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Chapter 1: Introduction
Problem Statement
Many students with dyslexia struggle academically. This problem consists of different
facets, namely that these students struggle not only with reading, but in other subjects as well.
Duff et al. (2023) explained, “We found that children with either DLD [developmental language
disorder] or dyslexia in second grade exhibited significantly lower performance than their
typically developing peers in both reading and math achievement” (p. 384). General education
classroom teachers also have misconceptions about dyslexia and how it presents in students, as
well as a lack of knowledge around dyslexia itself as a learning disability. It was found that over
half of all the teachers surveyed held misconceptions such as students seeing words or letters
backwards is a sign of dyslexia, students who have dyslexia have low word-level reading skills
because of bad visual processing, that visual perception inadequacies are not part of the dyslexia
diagnosis, and that dyslexia is a mainly visual reading disability (Peltier et al., 2022).
The National Center for Education Statistics [NCES] (2023), found that in the 2020-2021
school year, 7.3 million students between the ages of three and 21 were receiving services
provided by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act [IDEA]. This means that these
students are, “...identified by a team of professionals as having a disability that adversely affects
academic performance and as being in need of special education and/or related services” (NCES,
2023, p.1). This number is 15 percent of the entire student population of the United States; of
that 7.3 million students, 32 percent have what is categorized as a specific learning disability,
this category was the largest percentage (NCES, 2023). NCES (2023) defines a specific learning
disability as, “...a disorder in one or more of the basic psychological processes involved in
understanding or using spoken or written language that may manifest itself in an imperfect
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ability to listen, think, speak, read, write, spell, or do mathematical calculations'' (p.1); it is
important to note that this category does not include students with autism. 32 percent of 7.3
million students is 2,336,000; that is a large number of students that need specific support. While
not all of the 32 percent were students with the specific diagnosis of dyslexia, it is apparent that
it is in the group of the highest percentage of all students who receive special education services
and highlights the importance of appropriate, research based supports and interventions for
students with dyslexia, as well as adequate teacher training on the disability. If classroom
teachers hope to support general education and special education students in their classroom
alike, then they must recognize that there is a prevalent problem of students with dyslexia
struggling academically and then take action to address this problem.
Importance and Rationale of the Project
Despite students with specific learning disabilities being of a high percentage of all
students with services under IDEA, public school teachers who taught pre-kindergarten,
kindergarten, or first grade in Massachusetts, 74% reported that dyslexia training was not present
in their formal education (Mullikin et al., 2021). It was found 54% of teachers reported a
misconception about dyslexia, including misconceptions like words or letters appearing
backwards or upside down, or words moving on the page (Washburn et al., 2017). With this
research and statistics, it is clear that many teachers feel inadequately prepared to help students
with dyslexia, and even if they do feel as though they know what it is, many of them may have
misconceptions about how dyslexia presents itself in a student.
With this lack of training and knowledge, students who have a reading disability will not
get the assistance they need, or may receive intervention that may not be the most effective
method to help them succeed. Many teachers feel unprepared for helping students with reading
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disabilities (Mullikin et al., 2021). It was found that teachers treated students with dyslexia
differently, as if they lacked any intelligence, and the students’ self-esteem fell while their
disruptive behaviors increased. Furthermore, students who are dyslexic are more likely than their
average peer to drop out of high school (Blackorby and Wagner, 1996). Cassidy et al (2021)
found that 47% of prison inmates were dyslexic. These facts alone highlight the hardships that
people with dyslexia may face during or after their time in formal schooling, more than their
neurotypical peer.
Background of the Project
The first reported case of an English-speaking student with, what would be later termed
as, dyslexia was by a British Doctor named W. Pringle in 1986. He observed a fourteen-year-old
student who, “...has always been a bright and intelligent boy, quick at games and in no way
inferior to others of his age. His great difficulty has been – and is now – his inability to learn to
read” (Morgan, 1896, p.1378). In the mid twentieth century, an American physician Samuel
Torrey Orton found that children with dyslexia showed reading ability that was below what was
expected given their overall intelligence (Orton, 1937).
In the 1960s, the term “learning disability” was coined by Kirk and Bateman as a
delay in the development of reading, speech, math, language, writing, or other subject
that was not the result of sensory deprivation, social or cultural influences, or lack thereof
(Kirk and Bateman, 1962). This drew the line between cognitive impairment and learning
disability. Usually, someone with a higher IQ made them a successful reader, but with
dyslexia, the IQ of the individual was always higher than their reading ability. This led to
the US Federal Law (Congressional Research Service, 2021) defining dyslexia as:
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...unexpected difficulty in reading for an individual who has the intelligence to be
a much better reader, most commonly caused by a difficulty in the phonological
processing (the appreciation of the individual sounds of spoken language), which
affects the ability of an individual to speak, read, and spell. (para. 3)
It was found by Blackorby and Wagner (1996) that people who had dyslexia were
three to four times more likely to drop out of school than compared to typical peers.
Kruidenier et al. (2010) found that people with dyslexia were more likely to be at or
below the poverty line. It was also found that, “Compared to their typically reading peers
dyslexic young adults have significantly higher unemployment and significantly lower
lifetime earnings” (Shaywitz & Shaywitz, 2020, p.462). It was, at one point, believed that
dyslexia could not be diagnosed until after third grade, but this was proven false by Ferrer
et al., (2015) who found that it was evident as early as first grade. Schaars et al., (2017)
found that dyslexia is evident as early as kindergarten.
Every school and district may deal with dyslexia differently. The school where
the author of this project is currently employed, South Canton Scholars, which is a school
under National Heritage Academies, gives no in-service training to their classroom
teachers or support staff in the four years they have been there. Dyslexia has been present
in multiple students in the classroom and there is a lack of teacher knowledge on how to
best service these students.
