Reading

There are many factors that can effect a child’s reading performance. However, decoding is far and wide the most critical skill that comes into play. Although comprehension and fluency constantly take the center stage, without decoding, it’s hard to have decent scores in either one.

Traditional reading programs place more emphasis on reading fluency and comprehension than decoding, and that can work for kids who naturally learn to decode. But for kids with dyslexia, this is a big mistake.

These kids learn by doing. Moving is how they process information, so answering comprension questions on material they struggled to decode only serves to frustrate them. Add in pushing them to read faster and faster without giving them specific strategies to do so, and you have a fire you’re pouring gasoline on!

Kids with dyslexia struggle to read because they are missing or have weak strategies to decode or sound out new or unfamiliar words they encounter. Instead of using strategies, they end up guessing at the words, trying to memorize them, or using trial and error learning to figure out what the words might be.

These reading behaviors are really just bad habits they engage in because decoding strategies are weak. They are also called The Three Pillars of Poor Reading.

When kids with dyslexia engage in the Three Pillars of Poor Reading, they struggle to have high fluency and comprehension scores. Since they have to pause to figure out new words instead of systemmatically sounding them out, they desperately try to figure out what the word might be. Instead, they end up stammering and stuttering as they attempt to figure this out.

And comprehension is obviously affected if kids are guessing at words, as there is nothing definite about a guess! Memorizing words is at least a strategy, but it’s not an efficient one, as there are over one million words in our language. Once again, there’s that long pause that affects fluency while the reader tries to recognize the word, although comprehension isn’t affected as much by this poor reading habit.

Trial and error learning is equally as inefficient. There is no rhyme, no reason to what the student does while reading the word. Sometimes the “ch” sound might be correct, sometimes it might be “sh”. Consistency is only a wish and a dream!

Automaticity in Reading

When your child sits down to read a passage, a lot of different things go on – all at the same time. If the words are read with ease within grade level expectations, then it’s called reading automaticity. This is just a fancy word for saying your child reads without having to consciously think about it.

Reading automaticity is similar to other skills that require mulitple actions being performed at the same time – like typing on a keyboard. When you first learned to type, you had to figure out where to place your hands and where each particular letter rested on the keyboard. At first, it felt awkward, and most likely, you were slow and clunky, just like a beginning reader!

But after a bit, you became better at it, and before you knew it, your fingers flew over the keyboard. Accuracy improved as well. You quit making so many mistakes.

This is automatic reading is exactly what we want for students. But all too often, kids with dyslexia lack automaticity. They don’t have ways to figure out new or unfamiliar words. Because of this, they develop bad habits and rarely make improvement unless specific interventions are given.

A Lot to Think About…All at Once!

If you think about it, a lot of skills take place all at once when someone reads!

Following is a list of the main skills used when reading:

visual memory – holding images in memory after they are gone
auditory memory – holding sounds in memory after they are gone
visual discrimination – determining subtle differences between symbols
auditory discrimination – determining subtle differences between sounds
visual closure – filling in gaps of missing visual information in symbols
auditory closure – filling gaps of missing auditory information
visual tracking – the ability to move eyes smoothly across a page
Saccadic eye movements – rapid eye movements that shift center of the gaze from one part of a visual field to another
directionality – understanding which direction something faces – left, right, up, down
auditory figure ground – the ability to hear sounds when there is background noise
visual motor integration – the communication between the hands, the eyes, and the brain
visual sequential memory – the ability to recall a sequence of objects in the correct order
spatial relationships – how objects in space relate to each other spatial relation
sequential auditory memory – type of memory that allows you to recall chunks of information as auditory stimuli in a specific order
auditory sequencing – the ability to understand and recall the order of sounds
phonemic awareness – the ability to recognize and manipulate the spoken parts of words, syllables, phonemes, and initial sounds of words
auditory blending – bringing the fragments of a word together to obtain its meaning
comprehension – understanding what was read
visual sequential memory – the ability to remember and recall a sequence of objects in the correct order
visual spatial memory – the ability to retain and process an object’s identity and spatial location
phonics blending – combining letter sounds together to form a meaningful word T

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Decoding

Decoding is the mechanical end of reading. It’s the nuts and bolts of sounding out letters, blending them together, and turning them into words that make sense.

If your child struggles to sound out and blend letters, then bad habits set in. Kids with dyslexia especially struggle with decoding. They lack strategies for when they come across a word they don’t know. Out of desperation, they take wild guesses at what they think the word might be.

All too often, they guess wrong.

Once bad reading habits set in, reading fluency and comprehension scores drop. This is because too many mistakes are made.

