teachers that can help adolescents with dyslexia continue to succeed in school (Guerin & Male, 2006; Bassik & Guth, 1997; McCray, Vaughn, & Neal, 2001):

• Provide multisensory lessons enhanced by movement and visuals
• Help students with organization and study skills to decrease their apprehensions about school
  
• Provide hands-on learning experiences, such as creating story boards for a short film, in which students learn problem solving strategies and work creatively
• Recognize students' talents in art, science or other areas and incorporate their interests into lessons and assessments
• Give students opportunities to self-select reading material and read independently; choice on any assignment increases students' motivation and curiosity
• Learn strategies for teaching students to break down words and sound them out, instead of just telling students to do so
• Have students read books aloud in small groups, which allows students with dyslexia to learn from hearing higher level readers read new vocabulary and offers opportunities for discussion to increase understanding.
  
• When grading student papers, de-emphasize spelling and handwriting for students with dyslexia and focus on content
• Create alternative assessments instead of giving essay tests
  
• If a student has a severe reading disability, help him or her find a tutor or other special education services

Successful programs for students with dyslexia

The most successful programs and schools for students with dyslexia offer smaller class sizes, student-centered instruction that draws on children's interests and initatives, and curriculum based on multi-sensory methods.

For example, one high school language arts teacher offered a performance-based Shakespeare course in which students acted out scenes in order to learn the text and the story. The combination of kinesthetic, aural, and visual modalities along with collaborative learning allowed students to read a text that uses complex and unfamiliar language when they might otherwise have become frustrated and given up. (Johnson, 1998)

The Lab School of Washington, a non-profit educational institution that includes an independent school for students with severe dyslexia, has been using strategies of multi-sensory and student-centered instruction since 1967. Many of the studens from The Lab School go on to attend colleges and universities.

The Woodward Academy in Atlanta offers a transition program for students with diagnosed learning disabilites to receive an education that will prepare them for college. Faculty are committed to their students' holistic development; they teach students to celebrate their strengths and learn to manage their weaknesses so they can succeed in an academically rigorous environment.

Tips for involving parents

Although their child may have been mainstreamed into regular education classes, parents of students with dyslexia still need to be actively involved in their child's education. In McCray, Vaughn and Neal's study (2001) of middle school students with reading disabilities, many of the students they spoke with cited their parents as important figures for encouraging and supporting their reading programs at school by helping them apply reading strategies at home. In contrast, many students also spoke of impatient, intolerant parents and relatives or changes in their home lives as reasons for having low confidence in their abilities or for not reading as much as they would like to. Teachers can assist parents in guiding their student with dyslexia in several major ways (Stowe, 2000):

1. Offer suggestions for how the parent can observe his or her child, by which the parent can provide valuable information about how the student is working at home.
2. Provide names of resources that parents can utilize to learn about the child's learning style.
   
3. Give specific and practical suggestions for ways in which they can assist their child's learning at home.
   
4. Give specific ways that they can help their child with certain problem areas including homework, and social and emotional issues.
   

Resources for Teachers

To learn about the legal rights for students with learning disabilities like dyslexia, including information about the procedures in place for your state, visit the Web site of the National Dissemination Center for Children with Disabilities.

To read about research and techniques for using multi-sensory instruction with struggling readers, visit the Web site for the Orton-Gillingham Institute for Multi-Sensory Education.

To find out about professional development opportunities that can help you learn to identify students with learning disabilities and work with struggling readers, visit the Web site for the Frostig Center, a non-profit organization founded in 1951 that conducts research, provides parent and teacher support, and provides direct instruction to struggling learners.

For a list of books, journal articles and a video about students with dyslexia, please refer to our References list below.

References

Bassick, J. (Producer/Writer) & Guth, J. (Producer/Writer). (1997). Dyslexia [Motion Picture]. United States: Aquarius Productions.

Guerin, G. & Male, M.C. (Eds). (2006). Addressing Learning Disabilities and Difficulties. Thousand Oaks, California: Corwin Press.

Johnson, K.K. (1998). Teaching Shakespeare to learning disabled students. The English Journal, 87 (3), 45-49.

McCray, A.D., Vaughn, S., & La Vonne, I.N. (2001). Not all students learn to read by third grade: Middle school students speak out about their reading diabilities. The Journal of Special Education, 35(1), 17-30.

Pollock, J., Waller, E., & Politt, R. (2004). Day-to-day dyslexia in the classroom (2nd ed.). London: Routledge Falmer.

Stowe, C. (2000). How to reach and teach children and teens with dyslexia. West Nyack, New York: The Center for Applied Research in Education.

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