Statement of Purpose
The purpose of this project is to assist in the servicing of students with dyslexia. This will
be accomplished through an in-service training manual for administrators and teachers of young
children at any experience level on best practices in the teaching of reading to students diagnosed
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with dyslexia, or are suspected of having dyslexia. All this information will equip teachers with
the knowledge and ability to ensure that students with dyslexia struggle less, and become better
readers, thus leading to an improvement in their overall academic performance.
Objectives of the Project
The objective of this project is to train educators who are currently general education
teachers working with children directly in some way in best practices for assisting students with
dyslexia, or suspected of having dyslexia. Participants will have a clear understanding of specific
signs of dyslexia in children, as well as specific interventions that will achieve the best rate of
reading growth in the child with dyslexia. This will help children with dyslexia or those who are
suspected of having dyslexia become more successful in reading, both decoding and
comprehension. Teachers will see more growth in this specific population of children in their
classroom. Teachers will also feel confident in using these strategies as they are best practices
that are backed by empirical, peer-reviewed research. This will solve the problem of children
with dyslexia struggling academically as the classroom teacher, who has the most time with
these children during the school day, will have well-researched strategies to implement in the
classroom and help the child develop their academic abilities.
Definitions of Terms
1. blending - taking sounds produced by another individual and saying them as a whole
word (Rehfeld et al., 2021)
2. consonant clusters - parts of a word that have two consonants in a row. examples include:
pl, wh, gl, sk, et.
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3. developmental language disorder- “highly prevalent, language-based learning disorders
that place children at risk for poor reading comprehension and broader academic
difficulties” (Duff et al., 2023, p. 371).
4. dyslexia - dyslexia is a neurobiological condition affecting phonological processing and
characterized by reading and phonological awareness difficulties. (Mullikin et al., 2021)
also referred to as reading disability
5. environmental factors - factors that affect one's ability to learn that come from the living
environment. Examples include home life, community, social situations, family
dynamics, etc.
6. grapheme - the smallest unit of meaning in a writing system
7. handwriting – “involves multiple processes and skills a writer must adequately deploy to
create legible letters” (Al Otaiba et al., 2018, p. 834)
8. high-frequency words - words which are known and used more often.
9. intervention - extra instruction given to students who are performing lower than expected
in reading abilities, usually done in small groups or individually outside of whole class
instruction
10. lexical retrevial - the ability to name something based on a picture or photographic
representation (Schaars et al., 2017)
11. lexical simplification/substitution – to exchange a word that is not as common for a high-
frequency word that means the same thing.
12. low-frequency words - words which are not used as much in everyday language and may
not be known by the child who is reading it.
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13. morphemes - a meaningful unit of language, It cannot be divided into smaller meaningful
segments without changing its meaning or leaving a meaningless remainder (Al Otaiba et
al., 2018). Ex: in - com - ing
14. phoneme - a single unit sound in any language
15. phoneme isolation - the ability to to sound out the first phoneme of a word (Schaars et al.
2017)."
16. phoneme segmentation - the ability to to serially pronounce each single speech sound of
an orally presented word (Schaars et al. 2017)
17. phonemic awareness - the ability to attend to and manipulate individual sounds within
spoken words (Rehfeld et al, 2021)
18. phonics - understanding how letters represent sounds and how units and morphemes are
represented (Al Otaiba et al., 2018).
19. Phonological Awareness - Phonological awareness is an individual’s awareness of the
sound (phonological) structure of spoken words, it is a broad meta-linguistic skill that
represents an understanding that words can be broken down into smaller units. (Rehfeld
et al., 2022)
20. print rich environment - the environment of a child or person that contains a significant
amount of print accessible to them.
21. segmenting/segmentation- breaking apart a word into its constituent sounds (Rehfeld et
al., 2021)
Scope of Project
The scope of this project will focus on English speaking/learning children that are in pre-
kindergarten, kindergarten, first grade, and second grade. This project will not focus on middle
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school or high school age students, and will not focus on diagnosing students with dyslexia, as
this must be done by a school psychologist or doctor, depending on where the participant lives.
This project does not focus on students who are learning in a language other than English. While
there are many studies of dyslexia in different languages, for the purposes of this project,
dyslexia in English learners will be the primary focus because English does not have a one to one
letter/sound correspondence, like other languages, such as Spanish. Thus, dyslexia affects
learners of different languages in different ways, as dyslexia is a problem focused on
phonological awareness. This project will not include how to assist dyslexic learners who are
learning a language other than English.
This project will also not include how to help adults or collegiate level students who may
have dyslexia, as the strategies and supports given were done with children who were in the K-
12 schooling age. Miciak and Fletcher (2020) state that early intervention – when children are
first learning letters, sounds, and how to read – works well to close the gap as compared to
intervention in the later grades.
Another factor that is beyond the researcher’s control is general attitudes towards
dyslexia in general, as well as how children with dyslexia learn. There are many misconceptions
and false ideas about dyslexia, as found by Peltier et al. (2022). These misconceptions may prove
difficult to dispel, or cause educators or others to disregard the information in this project all
together. Funding and support for this project to be used as an in-service may also provide a
barrier for this knowledge to become common practice among educators, as well as additional
funding for materials, curriculum, and more training to assist children with dyslexia once the
knowledge from this project is obtained and understood.
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Chapter 2: Literature Review
Introduction
Students with dyslexia struggle academically. In order to examine research done on this
topic, this literature review will be looking at the research through the theoretical framework of
Information Processing Theory. Next, the impacts of dyslexia on various age groups will be
analyzed. The literature review will then explore educators' knowledge and misconceptions
around dyslexia. After, the literature review will investigate the correct methods for identifying
early readers who may have dyslexia. Finally, there will be an investigation of strategies and
interventions for teaching reading in young children with dyslexia. A summary of all the
literature review and its main points will be provided, as well as conclusions that can be drawn
from these points will be made.
