Kate Pearce
Kate Pearce is the founder of Kate Pearce Educational Services, a Connecticut-based organization that specializes in supporting students with learning challenges.
To thoroughly answer your question I would need more information, including your child’s age, grade, and evaluation results. I can, however, provide you with general guidelines that I hope you’ll find helpful.
When a student with dyslexia struggles with phonological awareness (isolating individual words from a stream of spoken words) or phonemic awareness (recognizing and using individual sounds to create words), they often face challenges in learning to read and write. Weaknesses in these areas create a “leaky bottom” foundation, making it difficult to acquire literacy skills.
To address these issues effectively, it is not necessary for your child to work with a speech and language pathologist. It is, however, important that your child works with a person who is highly trained in the Orton-Gillingham methodology, a research-based, multisensory approach to reading instruction. This could be a classroom teacher, a special education teacher, or a tutor, but they must possess a deep understanding of language skills and be proficient in implementing all components of language instruction.
Not all speech and language pathologists have experience teaching students how to read; many specialize in oral language issues and preliteracy skills, so their involvement may not be necessary unless your child’s difficulties accessing text-to-speech are related to articulation errors.
Regarding writing skills, it is again crucial to address the dyslexic profile with a comprehensive and hierarchical approach. An effective strategy involves starting with foundational skills, such as writing good sentences, before progressing to paragraphs and multi-paragraph compositions.
Several evidence-based writing programs are available for students with dyslexia, including the Writing Revolution. These programs emphasize structured planning and progression, ensuring that skills logically build upon each other. It is important to remember that whoever will be supporting your child with dyslexia focuses on the areas of phonological awareness, phonemic awareness, and writing, which requires a detailed and targeted approach. Working with an Orton-Gillingham practitioner or a special education teacher trained in this method can be highly beneficial.
Finally, if speech errors hinder your child’s ability to access speech-to-text technology, it is most likely hindering their decoding (converting printed words into speech) and encoding (converting spoken words into written symbols) abilities. In that case, collaboration with a speech and language pathologist may also be helpful.
Related Smart Kids Topics
- Treating Dyslexia
- Addressing Reading Issues: MSL Basics
- Help for Older Kids with Reading Problems
- Finding a Reading Specialist