Supporting Dyslexic Learners

Supporting ideas for dyslexics and others

Ideas for Listening

• Look at the person talking while they are talking to you. It makes is a whole lot easier to listen when you are looking at the face of the person talking.

• It also signals to the other person that you are listening.

• Listen until the other person has finished talking. This will help you listen and concentrate on all the ideas they have communicated.

• If you find it hard to keep still when you are listening, help the other person understand this by telling them. Agree to show your listening. If your fingers need to busy whilst listening agree that you can fiddle with something. Make this your listening thing. Just holding something can help you listen and focus better.

• Sit in a place that will help you listen. An open window with sounds, breezes and things happening out side is not a good place for you. Choose a place with the least distractions for you.

• Signal if you do not understand. Ask the speaker to repeat or show what they mean. Ask for them to use new words or different words to help you understand what they are trying to say.

Ideas for Reading

Try to visualise while you are reading. Make the story happen inside your head. Ask your self:

1. What would I see? What do I hear? What do I feel?

2. Imagine what the story would look if you were making into a film.

3. As you are reading, pause and ask yourself what has just happened.

4. Can you put into your word?

5. If not, re-read the sentence.

6. What do you think might happen next?

Ideas for Writing

Make a plan before you start writing use a mind map put all of your ideas down, this can be done quickly and in any order. It does not need to be really neat - neat enough for your to read it.

1. Once you have everything down in note form – number them in an order you are going to write them. you will find some ideas fit going first or early and then others are belter going later or last.

2. Decide what you are going to write about and divide these into paragraphs you might find one paragraph has only one idea in it – because it is a big idea. Another might link two or three together because it makes sense to put these together.

3. Write a paragraph or a few sentences at a time, looking at the plan often.

Ideas for Proof Reading

When improving your writing, it is a good idea to concentrate on just two or three things for a few weeks.

1. Can you ask for help? Of course, you can – you need to practice and they only way to get better to with feedback.

2. When you write, have a check list – something like this:

Should this be formal?

Have I put capitals at the start of every sentence?

I have I used full stops at the end of the sentence.

Have I put capitals on people’s names?

Have I put random capitals in words?

Are my sentences too long so they need commas or full stops?

Do the sentence make sense- read them out aloud and listen to them, where you

stumble over them – is where you need to look for a mistake.