These studies are peer reviewed and present the most up to date research on their topic.
These articles will come together to help present the best practices for educators working directly
with children to assist them in being their most successful, despite their difficulties in reading.
Theoretical Framework
The theoretical framework that this literature review will be operating under is the
framework of the Information Processing Theory, which states that learning is a complex process
that involves memory. The focus is how the brain takes in different stimuli and how the brain
organizes these stimuli, moving it from working memory to long term memory, or forgetting the
stimuli. There is a process to the sorting and storing or removal of the various stimuli and it takes
active work of the learner to encode these stimuli into the various places they need to be stored in
the brain to remember them (Çeliköz et al., 2019). There are three different parts to the
Information Processing Theory, first is the information stores – where the information is stored
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in the learner’s brain, which is either as sensory memory, short term memory or long term
memory. Within long term memory there are two different subcategories: procedural memory -
the ability to remember motor skills such as driving a car or how to bake a cake; and semantic
memory - the ability to remember the meaning of words or letters, and general knowledge such
as the sounds letters make or what street you live on (Çeliköz et al., 2019).
The second part of Information Processing Theory is about the cognitive process, which
is the different actions that a person’s brain takes to understand and sort all of the stimuli they are
receiving and transfer it from one type of memory to another. There are many different cognitive
processes, which include attention, retrieval, perception, and repetition. Using these processes
individuals can transfer the stimuli to long term memory so it can be retrieved when needed.
Forgetting is when an individual eliminates the information from long term memory, or cannot
retrieve it when needed (Çeliköz et al., 2019).
The third part of Information Processing Theory is called executive cognition, which
means that information stores and cognitive process are working correctly to give an individual
the ability to remember information. Executive cognition is different for everyone, and each
person directs their own executive cognition based on the self-awareness they have over their
own learning and memory (Çeliköz et al., 2019).
This applies to the research and conclusions made in this literature review. The evidence
presented gives clear indications that students with dyslexia need support in the different parts of
storing information and stimuli regarding reading and writing. The evidence presented in terms
of the impacts dyslexia has on individuals, the misinformation or lack of knowledge on the part
of classroom teachers, and identifying students that may have dyslexia and interventions that can
be given to those students, highlight this theory and shape the conclusions.
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Research/Evaluation
Impacts of Dyslexia
Students with dyslexia are not only impacted in their reading ability, but also effects on
their self-esteem, mental health, family members – specifically parents, and homework. It was
found that both the self esteem of the child with dyslexia and the parent or caretaker of the child
experienced a decline in self esteem following the initial diagnosis of dyslexia; parents were able
to verbalize feelings that they felt associated with this effect as frustration, feeling overwhelmed,
and devastated (Dipleou et al, 2015). This connects to later findings by Leitão (2017), which
found that students between the ages of ten and seventeen reported negative self-perceptions
which included referring to themselves as lazy, dumb, and “unable to figure anything out” (p.
326).
In relation to experiencing low self-esteem, Leitão et al. (2017), found that students
experienced copious negative emotions throughout the school day and during homework time
that included disappointment, frustration, annoyance, sadness, and stress. These feelings were
felt when comparing themselves to their classmates. All these feelings were internalized by the
students, and most did not display this in outward behavior, except for a small number did
display disruptive behavior or emotional outbursts. This evidence of dyslexia impacting students
in a negative way is connected to research which found that children with dyslexia have more
symptoms of depression and anxiety when compared with their typical peers (Mammarella et al.,
2016). Furthermore, Mammarella et al. (2016) found that students with dyslexia also had
increased anxiety surrounding reading in class, highlighting the fact that these students are
experiencing many of their symptoms during the school day. Both Leitão et al. (2017) and
Mammarella et al. (2016) found similar evidence that low self-esteem and other mental health
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issues, like depression and anxiety, were present in students with dyslexia at higher rates than
compared to typical peers.
Due to the decrease in self-esteem found in the Leitão et al. (2017) study, those same
researchers found that parents took on the extra task of rebuilding and fostering the growth of
their child’s self-esteem post diagnosis. Leitão et al. (2017) also found that parents and
caregivers took on other additional roles to support their child with dyslexia. These roles
included tutor – spending longer than the average parent spends helping their child with
homework, advocate - spending extra time speaking up for their child to teachers and
administrators, counselor – rebuilding their child’s confidence and self esteem. Other research
done by Dipleou et al (2015) additionally found that parents and caregivers found themselves
helping their child with dyslexia with their homework for extended periods of time due to the
difficulty it posed for them, which in turn added more strain on the student with dyslexia, the
parent/caregiver, and other family members in the household. Some parents/caregivers reported
that they helped their child with dyslexia more than their other children on their homework, and
some even went so far as to reduce the number of hours that they worked to help support their
child with dyslexia more (Dipleou et al., 2015).
This struggle with homework and assignments did not go away either as the children
aged, as presented by Cassidy et al. (2021) who studied adults with dyslexia in prison. Cassidy et
al. (2021) found that out of one whole prison assessed, forty seven percent of inmates had
dyslexia. Of that percentage, ninety seven percent of those inmates reported that they had special
education support or classroom accommodations while in school. Despite these systems in place
supposed to be designed to help them be successful in their educational career, fifty nine percent
of the inmates with dyslexia dropped out of school at middle or high school (Cassidy et al.,
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2021). Cassidy et al. (2021) also found that prison inmates with a reading disability read less
than one hundred and twenty words per minute, making the achievement of a high school
diploma or equivalent difficult. These findings connect with Dipleou et al. (2015), who found
that when parents of students with a reading disability went to their child’s school to seek
assistance and resources, that the school was lacking in experience and knowledge of how to
help students with reading disability and were lacking in connecting the families to outside
resources. Leitão et al. (2017) found that students with a reading disability were judged by their
teachers as being the “bad kids”, seating them at the back of the class or with students who were
disruptive or didn’t do their work. They also reported that teachers did not support them in class,
and some teachers refused to believe or acknowledge their disability (Leitão et al., 2017). This is
a trend that continues to present itself in other bodies of work, highlighting the lack of teacher
knowledge to help students with dyslexia.
