How to Teach Phonics to Children With Dyslexia

Dyslexic students lack the phonemic awareness skills they need to begin reading. Phonemic awareness is the ability to hear sounds in words, then change them to make new words or produce rhyming words. Students have to be able to do this mentally, without print, in order to become successful readers. Phonemic awareness is an integral part of phonics instruction. Follow the steps below to help your dyslexic students learn these skills.

Instructions

1. Emphasize phonemic awareness. To teach phonemic awareness skills, work with the students so they are able to count or say each sound in a word, add and delete a sound, change a sound to make a new word, blend sounds into words, and produce rhyming words. For example, say the word, "Take." Ask them to say the sounds they hear. They should say "t-a-k." Ask them how many sounds are in the word. Then say, "If I take the "t" away from take and put a "b" in its place, what new word will I have?" Follow up with, "What other words sound like take and bake?" You may have to give some more words that rhyme, but with help and practice, dyslexic students should be able to do improve on this skill.

2. Conduct interventions. The phonemic awareness activities are best taught to dyslexic students in small group or one-on-one interventions. This is because the instruction can be intense with focused attention which they must have. You can either group two or three dyslexic students together and work with them at one time, or pair them with another student who is on grade level or above. A peer helper does not teach the student, but can reinforce the phonological skills that you have introduced. The ideal intervention time is 15 to 30 minutes, at least three times per week.

3. Conduct frequent assessments. This is important so that the students as well as you can monitor progress. Use measured tests like the Dynamic Indicator of Basic Skills (DIBELS) assessment. This is a timed measure of skills like letter naming, initial sound, nonsense words, phoneme segmentation and oral reading fluency. These tests give immediate results that are easily understood. Of course, you can also make assessments by informal observation. Keep a folder on each student that has a checklists of indicators for phonics mastery and update it weekly.

4. Establish a routine. Phonics instruction should be systematic and explicit for the dyslexic students. This means that it is done the same way, every day. Although there may be several ways to teach a specific skill, you need to have a certain time of the day established for teaching phonics. If you are teaching phoneme segmentation (separating the individual sounds in words), just work on it until the students are comfortable enough doing this activity before introducing another skill like deleting or adding phonemes to words. Follow a logical sequence of steps in the phonological process and don't deviate from this practice. These steps are usually in the following order: letter naming, initial sounds,rhyming, sound segmenting, sound manipulation, sound blending, word decoding and pronunciation. Dyslexic students will have a much easier time mastering the basics of phonics if they are taught in this way.