Dyslexia: Switch on Success Mode at School and at Home!

Talking about dyslexia often comes down to describing the symptoms, the disorder and its different forms. School failure gets more attention than the psychological impact that comes with it. Yet the challenge of improving performance must go hand in hand with restoring self-confidence. To achieve this, discover all the specific adjustments for dyslexic pupils at school and at home!

A reminder on the specific features of dyslexia

Definition of the disorder.

Dyslexia is a learning disorder affecting reading and spelling. Four types of dyslexia are currently recognised. Phonological dyslexia, which affects the ability to match graphemes with phonemes. Surface dyslexia, which prevents the child from memorising the spelling of words. Mixed dyslexia, which combines the two previous forms, and visual-attentional dyslexia, which impairs the visual perception of written words.

The psychological and behavioural impacts

The first consequence of dyslexia is school failure. The child redoubles their efforts and puts in far more work than their classmates. And yet, they get mediocre or unsatisfactory results. Despite having perfectly normal intelligence, they’re judged as incompetent. As a result, they see themselves as “useless.” From bad grades to humiliating situations, the dyslexic child often becomes discouraged. They can develop a school phobia, aggression, or a form of depression. It’s urgent to step in! But how can you help a child with dyslexia?

Adapting the dyslexic child’s school life

Getting a diagnosis from a speech therapist, setting up speech therapy and sometimes psychological follow-up is an essential first step. Talking about it with the child, putting a name to their disorder, and reassuring them about their abilities and intelligence will also help restore their balance. However, this approach needs to go hand in hand with specific adjustments both in class and at home.

Following trials of various schooling conditions for dyslexic pupils, speech therapists, neurologists and teachers have identified adjustments with a strong positive impact on these pupils. These measures should be adopted in the classroom without hesitation! After getting parents’ agreement and explaining these changes to the other pupils, teachers can apply various types of adjustments. Working with the school doctor or nurse, these can be set out in an Individual Care Plan or a Personalised Schooling Plan (PPS). Note that to qualify for a PPS, parents must submit an application to the Departmental Disability Office (MDPH).

A few possible adjustment ideas

To motivate them to put in effort:

• Favour cross-curricular projects that let the child make the most of their abilities in other subjects.
• Multiply debates, meetings, presentations and drama activities to deliberately set aside the barrier of reading and let them express themselves differently.
• Make lesson materials as visual as possible to make them appealing (images, games, music…)
• Clearly explain the purpose of each lesson to give meaning to the teaching.
• Set achievable goals together with the pupil.
• Offer them the chance to carry out a project based on a topic they’re passionate about.

To improve their reading skills

• Read instructions aloud, deliberately kept simple with short sentences, and break them into sub-steps if they’re too complex.
• Instructions, never handwritten, should be written in Arial 12 or 14, 1.5 line spacing, left-aligned, with well-spaced paragraphs.
• Use pictograms, colours and distinct boxes for passages to remember.
• Allow them to record lessons and use a calculator.
• Show tolerance for slow reading.
• Allow extra time for assessments or reduce the number of exercises.
• Teach them to make mind maps for note-taking.
• Avoid having them read aloud in front of the class.
• Offer audiobook versions and work mainly through spoken tasks.
• Encourage a love of reading by offering simple books that still suit their age.
• Encourage learning English as a second language, or another transparent language (Italian or Spanish)
• Make sure instructions have been properly understood, and do so in every subject.
• Allow correct reasoning that differs from the taught method when solving arithmetic problems.

To improve their writing skills

• Show tolerance in marking, particularly for spelling, if the answer itself is correct.
• Favour oral assessments or multiple-choice questions, fill-in-the-blank texts, diagrams, and matching answers over essay-style answers.
• Allow lined notebooks rather than squared ones.
• Send lessons by email before class so the pupil can read them in advance and annotate them.
• Allow the use of spell-checking software.
• Check that homework has been correctly written down in the homework diary or planner, and send it by email.
• For dictation, reduce the content required and favour fill-in-the-blank or multiple-choice dictations.
• Provide explanatory sheets for proofreading written work (reading aloud or under one’s breath to check the text makes sense, checking punctuation and capital letters, then noun/adjective agreement, then verb conjugation, and finally spelling).
• Avoid piling on multiple memory tricks to remember the same spelling rule.
• Create and allow the use of reference sheets for grammar, spelling and conjugation (outside of dictation).
• Allow limited written explanation in scientific subjects, as long as the calculation method is correct.

To build their self-confidence

• Always start from what the pupil can already do.
• Highlight their strengths.
• Give them encouragement.
• Avoid any situation with a high likelihood of failure.
• Ban phrases like “just try harder” or “it’s not that complicated,” because for the dyslexic child, it genuinely is very complicated, and their efforts are enormous.
• Celebrate their talents (artistic, sporting…).
• Offer them the chance to give demonstrations or lessons in their instrument or talent to interested classmates.

To make their relationships with other children easier

• Take the time to explain to the class how pupils differ from one another. Discuss everyone’s strengths and weaknesses.
• Teach children what a DYS disorder is without singling out any particular pupil.
• Set up peer knowledge-sharing in pairs: one pupil strong in French but weak in maths, paired with the opposite.
• Encourage group work around a shared project.

Home as an extra resource

School adjustments represent a genuine step forward in supporting the dyslexic child. Speech therapy follow-up also delivers very good results. But as parents, how can you make yourself useful in helping your child?

Opening them up to the pleasures of reading

Who said bedtime stories were only for younger children? It’s an activity that restores all of reading’s positive appeal! Reading with your dyslexic child is essential. To do this, it’s best to choose material that matches their interests. This could take the form of a story, but also a recipe or the instructions for a game. This reading should become part of a daily routine, both during term time and during holidays!

Making books easier to access

The length of texts, and how complex they become over the years, can be a real barrier to reading for dyslexic children. To fight this discouragement, parents should make sure the child has properly understood the meaning of the text. How? By sharing the reading, for example. One paragraph read by the parent, another by the child. Or by echo reading: the parent reads the text while the child follows the words with their finger. Once the text has been read, it’s the child’s turn to read it. Parents and children can also read paragraphs aloud together in one voice. To help stay focused on a particular word, using a reading guide can also help.

Improving their comprehension

Because they’re focused on decoding words and letters, the dyslexic child quickly reaches cognitive overload. It’s not easy to add text comprehension on top of that! Here are a few ideas to help parents make sure the child grasps the meaning of the text. First, by preparing for the reading. Simply ask the child a few questions before starting to read:

• What do you think this text is about?
• What do you think it’s going to say?
• Why are we going to read it?
• Let’s look at what stands out in this text: titles, images, bold words…

While reading, pause regularly so the adult can ask the child what they’ve understood and remembered. At the end of the reading, the parent can invite the child to use the KWL chart technique (Know / Want to know / Learned)

Beyond schooling conditions and the dyslexic child’s everyday wellbeing, the adjustments granted under an Individual Care Plan or a PPS will also benefit the pupil for national exams such as the DNB (lower secondary diploma) and the baccalauréat, if parents request it. Learning represents a far greater effort for the dyslexic child than for other children. Adapting their living and learning conditions should be a given for everyone involved in supporting them.