Lack of Teacher Knowledge
Teachers have mixed knowledge surrounding dyslexia. Teachers hold some knowledge
that is true and hold some misconceptions (Peltier et al., 2022). It was found that many
experienced teachers hold misconceptions that they do not even realize are incorrect. It was
found that out of all the teachers sampled, 81% of them thought that students with dyslexia saw
letters and words differently, meaning that they saw letters or words backwards or “floating” on
the page (p. 2089). Other misconceptions found were things like students with dyslexia needing
to memorize the general shapes of words instead of learning to read them, that special fonts or
colored screens helped students with dyslexia to read, that dyslexia was a visual-spatial problem,
and that coping skills should be taught to students with dyslexia in lieu of actual phonological
skills (Peltier et al., 2022). These findings connect to other research done by Washburn et al.
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(2017) that found that of all of the novice teachers they surveyed, over half of them held similar
misconceptions found by Peltier et al., such as seeing letters and words backwards or as if they
were “jumping around on the page” (p. 183), and that more than half of the novice teachers
surveyed held more than one misconception. Washburn et al. (2017) found that secondary
teachers were more likely to have misconceptions than teachers of the primary grades. Mullikin
et al. (2021) found that the most common misconception in teachers regarding dyslexia was that
words or letters were backwards or otherwise incorrect, this misconception was present in 82%
of teachers surveyed. They found other misconceptions, such as dyslexia being present in more
males than in females. This study looked at both experienced and novice teachers alike and
found that ten years of teaching experience only increased a teacher’s knowledge by about 3%
(Mullikin et al., 2021).
Even with all of this misinformation reported by teachers through various surveys, Peltier
et al. (2022) found that teachers who had even a small amount of extra training had significantly
more knowledge than the teachers who had reported no extra training at all. This is connected to
research done by Virinkoski et al. (2017), which found that special education teachers were able
to identify students at risk of having dyslexia more accurately than general education teachers,
speaking to their more specialized training than general classroom teachers. Peltier et al. (2022)
additionally found that many teachers were unaware of phonemic awareness at all, which is a
key component to the education of students with dyslexia. This connects with research found by
Washburn et al. (2017) that novice teachers and new teachers just exiting their formal education
at a university, across all domain areas did not have knowledge of dyslexia at all. Mullikin et al.
(2021) found that while more experience does lead to slightly higher levels of confidence and
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knowledge about dyslexia, teachers did select “I don’t know” more frequently on the survey
about knowledge of dyslexia than they did incorrect answers.
Researchers further explored the lack of training on dyslexia after teachers had finished
their formal education. Mullikin et al. (2021) found that teachers felt that their formal education
did not sufficiently prepare them for working with children with dyslexia. Furthermore, the
professional development that they received was focused more on general education rather than
specific learning disabilities, and there was a lack of teacher input on the types of professional
development. Teachers additionally reported that informal education, things like reading books
or articles, talking with colleagues, and browsing the internet for information was better at
preparing teachers for working with children with dyslexia (Mullikin et al., 2021). This
information connects with research done by Peltier et al. (2022), which concluded that if teachers
were not given new information to refute or dismantle misconceptions, teachers would continue
to be misinformed. Virinkoski et al. (2017) supports this claim with their own research, which
found that classroom teachers make false identifications of students who they think may have
dyslexia but may just need more support due to other reasons, such as lack of knowledge, which
takes away supports for students in that same classroom who may actually have dyslexia and
need more support from the teacher.
The way that teachers assess students may contribute to this misidentification; qualitative
data – which many classroom teachers rely on – did not give accurate information regarding a
student’s abilities on specific skills, such as reading. Furthermore, when a classroom teacher uses
quantitative data s/he are looking at the student wholistically, which may lead to inaccurate
assessments of student’s abilities (Virinkoski et al., 2017). This information is supported by
findings made by Mullikin et al. (2021), that teachers who are unsure of how to help a student
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who may have dyslexia go looking for information on their own because there is no clear, strong
training available on supporting them. Mullikin et al. (2021) found that these teachers usually go
to peer or lead teachers for resources on helping students with dyslexia, but as stated earlier,
many teachers hold misconceptions about dyslexia.
Identification
The identification of students suspected or at risk of dyslexia is multi-faceted. As will be
proven in the subsequent paragraphs, identification of students at risk of dyslexia may present in
multiple areas, but specifically a lack of prereading and reading skills, problems with processing
information in their brains, strengths in other areas not connected to reading, environmental and
hereditary factors playing a role in their development, and gaps in achievement persist over time.
Firstly, it was found that prereaders, children of preschool age were studied to measure their
phonological awareness, rapid naming, baseline print knowledge, verbal short term memory,
speech pronunciation, auditory processing, motor and balance, visual attention, vocabulary and
nonverbal reasoning, and finally - word reading accuracy (Carroll et al., 2016). The three pre
reading skills that could predict that children may be poor readers were phonological awareness
(PA), visual short term memory (VTSM), and print knowledge (PK) (Carroll et al., 2016).
Secondly, the different abilities and tests were grouped together to form different categories.
Carrol et al. (2016) states, “PA and VSTM are thought to be two measures of phonological
processing, while visual search and rapid naming are both timed tasks involving visual scanning
(p. 754-755).” When examining the data from all of the tests, the researchers found that about
49% of the children who were poor readers had deficits in two to three of the areas, while about
39% of the children had deficits in one of the areas.
