Teacher Discussion Forums

Hi all,

Hoping someone can help me. I have a group of smart, interested eight year olds, and one dyslexic eleven year old who knows lots more than the rest but really struggles to write.

The class is working well so far but the children are very competitive and I obviously want this child to benefit from my classes as much as the rest.

This is my first year teaching, I have not been trained in generic education, only TEFL, and I'm unsure how to proceed.

Any help appreciated by me - and hopefully my student too!

Cheers, Natastar

There's a saying: a rising tide lifts all ships.

If you help the dyslexic kid out with writing using things like graphic organizers, essay templates, sentence structure practice, handwriting practice, phonological awareness, and phonics then the other kids will also benefit. Which is to say, you don't have to spend that much time helping only the student with dyslexia. Help everyone, in a very systematic, structured, multisensory way and all the students will reap the rewards.

I don't know that specific problems with writing your student has. Feel free to PM me with a more detailed profile of the student's strengths and weaknesses, and I would be glad to brainstorm with you about activities that would be especially useful.

Talk to the specialists who work with other kids who have dyslexia to see what kinds of accomendations you can have for him. Maybe a student from another class could write his awnsers for a test for him so that he doesn't take too much extra time to take it. (preferably a native speaker you trust and in another room so that the other students don't hear them.)

It is possible for him to learn to type on a computer?