It’s important that kids with dyslexia learn to decode, but traditional reading programs fail to teach them to do this in a way that makes sense to them. Instead, these programs cater to the masses. Although one in five has dyslexia, it’s not enough for them to change what they are doing.

Sadly, this leaves dyslexic children out in the cold! These bright children can certainly learn to decode words. They just need a few things to help them along.

For starters, kids with dyslexia need to move to learn. So instead of doing phonics sheets, flashcards, or typical reading workbooks, these intuitive kids need to move their bodies to set in skills. Gross motor (large motor movements) are especially helpful for dyslexic children.

These kids also need brain-based learning so new neural pathways can be built in the brain. This only makes sense – not just for kids with dyslexia but for any child learning or struggling to read!

Since most dyslexic kids are right-brain dominant, they also need color and pictures to help them along. These fun cues are something they are naturally attracted to, so they’re able to make sense of what they’re being asked to do.

Kids with dyslexia usually struggle with visual and auditory memory and processing skills. Because of this, they also need decoding taught to them in a multi-sensory fashion. This means that they use visual, auditory, and kinetic exercises to help them learn to sound out words.

Orton-Gillingham Approach

An Orton-Gillingham approach has proven to be helpful for kids with dyslexia and other children struggling to read. This research-based approach to teaching reading skills is based on the work done by researchers Samuel Orton and Anna Gillingham back in the 1930’s and 1940’s.

There are three basic components to an Orton-Gillingham approach, all which are beneficial for a struggling reader. Following are these components:

Letters and Sounds – letters and sound knowledge is essential for both phonic decoding and sight-word learning
Phonic Decoding – early phonological awareness skills enable development of letter-sound knowledge. Advanced phonological awareness skills should continue as the student gains a decoding foundation
Orthographic mapping – this is when unfamiliar words become automatic sight words

Not all kids learn in the same way, so it’s important that different methods are used for kids with dyslexia or other children struggling to read. Kids with

In addition, the Orton-Gillingham approach stresses the use of a multi-sensory activities to teach kids to learn to use phonemes. This means that visual, auditory, and tactic methods are used to teach kids how to read, primarily with those small phonemic units that make up our language.

A phonemic unit is a small unit of sound such as “it”, “ab”, “em”, “ub”, and “op”. Once kids are familiar with the basic forty-four phonemic units that our language is built upon, they can branch out to more difficult units, finally form multi-sensory words.

Reading Comprehension

Reading comprehension is the end result of reading. It’s a culmination of learning letter sounds, blending them together, building vocabulary, reading words with appropriate speed (fluency), and understanding that those words have meaning.

Reading comprehension is a complicated process, as there are numerous factors involved that can affect its success.

Auditory Skills Must be Sharp

Auditory processing skills greatly affect a child’s ability to comprehend what was read, as many auditory skills play into sounding out words. Children need to “hear” sounds correctly in order to understand what was read.

If sounds are word incorrectly, then meaning can certainly be affected in a negative way. Words are heard wrong, which means they are read wrong. Of course, meaning will be different than intended. Comprehension scores drop because of this! Wrong sounds equate to wrong meaning.

Visual Processing Skills Weigh Heavily in Comprehension

75 to 90% of what we take in as humans is visual. And reading is a highly visual process, so obviously visual processing skills must be adequate in order for reading comprehension to be acceptable.

Kids who struggle to process visual information might see halos or shadows around letters. The print might jiggle and wiggle or appear to be slanting up or down. Children with dyslexia might see a letter backward one day and normal the next. Predictability is hard for them, as their visual stimuli is constantly changing!

Another visual processing skill,visual memory, is also crucially important for reading comprehension. This is the ability to hold symbols or figures in memory after they are gone. If you think about it, each letter of a word is a symbol, so if a child can only hold three figures in visual memory, then anything over a three-letter word will be challenging.

If a child “taps out” at three-letter words, then it will be hard to get past a first grade reading level. Of course, if the student is in the fifth grade, it would be nearly impossible to comprehend grade level material!

There are numerous visual processing skills that come into play when reading, and if they are weak, comprehension can be affected in a negative way. Meaning is changed if visual information is perceived incorrectly. For instance, if a child looks at the letter “h” and it appears to be the letter “n”, then the word will be read incorrectly.

Incorrect words make meaning incorrect. It’s that simple.

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Reading Fluency is a Huge Factor that Affects Comprehension

Reading fluency also affects reading comprehension. If a child struggles with fluency, then it takes longer than expected to read. When reading out loud, the child stutters and stammers, lacking expression. It’s a laborious process, and as the child struggles to read, there isn’t time, effort, or ability to understand what was read.

It’s hard on a dyslexic or struggling reader to push them to read faster and faster without giving them proper decoding skills as part of the package. This only serves to frustrate them and make them feel bad not only about reading but about themselves.