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This connects to a study conducted by Schaars et al. (2017), which discovered that the
children that were deemed at risk for dyslexia at the beginning of kindergarten showed deficits in
phoneme isolation, slower word processing when compared to typical peers, and that their word
decoding got especially slower when the words began to get more complex. These deficits were
still present at the end of kindergarten, after having explicit instruction in phonemic awareness
and phonics. The student’s abilities at the end of their kindergarten year accurately predicted the
skills that the children would have in first grade (Schaars et al., 2017). This connects to findings
made by Zuk et al. (2020) which found that students at risk of dyslexia showed deficits in
vocabulary knowledge in second grade, and by Duff et al. (2023), which found that at risk
students scored significantly lower in reading in second through fourth grade.
Students who are diagnosed with dyslexia and students who are determined to be at risk
of having a reading disability were found to have other deficits in certain brain functions. Werth
(2023) found that while good readers have staircase like eye movements as their eyes move
across a line of text, children with dyslexia have eye movements that are irregular, and
sometimes move in the direction opposite the direction of the text. It was also found that students
with dyslexia had a shorter fixation time on words than that of typical peers, and that they were
trying to recognize too many letters at one time that was past their capabilities, adding to the time
it took to decode words. Werth (2023) found that students with dyslexia were unable to
recognize all individual letters in a word containing between three and four letters, even if their
attention was sufficient, enough time was given, and participants were giving all their effort.
Other research connects to these findings of deficits, finding that in first grade, students at risk
for dyslexia had slower productions of certain speech sounds (Zuk et al., 2020). Ferrer et al.
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(2015) found that students at risk for dyslexia showed a lower ability in word attack skills, word
identification skills, and reading passage comprehension in first grade.
There are different factors that may also be connected to these deficits besides brain
function and capabilities. Schaars et al. (2017) categorized students as being at risk on the basis
of if their parents or one of their siblings was already diagnosed with dyslexia; Schaars et al.
(2017) went on to conclude that these students should be monitored more closely than other
students because they were more likely to develop dyslexia. These findings were highlighted by
Miciak et al. (2020), but they went on to suggest that deeming a child at risk for dyslexia was
also determined by factors such as low reading achievement and low response to effective
interventions. Miciak et al. (2020) claims that dyslexia is heritable, but the aforementioned
factors, as well as socioeconomic status (SES), and environment play additional key roles. Zuk et
al. (2020) suggest that part of the reason that more children with low socioeconomic status are at
risk is because of lower access to resources, a less print-rich environment, and lack of
parent/caregiver time or knowledge on how to help them. The findings of Elliot (2020),
encourage caution and possibly the presence of an unconscious bias against children of low SES
or of different racial backgrounds may impact identification.
Despite the presence of deficits in many areas, students who are at risk of dyslexia may
display strengths in other areas that are not connected to the skills necessary for reading (Werth,
2023). For example, Werth (2023) found that students who had dyslexia scored lower on reading
tests than typical peers, but scored higher on tests of visual spatial skills, verbal expression skills,
and short and long term memory tasks. Miciak et al. (2020) found that while their were deficits
in decoding skills, students with dyslexia showed other strengths such as creativity and critical
thinking. Elliot (2020) found that low reading comprehension was a concequence of dyslexia,
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not a symptom, as students with dyslexia are found to have average or above average
comprehension of a text when they do not have to decode it themselves.
While students with dyslexia do have strengths, the gaps in their reading abilities persist
over time that begin in the early grades and into the later ones, as stated by Duff et al. (2023),
which found that deficits that were present in a group of second graders with dyslexia were still
present by the time that they got to fourth grade. Duff et al. (2023)found that students who had
dyslexia as well as another learning disability, such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder
(ADHD) or autism, perform worse on measures of reading and math as compared to students
with only one learning disability. Ferrer et al. (2015) found that students with dyslexia who
showed vocabulary deficiencies in first grade continued to have deficiencies and gaps all the way
into ninth grade. This connects to findings by Elliot (2020), who found that there are some
students who may not respond to intervention as well as other students. Which connects to Ferrer
et al. (2015), who also stated that even though students with dyslexia do improve in their reading
abilities over time, the gap between them and their typical peers does not narrow or close. Ferrer
et al. (2015) suggests that early interventions may be better at closing the gap than late
intervention, which prevents the gap from widening but does little to overcome the differences
developed in the early grades.
Interventions
Before specific interventions that should be done for students with dyslexia are explored,
the specifics of who does the intervention, how they intervene, with what frequency, and when
the intervention is done must be specified. Research found that effective instruction can be given
by teachers, speech pathologists, special education teachers, or other trained volunteers. It was
also found that small group instruction is the most effective, but students with dyslexia moreover
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benefit from whole group instruction and one on one instruction as well (Rehfeld et al., 2022).
Other research conducted by Waldie et al. (2014) saw significant results in students with
dyslexia when they were given one on one tutoring by a special education teacher for the
duration of 45 minutes, twice a week. Furthermore, Waldie et al. (2014) also found that using
assessment results to meet individual students academic needs helped students with dyslexia in a
significant way. Al Otaiba et al (2018) saw significant results in children with dyslexia when the
intervention was intensive, and they received feedback with a chance to respond to that feedback
and implement other strategies.
