Treatment
There is no cure for dyslexia. The symptoms can be helped by a tailor made treatment plan after the meeting post assessment. It has been found the most effective way to improve symptoms long term is for an intervention to occur before a child reaches eight years old. This is why there is such importance in an assessment being carried out as early as possible.
Children
Dyslexic children may need to miss a couple of hours of normal classes a week to receive specialist teaching however a small percentage may need to be transferred to a more specialist school.
It is first important to break down emotional barriers the child may have build up, including low confidence and frustration.
It has been suggested in research that perhaps the most effective of methods to improve symptoms at a young age is by improving the child’s Phonological skills (identifying and processing sounds)
This is also referred to as Phonics and is used to teach all children.
Their teaching in general should be highly structured, multisensory and thoroughly reinforced.
Teenagers and Adults
For older dyslexia sufferers technology should be utilised. Many tools such spell checks and auto-correct on word processing software can be useful to help correct simple mistakes.
Other examples are digital voice recorders. Simply recording a class or lecture and reading notes whilst listening back can be beneficial.
In general breaking large tasks into more manageable activities makes them more manageable.
In the workplace adjustments should be made. For example voice recognition software will enable a person struggling with dyslexia to work efficiently and extra time should be given for tasks.
Key areas for development in dyslexic children:
Phonics
Improving a child’s knowledge of phonics can improve their reading, writing and verbal communication greatly.
Phonological awareness- Improves ability to recognise sounds that make up words and how altering one can change the word entirely.
Phonological Instruction- Is the way to sound out the written letter. Can then be proceeded to multisyllabic words.
Spelling and writing- Focuses on using Graphemes (letters corresponding to phonemes) to make words and sentences.
Fluency-Improving reading by practice to become fluent enough to take a text in as a whole.
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Information sourced from, www.nhs.uk and www.dyslexia-teacher.com