Greenhills School - Best Dyslexia Teaching

Twelve Principles

for Teaching Dyslexic Language Development

The Orton Dyslexia Society: now The International Dyslexia Association

1. Its teaching is planned to meet the differing needs of learners who are similar to each other but no two exactly alike. It is individualized.

2. It draws on the knowledge and skill of experts from many fields- education, medicine, psychology, social work and language theory. It is multidisciplinary.

3. It uses the learning pathways we all share of seeing, hearing, feeling and awareness of motion, brought together by a thinking brain. It is multisensory.

4. It takes advantage of the letter-sound plan on which our language is based. "Words which carry meaning are made of sounds; sounds are written with letters in the right order." It makes sense to learn this alphabetic-phonetic system.

5. The sounds of the letters can be blended into words for reading, and the words can be divided into the sounds they are made of for spelling and writing. We call the process synthetic-analytic.

6. Words and sentences are the carriers of meaning. Based on proficiency, fluency with language patterns serves linguistic power as full literacy is achieved.

7. Material is organized and taught in a way that is logical and fits the nature of our language. The procedure is systematic.

8. The learner moves, step by step, in order, from simple well learned material to that which is more and more complex as he or she masters the necessary base of language skills. The teaching is sequential.

9. Each step of the way is based on those already learned. The process is the cumulative sum or cycle of growth.

10. The student is helped to understand the reasons for what he is learning. Then, when necessary, he will have the confidence that he can think his way through language problems instead of counting only on memory - "the mind is the master". It is a cognitive approach.

11. The purpose of it all, from recognizing a letter to writing a poem, is getting meaning from one person's mind to another's. Communication is paramount.

12. The person's feelings about him/herself and about learning are vital to education. A sense of confidence in oneself comes about true mastery, which takes away tensions and makes a person want to achieve at his or her best. Such an approach is emotionally sound.