The type of intervention that saw the most success across various studies was phonemic
and phonological awareness interventions. Rehfeld et al. (2022) found that preschoolers saw the
largest benefit from phonemic awareness instruction, and that phonological instruction alone was
a powerful tool to yield significant results, but incorporating interventions that used graphemes
was more impactful than not using them. In terms of findings, the researchers broke up the
findings based on the type of intervention. For phonemic awareness interventions, the research
supports that explicit, routine instruction of these code based skills in order from easiest skills to
hardest are extremely important(Al Otaiba et al., 2018). The researchers found that once a
student has a mastery of decoding, fluency must be the next focus. The student must be able to
read the text fluidly and rapidly with very few errors; this allows the student to easily monitor
their own comprehension of the text they are reading (Al Otaiba et al., 2018). Waldie et al.
(2014) found that intervention that focused on phonological awareness and phonemic awareness
yielded the best results.
For assisting students with vocabulary, the research drew a clear and distinct line between
vocabulary development and reading comprehension. Furthermore, it was noted that teachers
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should split vocabulary into three different tiers to help support students in their vocabulary
development through repeated exposure, synonym and antonym explicit teaching, and
specialized instruction (Al Otaiba et al.). To help develop reading comprehension, educators
should focus on teaching specific reading skills, such as predicting, clarifying, summarizing, and
monitoring all being done before, after, and during the reading of the text (Al Otaiba et al.,
2018). Ring and Black (2017) found that explicitly teaching higher vocabulary yielded higher
results in reading comprehension of more difficult reading passages.
The writing strategies focus on things such as handwriting and spelling. Firstly,
handwriting is an important first step to assisting struggling writers because if the student’s
handwriting is not automatic, the student will struggle with the rest of the writing process (Al
Otaiba et al.). Handwriting should include explicit instruction of how to form the letters, as well
as the educator modeling how to form them correctly, while introducing a few letters at a time
that share common formation characteristics. These exercises should involve some skill using the
student’s memory and the student should be taught how to evaluate their own handwriting to see
if they have formed the letters correctly.
Another, albeit, smaller part of the structure of intervention is addressing processing
difficulties, which is highlighted by Waldie et al. (2014). They found that when specific
processing skills were explicitly targeted by the interventionist, the processing speed of students
with dyslexia increased, as well as their cognitive ability. Another skill that also increased as a
result of this targeted instruction was word attack accuracy, which increased from 50% to 94%
accuracy rate. This research was corroborated by Ring and Black (2017) who found that when
intervention addressed cognitive and processing difficulties in students with dyslexia, their
success rate in reading overall increased.
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It is important to note that there are strategies that have been used or even encouraged in
the field of education but are not backed by empirical research and must be addressed so
educators do not use them. For example, Al Otaiba et al. (2018) found that a multisensory
approach to intervention is not better or worse than a standard literary approach, even though
there are certain programs available for schools that claim that a multisensory approach is better
or necessary. Al Otaiba et al. (2018) found that if time for intervention is shortened, that
phonemic awareness instruction is better than phonological awareness instruction alone and
should be prioritized. Similarly, Rehfeld et al. (2022) found that the group that benefits the most
from explicit phonemic instruction is younger students. Older students may not gain as many
benefits, unless they have received minimal phonemic instruction when they were younger.
Furthermore, the specific skill of phoneme deletion practice was only effective in younger
students, and was only minimally effective in students in third grade or older (Rehfeld et al.,
2022).
Summary
In summary, the findings from this culmination of articles has proven that there are
impacts on students with dyslexia that go beyond academic ones; namely the fact that parents
must take on additional responsibilities such as advocate, counselor, and tutor. The classroom
teachers also believed that the dyslexia diagnosis was made up, refused to give extra support, and
associated students with dyslexia as the “bad” kids (Leitão et al., 2017). Schools and teachers
were ill equipped to help or provide resources for students with dyslexia (Dipleou et al., 2015).
Furthermore, it was found that over half of prison inmates had dyslexia, and despite almost all of
them having an Individualized Education Plan or other accommodations in school, many of them
dropped out before or during high school (Cassidy et al., 2021). Students with dyslexia were
29
found to have higher rates of anxiety and depression symptoms, namely at school (Mammarella
et al., 2014). Students with a reading disability and their caretakers also reported low self esteem
(Dipleou et al., 2015)
To sum up the lack of knowledge on the part of the classroom teacher, it was found that
most educators had many misconceptions surrounding dyslexia, chiefly that it caused the learner
to see letters or words backwards or as if they were floating on the page. Furthermore, many
teachers expressed that they understood that they lacked knowledge on dyslexia, and that even a
little bit of extra training went a long way in educating classroom teachers (Peltier et al., 2022).
Many teachers expressed that their formal education did not prepare them for working with
children with a reading disability, and that they were more likely to seek out various hubs of
information on their own because there was not one readily available resource that they could
access (Mullikin et al., 2021).
Identification of children who are at risk of dyslexia is categorized by the main fact that
these students display a deficit in their phonemic and phonological skills as early as preschool
and kindergarten, despite receiving explicit instruction in these areas (Carroll et al., 2015). In
addition to these deficits, students at risk of dyslexia display difficulties in areas of their brain
and body that contribute to the success or failure of reading, namely eye movement that is too
rapid for their brain to process, their fixation time on a letter or piece of a word is too short, or
they cannot recognize all letters in a word or part of a word (Werth, 2023). Beyond these
deficiencies, students at risk for dyslexia, and who are diagnosed, maintain these deficits as they
mature – still growing their skills but not enough to match their typical peers (Ferrer et al., 2015).
Students who are at risk for dyslexia may exhibit strengths in areas separate from the skill of
30
reading, and may show typical performance on tasks relating to visuals and space, short and long
term memory tasks, critical thinking, or creativity (Werth, 2023).
