I teach a class of dyslexic students, and one thing I need to do for/with them is to check that they know how to read all the si

I teach a class of dyslexic students, and one thing I need to do for/with them is to check that they know how to read all the sight words on the Dolch list. Getting their peers to read these words can be done as a speed task during spare moments in between lessons. However, with some of these 13-year-old kids, I need to spend an inordinate amount of time to witness them struggle to read the majority of the words. No exaggeration here.

These low-progress students tend to read ‘those’ and ‘thank’ as ‘does’ and ‘think’ respectively. Even when I taught them the mnemonic ‘big elephants can always understand small elephants’, they still had difficulty spelling ‘because’. One boy misspelt ‘play’ as ‘play’.

In a previous lesson, I designed an exercise that aims to impart the three ways in which the suffix ‘-Ed’ is pronounced. I hoped to use this exercise and take it slow and get them to learn words like ‘complimented’/‘participated’/‘grinned’. But having realised their difficulty with the foundational words on the Dolch list, I had to put this lesson on pause. After all, one can get through life without knowing the words ‘complimented’/‘participates’, but it would seem sad if he can’t even spell ‘because’ confidently. 

Hence, I pivoted to another lesson. It was deceptively simple. Use my letter tiles to spell ‘thankful’ and ‘wishful’. ‘Thank’ and ‘wish’ are both words on the Dolch list that they still haven’t quite mastered yet. I thought it would be a good way to revise the spelling of these words by pairing them with the suffix ‘-ful’. At the very least, they won’t mistakenly spell ‘thankful’ as ‘thinkfull’. This lesson worked out pretty well. At least, arranging tiles engaged their tactile and kinesthetic senses - better than writing words on paper, I reckon.

This weekend, I thought long and hard about how I could tap on their interests to get them to learn words. Obviously, soccer is a favourite sport among boys. So, I had a brainwave. Why don’t I get them to arrange letter cards A to Z in the form of a rainbow and give them various words to spell? Words like useful, helpful, playful, thankful and wishful. The base words are the usual suspects on the Dolch word list. 

Next, I intend to give students a ball and ask them to aim it towards the letters that constitute a word. So, if a student is tasked to spell ‘useful’, he will kick the ball towards ‘u’. This is followed by ‘s’, ‘e’, ‘f’, ‘i’ and ‘l’ - hopefully in quick succession. 

I am cautiously optimistic that the big muscle movements involved in kicking the ball to spell words will help them internalise the spelling of these high frequency words. So optimistic that I invited my Vice Principal to observe my lesson, haha.

Will update how this lesson turns out. Wish me luck!