A teacher's attention is often drawn to a dyslexic child or student by their 'messy' work - short words spelt wrongly, poor handwriting, words crossed out, lack of paragraphs, and incomplete work. Unfortunately, teachers too frequently come to the conclusion that the child cannot be bothered to make an effort, or is simply stupid. It can come as a surprise to discover that the child is actually quite intelligent, and teachers often conclude that the child must, therefore, be lazy.
This is far from the truth. Dyslexic children, teenagers and adults suffer from a range of difficulties which, even with the greatest effort, make writing the most difficult activity they are asked to perform.
There are four main challenges for a dyslexic child:
1.
Spelling
2. Sentence punctuation
3. Handwriting
4. Sequencing ideas
1. Spelling
Visual memory weaknesses present particular challenges. This weakness prevents a child or teenager from having a strong memory of what many common words look like. You can compare this to your own visual memory of what the Statue of Liberty looks like - you probably have a clear picture in your mind.
Dyslexic children can learn to work out the spellings of words that follow a logical pattern of letter sounds (like 'c-a-t' and 's-i-n-g'). The best help for a dyslexic child is to use phonics-based teaching of spelling . However, the spellings of words with little relation to their sounds - like 'said' and 'ought' - are particularly difficult to remember. They do not sound like the letter-sounds from which they are spelt.
In some languages, like Italian, the spellings can be worked out from their letter-sounds. So, a sentence like:
La mia madre desidera andare all'isola.
(My mother wants to go to the island)
is not too hard to spell once you know the rules. However, to spell the English word 'mother' from its letter-sounds is not easy: you would think that the beginning of moth|er was a flying insect! The word 'island' looks like 'is' 'land' and the letter sounds do not create the word 'island'.
Other words like 'where', 'here', 'are', 'there', etc. are equally impossible to spell from the sounds of their letters. (These illogical spellings came about because of the complex history of the English language, which has been built up from other languages over the centuries.)
One group of spellings causes particular difficulties for dyslexic writers:
any
('eny')
many ('meny')
does ('dus')
said ('sed')
they ('thay')
because ('becos')
island ('iland')
eyes('ies')
friend ('frend')
enough ('enuff')
These tricky words can be learned as a 'mnmonic' by dyslexic children. 'Because', for example, can be remembered from the first letters of the 'silly' sentence: 'Big Elephants Can Add Up Sums Easily'. The word 'any' can be remembered by using the 'silly sentence 'Ants Never Yawn'.
Dyslexic children and teenagers can be helped if teachers write the spellings of words which most children will use on the board while discussing the topic with them. For example, if the children were to write about 'My trip', the teacher could put such words on the board as:
decided
miles
camping
mountain
lake
mosquito
campfire
etc.
Telling dyslexic children to check spellings in a dictionary is not helpful. To find a word in a dictionary, you have to know how the word is spelt in the first place! However, spell-checkers can make a big difference (and are seen as being fun and trendy!).
2. Sentence punctuation
Sentence punctuation means putting upper-case or capital letters at the start, and periods or full stops at the end, of each sentence. You will often notice dyslexic children omitting these crucial markers of how the passage reads.
An easy exercise to teach this is to take a passage of about five or six sentences which a dyslexic child can read without difficulty, and type it out, omitting the upper-case letters and periods. Children will soon see how hard it is to make sense of the passage, and they can be asked to punctuate the passage into sentences. If repeated a number of times, children will become proficient at using sentence punctuation themselves.
Another activity which works well is to say a couple of sentences to a child, and ask how many sentences you said. For example, say: 'I got into the car yesterday. I found the map I had been looking for.' (two sentences). Say: 'I went home last night and cooked myself a meal.' (one sentence). The child will soon come to realize that the word 'and' can link two ideas into one sentence.
3. Handwriting
Some dyslexic children experience difficulty memorizing the sequence of movements which make up the writing of each letter. This can lead to uneven handwriting, and, if severe, may be described as 'dysgraphia'.
They may also find it hard to remember which way round certain letters go (like b/d, 9/p, p/q. c, z, j, g, and others).
The following approaches can help:
- When
assessing a dyslexic child's original writing, it is important to ignore the poor
spelling and handwriting, and to grade on the content rather than the handwriting.
- The best
help for improving handwriting and memorizing spellings is to teach dyslexic children
cursive handwriting.
In
view of their difficulties with handwriting, dyslexic children should be allowed
to do homework assignments on a word processor at home, and to bring in the print-out.
As this can be spell-checked, and usually looks attractive, it can help to re-build
their self-confidence. Some schools allow dyslexic children to do their written
work in class on an inexpensive laptop computer (from an educational supplier)
with a spell-checker, and take it to the Special Services/Special Needs department
at recess/break times to print out their work.
4. Sequencing ideas
Telling a story in the right order or explaining what happened can cause problems. Dyslexic children, teenagers and students are often unaware of the need to sketch out a rough outline of an essay before actually writing it. This can look like this:
1.
Introduction - how we decided to go on a trip.
2. What we took with us.
3. Journey to the mountains.
4. Setting up camp by a lake.
5. Getting
lost on the first day.
6. Two million mosquitos at night!
6. Cooking a
meal on the camp fire.
7. Singing songs on our journey home.
8. Conclusion
- like to go again, but with a mosquito net!
With this plan on a sheet of paper, a dyslexic child can then write a paragraph about each part of the story, confident in the knowledge that each section of the story will be in the right order. Although time-consuming at first, thus procedure leads to confident essay-writing over the years.
For a university student, a plan like this can re-build their confidence in their ability to write an essay which argues a point coherently. Once the plan is written, they only have to fill out each section.
John Bradford
June 2003
