Teaching Dyslexic Students to Write

Teaching Dyslexic Students to Write

The Do's and Don'ts of Teaching Dyslexic Students to Write

Writing instruction should always be geared to helping dyslexic students get their ideas on paper. Dyslexic students are going to hate writing if you focus on grammar, spelling and penmanship. Writing takes dyslexic students so much time to write because they are translating between the part of the brain that deals with visual memory, auditory memory, fine motor skills and language structure sequence and meaning. Students are overwhelmed and just give up or get nothing out of writing instruction when you overwhelm dyslexic students.

The Do's

• Have fun and make writing fun
• Teach writing as an inseparable part of reading, science, social studies and math
• Use mentor text to teach differentiated writing task and support scaffolding of all interest and abilities  
• Use brilliant literature that students will love to summarize and emulate
• Use outlines, graphic organizers and editing checklist that develop individual traits or develop practice using writing process structures
• Do everything in the form of an ongoing dialogue, use auditory memory and "Always Write Outloud" 
• Use electron dictionaries and thesaurus
• Use a tape player to record ideas and thoughts
• Use sentence starters, transitions words, dead word list, amazing verbs, any and all writing helpers
• Please share your ideas!