Reading fluency comes naturally when decoding skills are strong, as there aren’t pauses while the reader attempts to figure out what a new or unfamiliar word might be. Also, guessing and memorizing words is diminished by a strong decoding system.

Kids who know what to do when they come across a new word, sounding it out in chunks (phonemic units), are able to learn the word and remember it for further use. That way, when they come across it again, it’s familiar. They don’t pause, make wild guesses at the word, or try to memorize it without strategies attached.

Decoding – the Deciding Factor of Reading Comprehension

Once again, decoding shows up as a powerhouse to help readers gain reading comprehension. Decoding, simply put, is the ability to sound out words when they are new or unfamiliar.

Decoding is a strategy, not guesswork. It’s a step-by-step process that kids need to know to do when reading. If decoding skills are weak, the process of reading will be laborious and haphazard at best. There is too much guesswork going into the equation, too many stabs in the dark.

This is not efficiency, which is what needs to happen for excellent reading skills! Kids with dyslexia usually struggle to decode words. Even though they usually have high vocabularies and are quite bright, the process of decoding is like speaking another language to them!

But kids with dyslexia can learn to decode!

Reading Fluency

Reading fluency is the ability to read at a conversational rate with accuracy and expression. Like reading comprehension, many factors come into play when it comes to fluency.

Decoding is the most important skill that affects fluency, as readers must have a method of sounding out unknown words when they come to them. If a child takes too long trying to figure out an unfamiliar word, then it slows down fluency.

As with comprehension, visual and auditory processing skills come into play for adequate fluency scores. If a child isn’t correctly perceiving information, it’s difficult to process information. This, in turn, makes reading words out loud an easy skill.

Children with dyslexia struggle with reading fluency even though they are bright and usually quite verbal. They stammer and find it hard to decode words, often resorting to bad habits out of desperation.

Teachers and educators will usually time students to find out how many words per minute they can read. This score is used as a benchmark. Children should not be forced to attempt faster and faster reads, as the pressure causes them to form bad habits. It can also force them to hate reading!

It’s a good idea to keep track of fluency scores and to gauge them against normal ranges. But this should be done in a neutral setting where the child feels comfortable. This way, an accurate result is achieved, and the student isn’t learning bad habits from trying to read fast instead of trying to decode or sound out new or unfamiliar words.

Usually, we refer to this fluency norm as “words per minute”. Each grade level has an average words per minute that is acceptable, although many children can read well and still fall below these normal ranges.

Dyslexia

Kids with dyslexia are bright, verbal, and creative. Yet, they fail to read successfully at an alarming rate. Even worse, they fail to get the help they desperately need. We have the research that tells us how they learn best, why they learn the way they do, and even how to best meet their needs.

Yet, year after year, traditional reading programs are used for these non-traditional learners in schools. Kids with dyslexia need different routes to success than their peers, who not only learn differently from them but view the world differently than they do.

One in five has dyslexia. That’s a lot of children not getting the help they need!

Children with dyslexia learn to succeed in both reading and spelling when they are strong at decoding or sounding out words. Yet, decoding is like a foreign language to these kids. The secret to helping them lies in helping them strengthen these decoding skills that evade them so easily.

These kids need to learn by moving – especially through gross motor (large) movements. That’s because most dyslexic students are tactile learners, and these are the kids that learn by doing – not by seeing or hearing.

Traditional Methods Don’t Work for Children with Dyslexia

Traditional reading programs are based on teaching through primarily auditory and visual means. Kids use phonics sheets, flashcards, and “drill and kill” workbooks. This just doesn’t work for the child with dyslexia.

Give kids with dyslexia the chance to move – lots of it in a big way – and they start connecting dots in no time. This is their “language” of learning.

In addition, these kids are usually weak in visual and auditory processing skills. Because of this, they need a decoding program that has visual and auditory cues as well as a multi-sensory mode of learning. To learn via multi-sensory modes is to use visual, auditory, and tactile methods.

It’s More than Just Tactile

At Bravo! Reading, we know that tactile methods alone often aren’t enough. Sure, moving a tile can help a child read – it’s better than nothing. But kids with dyslexia need more than just moving a tile. They need those large motor movements previously mentioned to truly set in learning. This is their “true” multisensory way of learning.

Kids with dyslexia are weak or lacking in strategies for decoding, so they need to use movement along with brain-based learning to learn ways to sound out words. Otherwise, they resort to guessing at words, memorizing words, or trial and error learning to decode. These methods that are not strategy based and are not reliable.

Once kids with dyslexia have a system that works for them, they can soar in reading, which in turn, helps all academics.