Effective Teaching

Research now tells us just how to teach individuals with dyslexia.

One of the foremost researchers, Dr. G. Reid Lyon, Chief of the Child Development and Behavior Branch of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development of the National Institutes of Health, has been instrumental in these findings. The National Reading Panel found that intervention programs that provided systematic and explicit instruction in phonemic awareness, phonics, repeated reading to improve fluency, and direct instruction in vocabulary and reading comprehension strategies were significantly more effective than approaches that were less explicit.

In her book, Overcoming Dyslexia, Dr. Sally Shaywitz shares the functional Magnetic Resonance Images (fMRI) of children with and without dyslexia. After receiving an appropriate intervention reading program, the children's brain scans show that the areas of the brain used in reading resemble those of a typical reader.

To achieve these changes, students must be given the appropriate instruction. They must receive systematic and direct instruction in the following areas:

• Phonemic awareness
• Phonics
• Spelling
• Vocabulary
• Comprehension strategies
• Fluency instruction