Finally, interventions for these students with dyslexia must be explicit teaching of
phonemic and phonological skills that also incorporate graphemes to maximize the effectiveness
of the intervention (Rehfeld et al., 2022). The progression of these skills should go from simple
to increasingly complex in manageable steps, but still intense in their instruction that should
occur twice a week for forty-five minutes (Waldie et al., 2014). The intervention can be given by
any trained professional or volunteer, in small groups or one on one or whole group (Rehfeld et
al., 2022). Skills that assist with processing speed and word attack skills were found to be very
effective in working with children with dyslexia (Waldie et al., 2014). Phonological and
phonemic awareness skill development worked best with younger children and not as well with
older children, unless the older children received little or no instruction in these skills when they
were younger (Rehfeld et al., 2022).
Conclusions
Based on evidence presented by Leitão et al. (2017), a lot more work and effort is being
put on the caregiver and student when it comes to supporting and accommodating the diagnosis
of dyslexia, and teachers as well as administrators are largely unsupportive or lack resources to
give the children and their families. This may connect to the findings of Mammarella et al.
(2016), which highlighted the increased feelings of depression and anxiety, and low self esteem
that was found by Leitão et al. (2017). This is connected to the findings of Cassidy et al. (2021)
that found prison inmates who had a formal dyslexia diagnosis had accommodations in place, but
still dropped out. The conclusion that can be drawn from all of these sources is that students with
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dyslexia are not supported by schools and teachers as they should be to be successful, and even
when they are supported, the supports given are obviously not enough or not effective.
In terms of teacher knowledge, the number of misconceptions are rampant, and it
mattered little if the teachers are experienced or novice, as illustrated by Peltier et al. (2022).
Many teachers expressed their realization of lack of knowledge and noticed shortcomings within
their formal training to become educators and their lack of continuing education training
regarding working with children with dyslexia and feel that they must find information on their
own or seek it from a peer teacher (Mullikin et al., 2021). This leads to the conclusion that there
is no widely used training or source information for general classroom teachers, but there needs
to be one because teachers hold so many misconceptions about dyslexia that they are unable to
effectively help these children simply for that fact alone. Misconceptions and misinformation
given by unreliable sources or other educators with misconceptions creates a cyclical loop of
poor information that is circulated among classroom teachers again and again, leaving students
with dyslexia to continue to struggle in reading without any supports that are effective.
Based on the evidence presented, Carroll et al., (2016) tells teachers who are assessing
their children in areas such as print knowledge, phonological awareness, and rapid naming skills,
they will certainly see students who have trouble with multiple or all of these categories. With
the knowledge that these are indicators of dyslexia, educators will be able to inform
administrators and family members of the child, which can lead to formal assessment of the child
for dyslexia, which in turn will lead to accommodations and supports being put in place early in
the child’s academic career. To further assist in identification, the research conducted by
Schaars et al. (2017) supports the project overall as it highlights the fact that as early as
kindergarten and first grade the signs of dyslexia are present and can be identified. This connects
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to the earlier article by Carroll et al. as it highlights not only the phonemic awareness
discrepancy but also the fact that it takes children with dyslexia longer to master the skills that
the control group picks up sooner. This will add to the list of signs that teachers need to know in
order to detect dyslexia early. Werth (2023) adds to a teacher’s checklist of signs of dyslexia as
poor eye tracking along a line of text, too short of fixation times on words or letters, and the
inability to recognize all of the letters in a word or part of a word. This, coupled with students at
risk for dyslexia showing strength in other areas (Miciak et al., 2020) paints a clear picture for
classroom teachers to watch for. Once classroom teachers have a clear and definitive checklist or
other helpful tool, they may be able to identify students at risk earlier, giving them the
intervention and support they need, while also advocating for assessment and accommodations
through the special education department.
In terms of educating educators about effective interventions, the Al Otaiba et al.(2018)
article contains copious strategies for all types of educators to implement in their classrooms, or
if they are support staff - such as speech-language pathologist, or occupational therapists, or
reading specialists, in their sessions with students. This helps the project because it gives rich
information on various skills that students with dyslexia may struggle with and this article
discusses them succinctly and gives many strategies and ways to implement them. This article
helps to erase part of the issue of misinformation among teachers and other educators about best
practices when working with children with dyslexia. The other article by Rehfeld et al. (2022)
goes more in depth into phonemic awareness interventions and this article adds to its focus and
supports those findings.
Rehefeld et al (2022) highlights the importance of phonemic awareness interventions and
provides essential information to the formation of this project, as it presents the best way to help
33
children with dyslexia. While there are misconceptions among teachers about how to teach
dyslexic students to read this study helps to provide quantitative data on the best strategies,
which ones are most effective, which will help educators rid themselves of strategies that may
not be as effective. This further supports the Al Otaiba et al. article because it gives more
strategies for phonemic awareness interventions, which will fit well with the kindergarten and
first grade curriculums and will continue to dispel the misconceptions that teachers of young
children may have about assisting children suspected of having dyslexia. Waldie et al. (2014)
supports explicit teaching of strategies to help with processing and word attack accuracy with
significant success shown. This shows the importance of explicit teaching of various skills that
has been proven to work because it has been proven that students with dyslexia have deficits in
these areas. This will also help to dispel misconceptions or reservations some teachers may have
about these methods when they test them in their own classrooms and see the results of
researched based methods of intervention.
Chapter 3: Project Description
Introduction
As stated in Chapter One, many students with dyslexia struggle academically. This
problem consists of different facets, namely that these students struggle not only with reading,
but in other subjects as well. General education classroom teachers also have misconceptions
about dyslexia and how it presents in students, as well as a lack of knowledge around dyslexia
itself as a learning disability. It was found that over half of all the teachers surveyed held
misconceptions such as students seeing words or letters backwards is a sign of dyslexia, students
who have dyslexia have low word-level reading skills because of bad visual processing, that
34
visual perception inadequacies are not part of the dyslexia diagnosis, and that dyslexia is a
mainly visual reading disability (Peltier et al., 2022).
