Research Assessment #5

Date:​ 10/22/2017

Subject: ​Elementary Education

MLA Citation(s):

Wadlington, Elizabeth, et al. "Teaching Students with Dyslexia in the Regular Classroom."

Childhood Education​, vol. 73, no. 1, 1996, p. 2. ​Academic OneFile​,

go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=AONE&sw=w&u=j043905005&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA57045269

&it=r&asid=64e910a816e513779ffd2b3db3d566a2. Accessed 22 Oct. 2017.

Assessment:
I decided to research dyslexia for this research assessment for a couple of reasons. One

big reasons is that I tutor a girl with dyslexia and am struggling to teach her effectively. Another

is that it fascinates me that people learn in different ways and different learning abilities and

disabilities can affect people in how they learn things, but that everyone is still able to end up

learning the same material. The last and biggest reason is that in every interview I have been

on, the teacher says that in their classroom they tailor lessons to help everyone learn as well as

they can, so I am interested in learning different techniques to help people with dyslexia learn as

well as what dyslexia really is.

When starting to look for an article about this, I first saw a bunch of super broad things

about dyslexia and they all had two things in common: they defined dyslexia as a learning

disability that affects people’s reading and writing skills, and they explained that a way to teach

dyslexic people is with multisensory instruction. I decided to read this entire article and choose it

for me research assessment because it went in very large depth about these two things while
providing a lot more information about the learning disability. The article is broken into a few

sections: the first gave an in depth definition of dyslexia, then the next explained characteristics

of the learning disability, then it explained how to meet a dyslexic student’s needs, followed by

sections about teaching general instruction, study skills and organization, language arts, and

test taking, and finally it has a section concluding the information about teaching students with

dyslexia.

One thing that caught my eye while reading this article is that there are two different

types of dyslexia- developmental dyslexia and acquired dyslexia. Both of these types have the

same effect on the person, but developmental dyslexia (the one that most people with dyslexia

have) is something someone is born with and acquired comes from a brain injury. I found this

very interesting because I never thought that an injury could make someone dyslexic, but it can.

The article then explained that dyslexia affects the way people learn and can make it harder for

people to read, write, have good handwriting, and remember things. Then, it followed by giving

a few characteristics of dyslexic people. It said that many times they are very motivated to learn,

but have trouble to do so. It takes them much more time and effort to read different things, but

usually excel in other areas. One thing that it said that I had no idea about is that Albert Einstein

probably had dyslexia. This is super cool because despite the learning disability that makes it

hard to do different things, he still was able to become one of the most recognizable scientist

and commonly referred to as a genious. This shows that people with dyslexia still have huge

potential and can learn. If I were to become a teacher, I would want to create an environment

where students with dyslexia understand this potential and work with them to discover their

learning potential at a young age, providing them with confidence throughout the rest of their

school years. The article also pointed out different characteristics that I have noticed in people I

know are dyslexic and have heard that dyslexic people exhibit. One main characteristic is that
they struggle with putting things in order. This is interesting to me because there are different

ways that people can make it more doable in situations where they must sequence things, and

these ways are different for most people with dyslexia. One way it said that elementary school

teachers can make it easier for them to learn sequencing things such as the alphabet and

numbers is something as simple as putting up the alphabet and different sequential patterns in

their classroom as a constant reminder of the order. I thought this was cool because it is such a

simple method that works very well. Then, the article explained that there are different laws that

make dyslexic students have to receive different aid in public schools. I think this is cool

because it makes it so that people with disabilities are required to be recognized and are able to

have the best learning environment available to them. Some of the ways that teachers help their

students is by putting them in the front of the classroom, give them extra time on assignments

and tests, receive audio copies of different things, take tests in different rooms, and other ways

that they create theirself. This is cool because of the small difference in just time or environment

make a huge difference for the student, and it is not much of a hassle for the teacher to do. One

thing that it says that can help students with spelling and memorizing vocabulary is the

multisensory technique that many other articles touched base on. Some specific examples this

article gave that can help is with two fingers writing out the words in sand or a rough, carpet

surface, acting out the word, or recording theirself saying the word and listening to it while

writing it down. I think that it is cool that because the student writes with their finger on a

textured surface, the brain creates a stronger pathway to remember the vocabulary word or

spelling of the word. I am definitely going to try this when tutoring and maybe with myself and

also will use this technique on all of my students sometimes if I become a teacher.

Overall, this article was rich in super interesting information about dyslexia and I learned

a lot from it. Now that I have a better understanding of what dyslexia is, I will be able to
understand the thought process behind different teaching strategies. In the future, I hope to

build on my research by finding different articles that give more techniques to helping students

with dyslexia and other learning disabilities, as well as trying them myself while tutoring and

studying on my own. Although I am not dyslexic, I feel like anyone can benefit from this type of

learning, which I will be able to test!