The solution to this problem is an in-service training that educators and administrators
will take part in for one day, to properly equip them with the best practices for assisting students
with dyslexia. The following chapter contains a description of the project components, how the
project will be evaluated to determine success, project conclusions, a plan for implementation of
the project, and finally an appendix.
Project Components
The school where the author of this project is currently employed, South Canton
Scholars, which is a school under National Heritage Academies, gives no in-service training to
their classroom teachers or support staff in the four years they have been there. Dyslexia has
been present in multiple students in the classroom and there is a lack of teacher knowledge on
how to best service these students. The objectives of this project are to train classroom teachers,
and other teachers who work directly with students on the most effective strategies to identify
and support students with dyslexia, or are suspected of having dyslexia. Teachers will see more
growth in reading and comprehension for this group of students and teachers will feel confident
using these strategies as they are peer reviewed and empirically based. The rationale for this
project is that many teachers reported having no training on how to help students with dyslexia
(Mullikin et al., 2021). Furthermore, teachers had high levels of misconceptions about dyslexia,
which affected their ability to help those students (Washburn et al., 2017). This lack of training is
an important rationale to the creation of this project, as this group of students are not getting the
support that they need to succeed (Washburn et al., 2017).
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The product itself consists of three parts. The first part, Appendix A, is the pre-
professional development survey that will be given to all participants before the beginning of the
presentation. The survey consists of ten true/false statements – with an option for participants to
select an “unsure” option as well. These items gauge the knowledge and possible misconceptions
that the participants have regarding dyslexia in children. The survey also contains five questions
that assess the participant’s comfort level with various knowledge of dyslexia. The second part of
the product is the actual presentation slides, Appendix B. These slides are what the presenter will
use when training educators and administrators on the misconceptions and facts about dyslexia,
the adverse effects of dyslexia, how to identify a child who may be at risk of dyslexia, and
interventions that they can do to help those students. The slides give detailed information to the
participants to help them understand all the research and best practices that will ensure that they
are effective in their identification and intervention. The final part, Appendix C, is the post
professional development survey. This survey has the same questions as the pre professional
development survey, except for the last two questions. The last two questions are short answer
response questions that allow the participants to give feedback to the presenter.
Project Evaluation
The project will be evaluated after a group of teachers have received the in-service
training. The educators will be provided with a post-training survey – as seen in Appendix C.
The post-training survey is almost identical to the pre-training survey that was administered, to
see if educators did learn the information that was presented in the training, as well as to give
them a chance to see how much they have learned. There are ten true/false items, five items on a
Likert scale, and two written response questions. The true/false items will show clearly if the
educators learned the material presented, and the Likert scale questions will also give data on
36
how comfortable they feel implementing the material they just learned. The written response
questions will give feedback to the presenter on how more resources or information can be added
to the presentation to make it better. The true/false section and the Likert scale questions should
see a positive change from the pre-training survey to show the project’s success. The pre and post
presentation survey will be collected by the presenter at the end of the presentation.
Project Conclusions
The main problem discussed in Chapter One was that students with dyslexia struggled
academically. Carroll et al. (2016) found that students with dyslexia struggled specifically in
multiple subcategories in reading, such as rapid naming skills, print knowledge, and
phonological awareness skills. Schaars et al. (2017) found that students with dyslexia show signs
of the disability as early as kindergarten and first grade. Duff et al. (2023) found that the gap that
was present in children with dyslexia versus their peers in second grade still persisted by the time
that they got to fourth grade. All of these findings support the conclusion that dyslexia is
negatively impacting students who are diagnosed or undiagnosed and that more must be done to
help these students.
Chapter One also stated that teacher misconceptions contributed to the issue. This was
proven by Peltier et al. (2022) which found that it did not matter if teachers were experienced or
novice, both groups still held more misconceptions than facts regarding dyslexia. Mullikin et al.
(2021) also found that when teachers did not know something about dyslexia, they tended to ask
a peer teacher. The conclusion that can be drawn from this research and this part of the problem
is that teachers are not even aware of the misconceptions that they have, and when they do
realize that they are not informed, they ask a peer teacher, who very likely does not have the
37
correct information either. This highlights the importance of this project and the need for clear,
and appropriate training to be provided to classroom teachers.
Some questions that remain about this topic are regarding specific curricula or
instructional tools to help children with dyslexia. Are there specific, already created curricula
that works the best for students with dyslexia? This project has explored the types of instruction
needed, but is there a curriculum that follows research thoroughly? Has this curriculum been put
into practice and seen success in schools and classrooms? This requires further study and is a
suggestion for next steps in research.
Project Implementation
It is suggested that this professional development presentation be given during the
professional development training time before the beginning of the school year. This will give
educators a good starting point right at the beginning of the school year to implement these new
resources and information they have learned to accurately identify and assist students who may
have dyslexia. Novice and veteran teachers alike should receive this training and should receive
it more than just one time. It is also suggested that the training should be given again, part way
into the school year. This gives teachers a chance to get the information again, while potentially
identifying students in their current class who may be at risk for dyslexia. The chances of success
with the project and its objectives being attained will increase the more that educators get
presented with the information. This may increase the likelihood that a classroom teacher
accurately identifies a student that may have dyslexia and gets them the right support that they
need.
The project should be shared at conferences that teachers and administrators attend,
especially reading and special education conferences. This would help to initially get the project
38
out into the field, that way teachers and administrators can bring the information about the
project back to their home schools, where they may be able to have a presenter come in and give
the training to those schools. Teachers may also spread information about the project through
informal discussions with other teachers that they may know or connect with through electronic
means. The project may also be shared with universities in their teacher training programs, so
that teachers in training may be well equipped to support students with dyslexia, and reduce the
number of new teachers coming into the profession with misconceptions.
